THE GENTS VIEWED WITH RESPECT TO THEIR EXTINCTION.
IF ANY influential member, bent upon being of service to his country,
would bring in a bill for the “Total Repeal of the Gents,” he would
confer the greatest benefit on society; for until they are entirely
knocked on the head, our public amusements can never be conducted with
the propriety which distinguishes those of Paris.
We believe, with sorrow, that this offensive race of individuals is
peculiar to our own country: we know of no foreign type answering to
them. If persons establishing resorts where they mostly congregate,
could take out an assurance against Gents, as they do against fire, what
a blessing it would be!
We think it would be an excellent plan for respectable electors to make
members pledge themselves to vote for the heavy taxation of various
articles in which Gents chiefly delight. In this tariff we would have
blue stocks; large breast-pins; snaffle coat-studs; curled hair;
collar-galled hacks; Spanish dances; Cellarius waltzes; Caledonian
quadrilles; lithographed beauties, plain and coloured; cheap cigars;
large pattern trowsers; gay under-waistcoats or “vests;” thick sticks;
short canes; walking-whips; and boxes of omnibuses, as distinguished
from omnibus boxes. If the Gents could not enjoy these things without
paying heavy prices for them they would go without; for a great effect
at a small outlay is the main intention of all their follies.
And we also think it might be serviceable towards the great end of
putting Gents out altogether, when any one chances to say, “I know a
Gent,” to exclaim immediately either “You know a _what_?” in accents of
horror, or “You look as if you did!” in a tone of contempt, to bring him
to a sense of his miserable position—in whichever way you think will
best work upon his feelings.
Doudney, Moses, Prew, and Hyams! patrons as ye are of literature
generally, and poets especially! by whose influence the taste of the
Gents is in some measure guided, help us to effect some little reform!
Do not, we beseech you, allow your emblazoned window-tickets to lead
this wretched race into such strange ideas respecting the “fashions” as
they are wont to indulge in. Abolish all those little pasteboard
scutcheons which point out your gaudy fabrics as “Novel,” “The Style,”
“Splendid,” “The Thing,” “Parisian,” and the like. Cut their waistcoats,
in charity, as if you intended them for gentlemen instead of Gents.
Reform your own bills, and appeal not to the sympathies with such wild
innovations: and persuade the literary Gent who writes those charming
little _brochures_ about your establishments—whispered to be the light
contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine—which are presented gratuitously
with the periodicals, to lead the minds of the Gents into another
channel. Let them no longer imagine that the usual method of dressing of
an acknowledged leader of fashion—the gentleman of the greatest taste in
England—is in a puckered six-and-threepenny blouse with braid round the
pockets (for such is the garment that bears his name), a rainbow-tinted
stock, drugget-pattern trowsers, and nine-and-sixpenny broad-brimmed
hats. Do this, and send all your present stock to America.
Editors of Sporting Papers! you are renowned for obliging courtesy:
assist the good work with your able pens, by never allowing the term
“Sporting Gent” to appear in your columns, whether he undertakes to
drive a pony to death, match his dog to be torn to pieces last in a
struggle, or advance a pecuniary inducement for two savages to pummel
each other’s heads to jelly. Did you ever see a “Sporting Gent?” You
must have done so; and you have noted his coarse hands, his flattened
fingers, and dubby nails; his common green coat, his slang handkerchief,
and his low hat: his dreary conversation entirely confined to wiredrawn
accounts of wagers he has won, and matches he can make for any thing.
Never give him a chance of attaining publicity, and he will go out and
disappear altogether, leaving the coast clear for gentlemen.
We are not altogether without a hope that, by strong and energetic
measures, the Gents may be put down—this would be a real “improved
condition of the people” much to be desired. A Court of Propriety might
be established at which Gents could be convicted of misdemeanors against
what is usually considered _comme-il-faut_. And punishments might be
awarded proportionate to the nature of the offence. For a heavy one a
Gent might be transported for fourteen days into good society, where he
would be especially wretched; for a light one he might enter into heavy
recognizances not to smoke cigars on omnibuses or steamers, not to wear
any thing but quiet colours, not to say he knew actresses, and not to
whistle when he entered a tavern, or, with his fellows, laugh loudly at
nothing, when ensconced in his box there, for any time not exceeding the
same period. A Court of Requests would be of no use; for it is of little
avail requesting the Gents to do any thing. Compulsion alone would
reform them.
We trust the day will come—albeit we feel it will not be in our
time—when the Gent will be an extinct species; his “effigies,” as the
old illustrated books have it, being alone preserved in museums. And
then this treatise may be regarded as those zoological papers are now
which treat of the Dodo: and the hieroglyphics of coaches and horses,
pheasants, foxes’ heads, and sporting dogs found on the huge white
buttons of his wrapper, will be regarded with as much curiosity, and
possibly will give rise to as much discussion and investigation as the
ibises and scarabæi in the Egyptian Room of the British Museum. We hope
it may be so.
VIZETELLY BROTHERS AND CO. PRINTERS AND ENGRAVERS, FLEET STREET
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that:
was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).