What do you think of as an English gentleman? A Banker in the City of London in a pinstriped suit and an umbrella in hand? A squire in a tweed hunting suit with hounds at his feet? Or, the image of a gentleman has nothing to do with dress, but primarily with courtesy and demeanor: gentle to ladies, following the rules of honor represented by the Famous Aphorism of the London Stock Exchange, "My word is my bond". Or is the English gentleman a less beautiful image: hypocritical, reactionary, arrogant and deceitful?
Gentlemanly ladylike demeanor, like the spirit of skepticism and rain, is a central part of the British personality. But it's too hard to define what gentlemanly demeanor is. Indeed, many Britons can instinctively judge whether someone is a gentleman or not. However, it is also possible that even two close friends have differences on this issue. But one of the hallmarks of gentlemanliness is low-key prudence, so even if they disagree, they may never know that the other person's opinion is different from their own.
Gentlemanly demeanor has many mysteries and can provoke different reactions. Some people admire it, some people mock it. But gentlemanliness is one of Britain's most successful cultural exports. A Chinese student at Oxford University proposed to me to write about the British gentleman because he found it both fascinating and confusing. It makes me wonder why the worship of gentlemen has lasted so long, and whether gentlemen still have a role today.
Strictly speaking, historically, the gentleman was the lowest rank of the gentry class, lower than the knight and the esquire. The gentry were landlords with their own coats of arms. But the word gentleman, apart from denoting rank, has always represented a character. Its roots can be traced back to the Middle Ages and the laws of honor, chivalry and courage of that time. The legend of king Arthur, the mythical 6th-century Monarch of England, already contains some related motifs. Like the urban gentry and squires of our time, King Arthurian's knights had special uniforms: bulky suits of armor that symbolized privilege and duty. They are powerful figures, but they sit around the round table, which represents their collective responsibility. They rule the country, but they are bound by oaths to pursue noble causes, not to pursue their own selfish interests.
The noble should behave in a noble manner, and the privileged have an obligation to support those whose living conditions are inferior to his. This philosophy is fundamental to the gentleman. Ambition is admirable, but it must serve the public good and curb ambition with the right level of humility. The school I read was built in the 14th century, and its motto was "manners makyth man." To this day, the school still teaches students to improve themselves for nobler purposes, or at least to strive to do so.
No one is perfect, and King Arthurian's knights are certainly flawed, which exposes the loopholes in their law of honor. In the 14th-century romantic legend Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Gawain, the youngest knight under King Arthur, cuts off the head of a mysterious green giant. The giant picked up his head and insisted that it be tried again a year later. In order to fulfill his promise, Gawain searched everywhere for the Green Knight and came to a castle. The hostess there seduced him. He resisted temptation unyieldingly, but finally accepted her green silk belt. When the duel comes, the Green Knight spares Gawain's life and reveals that he is the noblewoman's husband. He was enchanted by King Arthur's sister to become a green giant in order to test the morality of the knights in the country.
Screenshot of the trailer for Dave Patel starring in "The Green Rider."
Gawain returned to King Arthur's round table in shame, and the other knights smiled and forgave him, and swore that each of them wore a green silk belt to remind themselves to be honest. Whether this knight symbol commemorates a heroic feat or to remind the reader that even the best people cannot conform to the ideals of perfection that cannot be achieved, it is up to the readers to decide for themselves.
This ideal is difficult to grasp in literature, and it is even more difficult to pursue in real life. In the 11th and 13th centuries, the pinnacle of chivalric virtue was to travel to Jerusalem to attack the Muslims who controlled the Holy Land. Crusader Knights like the Knights Templar and kings like Richard the Lionheart (King Richard I of England) were celebrated for their strict discipline, bravery, and Christian zeal. Today, chivalry has lost its religious connotations, so we prefer people like frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. He sat down with the Muslim rulers of Jerusalem in 1229 to negotiate a degree of Christian control over Jerusalem. He spoke Arabic and praised the islamic missionary service. In that era, however, knights who sought to impose their culture on foreign countries abroad were more praised than those who showed chivalry to people of different religions. As a result of Frederick II's efforts, he was excommunicated in Europe.
Historically, England experienced the Hundred Years' War, the Wars of the Roses and the Civil War. These hate-filled factional struggles clash with the laws of chivalry. Politically, we may be in a similar dilemma today: pro-Brexit or PRO-EU, Pro-Democrat or Republican. These contradictions are common and deep-rooted – it's hard for us to respect our adversaries and see them as people of integrity.
