The prevalence of Gents at Ramsgate, in such numbers that the fine weather brings them out like bluebottles, is easily accounted for. There is a certain class of families who go to Ramsgate every year, because they were there the last. They come either from the Pancras-cum-Bloomsbury district of London, or having shops, or ware-rooms, or counting-houses in the City, live in suburban villas comfortably off, and believing greatly in all conventional rules of society, getting perhaps once a year to the Opera, thinking a great deal of Mansion-house balls, and believing to a great degree in fashion-books. Well, these good folks affect Ramsgate greatly, and so take their families with them. The girls of this class pass muster pretty well; Clapham or Chiswick academies teaching them certain school accomplishments, which pass current for a decent education amongst their equals—but the boys are always Gents. The same feeling which induces their parents to believe that the more showily they can set out their dinner-table the higher they rise in social life, makes these sons imagine that two or three dear and flashy articles of dress place them on a level with the well-born and well-bred Gentleman. Accustomed in their own spheres to take the lead, they will not go where they meet men who attain very good stations in society without large studs or noisy-patterned cravats; and constantly associating, one with the other, they get lost beyond all redemption. And of these is the migratory young-man society of Ramsgate chiefly composed.
Of the same class is the Gent at Boulogne. He is at first a long time being persuaded to go there; because he knows that his ignorance of the language will be an awful drop to his consequence, and bring him down at once to his elements in a very humiliating manner. But after a while, finding that every body else knows something about it but himself, he determines to go. And in this wise doth he deport himself.
Imprimis he alloweth his mustaches to grow, which giveth him the look of an officer-lover in a farce at the Eagle, but assimilateth to the foreigner in nothing. He delighteth in brutal conduct to the native functionaries, which he taketh to be a fine display of national spirit, and thinketh that they are impressed with respect for him thereby. He calleth the vin ordinaire “rot,” but drinketh brandy to intoxication. He shouteth with hoarse joyless laughter at French peculiarities, and thinketh that, by so doing, he displayeth a fine-natured naïveté. He deemeth the greatest discovery ever made to be that of a tavern whereat British stout is retailed; and thinketh that he maketh a joke of excellent pungency when he saith “Waterloo,” to a French soldier. He careth not for the indigenous hotels, but loveth better the English boarding-house, where he can have “a good John Bull joint, and no French kickshaws:” John Bull being represented generally as a vulgar top-booted man verging on apoplexy, with, evidently, few ideas of refinement, obstinate and hard-natured; but the Gent conceiveth that upon occasions it is ennobling to profess attachment to him.
CHAPTER XII.
NOTES OF CERTAIN OTHER GENTS.
There is a species of Gent who, moving only in a third or fourth rate sphere, goes to a party in a white cravat and turned up wristbands, and carries his hat into the room because he had heard that Gentlemen do so. He is generally an immense card. We chanced to stand next to a specimen of this kind, one evening, in a quadrille, and the only remark we heard him make was inquiring of his partner, after two or three false starts, whether she preferred dancing on a carpet or the bare boards: to which the young lady replied, having looked down to see what the floor was (that she might not “put her foot in it,” figuratively speaking), that she preferred a carpet, she thought: and this was the beginning and end of the conversation.
A sample of this variety fixed himself upon us once, as we were taking a stroll, merely upon the intimacy of a casual party introduction two or three weeks before, where we had procured him some trifle at supper, solely because we did not choose to run the chance of allowing him to approach the table and stand near the pretty girl over whose white shoulder we stretched our arm to help him. We found out that he was minutely particular about his deportment in the street, and a pretty treat we gave him. First of all we rattled our stick against the area railings of the houses: then we bought penny bunches of cherries at the stalls, and munched them as we went along, continually pressing him to take some, or propelling the stones, six at a time, along the pavement in front of us. We cut off the angles of all the squares, and ran very fast across all the crossings; and then took off a little boy’s cap, and carried it a short way with us, to provoke a few salutations in our wake, of that pleasing and forcible kind which only little boys in the streets can give with such piquancy of expression. We finally got rid of him by insisting upon stopping at the corner of Berners Street to see Punch—an exhibition we never, by any means, omit playing audience to: although we know many Gents who think their station in society would be lost for ever, were they once observed taking an interest in any thing half so common.