Curtesy

“ Why, Sir, say even that your modesty, which astonishes me more and more every time I regard you, is calculated, and not a virtue naturally inherent in you, that very fact would argue for the high sense of the public morality among us. We will laugh in the company of our wives and children; we will tolerate no indecorum: we like that our matrons and girls should be pure. ”

“ Why should he have all the graces and ear-marks of breeding? Why should he have all the appearances of a gentleman? It seemed a needlessly cruel and additional blow that fate had dealt her, when already she was living through days and nights of fear, of horror, of trepidation, so great that at times it seemed she would literally lose her reason. ”

“ Such obloquy, although intended to hurt, does but little if any injury to those against whom it is directed; but what may we think of the gentlemanly spirit of the men who descend to it? As for myself I cannot restrain a feeling of profound pity when beholding the spectacle of such conduct, and I turn with a sense of relief to the honorable men amongst them who have remained true to the nobler instincts of human nature. ”

“ Will their contemplation injure us? Shall we become by habit more lenient to vice, and less averse to its shame? or shall we, as some say, be only more charitable to others, and less hypocritical ourselves? I sadly fear that, in losing what many call “our affected prudery,” we lose the best safeguard of virtue. It was, at the least, the “livery of honour,” and we shewed ourselves not ashamed to wear it. And yet there are those who will talk to you—ay, and talk courageously—of the domestic LIFE OP ITALY! ”

“ How could I become cruel or vicious, when I had before my eyes only examples of mildness, and was surrounded by some of the best people in the world? My father, my aunt, my nurse, my relations, our friends, our neighbors, all I had any connection with, did not obey me, it is true, but loved me tenderly, and I returned their affection. ”

“ Let us hope that he knows the test of a gentleman not to be the ownership of blood-horses and a unique drag, but perfect courtesy founded upon fine human feeling—that rare and indescribable gentleness and consideration which rests upon manner as lightly as the bloom upon a fruit. ”

“ High-bred, prudent, and sagacious, Lord ***** knew well how often great men, especially in public life, obtain odium for the rudeness of their domestics, and all those, especially about himself, had been consequently tutored into the habits of universal courtesy and deference, to the lowest stranger, as well as to the highest guest. ”

“ You may be a gentleman, or you may be an impostor; but one thing is certain, you have taught her to contravene my wishes—to despise the honors to which a dutiful obedience to them would exalt her—to spurn my affection, and to trample on my authority. Now, sir, listen to me. ”

“ To be yours, to have you mine, is the greatest desire of my heart, but not in the coward's way, not at the expense of honor, of self respect—no not that way. Courage, my friend, God will show us the way, and meantime good night. ”

“ And yet, without pity for the laceration of the hearts of those three women, he forces them to gulp down the affront put upon them, to silently swallow their mutual jealousy and resentment, to smother their shame. He forces them to appear in public face to face ”

“ If a gentleman—I mean a real gentleman, not a pretended one, of which sort they say there are a many above ground—if a real gentleman were to lose all his money and come down to work in the mines to get bread for his family do you think, Curdie, he would work like the lazy ones? ”

“ I’ll leather ye when I get ye,’ cried Bill, forgetting his peacefulness; ‘ye young uns shall feel my hands, I tell ye that!’
‘Hold back there, ye fools,’ proclaimed an older man; ‘can’t ye let a man be when he sets forth to speak? There isn’t a grain o’ sense amidst the lot; one ’ud think ye were bred upon folly, and not on milk.’
‘We’re on’y supportin’ of him,’ a lad urged, sulkily, ‘we thort it ’ud do him good to have a cheer. ”

“ But in this instance I was seduced by no love of low company, nor disposition to indulge in low vices. I have always despised the brutally vulgar; and I have always had a disgust at vice, whether in high or low life. ”

