The Gentleman, Where Did That Idea Come From?
The Creation of the Gentleman
Way back when the Normans conquered Anglo-Saxon England in 1066, William the Conqueror installed a brand-new hierarchy of titles for the ruling class. These men and their families were given nearly all available land across England. Those who lived on those lands were ‘subjects’ of the ruling class and of the King.
At the same time, the Age of Chivalry was dawning. At its heart was a set of ethical behaviors and heroic ideals expected, specifically of the warriors, the knights of Feudal Europe—which included the majority of the nobility. Our notions of ‘fair play,’ gracious behaviors, and being thoughtful of others less fortunate were encapsulated in the ideals of Chivalry. Much of this code of conduct was created by the Catholic Church to curb the tyrannical and often rapacious behaviors of knights and nobles. Chivalry also included the romantic, almost exclusively the chaste worship of some lady, almost exclusively married.
A ‘gentleman’ originally meant someone at the lowest rung of the upper class, just below a squire. The Squire was the knight’s apprentice. The Gentleman was the ‘squire in waiting’, an officer among a knight’s soldier and servants. They shared the same expectations of chivalric behavior as any knight or noble. Heredity still held sway as the determiner of a gentleman. A man was born to the title, or like other noble ranks, he won glory for the king and as a reward, received a title and land.
The rank of gentleman became a distinct title with the Statute of Additions in 1413 and remained in place throughout the Regency. This title was given to a man of high rank or birth, with wealth and inherited land, though there were exceptions. In 1413, it was an inherited title. In the beginning, chivalric behavior was simply something expected of anyone holding the rank of gentleman or above. A man was born to be a gentleman. William Harrison, writing in the late 1500s, noted, "Gentlemen be those whom their race and blood, or at the least their virtues, [accomplishments in achieving glory] do make noble and known."
Even this early, a growing middle class sought entry into the upper classes with their new wealth. Not surprisingly, entry was at this lowest rung of nobility. In 1614, John Selden, author of Titles of Honor voiced a growing concern with wealth-created’ gentlemen:
"…that no Charter can make a Gentleman, which is cited as out of the mouth of some great Princes that have said it." He adds that "they without question understood Gentleman for Generous in the ancient sense, or as if it came from Genii/is in that sense, as Gentilis denotes one of a noble Family, or indeed for a Gentleman by birth." For "no creation could make a man of another blood more than he is."
The feudal creation of chivalric knighthood, of sensitive, ‘genteel’ behavior on the part of warriors grew to be seen as evidence of ‘good breeding’, a visible distinction setting the upper classes apart from the lower classes. In this case, ‘breeding’ meant just that: Family lineage. Not surprising, this set of behaviors had to be clearly defined. Henry Peacham’s 1634 treatise The Compete English Gentleman: The Truth in Our Times, was an example of an author delineating these differences to the upper class by one of their own. The prevailing belief was that gentlemen are born, not made.
The Successful Noble, the Successful Gentleman.
What constituted success and status for men of the European aristocracy from 1500s to 1800s was exemplified by the most successful noble in the middle of that period, Louis XIV, The Sun King. The goal of that French monarch was identical for every aristocrat: Glory. Or as the German princes called it ‘Ruhm.’ This was fame, admiration, and social distinction. These outward signs of glory were attained by successful wars and battlefield heroics, gaining new territories and particularly social notoriety among a noble’s peers. This was usually attained by a conspicuous demonstration of wealth, with clothing, court and social activities, impressive buildings and possessions.
Louis VIX was the model. It didn’t matter how small or poor theEuropean principality or duchy, a smaller version of the Versailles palace had to be built, wars fought and personal grandeur bought. The most expensive possessions and extravagant spending remained de rigor, driving many nobles—and their states—into poverty.
This desire for glory on the part of the British upper classes continued into the 19th Century. In 1812, Colonel George Napier, an officer and a gentleman, speaking of why he went to war wrote, “I should hate to fight out of personal malice or revenge, but have no objection to fighting for fun and glory.”
