The Evolution of the Gentleman

WHEN I venture to discuss the evolution of the gentleman, I may be expected to begin with a definition ; but for the present I must decline this invidious task. In the Century Dictionary I find as the first definition. “ A man of good family ; a man of gentle birth.”The sixth definition is, ” An apparatus used in soldering circular pewter ware.”Between the gentleman who is born and the gentleman who is made, in connection with pewter ware, there is a wide range for choice. After all, definitions are luxuries, not necessities of thought. When Alice told her name to Humpty Dumpty, that intolerable pedant asked, “ ' What does it mean ? ’

“ ‘ Must a name mean something ? ’ Alice asked doubtfully.

“ ‘ Of course it must,’ Humpty Dumpty said, with a short laugh. ' My name means the shape I am, — and a good handsome shape I am, too.' ”

I suppose that almost any man, if he were asked, what a gentleman is, would be inclined to answer, “ It is the shape I am.” I judge this because, though the average man would not be insulted if you were to say, “ You are no saint,” it would not be safe to say, “ You are no gentleman.” Perhaps, then, we may as well follow the formula of Humpty Dumpty, and say that a gentleman, if not the shape that every man actually is, is the shape in which every man desires to appear to others.

It is needless to remark that this aspiration is not always adequately fulfilled. Sometimes we see only the actual boor in our acquaintance, while the astral body of the gentleman which he is endeavoring to project at ns is not sufficiently materialized for our imperfect vision. There are those who have to admit as did Boss Tweed when reviewing his attempts at lofty political virtue, “ I tried to do right, but somehow I seemed to have bad luck.” All this is but to say that the word “gentleman ” represents an ideal. Above whatever coarseness and sordidness there may be in actual life there rises the idea of a finer kind of man, with gentler manners and truer speech and braver actions.

It follows, also, that the idea of the gentleman has grown, as from time to time new elements have been added to it. In every age we shall find the real gentleman, — that is, the man who in genuine fashion represents the best ideal of his time ; and we shall find the mimicry of him, the would-be gentleman, who copies the form, while ignorant of the substance. These two characters furnish the material, on the one hand for the romancer, and on the other hand for the satirist.

If there had been no real gentlemen, the epics, the solemn tragedies, and the stirring tales of chivalry would have remained unwritten ; and if there had been no pretended gentlemen, the humorist would find his occupation gone. But always these contrasted characters are on the stage together. Simple dignity is followed by strutting pomposity, and after the hero the braggart swaggers and storms. So ridicule and admiration bear rule by turns.

For the sake of convenience, it might be well to indicate the difference by calling one the gentleman, and the other the genteelman. Below the genteelman there is still another species. Parasites have parasites of their own, and the genteelman has his admiring but unsuccessful imitators. I do not know the scientific name for an individual of this species, but I believe that he calls himself a “ gent.”

The process of evolution, as we know, is a continual play between the organism and the environment. It is a cosmic game of “ Pussy wants a corner.” Each creature wants to get into a snug corner of its own ; but no sooner does it find it than it is tempted out by the prospect of another. Then ensues a scramble with other aspirants for the coveted position ; and as there are never enough corners to go around, some one must fail. Though this is hard on the disappointed players, the philosophers find it easy to show that it is an admirable arrangement. If there were enough corners to go around, and every one were content to stay in the corner in which he found himself, the game would be over. That would be an end of progress, which, after all, most of us, in our more energetic moods, acknowledge to be worth what it costs.

We do not always find the gentleman in his proper environment. Nature seems sometimes like the careless nurse in the story books who mixes the children up, so that the rightful heir does not come to his own. But in the long run the type is preserved and improved.

The idea of the gentleman involves the sense of personal dignity and worth. He is not a means to an end : he is an end in himself. How early this sense arose we may not know. Professor Huxley made merry over the sentimentalists who picture the simple dignity of primitive man. He had no admiration to throw away on “ the dignified and unclothed savage sitting in solitary meditation under trees.” And yet I am inclined to think that the gentleman may have appeared even before the advent of tailors. The peasants who followed Wat Tyler sang, —

But a writer in the age of Queen Elizabeth published a book in which he argued that Adam himself was a perfect gentleman. He had, at least, the advantage, dear to the theological mind, that though affirmative proof might he lacking, it was equally difficult to prove the negative.

