Ed Howker

Death of a dandy

In the final interview before his death last week, Sebastian Horsley told Ed Howker about being ‘the high-priest of the dandy movement’, a heroin addict and a self-confessed fraud

In the final interview before his death last week, Sebastian Horsley told Ed Howker about being ‘the high-priest of the dandy movement’, a heroin addict and a self-confessed fraud

His artwork was described as ‘dreadful’, his poetry as ‘pointless’ and he was denied entry to the United States for what the authorities called ‘moral turpitude’. But Sebastian Horsley excelled at failure. When a play of his memoirs opened this month at the Soho Theatre, the book had fallen out of print. Even his death last Thursday, of a heroin overdose, was completely accidental — otherwise, as friends said, he would not have passed up the chance to pen a lengthy suicide note.

When I met him in February, neither of us would have guessed it would be one of his last interviews. Nonetheless, his comments had a valedictory feel. ‘The horror is sounding too serious,’ he said. ‘I’m perfectly aware of how absurd I am. I am a dandy — and the dandy oscillates between Savile Row and Death Row, between narcissism and neuroses. There is a Calvinistic, austere quality to it. I have sacrificed possessions, career, children. And of course I understand my condition very well: I’m in a popular movement for individualism — that is farcical. To be adored, darling. That is what it’s about.’

I had met him hoping to discuss dandyism, a fashion which is working its way into the wardrobes of young men who do not share Horsley’s affectations. He greeted me with exaggerated warmth outside his flat — two sparsely furnished rooms on Meard Street in Soho — dressed in an Edwardian Gothic number complete with top hat. As we walked to a local restaurant, passers-by stared at him with incredulity. I suspect they thought I was his footman. As the self-proclaimed high priest of the ‘dandy movement’, he had plenty to say on the matter.

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