OF GENTS ON THE RIVER
THE grand gathering of Gents is only to be met with as one universal
réunion of all their varieties, on board the Sunday steamboats. No city
in the world produces so many holiday specimens of tawdry vulgarity as
London: and the river appears to be the point towards which all the
countless myriads converge. Their strenuous attempts to ape gentility—a
bad style of word, we admit, but one peculiarly adapted to our
purpose—are to us more painful than ludicrous: and the labouring man,
dressed in the usual costume of his class is, in our eyes, far more
respectable than the Gent, in his dreary efforts to assume a style and
tournure which he is so utterly incapable of carrying out.
[Illustration]
When joining a steamboat excursion the Gent never sits on the regular
benches placed for that purpose. He prefers the top of the
cabin-door—the steps of the paddle-boxes—the platform on which the
steersman is elevated, and the like situations. Here you may always see
him with a newspaper and a bottle of stout, a light blue stock, and,
being Sunday, a very new hat, and a pair of white trowsers: with Berlin
gloves, which he carries in his hand. For, indeed, not being used to
them, nothing presents so perfect an idea of tolerated discomfort as a
Sunday Gent in a pair of gloves. We can only compare the appearance of
his hands, when suffering under the infliction, to those of a Guy
Fawkes, or the tailors’ dressed-up dummies before alluded to.
[Illustration]
But there are also aquatic Gents, who row in boats on regatta
afternoons, and hope to be mistaken for “Leanders.” Their principal
characteristics when on the river, in this phase, are propensities to
wear pink silk jerseys, and silk caps. Now and then they have been known
to row in white kid gloves. But they may soon be detected; and are
especially found out by a race of amphibious aborigines who affect the
river and its banks, known to the natives as “Coalies” and “Bargees;”
and who call them _tailors_, and make unpleasant allusion to goose and
board, whereupon the anger of the Gents being called forth, they retort,
asking of the latter _amphibia_ above alluded to, “who eat the puppy pie
under Marlow bridge?” In which query, it is presumed, lies a hidden
taunt of rankling venom; for the “Bargees” immediately indulge in
language which would shock any one of a properly constituted mind, very
dreadfully—and call the Gents _sweeps_, not always without some
adjective prefixed, more powerful than polite.
River Gents are very fond of talking of their “rooms;” which means the
rooms rented by Oxford and Cambridge rowing men, for their meetings
previous to matches, starting, &c. With these, and the members of them,
the Gent professes to have an intimate acquaintance, albeit most likely
he never entered them, and would in all probability be snubbed out, or
possibly kicked, if he made the attempt.
Another great feature in the natures of the river Gents, is that of
belonging to four-oared cutter-clubs, with startling names; such as, the
Argonauts, the Corsairs, &c. They have their boats very elaborately
adorned—red and blue; and lots of gilding being considered the thing;
with the arms of the club—the only ones with which they have, in any
way, any thing to do—being emblazoned everywhere. In such clubs the
members row up to Putney, dine, get drunk, sing out of window, and come
back in an omnibus, leaving their waterman to bring the boat home the
next day.
The river Gent always knows a man with a yacht, with whom he has once
been as far as Gravesend. This enables him to talk about the “Bargee;”
and even when he thinks he is entirely amongst the unsophisticated, to
launch into hazardous remarks about a “flying-jib,” and the build of the
_Prima Donna_. And if he in any way intends to make a great effect, he
has been frequently known to take the name of Lord Alfred Paget in vain;
which is a great thing, not only with river Gents, but all sorts of city
yacht men generally.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------