The Natural History of the Gent

WHAT THE GENT IS GENERALLY.

THE species of the human race, to the consideration of which we are about to draw the attention of the reader, is of all others the most unbearable, principally from an assumption of style about him—a futile aping of superiority that inspires us with feelings of mingled contempt and amusement, when we contemplate his ridiculous pretensions to be considered “the thing.”

The Gent is of comparatively late creation. He has sprung from the original rude untutored man by combinations of chance and cultivation, in the same manner as the later varieties of fancy pippins have been produced by the devices of artful market-gardeners, from the original stock wild crab of the hedges. The fashion which Gents have of occasionally addressing one another as “my pippin” favours this analogy: and when they use this figure of speech, they pronounce it as follows,—placing great stress on the first letter, and then waiting awhile for the rest,—“Ullo, my P—ippin!”

After much diligent investigation, we find no mention made of the Gent in the writings of authors who flourished antecedent to the last ten years.

In the older works we meet with “_bucks_” and “_gay blades_” and “_pretty fellows_;” and later with “_men upon town_,” “_swells_” and “_downy ones_,” or “_knowing coves_:” but the pure Gent comes not under any of these orders. He was not known in these times. He is scarcely understood now so universally as we could wish; but we trust that his real character will, before long, be properly appreciated. He is evidently the result of a variety of our present condition of society—that constant wearing struggle to appear something more than we in reality are, which now characterizes every body, both in their public and private phases.

Our attention was first called to the Gents in the following manner:—

We were in the habit of occasionally coming into contact with certain individuals, who when they spoke of their acquaintances were accustomed to say “I know a Gent,” or, “A Gent told me.” Never by any good luck did we hear them speak of Gentlemen. But it occurred that we chanced, on future occasions, to see one or two of the Gents above alluded to, and then we understood what they were.

The first Gent we ever saw, we encountered on the roof of an omnibus, with his hat a little on one side, and a staring shawl round his neck. He was also smoking a cigar, as he sat next to the driver, in order that he might reap the benefit of his anecdotes and remarks concerning the horses and vehicle, to which the Gent replied at intervals, “Ah,” and “Yes,” and “I should say not,” and “Just so,” with other similar phrases used to fill up unmeaning dialogue. We heard him speak of “a Party he knew,” and he was very much interested at hearing that the off-horse worked “in the fust bus as ever Shillibeer started, and was took from the Angel to be put on the Elephant.” He was also informed of the singular speculation in which “the guvner give a fippun note for that little mare, and was offered eight sovrins for her within a week, though she was a reg’lar bag o’ bones;” upon which the Gent observed that “very often those sort of horses were the best.” Having delivered himself of which opinion, he rolled his cigar about in his mouth, gave a whiff in our face, and then removed it between his middle and ring-finger, to offer it to another Gent on the roof, who begged the favour of a light.

The next Gent we met was in the street. He wore large check trowsers of the true light comedian pattern, which appeared to have been made expressly for Mr. Walter Lacy, or Mr. Wright: and he had on a short odd coat; such a one as that in which Mr. Buckstone might be expected to go to a ball. He carried a little stick of no earthly use, with a horse’s silver hoof on the top of it, which he kept to his lips always; and he also patronised the staring shawl and cigar; and he evidently imagined that he was “rather the Stilton than otherwise”—“_Stilton_” or “_cheese_” being terms by which Gents imply style or fashion. He was pursuing a pretty girl of modest deportment, who was possibly going home—for it was evening, when Gents and cheap umbrellas chiefly flourish—after her hard day’s toil at a bonnet-shop. The Gent had not the sense to see that his advances were repulsed with scorn and indignation. He imagined that by addressing his coarse annoying gallantry to an unprotected girl, he was acting as if he was “upon town,” “a fast man,” “up to a thing or two,” or some other such epithet, which it is the ambition of the Gent to get attached to his name.

We met the next Gent in the boxes at one of the theatres, whither he had come in the full-dress of a light blue stock, and cleaned white gloves re-dirtied. We knew they had been cleaned; they exhaled a faint camphine odour, as he put his hand on the brass rail and leant over us, and there was none of that sharpness of outline in their dirt which new gloves evince: it was denser, cloudier, more universal; and the knuckles and nails were remarkably so. This Gent also had a little stick. He lighted a cigar at the lobby-lamp on leaving the house, and pulled a staring shawl out of his hat as he whistled an air from one of the burlesques. He went over to the Albion, the room of which was quite full; and after standing in the centre for a few seconds—tapping his teeth with his stick, whilst his left hand was thrust into the hinder pocket of his coat, dragged round to his hip—apparently disgusted at not creating any sensation, he turned round on his heel, and crossing Covent Garden, ultimately dived into Evans’s.

Then we thought that the Gents must be a race by themselves, which social naturalists had overlooked, deserving some attention; and we determined to study their habits, and allot to them a certain position which at that time they did not appear to have.

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