PSEUDO-GENTLEMEN. "The streets were fill'd; The croaking nuisance lurk'd in every nook; Nor palaces, nor even chambers, 'scaped; And the land stank, so numerous was the fry."-Cowper. IMAGINE not, patient reader, I am about to declare war upon that part of the present generation which is growing up in real gentleship around me; my intention is only to expose the vain claims of certain scape-graces belonging to it, who would take the world by violence, and, under false pretences, make proselytes among our youth. The "Tall bully that lifts his head and lies,"-the Greek of St. James'sstreet and Pall-mall,-the tight-laced spark of fashion, with his hat on one side, and his elbows projected behind him like the thigh-joints of a grasshopper;-the being who struts the pavé of this huge metropolis, wearing stays and an eye-glass, having no defect of vision, but being, in other respects, as "herein-aftermentioned ;" and all those who drive a tilbury, habited in superfine broad cloth, upon which Stultz or Weston have exhausted the utmost efforts of their supereminent skill in tailorifics-being at the same time unprincipled, unmannered, uncredited, unwitted, but not undunned-all and every of such beings come within the scope of my argument. I may, perhaps, arouse their anger by a new nomenclature; but that anger I need not fear, for it is innoxious" hissing, but stingless;" and I shall render a service to the philosophy of manners, in despite of it, by vindicating an abused word, and substituting a correct term for a species of animal, "To ascertain whose sex, Twelve sage impannell'd matrons 'twould perplex: Of neuter-gender, and of Irish growth; A six-foot suckling, mincing in its gait, Affected, peevish, prim, and delicate."-CHURCHILL. Mais revenons à nos moutons.-Eminent scholars, like Porson or Parr, have frequently been unable to determine the precise signification of certain words in the dead languages; they have pored and pored, "shook their ambrosial curls," and, at last, left the matter in doubt. The truth is, that language, as well as fashion, having its fluctuations, the best philologists find it impracticable to trace its multiform changes words, for example, that, in the days of our boyhood, expressed a particular idea, we find, when we have arrived at man's estate and mingled with the world, express one just the very reverse. It has happened thus with the word gentleman, for all mankind is aware that the term is now commonly used to designate one who may be an arrant knave. This abuse of an appellative, held in great esteem by our grandfathers and grandmothers, as the pink of every thing excellent in man, would have made "our ancestors startle with indignation" -to use a phrase of Lord Colchester's, unprovable according to Judge Best. "Sir, I am a gentleman," is at present the reply of every pickpocket or bully, who robs or insults a worthier member of society, and gets out of the scrape by giving himself a false appellation."Do you doubt my being a gentleman, Sir?" is the refuge of a fashionable liar, who is caught in an untruth. Upon my honour, as a gentleman," is an asseveration that must not be disputed; it gravitates like lead to the very centre, carrying with it all intervening doubts; for, who dares dispute the honour of a gentleman! " I am a gentleman, and expect satisfaction," is often the language of a ruffian, who has not the smallest pretension to the title: nay, highwaymen have been known, of late years, to pique themselves upon committing a robbery in a gentlemanlike way, and have expressed an earnest wish to prevent the ladies they are pillaging from being alarmed. It may be contended, that gallantry to the fair has been inherent with all gentlemenhighwaymen, since the days of Macheath: however this may be, it is not indispensable in the composition of what is now understood by the epithet of which we are treating. Scenes in our law courts and places of amusement have lately proved this: that honourable feeling which, in spite of individual antipathies, never loses sight of the chivalric and magnanimous homage due to the sex-nay, the very pleadings of that sex itself, gentlemen, in the modern sense of the term, even among the better born, have not capacity to comprehend, nor high-bred sensibility enough to honor. I would therefore propose, that having adopted the word Yevdos into our language--for we have pseudodipteral, pseudology, pseudodox, pseudophilosophy, and many similar words-we should restore the term gentleman to its old signification, of a man of unimpeachable honour and gallantry, of dignified carriage, spotless reputation, a high mind, liberal views, and a goodly education; and that we use the term PseudoGentleman*, to signify gentleman in its modern and abused sense, that the ancient appellative may be no longer scandalized. Pseudo-gentlemen support various characters in life, and it is often easier to define what they are not, than what they are. The pseudogentleman has all the vice of the Chesterfield gentleman, without his dignity