Social Challenges to the Upper Classes
The Enlightenment belief in the power of rational thought and Man’s ability to understand the world viewed the arbitrary laws and traditions such as hereditary power and ‘Divine Right of Kings’ [an the nobility] as hindrances to human progress in all areas of life.
In 1700, Louis XIV had said, “I am the State”. Fifty years later, a rational ‘Philosopher King’, Frederick the Great, as absolute a ruler as Louis, viewed himself as “The First Servant of the State.” Government has moved from the individual to an entity made up of every subject including the king: The State.
Chivalry, which had pertained only to knights and nobility grew to be a ‘rational’ expectation of any civilized person, first among the upper classes.
The political challenges went deeper. A contemporary of Frederick’s, Jean Jacque Rosseau, signed his letters and essays ‘A Citizen.’ He was not the subject of a king. He insisted on a different relationship with ‘the state.’ All men were equal as members of the ‘social contract.’ Those radical views of government and Man’s relationship to it led to both the American and French Revolutions. The Declaration of Independence in 1776 is based on this idea. This view saw representative government as the rational model, an idea encouraged in England by a history of civil wars, progressively limiting the power of the monarchy.
The British upper classes found themselves caught between the power gained through a weakened monarchy and the ideas of representative government, especially the madness of the French Revolution and Napoleon, threatening their hereditary powers.
The Gentleman Redefined
Ancient traditions of what constituted the gentry and a gentleman were challenged in the 18th Century by the Enlightenment ideas. Where the Enlightenment held up the intellect and reason as the salvation of man, not the class system. Romanticism challenged that view, turning to the emotions, the individual and the senses as more essential to life. During the Regency period, these two views marched side-by-side, when not mixing in complicated ways. The growth of the wealthy middle class and the reading public spread these views. For instance, British poets at the beginning of the 19th century seemed to exemplify this Enlightenment-Romanticism dichotomy. Coleridge, Wordsworth and Keats spoke to the intellectual approach to beauty, while Blake, Shelly and Byron were the sensual romantics, the arbitrators of ‘the New Man.’ This is a basic conflict in Austen’s book Sense and Sensibility: Elinor Dashwood holds on to propriety, honorable behavior in spite of her emotions whereas her sister Marianne values the purity of emotions honestly expressed above the artificial strictures of etiquette.’
Even politics were affected: the Tories held to traditional, rational beliefs, the Whigs, the liberal views of representative government, equality and romanticism. The expectations of gentlemanly behavior also became more democratic under these pressures, however at odds with upper class definitions.
Romanticism took the ideals of Chivalry and their attendant ethical behaviors and made them the ennobling aspect: Behavior defined the gentleman, not birth. Books and magazines concerning etiquette appeared detailing the proper behavior of gentlemen. Before the end of the 18th century, The Gentleman’s Magazine appeared. One of the first published to both ‘educate and inform’ the upper class gentleman—and the ambitious middle class of professionals and businessmen. Popular novels also detailed these expectations in an effort to ‘educate.’
The idea of ‘ennobling’ genteel behavior took hold in various ways. A story told at the end of the 18th century, which is probably not true, but indicative of this idea involved King James II. The monarch was petitioned by a lady asking him to make her son a gentleman. He supposedly replied, "I could make him a nobleman, but God Almighty could not make him a gentleman." The idea of a gentleman in behavior was beginning to be separated from any upper class distinction or rank.
When armies were commanded by nobles, every officer was of course, a ‘gentleman’, a member of the upper class, thus everyone commissioned was then both an “officer and a gentleman.” The upper classes enforced this distinction when all officer commissions were purchased for hundreds of pounds.
The huge expansion of the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars changed this relationship dramatically. There weren’t enough upper class gentlemen to officer the forces needed. This created a change in social relationships. For officers, regardless of military or social rank, in the regimental mess, all officers were considered equal. On the battlefield, all officers were equal, and middle class officers could outshine upper class officers, winning glory. For instance, volunteering for a ‘Forlorn Hope, leading infantry into a breach of a siege wall was one way of becoming ‘noticed’ and achieving higher rank and reputation.
