John Gentian, Esq., or Major Gentian, or the Dean, or the Major, or
Jack--for all these styles are his according to circumstances and the
person mentioning or addressing him--is one of those socially notable
characters whose names for all the notability will be found rather in
the trustworthy City Directory than in the not-always-reliable
Biographical Dictionary. Accordingly in the former ‘John Gentian’ is set
down as hailing from the ‘Burgundy Club,’ the street and number of the
club-house duly and accurately given. In brief, John Gentian is a
bachelor having chambers on an upper story of the club-house, a
privilege which at his solicitation was cheerfully accorded him, as by
seniority of membership, to say nothing of happy qualifications in his
character, Dean of the Chapter of _Burgundians_, for so do they
denominate themselves, the brethren of that congenial fraternity.
This captain of the good fellows belongs to a transplanted shoot of
Southern stock for two generations taking root and branching out in the
North, within the borders of a State which, thanks to its relative
geographical position and circumstances originating in that, least
partakes of a sectional spirit. For now a fair period, ever since the
latter part of 1865, the Dean has gone on in what would seem to be the
after-mission of his life, namely, the dispensing of those less
abbreviated greetings on the Avenue and considerate old-school
hospitalities of the board, hardly practicable for the ‘business-man’ of
our day, or, for that matter, the man of leisure either, unless
abounding in natural benevolence backed up by its desirable concomitant,
a comfortable bank account. Do not infer, however, that there is aught
of Count D’Orsay superannuated, or Sir Charles Grandison, become senile,
in our Dean of the Burgundians. He is no prodigal in airs and graces,
and, on the contrary, sometimes takes singular liberties with etiquette,
not out of ignorance, to be sure, or the Leveller’s contempt; no, but
from a certain impulsive straightforwardness at times, hardly compatible
with the abstract theory of a formalised gentlemanhood. Furthermore, he
of late has permitted himself an easy latitude in his dress, evincing a
lack of proper reverence for mercers and the mode. But yet more astray,
he will, upon provocation--say, at some story of perfidy or brutal
behaviour--incontinently rap out an expletive, startling to the ladies
as Brandt’s flourished tomahawk at the London masked ball long ago. Then
again, as if there were no end to his derelictions, he, when convenient
to him, thinks nothing of carrying a brown paper parcel in the street
rather than trouble the shopkeeper to send some inexpensive small matter
to his rooms. Notwithstanding these deviations from the conventionally
correct, there is that in the look of Major Gentian, something in the
‘cut of his jib,’ as the sailors say, if not in the end of his coat,
that involuntarily inspires respect, yes, even in cabby himself. Cabby,
before club-house or theatre, poised on the curb, expectant of the prey,
would never dream of hailing him (_the Dean_) with the ambiguous
‘_Gent._’ Should he do so, whether out of ignorance or sly impudence,
the Major would have to hold his temper well in hand to obviate a
violent breach of the peace. To _Boss_ he objects not, that Dutch
monosyllable having an honest bovine sound to it, and being, in fact, a
natural localism of a city first settled by the Hollander; and if
_master_ be not the word’s exact equivalent, it would be difficult to
find one.
The Major’s propensity is to occasional unlicensed emphasis in his talk,
a thing assuredly not commendable in anybody, very likely contracted
from certain experiences, namely, his adventures in early life among our
frontiersmen. Nor could his subsequent campaignings during our Civil War
have served to displace the secular expletives by Biblical ejaculations
such as those attributed to Cromwell’s pious troopers, though, indeed,
the historical sceptics of our time have suggested doubts as to whether
even these same martial deacons for all their psalmody in the tents did
not during active operations against the foe indulge more or less in
that ‘horrible swearing’ wherewith ‘the army in Flanders’ stands
pre-eminently charged. To terrorise, if possible, this pertains to the
true function of a soldier in the field. The point is energetically put
by a Roman consul, one of those schooling his infantry on the eve of an
eye-to-eye and hand-to-hand encounter of ancient war. To the same
purpose is a well-known passage in Shakespeare. But there are various
modes of terrorising as a preliminary to closely engaging. The Chinese
Achilles, for example, hurls at the foe missiles of an unmentionable
name in English, and which explode an abomination of stench. The
sequence is hot air, though disagreeable, and what is ‘horrible
swearing’ but the same? It is perhaps equally efficacious, and, in
military ethics, why may not either be used as an adjunct to the
artillery? But alas for the oathing. It becomes a habit, and so in times
of peace is mechanically resorted to by the retired Christian veteran
when there is no military call for it. In short, a soldier’s or sailor’s
oath, however shocking to ears polite, is, at least when the man is not
actually engaged in tussle with the foe public or private, but an
idiocratic form given to whatever meaning may lurk in such phrases as
Bless my soul! Thunder! Goodness gracious!
If, however, sin be not of the heart but the tongue, a theological
opinion to which some would seem to incline, then woe to no few of our
warriors in the late Civil Unhappiness. For, in that case, who but an
orthodox Calvinist can with any adequacy appreciate the sublime
disinterestedness of their patriotism, since from his point of view, not
alone did our heroes jeopardise their lives for us, but mortally
endangered their souls. And for what? Oh futility! in the attempts to
terrorise enemies who, being our own countrymen, of course, refused to
be terrified, though in the end fate, working through force, made them
succumb.
Though of all men Jack be the least exclusive as to the company he
keeps, and is anything but bumptious in his manner, there have not been
wanting detractors who have insinuated a charge against him rather
serious in a democratic community, namely, not alone a tendency to the
aristocratic in general, but a weakness for certain gewgaws, that savour
of the monarchical. True, at certain grand banquets, where as an
honorary guest he sits at the high table, banquets more especially of
those national societies wherewith our cosmopolitan city abounds--the
St. Denis, St. Nicholas, St. Patrick, St. George, St. Andrew; on these
occasions the Major a little lays himself open to invidious suspicion by
wearing on his left lapel the eagle wings in gold of the Cincinnati, a
venerable order whereof he who still reigns ‘first in the hearts of his
countrymen’ was the original head. This decoration descended to the
Major from his great-grandfather, a South Carolinian, a white-haired
captain of infantry at the battle of Saratoga Springs, who therefore,
being eligible as a Revolutionary officer, was enrolled in the order
upon its formation just after the Peace.
Now, an inherited badge of the Cincinnati, every American, however ultra
in his democracy, must allow to be something of which no other American
need be ashamed. As the Major himself once demanded, and with some
animation--‘Compared with this bit of old gold,’ tapping it with his
hand, ‘what is the insignia of the Knights of the Golden Fleece or the
Knights of the Spanish Order of the Holy Ghost? Gimcracks, sir! and the
last, in fact as in name, but a ghostly sort of vanity.’
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