As civilization advances and literature catches its changing features, the outlines of the gentleman grow distinct. Read the book of Genesis, the Analects of Confucius, and Plutarch’s Lives. What a portrait gallery of gentlemen of the antique world ! And yet how different each from the others !

In the book of Genesis we see Abraham sitting at his tent door. Three strangers appear. When he sees them, he goes to meet them, and bows, and says to the foremost, “ My Lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant. Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree; and I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts ; after that ye shall pass on.”

There may have been giants in those days, and churls, and all manner of barbarians, but as we watch the strangers resting under the oak we say, “ There were also gentlemen in those days.” How simple it all is ! It is like a single palm-tree outlined against the desert and the sky.

How different the Chinese gentleman ! Everything with him is exact. The disciples of Confucius are careful to tell us how he adjusted the skirts of his robe before and behind, how he insisted that his mince-meat should be cut quite small and should have exactly the right proportion of rice, and that his mat must be laid straight before he would sit on it. Such details of deportment were thought very important. But we forget the mats and the mince-meat when we read : “ Three things the master had not, — he had no prejudices, he had no obstinacy, he had no egotism.” And we forget the fantastic garb and the stiff Chinese genuflections, and come to the conclusion that the true gentleman is as simple-hearted amid the etiquette of the court as in the tent in the desert, when we hear the master saying : “ Sincerity is the way of Heaven; the wise are the unassuming. It is said of Virtue that over her embroidered robe she puts a plain single garment.”

Turn to the pages of Plutarch, where are fixed for all time the Greek and Roman ideals of the gentleman. No embroidered robes here, but a masculine virtue, in a plain single garment. What a breed of men they were, brave, forceful, self-contained ! No holiday gentlemen these ! Their manners were not veneered, but part of themselves. With the same lofty gravity they faced life and death. When fortune smiled there was no unseemly exultation ; when fortune frowned there was no unseemly repining. With the same dignity the Roman rode in his triumphal chariot through the streets and lay down to die when his hour had come. No wonder that men who thus learned how to conquer themselves conquered the world.

Most of Plutarch’s worthies were gentlemen, though there were exceptions. There was, for example, Cato the Censor, who bullied the Roman youth into virtue, and got a statue erected to himself as the restorer of the good old manners. Poor Plutarch, who likes to do well by his heroes, is put to his wits’ end to know what to do with testy, patriotic, honest, fearless, parsimonious Cato. Cato was undoubtedly a great man and a good citizen ; but when we are told how he sold his old slaves, at a bargain, when they became infirm, and how he left his war-horse in Spain to save the cost of transportation, Plutarch adds, “ Whether such things be an evidence of greatness or littleness of soul let the reader judge for himself.” The judicious reader will conclude that it is possible to be a great man and a reformer, and yet not be quite a gentleman.

When the Roman Empire was destroyed the antique type of gentleman perished. The very names of the tribes which destroyed him have yet terrible associations. Goths, Vandals, Huns,— to the civilized man of the fifth and sixth centuries these sounded like the names of wild beasts rather than of men. You might as well have said tigers, hyenas, wolves. The end had come of a civilization that had been the slow growth of centuries.

Yet out of these fierce tribes, destroyers of the old order, a new order was to arise. Out of chaos and might a new kind of gentleman was to be evolved. The romances of the Middle Ages are variations on a single theme, the appearance of the finer type of manhood and its struggle for existence. In the palace built by the enchantment of Merlin were four zones of sculpture.