However, because the common officer and soldier could now be or aspire to be a ‘gentleman,’ part of a superior social rank, there were jokes and jabs at crass men being capable of being a ‘gentleman’, particularly when displaying poor behavior. Here is one example of a song of the time about this dichotomy between behavior and being considered a ‘gentleman.’
The Gentleman Soldier
It's of a gentleman soldier
as sentry he did stand
He saluted a fair maiden
by a waiving of his hand
So then he boldly kissed her
and he passed it off as a joke
He drilled her up in the sentry box
wrapped up in a soldier's cloke [sic]
You can see all the lyrics at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=e34fG1DJQnI
Or the entire song sung by the Pogues
The social changes generated by the wars created real confusion socially.
In 1811, four men walk into a ballroom. One is a titled noble, one is a local squire, third is a wealthy businessman and the fourth, a lawyer. The host walks up to them and says, “Gentlemen, welcome to our ball.” Which men is he speaking to?
By the Regency, a man could be called a ‘gentleman’ for a variety of reasons including shear politness:
· A recognized rank by law and society as a land-owning member of the upper class.
· Any person of the upper class, noble or gentry, the recipient of heredity and tradition.
· A wealthy person of the upper class without land but with family among the gentry or nobility.
· A broad social class that included those who owned land (the country or landed gentry) as well as specific professions who did not (barristers, physicians, military officers and the clergy).
· A hereditary consequence of ‘good breeding.’
· Anyone adhering to a set of social and ethical principles, proper behavior and etiquette. This quality could possibly have any man being referred to as ‘a gentleman.’
· An address applied to any respectable man.
Any and all of the above might apply or not to the four men mentioned above. If that sounds confusing and rather contradictory, it was. “You misled me by the term gentleman,” observes one character in Persuasion, “I thought you were speaking of some man of property.” This confusion becomes a serious social conundrum for gentlemen of the Regency.
The Regency Upper Class: The realm of the Gentleman
By 1800, The British nobility or peerage included about 300 families of royal parentage as well as non-royal Dukes, Marquis, Earls, Viscounts, and Barons.
The Gentry was ranked lower, being all those who were not nobility, but still considered part of the upper class. This included all the offspring of a titled father except the first born son. However, the gentry also encompassed non-hereditary titles including 540 baronets, 350 knights, 6,000 landed squires and about 20,000 gentlemen.
The families of these nobles and gentry, considered the Beau Monde, totaled perhaps 1.5% of the British population in 1800 and about 20% of the national income. However, the nobility and gentry combined owned more than 70% of the land across the British Isles. Thus, in 1801, the gentleman was a member of an elite group numbering no more than 100,000 individuals, men and women, in a nation of 8 million in England and Wales, nearly 16 million counting Scotland and Ireland.
Though industrialization and urbanization had begun to take hold at the end of the eighteenth century, the most influential sector of society during the Regency was the landed gentry through sheer numbers, and not the titled nobility. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this relatively small group retained their hold over the land through a system that encouraged the consolidation and extension of estates by enforcing strict inheritance laws, all property going to the eldest son. Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility were were written during this period of confusion and social transition where the effort to concentrate wealth and enlarge estates, all property was inherited by the first male children or male relatives rather than breaking it up and distributing it amongst family members, male and female.
This meant the other sons were left to fend for themselves, gentlemen without income, hard pressed to remain in that class by avoiding earning a living in ‘trade’. This too created a real conundrum for the upper-class, where a good portion of a family were hard pressed to remain part of the upper class. Rory Muir has written an excellent book on these ‘second sons’ and their options in gaining a livelihood, Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune. https://www.amazon.com/Gentlemen-Uncertain-Fortune-Younger-Austens/dp/0300244312/ref=sr_1_1?crid=17BRR53SQB84Y&keywords=gentlemen+of+uncertain+fortune&qid=1652404720&sprefix=Gentlemen+of+uncer%2Caps%2C152&sr=8-1
The continental kingdoms such as France did not do this, which resulted in the nobility multiplying in number while diluting noble estates, later generations becoming impoverished princes and dukes with ever smaller holdings.
