Lavengro - George Borrow (nice books to read TXT) 📗

he gives at Christmas in the principal dining-room, the hundred wax-candles, the wagon-load of plate, and the oceans of wine which form parts of it, and above all the two ostrich poults, one at the head, and the other at the foot of the table, exclaims: “Well! if he a’n’t bang up, I don’t know who be; why he beats my lord hollow!” The mechanic of the borough town, who sees him dashing through the streets in an open landau, drawn by four milk-white horses, amidst its attendant outriders; his wife, a monster of a woman, by his side, stout as the wife of Tamerlane, who weighed twenty stone, and bedizened out like her whose person shone with the jewels of plundered Persia, stares with silent wonder, and at last exclaims: “That’s the man for my vote!” You tell the clown that the man of the mansion has contributed enormously to corrupt the rural innocence of England; you point to an incipient branch railroad, from around which the accents of Gomorrah are sounding, and beg him to listen for a moment, and then close his ears. Hodge scratches his head and says: “Well, I have nothing to say to that; all I known is that he is bang up, and I wish I were he;” perhaps he will add⁠—a Hodge has been known to add⁠—“He has been kind enough to put my son on that very railroad; ’tis true the company is somewhat queer, and the work rather killing, but he gets there half a crown a day, whereas from the farmers he would only get eighteenpence.” You remind the mechanic that the man in the landau has been the ruin of thousands, and you mention people whom he himself knows, people in various grades of life, widows and orphans amongst them, whose little all he has dissipated, and whom he has reduced to beggary by inducing them to become sharers in his delusive schemes. But the mechanic says: “Well, the more fools they to let themselves be robbed. But I don’t call that kind of thing robbery, I merely call it outwitting; and everybody in this free country has a right to outwit others if he can. What a turnout he has!” One was once heard to add: “I never saw a more genteel-looking man in all my life except one, and that was a gentleman’s walley, who was much like him. It is true he is rather undersized, but then, madam, you know, makes up for all.” V Subject of Gentility Continued

In the last chapter have been exhibited specimens of gentility, so considered by different classes; by one class, power, youth and epaulets are considered the ne plus ultra of gentility; by another class, pride, stateliness and title; by another, wealth and flaming tawdriness. But what constitutes a gentleman? It is easy to say at once what constitutes a gentleman, and there are no distinctions in what is gentlemanly,370 as there are in what is genteel. The characteristics of a gentleman are high feeling⁠—a determination never to take a cowardly advantage of another⁠—a liberal education⁠—absence of narrow views⁠—generosity and courage, propriety of behaviour. Now a person may be genteel according to one or another of the three standards described above, and not possess one of the characteristics of a gentleman. Is the emperor a gentleman, with spatters of blood on his clothes, scourged from the backs of noble Hungarian women? Are the aristocracy gentlefolks, who admire him? Is Mr. Flamson a gentleman, although he has a million pounds? No! cowardly miscreants, admirers of cowardly miscreants, and people who make a million pounds by means compared with which those employed to make fortunes by the getters up of the South Sea Bubble might be called honest dealing, are decidedly not gentlefolks. Now as it is clearly demonstrable that a person may be perfectly genteel according to some standard or other, and yet be no gentleman, so is it demonstrable that a person may have no pretensions to gentility, and yet be a gentleman. For example, there is Lavengro! Would the admirers of the emperor, or the admirers of those who admire the emperor, or the admirers of Mr. Flamson, call him genteel? and gentility with them is everything! Assuredly they would not; and assuredly they would consider him respectively as a being to be shunned, despised, or hooted. Genteel! Why at one time he is a hack author⁠—writes reviewals for eighteenpence a page⁠—edits a Newgate chronicle. At another he wanders the country with a face grimy from occasionally mending kettles; and there is no evidence that his clothes are not seedy and torn, and his shoes down at the heel; but by what process of reasoning will they prove that he is no gentleman? Is he not learned? Has he not generosity and courage? Whilst a hack author, does he pawn the books entrusted to him to review? Does he break his word to his publisher? Does he write begging letters? Does he get clothes or lodgings without paying for them? Again, whilst a wanderer, does he insult helpless women on the road with loose proposals or ribald discourse? Does he take what is not his own from the hedges? Does he play on the fiddle, or make faces in public-houses, in order to obtain pence or beer? or does he call for liquor, swallow it, and then say to a widowed landlady, “Mistress, I have no brass?” In a word, what vice and crime does he perpetrate⁠—what low acts does he commit? Therefore, with his endowments, who will venture to say that he is no gentleman?⁠—unless it be an admirer of Mr. Flamson⁠—a clown⁠—who will, perhaps, shout: “I say he is no gentleman; for who can be a gentleman who keeps no gig?”

The indifference exhibited by Lavengro for what is merely genteel, compared with his solicitude never to infringe the strict laws of honour, should read a salutary lesson. The generality of his