In 1660, the British monarchy was restored, and the gentlemen returned, but they had become courtiers and aristocratic landlords wearing wigs and powder. In general, they despise civilians, and civilians despise them. The 18th and early 19th centuries were the days of the dumb boys and playboys, the noisy sons of the privileged class, spending money at night in theatres, brothels and casinos in London's West End, and waiting until ordinary people went to work in the morning that they went home in a wagon, stopping from time to time to vomit.
Too much debauchery caused a backlash in public opinion, and it was during this period that writers began to redefine "gentlemanly manners" in their novels. Trends-setting journalists like Addison and Steele applauded the "bourgeois" gentlemen, leading to a growing conviction and general belief that personal talent and morality were more important than birth. Jane Austen's analysis of the gentry is the most nuanced and sensitive. She goes into a ridiculous way to expose the meanness of high-ranking people (like Henry Crawford in Mansfield Manor), but she also reminds us that our quick judgment of people can be wrong. In Pride and Prejudice, the clever Elizabeth Bennett is the daughter of a middle-of-the-road upper class family who fails to recognize Mr. Darcy's character for most of the novel. Darcy, though wealthy and of noble birth, was actually a gentleman.
Screenshot of the 2007 British film Mansfield Manor shows two Crawfords discussing how to use marriage
Screenshot of the movie Pride and Prejudice
In the Regency era, when the son of the Mad King George III ruled under his name, the playboy gentleman reached the notorious peak. The typical playboy of the Regency era was the beautiful man Brummel, whose greatest contribution to human knowledge was the invention of a circle that rested on the sole of a shoe to ensure that the gentleman's trouser legs would not be wrinkled. When the young Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837, the end of the playboy was approaching.
The new Victorian gentleman, regardless of origin, showed high morals. He was steady, dignified, erudite, resolute, benevolent, gentle, and pure and upright. Literature echoes the changes of the times and promotes this change. Charles Dickens was the son of a clerk who was in prison for debt. At the age of twelve, Dickens had to drop out of school to work in factories and label shoe polish bottles. With his talent, earnestness and diligence, he rose to a respectable social status. In "Great Prospects", he condenses his personal experience into the image of a gentleman from a poor background and a hard-working man, which is one of the most memorable gentlemen in the history of literature. The ostensibly protagonist of the novel, Pip, grew up in a humble blacksmith's hut and longed for his status to be elevated to marry the arrogant Estena, who lived in a nearby mansion.
The mansion is shrouded in darkness and despair. Pip suddenly became more and more convinced that he was destined to marry Estena. In London, he was in league with a group of noisy young snobs. They drank and gambled all day and wasted their time, and he thought that this was the life of a gentleman. When he discovers that his wealth is coming from the wrong direction and that he has no connection with Estella, he finds himself nothing more than a polite waste in a fancy dress. The blacksmith, whom Pip called a "true Christian gentleman," saved him from debt and disillusionment. The true protagonist of "Great Prospects" is this gentleman from the working class, and his gentlemanhood does not come from birth, certainly not because of wealth, but because of his inner goodness and integrity.
In 2011, Brian Kirk directed Pip in the miniseries "Great Expectations"
By the beginning of the 20th century, the image of a gentleman disintegrated as quickly as cheap clothes. The idea that being born, attending a good school, and financial independence can make one a gentleman is sneered at. In p.g. Woodhouse's Gifford and Worcester series of novels, Bertie Wooster is a stupid and incompetent nobleman, and his servant Jeeves saves him from a variety of predicaments many times. Gifs was much wiser and smarter than his employer, quietly and quietly transcending his role as a "gentleman of gentlemen." "Gentleman's gentleman" refers to a gentleman's male servant, as early as 1725. But in Woodhouse's novel, it is difficult to say who is the greater gentleman of the two.
Pictured here is Roderick Spöder, played by John Turner, and Bertie Worcester, played by Hugh Laurie, in the itv episode "The Almighty Butler"
The image of the gentleman is increasingly detached from social responsibility, and some unexpected compound words grow like weeds in abandoned mansions. The most unexpected is the "Gentleman Thief" (Rogue Thief), a.j. Raffles (a. Characters like J. Raffles and Pink Panther are the representatives of the Rogue, and David Niven often plays such roles on screen.
The concept of a "good" burglar can be traced back to Robin Hood, who came from a noble background, sympathized with the poor, and vowed to rob the rich to help the poor. And the 18th-century road robbery horse thief is called the "road gentleman", which is ironic.
