“ A
king may make a nobleman but he cannot make a Gentleman.”
Edmund Burke
'Objective and incisive ... This is a great achievement'
James Lees-Milne, Literary Review
 |
(…) “As
headmaster of Rugby from 1828 to 1841, Dr Thomas Arnold sought to
instil "1st, religious and moral principles: 2ndly, gentlemanly
conduct: 3rdly, intellectual ability." The new or revived public
schools of the 19th century had all sorts of practical purposes,
being designed to enable their pupils to pass the exams which
permitted entry to various professions, and to provide an imperial
ruling class. But the education they offered was saved from becoming
aridly utilitarian because they were devoted to the formation of
Christian gentlemen. One of the distinguishing marks of a gentleman
was that he did things because he knew they were the right thing to
do, not because they would bring him personal advantage. Captain
Oates was a very gallant gentleman.
The idea of a
gentleman was a more inclusive one than it sounds to modern ears. One
of its greatest advantages was that you could define it so as to
include yourself. You could behave like a gentleman, without
possessing any of the social attributes which a gentleman might have:
there was no need to possess a coat of arms, or a country estate, or
engage in field sports, or wear evening dress. At least since
Chaucer's time, there had been a distinction between the social
meaning of the word, and the moral. It was evident that well-born
people, who ought to know how to behave like gentlemen, did not
always do so, while others sometimes did.
Philip Mason, whose
perceptive study, The English Gentleman, was published in 1982,
argues that "the desire to be a gentleman" runs through and
illuminates English history from the time of Chaucer until the early
20th century. He suggests that "for most of the 19th century and
until the Second World War" the idea of the gentleman "provided
the English with a second religion, one less demanding than
Christianity. It influenced their politics. It influenced their
system of education; it made them endow new public schools and raise
the status of old grammar schools. It inspired the lesser landed
gentry as well as the professional and middle classes to give their
children an upbringing of which the object was to make them ladies
and gentlemen, even if only a few of them also became scholars."
This was a subject
that interested so great a man as Cardinal Newman. In The Idea of a
University he said that a liberal education makes "not the
Christian, not the Catholic, but the gentleman", and went on:
It is well to be a
gentleman, it is well to have a cultivated intellect, a delicate
taste, a candid, equitable dispassionate mind, a noble and courteous
bearing in the conduct of life; these are the connatural qualities of
a large knowledge; they are the objects of a University . . . but
they are no guarantees for sanctity or even for conscientiousness;
they may attach to the man of the world, the profligate, the
heartless.
Which is why for Dr
Arnold, the Christian basis of education took priority. His
headmastership came at a time when the public schools were
notoriously dissolute. At Eton, John Keate, headmaster from
1809-1834, sought to assert some degree of control by mass floggings.
But in 1834 the Quarterly Journal of Education reported that "before
an Eton boy is ready for the University he may have acquired . . . a
confirmed taste for gluttony and drunkenness, an aptitude for brutal
sports and a passion for female society of the most degrading kind,
with as great ease as if he were an uncontrolled inhabitant of the
metropolis." Public opinion would no longer tolerate this kind
of thing. It looked for moral leadership, and three years before
Queen Victoria ascended the throne, the new headmaster of Rugby
stepped forward with charismatic earnestness to provide it. Arnold's
sermon on "Christian Education", preached in Rugby Chapel,
begins: "This is the simplest notion of education; for,
undoubtedly, he is perfectly educated who is taught all the will of
God concerning him, and enabled, through life, to execute it."
Arnold expected his praepostors, or prefects, to work with him, and
with God, to defeat evil.”(…)
“Strange Death of
the English Gentleman”
ANDREW GIMSON
September 2012
|
In modern parlance,
the term gentleman (from Latin gentis, belonging to a race or gens,
and man, the Italian gentil uomo or gentiluomo, the French
gentilhomme, the Spanish gentilhombre, the Portuguese gentil-homem ,
and the Esperanto gentilmano) refers to any man of good, courteous
conduct. It may also refer to all men collectively, as in indications
of gender-separated facilities, or as a sign of the speaker's own
courtesy when addressing others. The modern female equivalent is
lady.