of carriage, elegance of manners, or affability: he is distinguishable in the street at first view, by an unmeaning stare, often from a "round unthinking face;" and an occasional lifting-up of the shoulders, like the last dying convulsion of a suspended malefactor, and this he mistakes for a gentlemanly carriage. The manners of the Chesterfield gentleman cannot be practised by an impostor; they being so linked with him as to appear a part of his nature. The pseudo-gentleman may be successfully rivalled by the city apprentice, the attorney's clerk, or an upper journeyman tailor :-the last, possessing facilities for imitation, by having a ready access to tape and broad-cloth, beyond the The public mind is sometimes highly sensible of philological propriety, and, in the present case, has endeavoured to designate the Pseudo-Gentleman by some other title than Gentleman; which latter it saw was an abuse of terms-hence the words Dandy, Corinthian, Swell, Exquisite, &c. &c. But some high literary authority was wanted to record the change in lasting print; and for that reason, neither of these words has been universally adopted—they had no poet to perpetuate them -Nocte, carent quia vate sacro ! power of the other two, can scarcely ever be distinguished from the original he copies. The Chesterfield gentleman was always welldressed; the pseudo-gentleman is, in appearance and manner, the caricature of a fop, the ultima Thule of extravagant frippery. The real gentleman generally gave his coat a character; the pseudo-gentleman gets his character from his coat. The first was distinguished by a manner and an address visible under every garb, even if it were threadbare; were he clothed in rags, he would still be "every inch a gentleman;" the address and spirit of the character were inherent in him. Such men are yet to be found in society, though but sparingly scattered, like diamonds in a mine, surrounded with opaque spars and gravelly concretions innumerable. They are the Grandisons of the age -the best pictures of man in his majesty, and the extremes of social and visible attraction. The pseudo-gentleman must never be taken per se. He must always be seen with clothes of the newest cut, in company with his dogs, or in the stable with his horses, if he has the means of keeping them. He imagines that the respect paid to him is in the ratio of his conjectured expenditure, and, in consequence, he always talks of money in great sums, and in whole numbers; though he draws largely on his invention for this sort of conversation, and what he says on the subject is often purely imaginary. He bullies every man who only implies a doubt of his word, and demands satisfaction; yet he talks of his intrigues with women whom he never saw, and boasts of crimes that common charity tells us he could never be monster enough to commit. His mind is a chaos of confused vices and vanities; an uncultivated waste, nourishing only weeds and pernicious plants. He has not talent enough to fill an office in common society; though his family's borough interest may sometimes cover his deficiencies sufficiently to qualify him for a sleeping Lord of the Admiralty; a ministerial underling in Parliament, to count one on a question; or, he may be drilled by an expert Court master of the ceremonies, into a decent Lord of the Bedchamber. The old genuine English gentleman joined to the highest polish of manners, the integrity of a man of principle, and the kindest heart; courage was, with him, only a secondary qualification. The pseudogentleman is directly the reverse; he is heartless, and entirely destitute of integrity. In courage or bravado he is not always deficient; but it is of the wolfish species, that never borders on heroism: it is the instinctive bravery of the common soldier, constitutional to Englishmen ; but it is not that of the gentleman, or general. The bravery of Lord Hay at the battle of Fontenoy, when he exclaimed, " Gentlemen of the French Guards, give us your fire!" is beyond the compass of his understanding, as much as the conduct of Sir Philip Sidney (the most finished gentleman of his age) when dying before the walls of Zutphen; or the noble act of the French officer to Colonel Ponsonby, at the battle of Waterloo. If in the Army, and there are many pseudo-gentlemen of that cloth, he prefers the corps that see no climate but their own, and that are "cankers of a calm world, and a long peace." Pseudo-gentlemen of the army may always be distinguished from their brother officers; they "shine so brisk, and smell so sweet, And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman." They call for a clean silk handkerchief to dust their boots after a campaign in the Park; and relieve their fatigues in a warm-bath, covered with a fine linen sheet, in which a couple of bottles of Eau de Cologne have been emptied. They are ill fit to bear the toils of a campaign the foe who cried out in combat, faciem feri miles! would, of all others, the soonest panic-strike them. Numbers of these pseudogentlemen went to the Peninsular war, expecting, at the worst times, a decent beef-steak, a silver fork, and a plate rubbed with a shallot;" but found themselves sadly mistaken in their ideas of hard service. Leave of absence, for a perpetuity, from the Duke of Wellington, purged his gallant army of most who did not appear to reform radically. The Navy produces few or none of the breed: the intractable nature of the initiation into that service, operates as an effectual bar to their introduction. 