Whatever my style was before visiting Italy, I cannot now say; probably the word did not then apply. I think that a man who is an agreeable companion should write as he would talk to himself; by such means only can he be what is called a stylist.
Macaulay wrote as he would have preached, had he been a parson; but, as a layman, he used stilts for a pulpit.
Thackeray spent a good deal of his time on stilts. He wrote, too, as he talked; but, then, he was a very disagreeable companion to those who did not want to boast that they knew him. In his society people had to do two things when one would have been quite enough; they had to smile titteringly as well as to listen.
Perhaps the reason why no author has hitherto described a perfect gentleman is, that it would require his being one himself; and some people think that no perfect gentleman ever lived except—not irreverently speaking—the Christian founder. Richardson’s Sir Charles was a muff, Bulwer’s Pelham a prig, Thackeray’s Major a fop, Dickens’s Mr. Dean an unfinished portrait.
Was the true gentleman ever meant to be? The only one accredited with that character—the only Lord—was not unacquainted with the use of irony, even with invective itself which served his end, and that with far greater effect than remonstrance.
I conceive the gentleman, like genius itself, to be fragmentary. How men differ in their conception of the character!
A lady whom I knew at one time very intimately, conceiving that her husband was on his death-bed, asked him to have his sons before him, and to give them some good advice before he died. The husband readily consented. “My sons,” he said, “your dear mother wishes me to say a few words that may be of benefit to you when I am gone, and I am most anxious to acquiesce in her desire. If there is anything that I can advise to your advantage, it would be this: never to repel the advances of women; it is not gentlemanly.”
But a perfect lady—has such a thing ever been? Who has described it?
No one; it is indescribable!
But even the temporary gentleman has a great charm; it is based on a model which may last for an hour, even a day; and then crumble. Amiability goes a long way in constructing this model; it is so conciliating, and sometimes so gentle, that it seems to purr. Henry VIII. no doubt handed Woburn Abbey over to Lord John’s ancestor in a most gentlemanly style; yet, what a wild beast he was; his mouth was always daubed with human blood.