The ideal of a gentleman, or, A mirror for gentlefolks : a portrayal in literature from the earliest times / by A. Smythe-Palmer.

  • Palmer, Abram Smythe.
Date:
[1908]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The ideal of a gentleman, or, A mirror for gentlefolks : a portrayal in literature from the earliest times / by A. Smythe-Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    516/542 (page 500)
    One arbiter elegantiarum has declared any man may pass for a Gentleman who wears a black coat and holds his tongue ; and this certainly approaches very nearly to the received ideas upon the subject. W. Thoms, Book of the Court, 1844, 147, note. Sir Thos. Smith says : ‘ As for gentlemen they be made good cheap in this kingdom ; for whosoever studieth the laws of the realm, who studieth in the universities, who professeth the liberal sciences, and (to be short) who can live idly, and without manual labour, and will bear the port, charge, and countenance of a Gentleman, he shall be called Master, and taken for a Gentleman, Id., p. 150. [In Ireland.'] In those days [about 1800] the common people ideally separated the gentry of the country into three classes, and treated each class according to the relative degree of respect to which they considered it was entitled. They generally divided them thus : 1. Half-mounted gentlemen, 2. Gentlemen every inch of them. 3. Gentlemen to the backbone. The first were independent yeomen ; the second were of excellent old families, whose finances were not in so good order as they might have been, but who were popular amongst all ranks ; the third were of the oldest families and settlers, univer- sally respected, and idolized by the peasantry, although they also were generally a little out at elbows. Sir Jonah Barrington, Personal Sketches of His Own Times (1827), i, 79 (ed. 1869). ' It would be extremely difficult—probably impossible— to frame a generally acceptable definition of the word ‘ gentle- man.” ’ The quick-witted Irish peasant finds no such diffi- culty ; but then he divides the genus into three species—to wit : ‘ A gintleman, a raal gintleman, and a Half Sir ! ’ Pre- sent him with a specimen of the genus, and after a very short acquaintance he will remit him to his proper niche in the collection, without doubt or hesitation ; and from a lifelong