Genteel

“ Indeed, if you wish to circulate freely in genteel society, I would advise you to get a pretty free use of the words, ‘jacobins,’ ‘rabble,’ ‘mob,’ ‘agrarians,’ ‘canaille’ and ‘democrats’; for they recommend many to notice who possess nothing else. In our happy and independent country it is a sure sign of lofty sentiment, a finished education, a regulated intellect, and a genteel intercourse, to know how to bespatter all that portion of your fellow-creatures, for instance, who live in one-story edifices. ”

“ Perhaps, after all, fear is at the root of the English veneration for gentility.
[316] Gentle and gentlemanly may be derived from the same root as genteel; but nothing can be more distinct from the mere genteel, than the ideas which enlightened minds associate with these words. Gentle and gentlemanly mean something kind and genial; genteel, that which is glittering or gaudy. A person can be a gentleman in rags, but nobody can be genteel.
[332] The writer has been checked in print by the Scotch with being a Norfolk man. ”

“ It is the genteel, the patriotic, and religious mode of gratifying pride, ambition, or any other unsanctified passion of the human mind. It can reconcile all contradictions, render practicable all impossibilities, authorize all kinds of absurdities, sanction all kinds of fooleries, and justify all kinds of cruelties. ”

“ A genteel manner of behaviour, how trifling soever it may seem, is of the utmost consequence in private life. Men of very inferior parts have been esteemed, merely for their genteel carriage and good-breeding, while sensible men have given disgust for want of it. There is something or other that prepossesses us at first sight in favor of a well-bred man, and makes us wish to like him. ”

“ Upon my word, I do not say too much, when I say that superior good-breeding, insinuating manners, and genteel address, are half your business. Your knowledge will have but very little influence upon the mind, if your manners prejudice the heart against you; but, on the other hand, how easily will you DUPE the understanding, where you have first engaged the heart? and hearts are by no means to be gained by that mere common civility which everybody practices. ”

“ The genteel thing, is the genteel thing at any time. If so be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.
3 Fel. I like the maxum of it, Master Muggins. What though I am obligated to dance a bear? a man may be a gentleman for all that. May this be my poison, if my bear ever dances but to the very genteelest of tunes: "Water parted," or "The minuet in Ariadne."
2 Fel. What a pity it is the 'squire is not come to his own! It would be well for all the publicans within ten miles round of him.
Tony. Ecod and so it would, Master Slang. ”

“ Of the two classes of people, I hardly know which is to be regarded with most distaste, the vulgar aping the genteel, or the genteel constantly sneering at and endeavoring to distinguish themselves from the vulgar. ”

“ The influence of society upon authors increased more and more; for the best society, consisting of persons of birth, rank, and property, chose for one of their chief recreations literature, which thus became quite social and genteel. Persons of rank and littérateurs mutually cultivated and necessarily perverted each other, for the genteel has always something excluding in its nature; and excluding also was the French criticism, being negative, detracting and faultfinding. ”

“ At the end of the 16th century the French gentil was again adapted into English in the form “gentile,” later changed to “genteel.” The word was common in the 17th and 18th centuries as applied to behaviour, manner of living, dress, &c., suitable or proper to persons living in a position in society above the ordinary, hence polite, elegant. ”

“ He placed the qualities to be cultivated in this order: "A genteel person, a simple nature, sensibility, cheerfulness, delicacy, softness, affability, good manners, regular habits, skill in fancy work, and a fund of hidden genteel learning." ”

“ Be it then your ambition to get into the best company; and, when there, imitate their virtues, but not their vices. You have no doubt, often heard of genteel and fashionable vices. These are whoring, drinking, and gaming. It has happened that some men even with these vices, have been admired and esteemed. Understand this matter rightly; it is not their vices for which they are admired; but for some accomplishments they at the same time possess; for their parts, their learning, or their good-breeding. ”

“ It may be said of them truly that ‘thin partitions do their bounds divide.’ There cannot be a surer proof of a low origin or of an innate meanness of disposition, than to be always talking and thinking of being genteel. ”

“ But discipline all to think and reason more and more justly and assuredly upon their facts, and to men so educated, the very thought of an inordinate crowding of the so-called genteeler avocations, to the neglect of the more substantial, becomes appreciated in its true light, as absurd and unfortunate in every way, and, in all its bearings upon the individual as well as the social welfare. ”

“ I proceed to spy out some defect in her shape; and I find I know not what graces of nature so happily and so liberally scattered in her person, that the genteelness of others only seems to be constraint and affectation. ”

“ Through the whole Piece you may observe such a Similitude of Manners in high and low Life, that it is difficult to determine whether (in the fashionable Vices) the fine Gentlemen imitate the Gentlemen of the Road, or the Gentlemen of the Road the fine Gentlemen.—Had the Play remained, as I at first intended, it would have carried a most excellent Moral. ’Twould have shewn that the lower Sort of People have their Vices in a degree as well as the Rich: And that they are punish’d for them. ”

“ It appears that the most general idea which people have formed of a Gentleman, is that of a person of fortune above the vulgar, and embellished by manners that are fashionable in high life. In this case, fortune and fashion are the two constituent ingredients in the composition of modern Gentlemen; for whatever the fashion may be, whether moral or immoral, for or against reason, right or wrong, it is equally the duty of a Gentleman to conform. And yet I apprehend, that true gentility is altogether independent of fortune or fashion, of time, customs, or opinions of any kind. ”