“ One, we say, is cunning, another is open and ingenuous, a third is vain, a fourth cruel, a fifth is refined and gentle, and a sixth is sensual and gross. These expressions have been developed on the face, by the exercise and indulgence through life of the several qualities of cunning, of frankness, of vanity, of cruelty, of refinement, or of sensuality. ”

“ But on this subject we have put a sufficient number of arguments into the mouth of Lælius, in our books on a Republic.
XIX. Now apply the same arguments to modesty, or temperance, which is a moderation of the appetites, in subordination to reason. Can we say that a man pays sufficient regard to the dictates of modesty, who indulges his lusts in such a manner as to have no witnesses of his conduct? ”

“ I have known a casual word spoken by a vicious servant, plant the seeds of vice in a young and previously-innocent mind, which have afterwards produced a harvest of misery, desolation, and remorse, in the bosom of a happy and virtuous family. ”

“ Some of them are probably poor, and cannot afford to dress like you; or, on the other hand, you may be poor yourselves, and may be mortified at their being dressed better than you. Put an end to all that at once, by resolving to go down into the deep of your girl's heart, where you will find, inlaid by Christ's own hand, a better thing than vanity—pity. ”

“ Does any gentleman say go on? Does any man who has a wife and sisters or children at home, say go on? Do you dare, sir, to call yourself a gentleman, and to say that you hold the King's commission, and to sit amongst Christians and men of honour, and defile the ears of young boys with this wicked balderdash? ”

“ In manners, though your mighty strength, and hatred of any meanness, sometimes break out in violence—of which I must try to cure you, dear—in manners, if kindness, and gentleness, and modesty are the true things wanted, you are immeasurably above any of our Court-gallants; who indeed have very little. ”

“ I do not in the least see why courtesy, and gravity, and sympathy with the feelings of others, and courage, and truth, and piety, and what else goes to make up a gentleman's character, should not be found behind a counter as well as elsewhere, if they were demanded, or even hoped for, there. ”

“ If they are uncalled for, their cruelty, believe me, can hurt only your vanity. While it is just possible—though indeed in your case in the very highest degree improbable—that the gentleman may have been right. ”

“ Though they reproved one without a smile, their eyes often expressed understanding and sympathy and the offending one felt the deep love which had moved the other to speak—always for the good of the offender. ”

“ It needs not to have been the friend or favored guest beneath a roof where elegance and refinement have prevailed to feel the shock at seeing them replaced by all that ministers to coarse pleasure and vulgar association. The merest stranger cannot but experience a sense of disgust at the contrast. Whichever way you turned, some object met the eye recalling past splendor and present degradation ”

“ But were the recesses of the heart laid open, how often would the sight of a stranger, of an acquaintance, even of a friend, superior for the evening in the attractions of dress, or enjoying the supposed advantage of having secured a wealthier, a more lively, a more graceful, or a more fashionable partner, be found to excite feelings of disgust and of aversion, not always stopping short of malevolence! ”

“ But certainly you ought to struggle with the evil that does most easily beset you—a total want of politeness in behaviour, I would say modesty of behaviour but that I should not convey to you my idea of the word modesty; for I certainly do not mean that you want real modesty and what is usually called false or mock modesty I certainly do not wish you to possess; yet I trust you know what I mean well enough. Secresy, tjiough you appear all frankness, is certainly a grand failing of yours; it is likewise your brother's and, therefore, a family failing. ”

“ If these things are to be called teachings, ill masters must of necessity have taught ill; if wages of lust, there is nothing base of which the wages are honorable. But why was it of so much importance to show these things as well as to confer them? Was it that women without material causes of splendor, and without ingenious contrivances of grace, could not please men, who, while unadorned and uncouth, and--so to say--crude and rude, had moved the minds of angels? ”

“ Personal courage on the one hand, and a tendency to cruelty on the other, seem to have come to him almost equally from both. The contrary tendencies of some of the above characteristics and the prominent development of them all seem to account in a great degree for that element of versatility and uncertainty to which we have already drawn attention. ”