Officially, in order to be a member of the gentry, a man had to own a country house and estate lands which would be rented by tenant farmers or workers. A gentleman did not work his lands or *gasp* do manual labor like a small landowner, the yeoman farmer. His income came from the tenants. Financial ties to business and ‘trade’ generally had to be avoided to gain and retain gentry status.
The large country estates of the kind Mr. Darcy owned and Mr. Bingley desired to purchase, served as a symbol of the wealth and proof of being part of the landed gentry. Mr. Bingley was obviously attempting to maintain the family status by renting or purchasing an estate. The Gentry was a uniquely British stratum of upper-class society not found in continental Europe. Many of the Gentry were far wealthier than dukes and princes on the continent, or in Britain.
Because of the many changes created by twenty years of war and the attendant economic wealth generated, becoming a gentleman grew easier, though buying an estate remained an expensive legal transaction. However, achieving the elevated position of gentleman, whether by wealth or accord, did not necessarily guarantee acceptance by the ranks of the upper class. There was a bottom tier where one was barely acknowledged regardless of wealth and land.
This the ability to hold onto the rank of gentleman became harder for a good portion of the male portion of the upper class while the ever-wealthier middle class was pushing into the upper class.
This inner-gentry ranking wasn’t enforced by law, per se, but rather by active social strictures. The Beau Monde policed its own. One had to be ‘allowed in’ socially, which was difficult without significant support. This kind of censorship could come from any quarter, but it always sounded the same. For example, Reverend William Holland, the vicar for the parish of Overstowey in Somerset, wrote in his diary in 1799 about a local man, Andrew Guy, “Alias squire Guy, a rich old widower…the son of a grazier [raised cattle] lifted up to the rank of gentleman, but ignorant and illiterate.” They would never be fully accepted, and the best hope was for their children to marry ‘above their station’, something that also could carry a stigma.
Jane Austen portrayed this social ‘gate’ repeatedly in her novels. A newly minted gentleman, someone like a wealthy merchant or even successful naval officers such as Admiral Croft and Captain Wentworth in Persuasion, did not have the prestige attached to ‘old families’ who inherited landed estates over several generations. The resistance to the ‘new gentry’ is portrayed by Jane Austen many times. For example, Anne Elliott’s family in the same novel is forced to rent their estate to the far wealthier Admiral Croft, but they still see him as a socially inferior interloper.
In Pride & Prejudice, Sir William Lucas is a knighted gentleman, but still deferential to the unknighted or titled Darcy because his family, far wealthier, comes from a long line of Darcy’s whereas Lucas has no inherited land or title. In Emma, the Vicar Philip Elton considers himself a gentleman and therefore capable of marrying Emma, while she, because of her sense of class distinctions, never imagines he would or could seriously consider courting her. It is no accident that Jane Austin gave Darcy [D’Arcy] and Lady de Bourgh ancient family names harking back to the French Normans.
Money and broadening definitions made this access to the upper class possible, but it also threatened the established class system, seriously weakening boundaries between the gentry and the middle classes. It made any such distinctions evermore critical, defending the class boundaries and a gentleman’s rank as an issue of social survival, particularly when facing the dictums of equality triumpted by the French Revolution. The Tories recognized this danger. Edmund Burke, is seen as the father of modern conservativism. In his 1791 “Reflections on the Revolution in France”, he wrote in detail about the need to uphold tradition, believing a nation’s wealth and stability resided in land ownership, the established hierocracy, not business and the fickle marketplace where land is sold and bought like cattle. It is no accident that some of his ideas are today championed by a group called “Chivalry Now.”
http://www.chivalrynow.net/articles2/burke.htm
Yet, Tom Paine responded with “The Rights of Man,” defending the new ideas of equality and representative government. Both Burke’s and Paine’s pamphlets were best sellers, even though they both were sold for three shillings apiece. Both pamphlets were supported by members of the upper class. The Tories felt the price would keep Paine’s work out of the hands of those who should not be reading it. However, the Whig ‘London Constitutional Society’ stepped in and provided Paine’s work for far less to the “lower orders.”