The 20th-century version of Rogue was meant to be polite and impeccable in social standing. They elegantly steal luxuries such as famous paintings or jewelry just for the sake of excitement. The core of gentlemanly demeanor has always had a subversive character: the more people who try to be gentlemen, the less they are gentlemen. But if the gentleman is transformed into a criminal who lacks morality, the last bit of integrity of the gentleman is also dissipated.
A variation of the Rogue theme is "Gentleman Mob". Sean Connery was the first actor to play James Bond, and he handled the role very well: mild-mannered, dressed in high-end men's clothing on Savile Street, drinking fancy cocktails, driving a fancy car, and skillfully destroying enemies. As if in knighthood, extreme violence was not a bad thing, as long as its purpose was to protect the good: everything was for the king (or queen) and the motherland. Daniel Craig is one of the best Bond since Connery because he understands that 007 is both a gentleman and a thug.
Sean Connery plays James Bond
After the Second World War, the winds of egalitarianism swept across Britain, and the traditional gentleman with land and title seemed to fade away like a fragile old photograph. The last master of gentleman's fiction was Evelyn Wohl, and his most famous work, After the Storm in the Old Garden, depicts the decay of the landlords. The novel is full of nostalgia for the aristocratic era, but also has the stench of decay. The war completely destroyed the declining organism of the nobility: like many other mansions, the Breizhed Manor was requisitioned by the army, and the noble frescoes were heavily worn by belts and military boots. The novel was published in 1945, but Woe could foresee what the future would be like: post-war taxes were heavy, agriculture was depressed, and the good old days of large landowners' estates were gone.
In the early 1980s, Waugh's novel was made into a TV series and caused a sensation. By this time Margaret Thatcher had been prime minister for several years, a new harsh philosophy of selfishness had defeated the idea of social citizenship. Suddenly, nostalgia came flooding back. Charles Ryder, the protagonist of After the Storm in the Old Garden (played by Jeremy Irons, who was still young at the time), is the son of a repressive and restrained bourgeois family that represents a cold version of gentlemanliness that has lost its romantic atmosphere. For a while, Charles's world and the old Breischhead Manor seemed to be merging through marriage, but the two worlds could not be mixed like oil and water. Wo's golden lament about the sunset of the old times and old fashions touched the heartstrings of a nation.
In October 1981, the TV series "After the Storm in the Old Garden" premiered in the United Kingdom.
But the gentleman was not dead. He survived the meritocracy of the 50s, the counterculture of the 60s, and the anti-authority trade union movement of the 70s. He also survived the Thatcherian society of income and expenditure. The gentleman is still alive and bouncing around, right among us.
Contrary to previous expectations, Woe's social elite still plays a role in national life today. Many of the main figures of the British Conservative Party today come from the same school, Eton College. According to a recent poll, the most admired Briton in history was Winston Churchill. He came from a rich family, attended an elite school, and was imbued with the spirit of "the noble man's behavior should be noble", but he also had the arrogance and conceit of the spirit.
Photograph of Winston Churchill in his youth
But modern gentlemen are gentlemen not only because of their origins. In general, in today's public life, aristocratic origin is a burden, because power has been transferred from the aristocracy. Like most countries, only a minority of Britain's wealthier people inherit wealth.
Wearing the right outfit or joining the right club is not enough to make a man a gentleman. There are many websites that teach people to dress and behave in a way that promises to turn you into a gentleman. However, clothes bought on the market often only make a truly critical gentleman notice that the seams of your clothes and the width of the lapels of your tops are not right. Meticulous etiquette is important, but etiquette alone does not make one a gentleman.
The modern gentleman and lady is a simple but elusive creature. He/she maintains a delicate scale in his or her treatment of people. A gentleman need not be a model of selfless dedication, but he must have a generous spirit, focus on his duties, and be willing to work for the public good at all times. Gentlemen respect the opposite sex, respect the poor, do not be arrogant, are not vulgar, and do not choose between short-term benefits and long-term benefits, though difficult to obtain.
The outward symbols and titles of a gentleman may disappear, but the connotation of a gentleman has not changed much over a period of more than 1500 years. Anyone can make it their goal to be a gentleman. Gentlemen are courteous, considerate, self-restrained, honest and decent, and have contempt for arrogant, rude, cold, and unprincipled aggressiveness. Gentlemanly demeanor is simple, but in today's world of deep divisions and fierce confrontations, we need gentlemen as much as we did in the past. I conclude this article with a quote from George Bernard Shaw. George Bernard Shaw came from an ordinary background, but was undoubtedly a true gentleman. The gentleman, he wrote, "always gives more to the world than to ask."