In its original
meaning, the term denoted a man of the lowest rank of the English
gentry, standing below an esquire and above a yeoman. By definition,
this category included the younger sons of the younger sons of peers
and the younger sons of baronets, knights, and esquires in perpetual
succession, and thus the term captures the common denominator of
gentility (and often armigerousness) shared by both constituents of
the English aristocracy: the peerage and the gentry. In this sense,
the word equates with the French gentilhomme ("nobleman"),
which latter term has been, in Great Britain, long confined to the
peerage. Maurice Keen points to the category of "gentlemen"
in this context as thus constituting "the nearest contemporary
English equivalent of the noblesse of France". The notion of
"gentlemen" as encapsulating the members of the hereditary
ruling class was what the rebels under John Ball in the 14th century
meant when they repeated:
When Adam delved and
Eve span,
Who was then the
gentleman?
John Selden, in
Titles of Honour (1614), discussing the title gentleman, likewise
speaks of "our English use of it" as "convertible with
nobilis" (an ambiguous word, noble meaning elevated either by
rank or by personal qualities) and describes in connection with it
the forms of ennobling in various European countries.
By social courtesy
the designation came to include any well-educated man of good family
and distinction, analogous to the Latin generosus (its usual
translation in English-Latin documents, although nobilis is found
throughout pre-Reformation papal correspondence). To a degree,
gentleman came to signify a man with an income derived from property,
a legacy, or some other source, who was thus independently wealthy
and did not need to work.[not verified in body] The term was
particularly used of those who could not claim any other title or
even the rank of esquire. Widening further, it became a politeness
for all men, as in the phrase Ladies and Gentlemen,....
Richard Brathwait's
The Complete English Gentleman (1630), showing the exemplary
qualities of a gentleman
Chaucer, in the
Meliboeus (circa 1386), says: "Certes he sholde not be called a
gentil man, that... ne dooth his diligence and bisynesse, to kepen
his good name"; and in The Wife of Bath's Tale:
Loke who that is
most vertuous alway
Prive and apert, and
most entendeth ay
To do the gentil
dedes that he can
And take him for the
gretest gentilman
And in the Romance
of the Rose (circa 1400) we find: "he is gentil bycause he doth
as longeth to a gentilman."
This use develops
through the centuries until 1710, when we have Steele, in Tatler (No.
207), laying down that "the appellation of Gentleman is never to
be affixed to a man's circumstances, but to his Behaviour in them,"
a limitation over-narrow even for the present day. In this
connection, too, one may quote the old story, told by some—very
improbably—of James II, of the monarch who replied to a lady
petitioning him to make her son a gentleman, "I could make him a
nobleman, but God Almighty could not make him a gentleman."
Selden, however, in
referring to similar stories "that no Charter can make a
Gentleman, which is cited as out of the mouth of some great Princes
that have said it," adds that "they without question
understood Gentleman for Generosus in the antient sense, or as if it
came from Genii/is in that sense, as Gentilis denotes one of a noble
Family, or indeed for a Gentleman by birth." For "no
creation could make a man of another blood than he is."
The word gentleman,
used in the wide sense with which birth and circumstances have
nothing to do, is necessarily incapable of strict definition. For "to
behave like a gentleman" may mean little or much, according to
the person by whom the phrase is used; "to spend money like a
gentleman" may even be no great praise; but "to conduct a
business like a gentleman" implies a high standard.
William Harrison
William Harrison,
writing in the late 1500s, says, "gentlemen be those whom their
race and blood, or at the least their virtues, do make noble and
known." A gentleman was in his time usually expected to have a
coat of arms, it being accepted that only a gentleman could have a
coat of arms, and Harrison gives the following account of how
gentlemen were made in Shakespeare's day:
Gentlemen whose
ancestors are not known to come in with William duke of Normandy (for
of the Saxon races yet remaining we now make none accompt, much less
of the British issue) do take their beginning in England after this
manner in our times. Who soever studieth the laws of the realm, who
so abideth in the university, giving his mind to his book, or
professeth physic and the liberal sciences, or beside his service in
the room of a captain in the wars, or good counsel given at home,
whereby his commonwealth is benefited, can live without manual
labour, and thereto is able and will bear the port, charge and
countenance of a gentleman, he shall for money have a coat and arms
bestowed upon him by heralds (who in the charter of the same do of
custom pretend antiquity and service, and many gay things) and
thereunto being made so good cheap be called master, which is the
title that men give to esquires and gentlemen, and reputed for a
gentleman ever after. Which is so much the less to be disallowed of,
for that the prince doth lose nothing by it, the gentleman being so
much subject to taxes and public payments as is the yeoman or
husbandman, which he likewise doth bear the gladlier for the saving
of his reputation. Being called also to the wars (for with the
government of the commonwealth he medleth little) what soever it cost
him, he will both array and arm himself accordingly, and show the
more manly courage, and all the tokens of the person which he
representeth. No man hath hurt by it but himself, who peradventure
will go in wider buskins than his legs will bear, or as our proverb
saith, now and then bear a bigger sail than his boat is able to
sustain.