“ Without following the inquiry into farther detail,4 we 274 may conclude that vulgarity consists in a deadness of the heart and body, resulting from prolonged, and especially from inherited conditions of “degeneracy,” or literally “un-racing;”—gentlemanliness, being another word for an intense humanity. And vulgarity shows itself primarily in dulness of heart, not in rage or cruelty, but in inability to feel or conceive noble character or emotion. ”

“ In their daily life, or practical advice to others, they adopt neither the standard of implacable and indiscriminating revenge and cruelty on the one hand, nor that of absolute self-abasement and meek submission to insult and injury on the other, which are alternately represented as attributes of the Divine character by the respective authors of these so-called sacred writings. ”

“ Two brilliant, sparkling eyes illumined his countenance and the curl of his carmine lips was that of one who while kind—without condescension and the odiousness of patronage—to all whom the mischance of fate had made his inferiors in fortune, would not bend the fawning knee to any whom the world calls great. ”

“ ANY other person, of less refinement and prudence than myself, would be at a loss how to thank your grace, upon the surprise of coming home last night, and finding two pictures where only one was demanded. But I understand your grace's malice, and do here affirm you to be the greatest prude upon earth. You will not so much as let your picture be alone in a room with a man, no not with a clergyman, and a clergyman of five and forty ”

“ And even some amongst themselves, great advocates for what they choose to call practical godliness, who have been drenched in sensuality, some of whom have been exposed to the public—why not use them as they have me? I only appeal to every thinking mind, whether their cruelty could arise from any thing but spite. It cannot arise from my doctrine itself, but their wilful ignorance of it, perversion p. ”

“ Why, madam, we vulgar take it to be a sign of love—We servants, we poor people, that have nothing but our persons to bestow or treat for, are forced to deal and bargain by way of sample, and therefore as we have no parchments or wax necessary in our agreements, we squeeze with our hands and seal with our lips, to ratify vows and promises. ”

“ Venerable too is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. O, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! ”

“ In the less capable and less elevated, devotion may become fanaticism, and [Pg 19] tenacity may become blind prejudice, or sheer obstinacy. In this temperament too, in its lower grades, we meet too often—not all together perhaps, certainly not all in equal degree—with indolence, sensuality, inconstancy; or morbid brooding, implacability, and even cruelty. ”

“ We’re less prudish, of course, but all the more wholesome for precisely that reason. And though somewhat obscured by the camouflage of ‘petting,’ purity still reigns supreme in girlish hearts, and honor in manly breasts. ”

“ In the cases where we have been accustomed to think that his passions led him into crime, he either displayed the strictest virtue, or, at most, sinned in so gentlemanlike a manner, with so much kindness and generosity, as hardly to sin at all. ”

“ Nay, then, my Lord, 'tis time for me to observe the laws of prudence.
Lord Town. I wish I could see an instance of it.
Lady Town. You shall have one this moment, my Lord; for I think, when a man begins to lose his temper at home; if a woman has any prudence, why——she'll go abroad 'till he comes to himself again. ”

“ The courtesan who keeps her wickedness concealed by what she calls respectability, has not a word of pity for the honest courtesan who claims to be just what she is.
32. I tell you, men, if you would censure not till you are free from sin, the world would soon forget the meaning of the word, accused. ”

“ In pleasure they comprehend malevolence—that is, pleased at another's misfortune—delight, boastfulness, and the like. To lust they associate anger, fury, hatred, enmity, discord, wants, desire, and other feelings of that kind. ”

“ Thus highly are gentleness and modesty prized by the heathen. Should they be less so by us? What object more revolting than a coarse and 129rude woman? In such we expect,—and we are seldom disappointed,—to find a rough character, a destitution of the gentle spirit of goodness and Christ. Will not one of this class flame against her dress-maker, if some point of fashion be violated by her? Must we not fear that animal impulse will control her actions? ”