LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.

"Is she a Lady or a Person?" asked a British Matron when I spoke of a certain young woman. The question is well calculated to set one pondering on those nice distinctions of class, and sub-distinctions within the classes, characteristic of most semi-civilised and so-called highly civilised nations of the world. Unquestionably, my interrogator was a "lady" in the popular sense of the title. She lived in a large house, received visits from the rector and the curate, gave parties attended by well-to-do tradesfolk and one or two professional men, with their wives and families, and refrained from committing the misdemeanour of carrying parcels in the street. Undoubtedly she was considered a lady by most members of her own order. But was she a lady? I confess I do not know what you in particular mean by a lady. I must know you tolerably intimately before I can even hazard a surmise. This dame was the daughter of a tradesman, and she earned her own livelihood. That is quite enough to stamp her as a mere person in the judgment of an immense class.

For many years I have been trying to understand the jargon of Respectability, and I have failed. I cannot get three people in one room to entirely agree as to the constituents of a lady or a gentleman. One will tell me that the claim to the distinction depends upon birth; another denies this, and says it is simply a matter of good manners; but a third, in spite of my protest that the manners of my housemaid betoken a gentle-woman, affirms that her social status debars a domestic servant from the label lady, though she may be a very well-behaved young woman. If you think it is easy to obtain a precise definition of lady and gentleman, I suggest that you interrogate your near acquaintances, and make notes of the answers. Perchance your luck is better than mine.

No, I do not to this day know exactly what people mean by calling this man gentleman and that man plain man. I have heard that there was a time when only those men who plundered the poor, swore "gad-zooks" and very much worse than that, got drunk nearly every night, and debauched a great number of maids were the only respectable gentlemen in the land, all the rest, who were not "up to" this "form" in usual practice being churls, and knaves, and clowns. It is a matter of history that these crapulous bandits were the only gentlemen of their day.

But take the phrase in its most modern sense. A. is a patrician, and therefore pre-eminently a gentleman in the esteem of tens of thousands. He uses the foulest back-slum expressions in the hunting-field, "pals" with harlots, gamblers of shady notoriety, and ruffianly hybrid sportsmen of the turf and ring, drinks to excess, and, after a career of low vice and mean trickery, he pays his creditors—many of them struggling tradesmen—sixpence in the pound, or less than that. You say he is no gentleman. Quite so; but he is received in that polite company where you and I would be cold-shouldered, and the society that receives him is undoubtedly very high and good society. Moreover, the Respectable million, though they may roll their eyes unctuously at his misconduct, would be extremely delighted to have the honour of entertaining Lord A. at afternoon tea. You know perfectly well, my friend, that his lordship is "a gentleman bred and born," and that circles closed to B., an impecunious artist, but a man of exemplary deportment and refinement of feeling, are open to Lord A.

I hold that the terms lady and gentleman, like the word Respectable, have become grossly perverted, and are now merely the connotations of an odious snobbery. I would like to see the phrases deleted from every dictionary. In their original sense they were good words, i.e., gentle-man and gentle-woman, or if you will, lady. But they are now utterly corrupt and meaningless, except when applied to the vulgar of all ranks. The lady who does washing calls for the woman's linen. The cant term has become the privileged title of the vulgarest plebeian. An ignorant, ill-mannered, middle-class woman dubs herself Lady, and describes her cultured governess as a Person.

Diogenes went about with a lantern looking for a man. Some of us are questing for those mythical personages known as ladies and gentlemen; and, like Mrs. Gamp, who doubted the existence of Mrs. 'Arris, we are feign to believe "there aint no sich a person." When the majority disagree as to the outward semblance and the inner attributes of "real gentlefolk," how can we distinguish individuals of the order?

At a flower show I once overheard the daughter of a provincial solicitor remark to her "lady" friend: "My dear, there is really no one here but us." I looked around, and saw "bankers and brewers, men of evil omen," with their resplendent wives and daughters, and a great number of social small-fry. But these were nobodies. They were not lawyers, or the sons and daughters of lawyers, therefore they were nonentities. How quaint are the invidious distinctions and the usages of Snobbery! For example, it is considered impertinence if a brewer follows the hounds in a scarlet coat, but a banker may wear the "pink and buckskins." Such, at any rate, is the unwritten law in some hunting districts. As for army snobbishness, it is well known that in several regiments the impecunious officer, not "up to" the extravagant "form" of the mess, is regarded as a cad by brainless, swaggering subalterns, whose expenditure on their stomachs amounts to several hundred pounds per annum. But to write upon the inflated Respectability of "the Service" would require a separate section of this essay. It is enough to say that the bullying, blustering military Respectable is usually a scion of a parvenu family. The type is not only to be found in the regular forces; it is very common in the county militia and in the provincial volunteer corps. A son of a wine merchant, or some other prosperous tradesman, secures a lieutenancy in the volunteers, and soon rises to a higher rank. He is an officer, and therefore a "gentleman;" and he lords it over other tradesmen and tradesmen's sons with the air of a patrician major-general. One of these precious jackanapes once abused me for a "civilian," and threatened me with "an orderly," in a raucous tone of wrath, because I inadvertently trespassed within the lines of a volunteer camp. I said: "Where is the orderly? I'll wait for him," and I sat down on the grass and smoked my pipe, and summoned fortitude for the awful tribunal of a court-martial. But the orderly came not, though the "civilian" waited long and patiently.