Europe was in the second stage, when men were slaying beasts and what was most brutal in humanity. If the higher manhood was to live, it must fight, and so the gentleman appears, sword in hand. Whether we are reading of Charlemagne and his paladins, or of Siegfried, or of Arthur, the story is the same. The gentleman has appeared. He has come into a waste land,

He comes amid savage anarchy where heathen hordes are “ reddening the sun with smoke and earth with blood.”The gentleman sends forth his clear defiance. All this shall no longer be. He is ready to meet force with force; he is ready to stake his life upon the issue, the hazard of new fortunes for the race.

It is as a pioneer of the new civilization that the gentleman has “ pitched

The ballads and romances chronicle a struggle desperate in its beginning and triumphant in its conclusion. They are in praise of force, but it is a noble force. There is something better, they say, than brute force : it is manly force. The giant is no match for the gentleman.

If we would get at the mediæval idea of the gentleman, we must not listen merely to the romances as they are retold by men of genius in our own day. Scott and Tennyson clothe their characters in the old draperies, but their ideals are those of the nineteenth century rather than of the Middle Ages. Tennyson expressly disclaims the attempt to reproduce the King Arthur

When we go back and read Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, we find ourselves among men of somewhat different mould from the knights of Tennyson’s idylls. It is not the blameless King Arthur, but the passionate Sir Launcelot, who wins admiration. We hear Sir Ector crying over Launcelot’s body, “ Ah, Launcelot, thou wert the head of the Christian knights. Thou wert the courtliest knight that ever bare shield; and thou wert the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrode horse ; and thou wert the truest lover for a sinful man that ever loved woman ; and thou wert the kindest man that ever strake with sword ; and thou wert the goodliest person that ever came among press of knights; and thou wort the meekest man and the gentlest that ever ate in hall with ladies ; and thou wert the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest.”

We must take, not one of these qualities, but all of them together, to understand the gentleman of those ages when good and evil struggled so fiercely for the mastery. No saint was this Sir Launcelot. There was in him no fine balance of virtues, but only a wild tumult of the blood. He was proud, selfwilled, passionate, pleasure-loving; capable of great sin and of sublime expiation. What shall we say of this gentlest, sternest, kindest, goodliest, sinfulest, of knights, — this man who knew no middle path, but who, when treading in perilous places and following false lights, yet draws all men admiringly to himself ?

We can only say this : he was the prototype of those mighty men who were the makers of the modern world. They were the men who fought with Charlemagne, and with William the Conqueror, and with Richard ; they were the men who “ beat down the heathen, and upheld the Christ ; ” they were the men from whom came the crusades, and the feudal system, and the great charter. As we read the history, we say at one moment, “These men were mail-clad ruffians,”and at the next, “ What great - hearted gentlemen! ”

Perhaps the wisest thing would be to confess to both judgments at once. In this stage of his evolution the gentleman may boast of feats that would now be rehearsed only in bar-rooms. This indicates that the standard of society has improved, and that what was possible once for the nobler sort, of men is now characteristic of the baser sort. The modern rowdy frequently appears in the cast-off manners of the old-time gentleman. Time, the old-clothes man, thus furnishes his customers with many strange misfits. What is of importance is that through these transition years there was a ceaseless struggle to preserve the finer types of manhood.

The ideal of the mediæval gentleman was expressed in the word “gallantry.” The essence of gallantry is courage ; but it is not the sober courage of the stoic. It is courage charged with qualities that give it sparkle and effervescence. It is the courage that not only faces danger, but delights in it. What suggestions of physical and mental elasticity are in Shakespeare’s description of the “ springing, brave Plantagenet ” ! Scott’s lines express the gallant spirit : —

Gallantry came to have another implication, equally characteristic. The knight was gallant not only in war, but in love also. There had come a new worship, the worship of woman. In the Church it found expression in the adoration of the Madonna, but in the camp and the court it found its place as well. Chivalry was the elaborate and often fantastic ritual, and the gentleman was minister at the altar. The ancient gentleman stood alone; the mediæval gentleman offered all to the lady of his love. Here, too, gallantry implied the same overflowing joy in life. If you are anxious to have a test by which to recognize the time when yon are growing old, — so old that imagination is chilled within you, — 1 should advise you to turn to the chapter in the Romance of King Arthur entitled “ How Queen Guenever went maying with certain Knights of the Table Round, clad all in green.” Then read : “ So it befell in the month of May, Queen Guenever called unto her knights and she gave them warning that early upon the morrow she would ride maying into the woods and fields besides Westminster, and I warn you that none of you but that he be well horsed and that ye all be clothed in green. ... I shall bring with me ten ladies and every knight shall have a squire and two yeomen. So upon the morn they took their horses with the Queen and rode on maying through the woods and meadows in great joy and delights.”