However, although
only a gentleman could have a coat of arms (so that possession of a
coat of arms was proof of gentility), the coat of arms recognised
rather than created the status (see G. D. Squibb, The High Court of
Chivalry, pp. 170–177). Thus, all armigers were gentlemen, but not
all gentlemen were armigers. Hence, Henry V, act IV, scene iii:
The fundamental idea
of "gentry", symbolised in this grant of coat-armour, had
come to be that of the essential superiority of the fighting man,
and, as Selden points out (page 707), the fiction was usually
maintained in the granting of arms "to an ennobled person though
of the long Robe wherein he hath little use of them as they mean a
shield."
At the last, the
wearing of a sword on all occasions was the outward and visible sign
of a gentleman; the custom survives in the sword worn with court
dress.
A suggestion that a
gentleman must have a coat of arms was vigorously advanced by certain
19th- and 20th-century heraldists, notably Arthur Charles Fox-Davies
in England and Thomas Innes of Learney in Scotland. The suggestion is
discredited by an examination, in England, of the records of the High
Court of Chivalry and, in Scotland, by a judgment of the Court of
Session (per Lord Mackay in Maclean of Ardgour v. Maclean [1941] SC
613 at 650). The significance of a right to a coat of arms was that
it was definitive proof of the status of gentleman, but it recognised
rather than conferred such a status, and the status could be and
frequently was accepted without a right to a coat of arms.
Lee's conception
The forbearing use
of power does not only form a touchstone, but the manner in which an
individual enjoys certain advantages over others is a test of a true
gentleman.
The power which the
strong have over the weak, the employer over the employed, the
educated over the unlettered, the experienced over the confiding,
even the clever over the silly — the forbearing or inoffensive use
of all this power or authority, or a total abstinence from it when
the case admits it, will show the gentleman in a plain light.
The gentleman does
not needlessly and unnecessarily remind an offender of a wrong he may
have committed against him. He can not only forgive, he can forget;
and he strives for that nobleness of self and mildness of character
which impart sufficient strength to let the past be but the past. A
true man of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling
others.
Lee's conception is
one of the better known expositions in favor of the Southern culture
of honor.
That a distinct
order of landed gentry existed in England very early has, indeed,
been often assumed and is supported by weighty authorities. Thus, the
late Professor Freeman (in Encyclopædia Britannica xvii. page 540 b,
9th edition) said: "Early in the 11th century the order of
'gentlemen' as a separate class seems to be forming as something new.
By the time of the conquest of England the distinction seems to have
been fully established." Stubbs (Const. Hist., ed. 1878, iii.
544, 548) takes the same view. Sir George Sitwell, however, has
suggested that this opinion is based on a wrong conception of the
conditions of medieval society and that it is wholly opposed to the
documentary evidence.[citation needed]
The most basic class
distinctions in the Middle Ages were between the nobiles, i.e., the
tenants in chivalry, such as earls, barons, knights, esquires, the
free ignobiles such as the citizens and burgesses, and franklins, and
the unfree peasantry including villeins and serfs. Even as late as
1400, the word gentleman still only had the descriptive sense of
generosus and could not be used as denoting the title of a class. Yet
after 1413, we find it increasingly so used, and the list of
landowners in 1431, printed in Feudal Aids, contains, besides
knights, esquires, yeomen and husbandmen (i.e. householders), a fair
number who are classed as "gentilman".
