Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a member of the fashionable sporting world.

1834		(con. 1737–9) W.H. Ainsworth Rookwood (1857) 143: Such a bang-up cove as your fancy man.
1846		Durivage & Burnham Stray Subjects (1848) 87: The company proved a heterogenous conglomeration of [...] editors, lawyers, auctioneers, indescribables, and ‘fancies’ – with a sprinkling of ‘none-such’s’.