If you cannot see them riding on, a gallant company over the meadows, and you hear no echoes of their laughter, and if there is no longer any enchantment in the vision of that time when all were “ blithe and debonair,”then undoubtedly you are growing old. It is time to close the romances : perhaps you may still find solace in Young’s Night Thoughts or Pollock’s Course of Time. Happy are they who far into the seventies still see Queen Guenever riding in the pleasant month of May : these are they who have found the true fountain of youth.

The gentleman militant will always be the hero of ballads and romances; and in spite of the apostles of realism, I fancy he has not lost his charm. There are Jeremiahs of evolution, who tell us that after a time men will be so highly developed as to have neither hair nor teeth. In that day, when the operating dentists have ceased from troubling, and given way to the manufacturing dentists, and the barbers have been superseded by the wig-makers, it is quite possible that the romances may give place to some tedious department of comparative mythology. In that day, Chaucer’s knight who " loved chevalrie, trouthe and honour, fredom and curtesie,” will be forgotten, though his armor on the museum walls will be learnedly described. But that dreadful day is still far distant; before it comes, not only teeth and hair must be improved out of existence, but a substitute must be found for good red blood. Till that time " no laggard in love or dastard in war " can steal our hearts from young Lochinvar.

The sixteenth century marks an epoch in the history of the gentleman, as in all else. Old ideas disappear, to come again in new combinations. Cervantes " laughs Spain’s chivalry away,” and his merry laughter echoes through all Europe. The same hands wielded the sword and the pen. The scholars, the artists, the poets, began to feel a sense of personal worth, and carried the gallant spirit of the gentleman into their work. They were not mere specialists, but men of action. The artist was not only an instrument to give pleasure to others, but he was himself a centre of admiration. Out of this new consciousness how many interesting characters were produced ! There were men who engaged in controversies as if they were tournaments, and who wrote books and painted pictures and carved statues, not in the spirit of professionalism, but as those who would in this activity enjoy “ one crowded hour of glorious life.” Very frequently, these gentlemen and scholars, and gentlemen and artists, overdid the matter, and were more belligerent in disposition than were the warriors with whom they began to claim equality.

To this self-assertion we owe the most delightful of autobiographies, — that of Benvenuto Cellini. He aspired to be not only an artist, but a fine gentleman. No one could be more certain of the sufficiency of Humpty Dumpty’s definition of a gentleman than was he.

If we did not have his word for it, we could scarcely believe that any one could be so valiant in fight and so uninterrupted in the pursuit of honor without its interfering with his professional work. Take, for example, that memorable day when, escaping from the magistrates, he makes an attack upon the household of his enemy, Gherardo Guascanti. “ I found them at table; and Gherardo, who had been the cause of the quarrel, flung himself upon me. I stabbed him in the breast, piercing doublet and jerkin, but doing him not the least harm in the world.” After this attack, and after magnanimously pardoning Gherardo’s father, mother, and sisters, he says : “ I ran storming down the staircase, and when I reached the street, I found all the rest of the household, more than twelve persons : one of them seized an iron shovel, another a thick iron pipe ; one had an anvil, some hammers, some cudgels. When I got among them, raging like a mad bull, I flung four or five to the earth, and fell down with them myself, continually aiming my dagger now at one, and now at another. Those who remained upright plied with both hands with all their force, giving it me with hammers, cudgels, and the anvil; but inasmuch as God does sometimes mercifully intervene, he so ordered that neither they nor I did any harm to one another.”

