CHAPTER III Gentle and other Men But Nature with a matchless hand Half human, half divine, And cries exultant, “Who can make THE weathercock of public opinion, ever kept in motion by the popularis aura, has veered from north to south as to the meaning and application of the words gentleman and esquire; it has turned from the frigidity of a disdainful exclusion to a maudlin embrace of all sorts and conditions of men. I remember the time when no man engaged in buying and selling, much less in manual labour, was regarded as a gentleman, and when they only assumed the title of "esquire," whose coats of arms were to be found in the Heralds' Office. No amount of virtue, intellect, or money, no achievements, no accomplishments, could obtain admission within the sacred enclosure. A yeoman who had inherited his lands from many generations of honest ancestors might rise to the designation of "a gentleman farmer ; and even shopkeepers might be privileged now and then to hear themselves addressed as "gentlemen of the jury." The man who had a pleasant home, a good cook, and a good cellar might be visited (provisionally speaking) by gentlemen, and even be received as their guests; and he who had influence at an election, rode well to hounds, or was reliable at whist, was occasionally invited to emerge from his obscurity and to pass from darkness to light. But the real bonâ fide gentleman was the possessor of an entailed estate with an ample income, whose family had been privileged for generations to engrave lions and eagles and badgers and crows upon their spoons, who had nothing whatever to do, and, with some admirable exceptions, did it. At school we resented with indignant asperity and brilliant sarcasm the intrusion of boys whose fathers had disgraced themselves by earning their own bread and by connecting themselves with vulgar employments, instead of inheriting houses and taking their place in genteel society. The lawyer's son was "Six and Eightpence," and the doctor's son was "Young Bolus," and the brewer's two boys were "Swipes" and "Mashtub," and those of the farmer "Beans " and "Bacon." At Oxford the qualifications were rigidly maintained. In my own college it was a law as inflexible as those of the Medes and Persians that every member of the Phoenix, the oldest social club in the University, should be bene natus, bene vestitus, moderate doctus"well born, well dressed, and moderately, not oppressively, learned." I still believe in the bene vestitus, for the apparel "oft proclaims the man," and "youth no less becomes the light and graceful livery it wears than age its furs and sables"; but who is to be the arbiter elegantiarum? In my day an undergraduate who did not wear straps to his trousers was a smug ; and it was sung in the parody of a popular song, "She wore a wreath of roses " : He wore grey worsted stockings, That term when first we met, His highlows lackéd jet. If a youth omitted the letter h in his conversation or construing, he was placed on the Index Expurgatorius; if he wore a false front or cuffs to his shirt, "down among the dead men let him lie." There was a tradition that in All Souls' College, before an election was made to a vacant fellowship, the selected persons were invited to dine with the electors; a cherry pie formed part of the meal, and he who ate it most like a gentleman was the favoured guest. What a difference between Then and Now! There is no need in these days for the anxiety of the Lancashire mechanic who had a son baptized "Gentleman," so that there might be one in the family. Genealogy, manners, habiliment, armorial bearings, pronunciation, grammar, are ignored, and every householder is "that gentleman," and is addressed on his letters as " esquire." * History repeats itself, and this is no modern innovation. Nigh upon two hundred years ago there was a complaint in the Tatler that the nation was becoming populus armigerorum -"a nation of esquires." These titles are sometimes almost as inappropriate as when the usher of the court at an Irish assize addressed the jury with, "Gentlemen, you will go to your usual places," and most of them went to the prisoner's dock, or when the victim of some gamblers in the Far West ran for his life, having been robbed and almost denuded, and when at the trial of his pursuers he was asked, "Was there no one to help you?" "No," he replied, "there were many in the streets, but only one gentleman ;" and when the further questions were put, "How did you know he was a gentleman, and what did he do?" he said, "He took his pipe out of his mouth and shouted, 'Go it, Shirt-tails, bowie knives is a gaining on yer.'"* How, then, are we to distinguish the reality from the sham, the true coin from the counterfeit, the solid wood from the veneer, the diamond from the paste? Where shall we find "that gentleness which, when it weds with manhood, makes a man," Aristotle's τετράγωνος ἄνευ ψόγου, the man who stands four square to every wind that blows, Horace's integer vita scelerisque purus, the French knight sans peur et sans reproche, the English gentleman, having those qualities which Isaac Barrow commends as the "two chief properties of a gentleman, courage and courtesy"? As meek as the man Moses, and withal * I know that these two anecdotes are as venerable as an archdeacon, but the critic will pardon them as things one would not willingly let die. What is the difference between homo and vir? Of whom can we speak Cicero's praise of Metellus, homo nobilissimus, optimus vir? Descent may be helpful, and "notes of fatherhood," good as well as evil, are commonly seen in the child. Ex quovis ligno non fit Mercurius, and the sculptor who has to carve a statue, chip by chip, is to be congratulated when his marble comes from a famous quarry. The Romans (I seem to have wandered into the Latin Quarter) recognised this advantage—Abi, patrissas, virum te judico-and it may be accepted almost as rule, verified by the biographies of our most illustrious authors and artists, that their genius was the early and marvellous development of some peculiar quality inherited from one of their parents. In a less prominent degree we find certain impressions both of mind and body transmitted from father to son-excellence as musicians, as draughtsmen, as linguists, as horsemen, as athletes. It is a common observation, "He comes from a good old stock; he's a chip of the old block." There have been eleven Lytteltons, Walkers, Studds, Garnetts, who played cricket against a county, and won the match. These natural gifts of mind and body are good material, but that is all. They may be auxiliary in making a gentleman, but that depends upon the use or the abuse which the heir makes of his heritage. Some who have been "born great" have become exceedingly small, and some who have had "greatness thrust upon them" have sunk under the burden of an |