Sir Charles Mainegra
Sir Charles Mainegra
gives a lucid, instructive and occasionally amusing explanation of
this development. The immediate cause was the statute I Henry V. cap.
v. of 1413, which laid down that in all original writs of action,
personal appeals and indictments, in which process of outlawry lies,
the "estate degree or mystery" of the defendant must be
stated, as well as his present or former domicile. At this time, the
Black Death (1349) had put the traditional social organization out of
gear. Before that, the younger sons of the nobles had received their
share of the farm stock, bought or hired land, and settled down as
agriculturists in their native villages. Under the new conditions,
this became increasingly impossible, and they were forced to seek
their fortunes abroad in the French wars, or at home as hangers-on of
the great nobles. These men, under the old system, had no definite
status; but they were generosi, men of birth, and, being now forced
to describe themselves, they disdained to be classed with franklins
(now sinking in the social scale), still more with yeomen or
husbandmen; they chose, therefore, to be described as "gentlemen".
On the character of
these earliest gentlemen the records throw a lurid light. Sir Charles
Mainegra (p. 76), describes a man typical of his class, one who had
served among the men-at-arms of Lord Talbot at the Battle of
Agincourt:
the premier
gentleman of England, as the matter now stands, is 'Robert Ercleswyke
of Stafford, gentilman' ...
Fortunately—for
the gentle reader will no doubt be anxious to follow in his
footsteps—some particulars of his life may be gleaned from the
public records. He was charged at the Staffordshire Assizes with
housebreaking, wounding with intent to kill, and procuring the murder
of one Thomas Page, who was cut to pieces while on his knees begging
for his life.
If any earlier
claimant to the title of gentleman be discovered, Sir George Sitwell
predicts that it will be within the same year (1414) and in
connection with some similar disreputable proceedings.
From these
unpromising beginnings, the separate order of gentlemen evolved very
slowly. The first gentleman commemorated on an existing monument was
John Daundelyon of Margate (died circa 1445); the first gentleman to
enter the House of Commons, hitherto composed mainly of "valets",
was William Weston[disambiguation needed], "gentylman"; but
even in the latter half of the 15th century, the order was not
clearly established. As to the connection of gentilesse with the
official grant or recognition of coat-armour, that is a profitable
fiction invented and upheld by the heralds; for coat-armour was the
badge assumed by gentlemen to distinguish them in battle, and many
gentlemen of long descent never had occasion to assume it and never
did.
Further decline of
standards
This fiction,
however, had its effect, and by the 16th century, as has been already
pointed out, the official view had become clearly established that
gentlemen constituted a distinct social order and that the badge of
this distinction was the heralds' recognition of the right to bear
arms. However, some undoubtedly "gentle" families of long
descent never obtained official rights to bear a coat of arms, the
family of Strickland being an example, which caused some
consternation when Lord Strickland applied to join the Order of Malta
in 1926 and could prove no right to a coat of arms, although his
direct male ancestor had carried the English royal banner of St.
George at the Battle of Agincourt.
The younger sons of
noble families became apprentices in the cities, and there grew up a
new aristocracy of trade. Merchants are still "citizens" to
William Harrison; but he adds "they often change estate with
gentlemen, as gentlemen do with them, by a mutual conversion of the
one into the other."
A line between
classes
A frontier line
between classes so indefinite could not be maintained in some
societies such as England, where there was never a "nobiliary
prefix" to stamp a person as a gentleman, as opposed to France
or Germany. The process was hastened, moreover, by the corruption of
the Heralds' College and by the ease with which coats of arms could
be assumed without a shadow of claim, which tended to bring the
science of heraldry into contempt.
The prefix "de"
attached to some English names is in no sense "nobiliary".
In Latin documents de was the equivalent of the English "of",
as de la for "at" (so de la Pole for "Atte Poole";
compare such names as "Attwood" or "Attwater").
In English this "of" disappeared during the 15th century:
for example the grandson of Johannes de Stoke (John of Stoke) in a
14th-century document becomes "John Stoke". In modern
times, under the influence of romanticism, the prefix "de"
has been in some cases "revived" under a misconception,
e.g. "de Trafford", "de Hoghton". Very rarely it
is correctly retained as derived from a foreign place-name, e.g. "de
Grey". The situation varies somewhat in Scotland, where the
territorial designation still exists and its use is regulated by law.