Much as I dislike slang, I find the cant terms "side" and "bounce" so admirably adapted to my purpose in delineating certain phases of Respectability that I may perhaps be pardoned for using them in this attempt at a scientific exposition. Side and bounce will carry you far in Respectable society. Self-assertiveness is an excellent thing. Johnson and Carlyle were born with the faculty; they knew how to inspire awe, and no one dared to contradict them. The Yankees call this quality "side." They say that an egotistical, swaggering, dominant man "puts on a lot of side." Many men and women make their way to Respectability by putting on side. The rules are: (1) To appear to know all about everything. (2) to talk in a loud voice, and to interrupt other speakers. (3) to push, jostle, and trample upon the weak, the very young, and the diffident. The man who observes these rules is sure to get on in the world.

Have you not seen the crowd cower like frightened sheep at the sound of a self-important voice? If you wish to get the better of your brother man, you must terrify him and awe him into admiration. There is a good story of Colonel Burnaby. He was once speaking on a political platform, and some dissentients made a hubbub, and shouted "Chuck him out!" Burnaby knew the value of "side." He walked down to the menacing rowdies, asked one of them for a light, sat down among them, and smoked his pipe.

We may not love bumptious, thrusting mortals, who make their brother men their stepping-stones to higher things. But we are all more or less envious of their success; and we are always giving way to them, and making their path easy and pleasant. When we see a pompous personage walking grandly up Pall Mall, and gazing scorn upon the vulgar herd, we are often tempted to step up to him and say, as Douglas Jerrold, or someone else, once said to one of these superior persons: "Pray, sir, are you anyone in particular?" But we don't do it. We wither beneath the glassy stare of an eye-glass.

Some men are born with "side." It is easy and natural to them. As children they are never the horse, but always the driver when playing at horses, and at school they become cocks of the walk and chiefs of the dormitories. They are destined to be highly respected among the Respectables, for the rank and file of Respectability like to be dominated.

The other day I read a letter from a young English Respectable settled in South Africa. He wrote: "You have no idea how much time it takes to kick sense into nigger servants." Glorious British supremacy! That is the way to plant the banner of civilisation in heathen lands.

In a modern comedy which I have seen played (I forget the title), a flunkey who inherits an unexpected fortune, thumps the table with his fist, crying, "Now I'll be a gentleman! I'll be a gentleman, by God!" You will possibly try to convince me that this fellow never could become a gentleman. Why not? Money makes the man. He may not be a gentle-man in your sense, but he is a gentleman in the estimation of an immense number of the "general public." Do not dupe yourself with the notion that there is only one kind of gentleman in the community. There are at least a dozen sorts—the true gentleman, the real gentleman, my idea of a gentleman, your idea of a gentleman, Mrs. Grundy's gentleman, the Veneering conception of a gentleman, the Oxford University definition of a gentleman, the crack cavalry notion of a gentleman, the county society idea of a gentleman, the gentleman who keeps a shop, but is too gentlemanly to sell you things over the counter, the natural gentleman, the born gentleman, the gentlemanlike person, and so on. Is there no room for Jeames in this mixed assemblage? Once and for all, clear your mind of the fallacy that your especial conception of a gentleman is the only true one. There are, fortunately, not one, but several standards of feminine beauty. There are also several criteria of the real gentleman and the perfect lady.

Turn to the dictionary for a "correct definition" of gentleman if you wish to fog your mind still more upon this subject: "Gentleman (from genteel and man)—In a general sense, every educated person above a labourer, an artisan, or a tradesman, an individual possessed of the conduct, habit, and outward appearance which belong, or are expected to belong, to persons born and educated in a high social position; a man in any station of life who is possessed of good breeding and refined manners, strict integrity and honour, kindliness of heart, and suchlike qualities; in a limited sense, a person of good fortune and good family, whether titled or not; one who bears a coat of arms; a term of complaisance or respect, as in the plural gentlemen, when addressing a number of persons." Does this hotchpotch of contradiction help you in determining the qualities of a gentleman? I confess it is of no service to me.

No, we must end this disquisition as we began it. Terminology merely bewilders and frustrates clear thought on the question. There is obviously room and to spare for all of us in the temple of gentility. We can all be gentlemen and ladies if we choose. The only thing to decide is, which sort? Personally, I feel honoured at being spoken of as "that man." "I endeavour," writes M. Taine, "rightly to comprehend the epithet so essential 'a gentleman'; it constantly recurs, and comprises a mass of ideas wholly English.... In France we have not the word, because we have not the things, and these three syllables, as used across the Channel, summarise the history of English society." [1]