Doorkeeper: "Beg your pardon, Sir—but must, indeed, Sir, be in full dress."
Snob (excited): "Full dress!! Why, what do you call this?"
The "Gent" Abroad and at Home
The criticism, if caustic, was not without provocation, and unhappily the provocation did not cease, indeed, it may not be a rash assertion to observe that it has not yet altogether ceased. The type reappeared as "'Arry." In the early 'forties he was one of Punch's pet aversions under the title of "the Gent":—
Of all the loungers who cross our way in the public thoroughfares, the Gent is 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."
No city in the world produces so many holiday specimens of tawdry vulgarity as London; and the river appears to be the point towards which all the countless myriads converge. Their strenuous attempts to ape gentility—a bad style of word, we admit, but one peculiarly adapted to our purpose—are to us more painful than ludicrous; and the labouring man, dressed in the usual costume of his class, is in our eyes far more respectable than the Gent, in his dreary efforts to assume a style and tournure which he is so utterly incapable of carrying out.
Punch was a sincere lover of his country and her Constitution. When foreigners criticized England or the English he was up in arms in a moment. John Bull, he declared, à propos of the suspicion of the French Government, was the best natured, most kindly, and tolerant fellow in the world. But this conviction never stood in the way of his playing the candid friend to and dealing faithfully with his countrymen on all possible occasions. As a comprehensive indictment of their failings it would be hard to beat or to improve upon the following list of the things an Englishman likes:—
An Englishman likes a variety of things. For instance, nothing is more to his liking than: To talk largely about Art, and to have the worst statues and monuments that ever disgraced a metropolis!
To inveigh against the grinding tyrannies practised upon poor needlewomen and slop-tailors, and yet to patronize the shops where cheap shirts and clothes are sold!
To purchase a bargain, no matter whether he is in want of it or not!
To reward native talent, with which view he supports Italian operas, French plays, German singers, and in fact gives gold to the foreigners in exchange for the brass they bring him!
To talk sneeringly against tuft-hunting and all tuft-hunters, and yet next to running after a lord, nothing delights him more than to be seen in company with one!
To rave about his public spirit and independence, and with the greatest submission to endure perpetually a tax[21] that was only put on for three years!
To brag about his politeness and courteous demeanour in public, and to scamper after the Queen whenever there is an opportunity of staring at her!
To boast of his cleanliness, and to leave uncovered (as in the Thames) the biggest sewer in the world!
To pretend to like music, and to tolerate the Italian organs and the discordant musicians that infest his streets!
To inveigh against bad legislation, and to refrain in many instances from exercising the franchise he pays so dearly for!
To admit the utility of education, and yet to exclude from its benefits every one who is not of the same creed as himself!
And lastly, an Englishman dearly likes:
To grumble, no matter whether he is right or wrong, crying or laughing, working or playing, gaining a victory or smarting under a national humiliation, paying or being paid—still he must grumble, and in fact he is never so happy as when he is grumbling; and, supposing everything was to his satisfaction (though it says a great deal for our power of assumption to assume any such absurd impossibilities), still he would grumble at the fact of there being nothing for him to grumble about!
Punch certainly exercised the national privilege of grumbling to the full, though the shafts of his satire were sometimes of the nature of boomerangs. We can sympathize with him when, in his list of "things and persons that should emigrate," he includes "all persons who give imitations of actors; all quack doctors and advertising professors; all young men who smoke before the age of fifteen, and young ladies who wear ringlets after the age of thirty," as fit for "dumping." But he runs the risk of the Quis tulerit Gracchos retort when he bans "all punsters and conundrum makers." In the main he was a strenuous supporter of education, especially elementary education, and the recognition and reward of men of science and letters, but, along with his general support of literary and scientific institutions, he seldom missed a chance of making game of learned societies, beginning with the British Association. The ignorance of candidates for appointments in the Civil Service does not escape his reforming zeal, when in 1857 no fewer than 44 per cent. were rejected for bad spelling; yet in 1852 we find him publishing a picture of a Japanese as a black man.
Desirable Emigrants