What fine old days those were, when the toughness of skin matched so wonderfully the stoutness of heart! One has a suspicion that in these degenerate days, were a family dinner-party interrupted by such an avalanche of daggers, cudgels, and anvils, some one would be hurt. As for Benvenuto, he does not so much as complain of a headache.

There is an easy, gentleman-like grace in the way in which he recounts his incidental homicides. When he is hiding behind a hedge at midnight, waiting for the opportunity to assassinate his enemies, his heart is open to all the sweet influences of nature, and he enjoys “ the glorious heaven of stars.” He was not only an artist and a fine gentleman, but a saint as well, and “ often had recourse with pious heart to holy prayers.” Above all, he had the indubitable evidence of sainthood, a halo. “ I will not omit to relate another circumstance, which is perhaps the most remarkable that ever happened to any one. I do so in order to justify the divinity of God and of his secrets, who deigned to grant me this great favor: forever since the time of my strange vision until now, an aureole of glory (marvelous to relate) has rested on my head. This is visible to every sort of man to whom I have chosen to point it out, but these have been few.” He adds ingenuously, “ I am always able to see it.” He says, “ I first became aware of it in Franee, at Paris; for the air in those parts is so much freer from mists that one can see it far better than in Italy.”

Happy Benvenuto with his Parisian halo, which did not interfere with the manly arts of self-defense! His selfcomplacency was possible only in a stage of evolution when the saint and the assassin were not altogether clearly differentiated. Some one has said, “ Give me the luxuries of life, and I can get along without the necessities.”Like many of his time, Benvenuto hail all the luxuries that belong to the character of a Christian gentleman, though he was destitute of the necessities. An appreciation of common honesty as an essential to a gentleman seems to be more slowly developed than the more romantic sentiment that is called honor.

The evolution of the gentleman has its main line of progress where there is a constant though slow advance ; but, on the other hand, there are arrested developments, and quaint survivals, and abortive attempts.

In each generation there have been men of fashion who have mistaken themselves for gentlemen. They are uninteresting enough while in the flesh, but after a generation or two they become very quaint and curious, when considered as specimens. Each generation imagines that it has discovered a new variety, and invents a name for it. The dude, the swell, the dandy, the fop, the spark, the macaroni, the blade, the popinjay, the coxcomb, — these are butterflies of different summers. There is here endless variation, but no advancement. One fashion comes after another, but we cannot call it better. One would like to see representatives of the different generations together in full dress. Wliat variety in oaths and small talk ! What anachronisms in swords and canes and eye-glasses, in ruffles, in collars, in wigs ! What affluence in powders and perfumes and colors ! But would they “ know each other there ” ? The real gentlemen would be sure to recognize each other. Abraham and Marcus Aurelius and Confucius would find much in common. Launcelot and Sir Philip Sidney and Chinese Gordon would need no introduction. Montaigne and Mr. Spectator and the Autocrat of the Breakfast - Table would fall into delightful chat. But would a “swell’' recognize a “spark”? And might we not expect a “ dude to fall into immoderate laughter at the sight of a “ popinjay ” ?

Fashion has its revenges. Nothing seems so ridiculous to it as an old fashion. The fop has no toleration for the obsolete foppery. The artificial gentleman is as inconceivable out of his artificial surroundings as the waxen-faced gentleman of the clothing store outside his show window.

There was Beau Nash, for example, — a much-admired person in his day, when he ruled from his throne in the pumproom in Bath. Everything was in keeping. There was Queen Anne architecture, and Queen Anne furniture, and Queen Anne religion, and the Queen Anne fashion in fine gentlemen. What a curious piece of bricabrac this fine gentleman was, to be sure! He was not fitted for any useful purpose under the sun, but in Ids place he was quite ornamental, and undoubtedly very expensive. Art was as self-complacent as if nature had never been invented. What multitudes of the baser sort must be employed in furnishing the fine gentleman with clothes ! All Bath admired the way in which Beau Nash refused to pay for them. Once when a vulgar tradesman insisted on payment, Nash compromised by lending him twenty pounds, — which he did with the air of a prince. So great was the impression he made upon his time that a statue was erected to him, while beneath were placed the busts of two minor contemporaries, Pope and Newton. This led Lord Chesterfield to write : ——

Lord Chesterfield himself had nothing in common with the absurd imitation gentlemen, and yet the gentleman whom he described and pretended to admire was altogether artificial. He was the Machiavelli of the fashionable world. He saw through it, and recognized its hollowness ; but such as it was it must be accepted. The only thing was to learn how to get on in it. “ In courts you may expect to meet connections without friendships, enmities without hatred, honor without virtue, appearances saved and realities sacrificed, good manners and bad morals.”