66 There are pseudo-gentlemen who have an invincible attachment to grooms, coachmen, and stable-assistants. It is not so much from a regard to the generous horse, that this predilection arises, as from the sympathy of a congenial nature with his keepers. The driving four horses, or tits, in a mail-carriage, is the ne plus ultra of ambition with many, whose pride soars no higher than to imitate the Jehus of the road in dress, manners, and language. They will go out of town a hundred miles, to meet and drive a stage-coach up, feeing the coachmen for their practice disguised in a frieze coat with pearl buttons, they take their glass of" gin and bitters" at the pot-houses on the road, open the doors for the passengers to get in, with " Now, gentlemen, if you please;" and seem perfectly at home. Some of our hereditary legislators may be found among the number of these. Instances are on record of the fore-tooth of a pseudo-gentleman having been punched out, in order to spit like a coachman, and project the saliva clear of the "cattle and traces," into the hedge, on the left-hand side of the road. These coachmen-like practices, which give rise to a boundless expenditure of revenue, generally introduce the pseudo-gentleman to the society of Jews and money-lenders, in whose hands he pledges all his property, present and prospective; so that when he has arrived three or four years beyond the age of discretion, he becomes in want of the necessary supplies of cash for his support. Then, if the accident of birth have placed him in the patrician ranks, he is often made, all at once, to shew a most intense and flagrant zeal To serve his country. Ministerial grace and he, who could not govern himself, lives by mis-governing others. that nonchalance of manner, and drawl of language, which it is beyond the power of the pen to describe, but which may be best conceived by looking at the principal figure in Hogarth's Marriage à la Mode, and guessing how it would articulate. With the weaker part of the sex, the negligence of his manner is lost in the superior cut of his coat, and the tight lacing of his stays; women being naturally fond of coxcombs: but the impression the "dear creature" makes at first sight is seldom lasting. He is neither constant nor romantic enough for a ward in chancery, and he cannot make verses-an indispensable requisite in that species of love, unless, indeed, he happen to be a collegian upon the town, and can throw something of mind into his address, and discuss the merits of a novel, or relate well a moving love-story. As to rich widows, they are generally placed beyond his reach by "tall Irishmen," who are observed to take off almost all the modern dames of Ephesus. His principal trust, however, when his family happens to be respectable, centres in the efforts of his parents to negotiate for him; balancing family, or some other contingent, against money; and thus he secures his daily bread by a church-hallowed prostitution. Some pseudo-gentlemen, among the fortunate ones of the species, commence life in the dragoons, and finish their probationship in the church. It may be called a redeeming period in their lives, when the Christian sword of war is laid by for that of the Christian divine, and justice of the peace. They become gards de chasse to the county, flog vagrants, descant upon loyalty, browbeat the country gentlemen, shoot and hunt right apostolically, feed at public dinners, and perform other feats truly orthodox; while their numerous engagements, and the vis inertia of "bellies with good capon lined," prevent the performance of more than a weekly sermon of ten minutes, generally furnished them from Paternoster-row. They spare themselves the trouble of ever being seen "beside the bed where parting life is laid ;" and lay their ponderous frames in their churchyards at a good age, leaving a record of "deeds immortal" at the whist table, the parish vestry, or at the 'squire's, by swallowing the third bottle, like "Atlas unremoved." But there is not a tithe of a tithe among the brood of pseudogentlemen, who close life so reputably or so gloriously as the pseudogentleman priest. Much more might be written on the present subject; but I have said enough to shew the necessity of avoiding any further clashing of appellations, and of establishing a useful distinction in language, I hope, finally, that every misnamed gentleman, who reads this proposal for re-baptizing him, may be duly grateful to the writer, nor feel, during the perusal, comme un petit diable au fond d'un benitier! 0. |
