The 'Pretty Man' at the Seattle Theatre
An 1878 local columnist offers a biting, satirical takedown of a local dandy, mocking his grooming habits and public vanity at the theatre.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
We have our eye on him now. He parts his hair in the middle, wears a mustache, calls himself 'Colonel,' 'Major,' or 'Doctor,' and devotes himself to his ambrosial locks, which he of course wears long. We can endure a flirt, a fashionable woman, but from 'pretty men,' good Lord deliver us! We saw him at the theatre the other night. He took a front seat, gloated at himself, ran his light hand twelve times through his 'ambrosials,' pushing them back of his ears and bestowing an encouraging pat on them. He then, after a manner of affected males (we mean males affected with few brains), pulled one cherished tuft down over his 'marble brow' to give himself a negligent air, felt at his necktie, looked at his feet, fondled his mustache and glanced sternly across his right shoulder at the young lady near him. We sat and trembled, expecting to see the young woman drop like a sparrow into the arms of the serpent-like charmer. But she didn't. She only kept her eye more firmly fixed on Montague, who was rattling through the character of 'Captain Beauclerc' all unconscious of the presence of a rival 'masher' in the auditorium.
“We can endure a flirt, a fashionable woman, but from 'pretty men,' good Lord deliver us!”
This piece captures the Victorian era’s rigid gender anxieties, where any departure from rugged masculine performance was social fodder. It is a striking snapshot of late-1870s Seattle social politics, where the 'masher'—a man who aggressively pursues women—was simultaneously objects of mockery and concern.
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