Subject of Gentility continued.
IN the last chapter have been exhibited specimens of gentility, so considered by different classes; by one class power, youth, and epaulets are considered the ne plus ultra of gentility; by another class pride, stateliness, and title;by another, wealth and flaming tawdriness.But what constitutes a gentleman? It is easy to say at once what constitutes a gentleman, and there are no distinctions in what is gentlemanly, (5) as there are in what is genteel.
The characteristics of a gentleman are high feeling - a determination never to take a cowardly advantage of another -a liberal education - absence of narrow views - generosity and courage, propriety of behaviour.Now a person may be genteel according to one or another of the three standards described above, and not possess one of the characteristics of a gentleman.Is the emperor a gentleman, with spatters of blood on his clothes, scourged from the backs of noble Hungarian women? Are the aristocracy gentlefolks, who admire him? Is Mr.Flamson a gentleman, although he has a million pounds? No! cowardly miscreants, admirers of cowardly miscreants, and people who make a million pounds by means compared with which those employed to make fortunes by the getters up of the South Sea Bubble might be called honest dealing, are decidedly not gentlefolks.Now as it is clearly demonstrable that a person may be perfectly genteel according to some standard or other, and yet be no gentleman, so it is demonstrable that a person may have no pretensions to gentility, and yet be a gentleman.For example, there is Lavengro! Would the admirers of the emperor, or the admirers of those who admire the emperor, or the admirers of Mr.
Flamson, call him genteel? and gentility with them is everything! Assuredly they would not; and assuredly they would consider him respectively as a being to be shunned, despised, or hooted.Genteel! Why at one time he is a hack author - writes reviewals for eighteenpence a page - edits a Newgate chronicle.At another he wanders the country with a face grimy from occasionally mending kettles; and there is no evidence that his clothes are not seedy and torn, and his shoes down at the heel; but by what process of reasoning will they prove that he is no gentleman? Is he not learned? Has he not generosity and courage? Whilst a hack author, does he pawn the books entrusted to him to review? Does he break his word to his publisher? Does he write begging letters? Does he get clothes or lodgings without paying for them? Again, whilst a wanderer, does he insult helpless women on the road with loose proposals or ribald discourse? Does he take what is not his own from the hedges? Does he play on the fiddle, or make faces in public-houses, in order to obtain pence or beer? or does he call for liquor, swallow it, and then say to a widowed landlady, "Mistress, I have no brass?" In a word, what vice and crime does he perpetrate - what low acts does he commit? Therefore, with his endowments, who will venture to say that he is no gentleman? - unless it be an admirer of Mr.Flamson - a clown - who will, perhaps, shout - "I say he is no gentleman; for who can be a gentleman who keeps no gig?"The indifference exhibited by Lavengro for what is merely genteel, compared with his solicitude never to infringe the strict laws of honour, should read a salutary lesson.The generality of his countrymen are far more careful not to transgress the customs of what they call gentility, than to violate the laws of honour or morality.They will shrink from carrying their own carpet-bag, and from speaking to a person in seedy raiment, whilst to matters of much higher importance they are shamelessly indifferent.Not so Lavengro; he will do anything that he deems convenient, or which strikes his fancy, provided it does not outrage decency, or is unallied to profligacy; is not ashamed to speak to a beggar in rags, and will associate with anybody, provided he can gratify a laudable curiosity.He has no abstract love for what is low, or what the world calls low.
He sees that many things which the world looks down upon are valuable, so he prizes much which the world condemns; he sees that many things which the world admires are contemptible, so he despises much which the world does not; but when the world prizes what is really excellent, he does not contemn it, because the world regards it.If he learns Irish, which all the world scoffs at, he likewise learns Italian, which all the world melts at.If he learns Gypsy, the language of the tattered tent, he likewise learns Greek, the language of the college-hall.If he learns smithery, he also learns - ah!
what does he learn to set against smithery? - the law? No;he does not learn the law, which, by the way, is not very genteel.Swimming? Yes, he learns to swim.Swimming, however, is not genteel; and the world - at least the genteel part of it - acts very wisely in setting its face against it;for to swim you must be naked, and how would many a genteel person look without his clothes? Come, he learns horsemanship; a very genteel accomplishment, which every genteel person would gladly possess, though not all genteel people do.
Again as to associates: if he holds communion when a boy with Murtagh, the scarecrow of an Irish academy, he associates in after life with Francis Ardry, a rich and talented young Irish gentleman about town.If he accepts an invitation from Mr.Petulengro to his tent, he has no objection to go home with a rich genius to dinner; who then will say that he prizes a thing or a person because they are ungenteel? That he is not ready to take up with everything that is ungenteel he gives a proof, when he refuses, though on the brink of starvation, to become bonnet to the thimble-man, an office, which, though profitable, is positively ungenteel.Ah! but some sticker-up for gentility will exclaim, "The hero did not refuse this office from an insurmountable dislike to its ungentility, but merely from a feeling of principle." Well!