In Pride and Prejudice, we see the Lady Chatherine de Bourgh insist on this division in social rank when it appears that Darcy will propose to Elizabeth Bennett. Elizabeth refuses to acknowledge the importance of any such social distinction…or society’s condemnation, based on Darcy’s wealth and ancient status:
Elizabeth: “In marrying your nephew, I should not consider myself as quitting that sphere. He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's daughter; so far we are equal.”'
Lady de Bourgh: “True. You are a gentleman's daughter. But who was your mother? Who are your uncles and aunts? Do not imagine me ignorant of their condition….”
Elizabeth: “If Mr. Darcy is neither by honour nor inclination confined to his cousin, why is not he to make another choice? And if I am that choice, why may not I accept him?”
Lady de Bourgh: “Because honour, decorum, prudence, nay, interest, forbid it. Yes, Miss Bennet, interest; for do not expect to be noticed by his family or friends, if you willfully act against the inclinations of all. You will be censured, slighted, and despised, by everyone connected with him. Your alliance will be a disgrace; your name will never even be mentioned by any of us.”
Elizabeth: “These are heavy misfortunes,” replied Elizabeth. “But the wife of Mr. Darcy must have such extraordinary sources of happiness necessarily attached to her situation, that she could, upon the whole, have no cause to repine.”
This debate and the social repercussions outlined by Lady B. were very real. The defense of class distinction and rank becomes more strident as its boundaries were battered and blurred from a number of quarters. Even so, the romantic view presented in Austen’s works were influential as were many others. Scott’s Waverly and Ivanhoe supported this romantic view of the heroic knight errant, the gentleman. Like Darcy, Ivanhoe’s actions, not his station, make him noble, a true gentleman.
Today, we view the Regency through a prism of more than two centuries. Our idea of Regency gentlemen can seem crystal clear, cut to shape by opinions of the intervening centuries. How to be a gentleman was not so obvious to those living during the Regency. It was a time of transition, where fundamental changes in perception can appear even across a single generation, which it did for the British gentleman.
Charles Dickens was an author of relatively humble origins who desired passionately to be recognized as a gentleman. Great Expectations, which contains a great deal of disguised self-analysis, is at once a portrait Dickens's concept of the Gentleman and a justification of his own claim to that title. His old friend, the author William Thackeray , on the other hand, insisted that a writer of novels could not be a gentleman. The two argued over this issue for a long time, Yet, owning land played no part in the debate. Thackeray’s novel, Vainity Fair presents his concept of the gentleman. The debate over just what constituted a gentleman raged on in many contexts, but nowhere was it contested so fiercely as within Victorian literature itself, appearing in works as different as Tennyson's In Memoriam.
By the 1860s, the notion of a gentleman had transformed to a significant degree from being a class of landowners to simply those following a set of ethical behaviors. Cardinal Newman, born in 1801 to a professional banking family, and not the gentry, wrote in the 1860s:
“It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain…he is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him… The true gentleman, in like manner carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast—all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to make everyone at his ease and at home.”
Gone are the requirements of wealth and land. During the Regency, men of the upper classes lived in the midst of this transition in definitions, from rank to ethics, from wealth and land, to particular behaviors. It represented an intense challenge to their identity. Upper class men were caught between maintaining one’s status in society against changing definitions and the upwardly mobile “new gentry,” while attempting to understand what expectations of behavior, old and new, constituted a proper gentleman.
The Darcy Dilemma
In this period of crisis, where the very structure of society is challenged and in transition across Europe, what does it mean to be a man? How is one to be a gentleman, upholding his proper station with all the contradictory expectations? This struggle is well illustrated again in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: the pride of place and the effort to maintain class distinctions as opposed to the expectations—prejudices of ‘gentlemanly behavior.’
