THE BRITISH GENTLEMAN

SOME one-we believe it was the 'Daily Chronicle’— called the late Mr. Thomson, the African explorer, an English gentleman. The remark, if not very original, was, one would have thought, quite harmless. It is a phrase which a writer might use almost without thinking at any rate, without any thought of raising a bitter controversy and impelling a great many worthy gentlemen on the other side of the Tweed and across St. George's Channel to ask how long it would be possible to endure the insolence of England. Unfortunately, a phrase is like a rocket. It is a thousand chances to one, when you let it off, that the stick will do no one any harm when it falls-will only lodge in a hedge or lie in a ditch. Every now and again, however, a stick comes plump into somebody's back garden, and either sets fire to the wood stack or gives some baldheaded old gentleman a knock on the head while he is serenely taking the air. An ordinary conventional phrase has exactly the same peculiarity. The chance of it setting fire to somebody or something is so small as not to be worth considering; and yet every now and again it does cause a conflagration.

The writer in the 'Daily Chronicle' who so innocently and light-heartedly let off the conventional

phrase of an English gentleman' à propos of the late Mr. Thomson experienced the truth of the fact we have just stated. His stick fell north of the Tweed, gave a rap to some fierce Highlander or splenetic Lowlander we know not which--and produced an instant combustion. It appears that Mr. Thomson was, like Mr. Gladstone, a pure Scotchman. What business, then, had a supercilious and impertinent South British scribbler to call him an English gentleman? Just as if Scotch gentlemen, and, for the matter of that, Irish gentlemen too, were not a great deal better gentlemen than English gentlemen. So the controversy of perverted particularism raged, till at last the heat, the bitterness, and fury generated a new phrase. Surgit amari aliquid. Some one suggested the inspiriting form, 'a British gentleman.'

It was a great moment when that phrase emerged. At once the silent watchers at the brink of the newspaper firmament realised that a new planet was sailing into the realms of expression. We felt all that the astronomers feel when they are lucky enough to be present at the birth of a hitherto undiscovered star. A British gentleman.' Here was a veritable addition to our language. Here was something to fill a want which, though only dimly perceived before, had been none the less real. We cared not then for the lesser problems- whether the word English could not rightly be applied to all the English-speaking members of the United Kingdom, or how, in any case, so evident an Anglo-Saxon as a Thomson could be hurt by being called an English gentleman. These distinctions and. subtleties seemed as nothing when considered in the

light of the great discovery-the discovery of a new category under which men can be grouped and described. Till the new discovery we had only the description, an English gentleman.' Now we have not only that, but the equally expressive and perfectly distinct phrase, ‘a British gentleman.'

Let us endeavour to enter and possess our new domain, to show how ample and splendid it is, and how much our language has gained by our now being able to describe people as British gentlemen. The first thing to be noted about 'the British gentleman,' as compared with 'the English gentleman,' is that the former has much more colour and go about him. We will not say that the British gentleman is florid, but he has a certain air, a dash, a flamboyance of manner which strongly differentiates him. Who has not in his past experience found persons who were distinctly a touch too high in colour to be described as typical English gentlemen? These will be exactly hit off by the admirable new phrase-' A British gentleman.' One sees him stand before one, 'pride in his port, defiance in his eye,' and a fixed determination to do the honourable thing at all hazards, and not take less than 4 per cent. except for Trust investments.

Now, at last, we have got a descriptive phrase that will exactly suit the first-class season-ticket holders on the suburban lines. That admirable class of man has been up till now a terrible difficulty to the conscientious analyst of types and classes. 'How shall you describe them to me, ces Messieurs who are now filling the long vast of this station and have all pink newspapers in their hands?' (Our readers will remember how the later

editions of the 'Globe' make our railway termini blush with a faint carnation, as blush the snows of Monte Rosa in the sunset.) That was a question which, if put a year or two ago by any French inquirer to any English friend bent upon giving the foreigner data for a complete social analysis of the English people, would have been extremely embarrassing. Somehow it would have seemed a little too cold and formal, nay, a little inhuman, to have said, 'These are typical English gentlemen.'

The English gentleman is well enough, but who can deny that there is something in him which partakes a little too much of the knight-errant? He is apt to be a being somewhat too pure and good for the daily 8 o'clock dinner and the 5.17 train. Well,' one would have had to say, 'I do not quite know what to call them. I can't exactly tell you that they are examples of the typical English gentleman after what I told you about that type last night.' 'Ah, tiens, then I enter these seasoners as belonging not to the English gentleman, but to some other category; and what is that category, mon ami?' Here would have been a difficulty indeed. One would have had hurriedly to explain that on no account must they be entered anywhere except as English gentlemen, and yet that somehow, &c., &c. But what a hopeless muddle that would have seemed to the clear-eyed analyst of the Latin race! How he would have shrugged his shoulders and talked of the illogical absurdities of the English! Now, however, the situation has been saved. One need not fear such questions as we have described. With a word they are answered. 'No, not typical

English gentlemen, if you wish to be exact, but typical British gentlemen; it is a more well-marked and highly coloured variety of the type.'

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the usefulness of the expression 'a British gentleman.' When Jones asks one at one's club what sort of a fellow Briggs is how difficult it is to reply! The conscientious man, anxious to be very correct, has sometimes had to eke out an imperfect nomenclature by such roundabout phrases as, 'Well, I wouldn't for a moment say that he wasn't a thorough English gentleman, because he is, in a sense, but if you said that he wasn't, though I shouldn't altogether agree, I should know quite well what you meant.' That is terribly clumsy and roundabout. Now, when Jones asks the question, one will be able to say straight out—' Oh, he is a very good sort of chap— the typical British gentleman.' How convenient, too, the new expression will be for the dramatists and the novelists. A line in the play-bill and we have Mr. Blandford hit off to the life. Again, the fifth chapter will begin :-' Charles Blandford was in every sense of the word a British gentleman,' and the thing will be done. One could write pages upon pages without improving or adding to the description.

For ourselves, we shall make no attempt at a complete analysis of the British gentleman. It is not necessary. One or two points, however, may be noted. One can hardly think of the British gentleman with less than a thousand a year; whereas the English gentleman, it is always understood, may conceivably have only a pound a week, or even fifteen shillings. Again, the British gentleman would hardly travel anything less