There is something earnestly didactic about Lord Chesterfield. He gives line upon line, and precept, upon precept, to his “ dear boy.” Never did a Puritan father teach more conscientiously the shorter catechism than did he the whole duty of the gentleman, which was to save appearances even though he must sacrifice reality. “ My dear boy,” he writes affectionately, “ I advise you to trust neither man nor woman more than is absolutely necessary. Accept proffered friendships with great civility, but with great incredulity.”

Poor little Rollo was not more strenuously prodded up the steep and narrow path of virtue than was little Philip Stanhope up the steep and narrow path of fashion. Worldliness made into a religion was not without its asceticism. “ Though you think you dance well, do not think you dance well enough. Though you are told that you are genteel, still aim at being genteeler. . . . Airs, address, manners, graces, are of such infinite importance and are so essentially necessary to you that now, as the time of meeting draws near, I tremble for fear that I may not find you possessed of them.”

Lord Chesterfield’s gentleman was a man of the world but it was, after all. a very hard and empty world. It was a world that had no eternal laws, only changing fashions. It had no broken hearts, only broken vows. It was a world covered with glittering ice, and the gentleman was one who had learned to skim over its dangerous places, not caring what happened to those who followed him.

It is a relief to get away from such a world, and, leaving the fine gentleman behind, to take the rambling stagecoach to the estates of Sir Roger de Coverley. His is not the great world at all, and his interests are limited to his own parish. But it is a real world, and much better suited to a real gentleman. His fashions are not the fashions of the court, but they are the fashions that wear. Even when following the hounds Sir Roger has time for friendly greetings. “ The farmers’ sons thought themselves happy if they could open a gate for the good old knight, which he requited with a nod or a smile, and a kind inquiry after their fathers and uncles.”

But even dear old Roger de Coverley cannot rest undisturbed as an ideal gentleman. He belonged, after all, to a privileged order, and there is a force at work to destroy all social privileges. A generation of farmers’ sons must arise not to be so easily satisfied with a kindly nod and smile. Liberty, fraternity, and equality have to be reckoned with. Democracy has come with its leveling processes.

In a revolutionary period the virtues of an aristocracy become more irritating than their vices. People cease to attribute merit to what comes through good fortune. No wonder that the disciples of the older time cry : —

What becomes of the gentleman in an age of democratic equality ? Just what becomes of every ideal when the time has arrived for a larger fulfillment. What is unessential drops off ; what is essential remains. Under the influence of democracy, the word “gentleman” ceases to denote a privilege, and comes to denote a character. This step in the evolution of the idea is a necessary one.

When, in 1485, Caxton, printed the Romance of King Arthur, he declared, “I William Caxton, simple person, present the book following. . . . which treateth of uoble acts, feats of arms, of chivalry, prowess, hardiness, humanity, love, courtesy and very gentleness.”These were the elements which constituted the gentleman. What we see now is that they might be as truly manifested in William Caxton, simple person, as in any of the high-born knights whose deeds he chronicled.

Milton, in memorable words, pointed out the transition which must take place from the gentleman of romance to the gentleman of enduring reality. After narrating how, in his youth, he betook himself “to those lofty fables and romances which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood founded by our victorious kings, and thence had in renown through all Christendom,”he says, “ This my mind gave me, that every free and gentle spirit, without that oath, ought to be born a knight, nor needed to expect a gilt spur or the laying on of a sword upon his shoulder.”

S. M. Crothers.