In Austen’s novel, Darcy has the problem of being a high ranking gentleman among gentlemen. How does one evidence that distinction in day-to-day interactions? In Austen’s novel, Darcy goes from being a gentleman aloof to those perceived as beneath him to working to meet Elizabeth’s expectations of a ‘true gentleman’ along the lines of the chivalric definition. His original proposal of marriage brilliantly illustrates Darcy’s, and all Regency Gentlemen’s conundrum:
“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
Elizabeth’s astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement, and the avowal of all that he felt and had long felt for her, immediately followed.
[Darcy]He spoke well, but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed, and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority—of its being a degradation—of the family obstacles which judgment had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit.
[Elizabeth replies] "In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally they may be returned. It is natural that obligation should be felt, and if I could feel gratitude, I would now thank you. But I cannot—I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly. I am sorry to have occasioned pain to anyone. It has been most unconsciously done, however, and I hope will be of short duration. The feelings which, you tell me, have long prevented the acknowledgment of your regard, can have little difficulty in overcoming it after this explanation."
Mr. Darcy, who was leaning against the mantelpiece with his eyes fixed on her face, seemed to catch her words with no less resentment than surprise. His complexion became pale with anger, and the disturbance of his mind was visible in every feature. He was struggling for the appearance of composure, and would not open his lips till he believed himself to have attained it. The pause was to Elizabeth's feelings dreadful. At length, with a voice of forced calmness, he said:
"And this is all the reply which I am to have the honour of expecting! I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little endeavour at civility, I am thus rejected. But it is of small importance."
Darcy has no reason to suspect his proposal will be rejected. He offers Elizabeth not only position and wealth far beyond her current station, but a true, self-sacrificing love in his willingness to set aside her inferiority of position and family which will generate serious opposition from family, friends, and the upper class at large. Elizabeth rejects him because of his ‘ungentlemanly’ behavior towards her and others. She sees his efforts to maintain the social distinctions between her and her sister, his family and friend Bingley as insulting, thoughtless and hurtful, based on a false pride, false differences.
Austen portrays Darcy’s reaction as surprise and yes, resentment that she does not value his rank in society as he does. Darcy is left bewildered and angry by her rejection. A man’s identity as a gentleman and society’s expectations created conflicts where men struggled to find some balance. That is a primary issue for Austen’s novel.
Austin uses Bingley, newly established, to portray the other approach to this conflict. Bingley is recognized as very gentlemanly, very agreeable, treating every person, regardless of rank or station as equals…which leads him to favoring Jane, someone seen as socially inferior. Yet, he is unable to maintain those sentiments in the face of active opposition from his family and friends concerning the perceived inferiority of Jane Bennett and her family.
This concern for pride of place in society was taught by family and society. As Austen has Darcy explain:
“As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately, an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoilt by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father, particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. [i.e. in maintaining his social status] Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth!”
The rules of rank, gentlemanly behavior and etiquette are the cause of misunderstandings and conflicts throughout Jane Austen’s novels as they were for most English novels of the period. However, from reading her novels, I think Austen illustrated a deeper, more realistic understanding of the emotional dissidence among the Regency upper class than many contemporary authors. In the end, Austin seems to condemn both the pride of station and wealth as well as the prejudice of judging a person on notions of ‘propriety,’ while upholding those gentlemanly, chivalric behaviors, whether Darcy or Captain Wentworth.
I found a college thesis by Sarah Ailwood entitled “What men ought to be”: Masculinities in Jane Austen’s Novels to be a fascinating investigation into Austen’s view of men, not only how they were, but her ideas concerning the resolution of these conflicting views of a ‘gentleman. It can be found at:
This confusing tug-of-war over a gentleman’s identity was as emotionally real for men of the Regency as any of today’s seemingly incompatible social expectations. As a comparison, today women attempt to meet Society’s expectations and their own, to ‘have it all’, be both a mother and a career woman. Such dilemmas can surface at any time. Recently, on “The Voice” just the mention of the struggle to have a family and career by a contestant brought tears to the eyes of several women.