[Illustration:
“Come along, my r-r-r-r-rummy cove; come along! how are you? how d’ye
do? here we are my bricksywicksywicksy!!!”
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE NATURAL HISTORY
OF
THE GENT.
[Illustration]
BY ALBERT SMITH.
LONDON:
DAVID BOGUE, 86 FLEET STREET.
MDCCCXLVII.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LONDON:
VIZETELLY BROTHERS AND CO. PRINTERS AND ENGRAVERS,
PETERBOROUGH COURT, FLEET STREET.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE.
IN the Sunday newspapers of May 24, of the past year, 1846, appeared the
following paragraph:—
MARYLEBONE.
A “GENT.”—A respectable-looking man, named James Dickenson, was
charged by Brooks, 169 S, who said, “Please your worship, at two
o’clock yesterday morning (Monday), I found this ‘gent’ drunk in
Park Road, and took him into custody.”
_Mr. Rawlinson_: Who do you say you found drunk?
_Constable_: This “gent,” your worship.
_Mr. Rawlinson_: What do you mean by “gent?” There is no such
word in our language. I hold a man who is called a “gent” to be
the greatest blackguard there is. (To the prisoner): What do you
say to this? I hope you are not a “gent.”
_Prisoner_: I am not, sir, and I trust that I know the
distinction between a “gent” and a “gentleman.”
_Mr. Rawlinson_: I dare say you do, sir, and I look upon the
word “gent” as one of the most blackguard expressions that can
be used.
The prisoner was fined 5s., which he directly paid.
We were exceedingly delighted when we read this police report. We had
laboured, for three or four years, to bring the race of Gents into
universal contempt; and we at last found that an intelligent and
respected London magistrate had publicly stated, from the bench, his
opinion of the miserable class in question; and that it exactly
coincided with our own. But fearing—from seeing the odious word still
starting up in shops, ticketed to wild articles of dress, to be
hereafter alluded to, as well as hearing it every now and then applied
by one “party” to another of his acquaintance—that the species was not
yet extinct; fearing this, in spite of our direct attacks in _Punch_ and
_Bentley’s Miscellany_, and our side-wind blows through the medium of
our esteemed friend John Parry, certain burlesques at the Lyceum, and
various other channels—we determined upon reconsidering all we had ever
propounded on the subject, and publishing it in the form now presented
to the reader, that all might clearly see who the Gents were, and shun
them accordingly.
And so we leave our little book in your hands, published at a price, as
a prospectus always says, “that will bring it within the reach of all
classes.” And we request your co-operation towards the great end of
putting Gents out altogether. For they form an offensive body, of more
importance than you would at first conceive; and both public and private
society will be much benefited by their extinction.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE NATURAL HISTORY
OF
THE GENT.
CHAPTER I.
WHAT THE GENT IS GENERALLY.
THE species of the human race, to the consideration of which we are
about to draw the attention of the reader, is of all others the most
unbearable, principally from an assumption of style about him—a futile
aping of superiority that inspires us with feelings of mingled contempt
and amusement, when we contemplate his ridiculous pretensions to be
considered “the thing.”
The Gent is of comparatively late creation. He has sprung from the
original rude untutored man by combinations of chance and cultivation,
in the same manner as the later varieties of fancy pippins have been
produced by the devices of artful market-gardeners, from the original
stock wild crab of the hedges. The fashion which Gents have of
occasionally addressing one another as “my pippin” favours this analogy:
and when they use this figure of speech, they pronounce it as
follows,—placing great stress on the first letter, and then waiting
awhile for the rest,—“Ullo, my P—ippin!”
After much diligent investigation, we find no mention made of the Gent
in the writings of authors who flourished antecedent to the last ten
years.