One of the markers
or dividing lines after 1600 was the practice of duelling. Gentlemen
would not challenge men of lower status to a duel, and a challenge to
(or excuse for) a duel was based on some perceived public insult to
the challenger's sense of his honour as a gentleman.
With the growth of
trade and the industrial revolution in 1700-1900, the term widened to
include men of the urban professional classes: lawyers, doctors and
even merchants. By 1841 the rules of the new gentlemen's club at
Ootacamund was to include: "...gentlemen of the Mercantile or
other professions, moving in the ordinary circle of Indian society".
In Thomas Hardy's
Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Tess Durbeyfield's travails stem from her
father's discovery that his family name was in fact inherited from an
aristocratic D'Urberville ancestor. Her apparent distant cousin (and
seducer) Alec D'Urberville proved to be a member of a nouveau-riche
19th-century family that had merely adopted the surname of
Stoke-D'Urberville in the hope of sounding more distinguished.
The word gentleman
as an index of rank had already become of doubtful value before the
great political and social changes of the 19th century gave to it a
wider and essentially higher significance. The change is well
illustrated in the definitions given in the successive editions of
the Encyclopædia Britannica. In the 5th edition (1815), "a
gentleman is one, who without any title, bears a coat of arms, or
whose ancestors have been freemen." In the 7th edition (1845) it
still implies a definite social status: "All above the rank of
yeomen." In the 8th edition (1856), this is still its "most
extended sense"; "in a more limited sense" it is
defined in the same words as those quoted above from the 5th edition;
but the writer adds, "By courtesy this title is generally
accorded to all persons above the rank of common tradesmen when their
manners are indicative of a certain amount of refinement and
intelligence."
The Reform Act 1832
did its work; the middle classes came into their own, and the word
gentleman came in common use to signify not a distinction of blood,
but a distinction of position, education and manners.
By this usage, the
test is no longer good birth or the right to bear arms, but the
capacity to mingle on equal terms in good society.
In its best use,
moreover, gentleman involves a certain superior standard of conduct,
due, to quote the 8th edition once more, to "that self-respect
and intellectual refinement which manifest themselves in unrestrained
yet delicate manners." The word gentle, originally implying a
certain social status, had very early come to be associated with the
standard of manners expected from that status. Thus, by a sort of
punning process, the "gentleman" becomes a "gentle-man".
In another sense,
being a gentleman means treating others, especially women, in a
respectful manner and not taking advantage or pushing others into
doing things he chooses not to do. The exception, of course, is to
push one into something he needs to do for his own good, as in a
visit to the hospital, or pursuing a dream he has suppressed.
In some cases, its
meaning becomes twisted through misguided efforts to avoid offending
anyone; a news report of a riot may refer to a "gentleman"
trying to smash a window with a dustbin in order to loot a store.
Similar use (notably between quotation marks or in an appropriate
tone) may also be deliberate irony.
Another modern usage
of gentleman- is as a prefix to another term to imply that a man has
sufficient wealth and free time to pursue an area of interest without
depending on it for his livelihood. Examples include gentleman
scientist, gentleman farmer, gentleman architect,[6] and gentleman
pirate. A very specific incarnation and possible origin of this
practise existed until 1962 in cricket, where a man playing the game
was a "gentleman cricketer" if he did not get a salary for
taking part in the game. By tradition, such gentlemen were from the
British gentry or aristocracy - as opposed to players, who were not.
In the same way in horse racing a gentleman rider is an amateur
jockey, racing horses in specific flat and hurdle races.
The term gentleman
is used in the United States' Uniform Code of Military Justice in a
provision referring to "conduct befitting an officer and a
gentleman."
The use of the term
"gentleman" is a central concept in many books of American
Literature: Adrift in New York, by Horatio Alger; "Fraternity: A
Romance of Inspiration, by Anonymous, with a tipped in Letter from
J.P. Morgan, (1836); Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell (1936).
It relates to education and manners, a certain code of conduct
regarding women that has been incorporated in the U.S. into various
civil rights laws and anti-sexual-harassment laws that define a code
of conduct to be followed by law in the workplace. Scarlett O'Hara in
Gone with the Wind, states "You're no gentleman," on
occasions where she feels a lack of manners and respect toward her
causes her to feel insulted.
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