“ The word gentleman has not any correlative abstract to express the quality. Gentility is mean, and gentilesse is obsolete. But we must keep alive in the vernacular, the distinction between fashion, a word of narrow and often sinister meaning, and the heroic character which the gentleman imports. The usual words, however, must be respected: they will be found to contain the root of the matter. The point of distinction in all this class of names, as courtesy, chivalry, fashion, and the like, is, that the flower and fruit, not the grain of the tree, are contemplated. ”

“ Then the youngsters would not be exposed to the anxieties that darken the average home; they would not pick up and perpetuate [202] the vulgarities of their parents. The child of the pauper would be just as refined as the child of the peer. Think what that would mean; a breaking down of all class distinction. The word ‘gentleman’ would come into its true significance, and in a few years we would have a new race, with new ideals, new ambitions, new ways of thought. ”

“ From the etymology of the word to the humanity of the character, a full, forcible, frank, and fervent discussion of the Gentleman is given, as he figures in history, in society, in domestic life, and in literature,—and as he lives, a grand and gracious ideal, in the consciousness of the author. ”

“ I speak of that unclassified order peculiar to England, which, no doubt, forming itself originally from the ideal standard of honour and truth supposed to be maintained by the gentilshommes, or well-born, no longer requires pedigrees and acres to confer upon its members the designation of gentleman; and when I hear a ‘gentleman’ say that he has no option but to think one thing and say another, at whatever risk to his country, I feel as if in the progress of the age the class of gentleman was about to be superseded by some finer development of species. ”

“ Coming then to details, let us, primarily, resolve to be slaves to nothing and to no one—neither to others nor to ourselves; and to endeavor to establish such habits as shall entitle each of us, in the estimation of discriminating observers, to the distinctive name of gentleman.
Constant association with well-bred and well-educated society, cannot be too highly estimated as an assistant in the acquisition of the attributes of which we propose to speak. A taste for such companionship may be so strengthened by habit as to form a strong barrier to the desired indulgence of grosser inclinations. ”

“ The world is so careful about the breeding and grading of every kind of domestic animals, and the improvement of machinery, but the breeding of humanity is left to luck, haphazard chance, and the devil to take the hindmost. This ought not so to be.
I cannot refrain from giving another definition of gentleman: “A man distinguished for his fine sense of honor and consideration for the rights and feelings of others.” This suits me, as there is nothing in it about color, lineage or wages, or whether one sits at table with shop-keepers. ”

“ If the lower set show a sense of common honesty and common order; those who would figure in the world, think it incumbent to demonstrate that complaisance to inferiors, common manners, common equity, or any thing{41} common, is quite beneath the attention or sphere—of a Gentleman. ”

“ And these are usually people of a character near akin to his own—of similar tastes, habits, manners, feelings and purposes. It is this similarity of character which draws them together, and renders their society mutually agreeable. Hence we find those who are deeply absorbed in any particular subject—as temperance, peace, abolition, moral reform, and the like—anxious to make the acquaintance and enjoy the society of persons known to be interested in the same subject. ”

“ A certain reckless dash about him, not common to a refined gentleman, forces us to set him down as one of those individuals who hold an uncertain position in society; and though they may now and then mingle with men of refinement, have their more legitimate sphere in a fashionable world of doubtful character. ”

“ If, however, the opinion of an official high in rank is to be accepted as evidence, gentlemen were not numerous up to 1767, as will be seen from an extract from a letter of his to a friend: “A ship lately arrived from London, has brought over the chief justice and the attorney-general of the province, and 80other gentlemen, who are very much wanted.” But who are and who are not gentlemen? Let the moralist, the sectarian, partisan, votary of sport or fashion, dude, friend, enemy, the prejudiced, the just, the harsh, and the charitable successively sit in judgment upon the same man ”

“ We have, indeed, but to visualize clearly the spectacle of a gentleman shaving himself and put beside it the spectacle of a gentleman starching and curling his whiskers, to see the finer personal dignity that has come with the general adoption of the razor. ”

“ And just think of Windeyer waiting
To deal with "A Gentleman, One"!
And some face it boldly, and brazen
The shame and the utter disgrace;
While others, more sensitive, hasten
Their names and their deeds to efface. ”

“ Hence even the common people, in the ordinary language of daily conversation, denominate whatever is connected with mutual good will, humane; so that the word humanity no longer describes man's nature, merely in a physical sense; but signifies humane manners, or a behaviour, worthy the nature of man, acting his proper part in civil society. ”

“ Miss, how frightful you are! said by a homely wench when Miss screams at a toad or a spider; a gentleman (midl. and s. counties) is a man who need not work, or is disabled from work, e.g. He’s a gentleman now, but he just manages to doddle about his garden with a weedin’-spud. It can be applied to a sick woman, e.g. I’m sure I’ve done all I could for mother; if she isn’t a gentleman, I should like to know who is! ”

“ Wherefore as the said qualities were found to be of ready acquisition, and of easy descent to the populace from their betters, ambition judged it necessary to add further marks and criterions for severing the general herd from the nobler species—of Gentlemen. ”

“ In the creation of the gentleman as well as of the thinker, the personal equation counts. In fact, it counts for more in the making of the gentleman. For in this making truth is less important than the personality. In the gentleman intellectual altruism and moral appreciativeness are large elements. ”

“ Exactly as on a great farm the distinguished sheep, when they were sent to a cattle fair might have specific names, while for the great flock nobody pretends to name the individuals, so certain people, even in feudal times, were gentilis, or belonged to a gens, while the great body of men were dignified by no such privilege. ”

“ No, he might not; for, though poor, being a citizen, he is a gentleman. That was the consequence of keeping slaves. Wherever there is a class of slaves, he that enjoys the jus suffragii (no matter how poor) is a gentleman. The true Latin word for a gentleman is ingentius—a freeman and the son of a freeman. ”