In the older works we meet with “_bucks_” and “_gay blades_” and
“_pretty fellows_;” and later with “_men upon town_,” “_swells_” and
“_downy ones_,” or “_knowing coves_:” but the pure Gent comes not under
any of these orders. He was not known in these times. He is scarcely
understood now so universally as we could wish; but we trust that his
real character will, before long, be properly appreciated. He is
evidently the result of a variety of our present condition of
society—that constant wearing struggle to appear something more than we
in reality are, which now characterizes every body, both in their public
and private phases.
Our attention was first called to the Gents in the following manner:—
We were in the habit of occasionally coming into contact with certain
individuals, who when they spoke of their acquaintances were accustomed
to say “I know a Gent,” or, “A Gent told me.” Never by any good luck did
we hear them speak of Gentlemen. But it occurred that we chanced, on
future occasions, to see one or two of the Gents above alluded to, and
then we understood what they were.
[Illustration]
The first Gent we ever saw, we encountered on the roof of an omnibus,
with his hat a little on one side, and a staring shawl round his neck.
He was also smoking a cigar, as he sat next to the driver, in order that
he might reap the benefit of his anecdotes and remarks concerning the
horses and vehicle, to which the Gent replied at intervals, “Ah,” and
“Yes,” and “I should say not,” and “Just so,” with other similar phrases
used to fill up unmeaning dialogue. We heard him speak of “a Party he
knew,” and he was very much interested at hearing that the off-horse
worked “in the fust bus as ever Shillibeer started, and was took from
the Angel to be put on the Elephant.” He was also informed of the
singular speculation in which “the guvner give a fippun note for that
little mare, and was offered eight sovrins for her within a week, though
she was a reg’lar bag o’ bones;” upon which the Gent observed that “very
often those sort of horses were the best.” Having delivered himself of
which opinion, he rolled his cigar about in his mouth, gave a whiff in
our face, and then removed it between his middle and ring-finger, to
offer it to another Gent on the roof, who begged the favour of a light.
[Illustration]
The next Gent we met was in the street. He wore large check trowsers of
the true light comedian pattern, which appeared to have been made
expressly for Mr. Walter Lacy, or Mr. Wright: and he had on a short odd
coat; such a one as that in which Mr. Buckstone might be expected to go
to a ball. He carried a little stick of no earthly use, with a horse’s
silver hoof on the top of it, which he kept to his lips always; and he
also patronised the staring shawl and cigar; and he evidently imagined
that he was “rather the Stilton than otherwise”—“_Stilton_” or
“_cheese_” being terms by which Gents imply style or fashion. He was
pursuing a pretty girl of modest deportment, who was possibly going
home—for it was evening, when Gents and cheap umbrellas chiefly
flourish—after her hard day’s toil at a bonnet-shop. The Gent had not
the sense to see that his advances were repulsed with scorn and
indignation. He imagined that by addressing his coarse annoying
gallantry to an unprotected girl, he was acting as if he was “upon
town,” “a fast man,” “up to a thing or two,” or some other such epithet,
which it is the ambition of the Gent to get attached to his name.
[Illustration]
We met the next Gent in the boxes at one of the theatres, whither he had
come in the full-dress of a light blue stock, and cleaned white gloves
re-dirtied. We knew they had been cleaned; they exhaled a faint camphine
odour, as he put his hand on the brass rail and leant over us, and there
was none of that sharpness of outline in their dirt which new gloves
evince: it was denser, cloudier, more universal; and the knuckles and
nails were remarkably so. This Gent also had a little stick. He lighted
a cigar at the lobby-lamp on leaving the house, and pulled a staring
shawl out of his hat as he whistled an air from one of the burlesques.
He went over to the Albion, the room of which was quite full; and after
standing in the centre for a few seconds—tapping his teeth with his
stick, whilst his left hand was thrust into the hinder pocket of his
coat, dragged round to his hip—apparently disgusted at not creating any
sensation, he turned round on his heel, and crossing Covent Garden,
ultimately dived into Evans’s.
Then we thought that the Gents must be a race by themselves, which
social naturalists had overlooked, deserving some attention; and we
determined to study their habits, and allot to them a certain position
which at that time they did not appear to have.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------