The ideal of a gentleman, or, A mirror for gentlefolks : a portrayal in literature from the earliest times / by A. Smythe-Palmer.
- Abram Smythe Palmer
- Date:
- [1908]
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.
76/542 page 60
![honest, truthful, upright, temperate, courageous, self-respecting and self-helping. The poor man with a rich spirit is always superior to the rich man with a poor spirit. . . . For the poor man who is rich in spirit, the world is, as it were, held in trust, and in freedom from the grosser cares of life, he alone is entitled to be called the true gentleman. 1887, S. Smiles, Life and Labour, p. 26. We in the present, and yet more our scientific descendants in the future, must use when we desire to praise a character the old expression, gentleman, in nearly the old sense [of gentilis, a man of family] : one of a happy strain of blood, one fortunate in descent from brave and self-respecting ancestors, whether clowns or counts. And yet plainly this is of but little help. The intricacy of descent defies prediction ; so that even the heir of a hundred sovereigns may be born a brute or a vulgarian. . . . One of the prettiest gentlemen I ever knew was a servant. A gentleman he happened to be, even in the old stupid sense. . . . And one thing at least is easy to prophesy, not many years will have gone by before those shall be held the most ‘ elegant ’ gentleman, and those the most ‘ refined ’ ladies who wait (in a dozen particulars) upon themselves. 1888, R. L. Stevenson, Gentlemen ; in Scribner, iii, 635-6. If I could but transfer to these pages a real portrait—such a portrait as Velasquez or Vandyke would have painted—of one of the many true gentlemen I have known, the work would be three parts done to my hand. . . . This, then, is my definition : A gentleman is one to whom discourtesy is a sin and falsehood a crime. W. R. Browne, The English Gentleman, in National Review, April, 1886, p. 261. ‘ To look on thee now, and compare thee with Master Tressilian here, in his sad-coloured riding-suit, who would not say that thou wert the’real gentleman, and he the tapster’s boy ? ’ ‘ Troth, uncle,’ replied Lambourne, ‘ no one would say so but one of your country-breeding, that knows no better. I will say, and I care not who hears me, there is something about](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29008529_0078.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
