Who Deserves the Title of 'Gentleman'?
An editorial from 1885 explores the tension between old-world aristocratic definitions of nobility and the emerging, character-based morality of a new society.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
There are few old-fashioned people who believe that gentility is an obsession of God; who believe that to be a gentleman is to be brave and true and honest, to be tender and loving and gentle; who believe that 'gentleman' is the proudest title that can be worn and that it is worth striving through half a lifetime to be kept thenceforth unspotted and unstained until he who bears it meets death calmly and fearlessly. The world is shuddering at the atrocities made public by the Pall Mall Gazette. But what does the world call the monsters who perpetrate these outrages? Does it call them monsters, beasts? No, it calls them gentlemen. And the world shudders and says, 'Yes, they are gentlemen.' Oh, the pity of it! Gentlemen who outrage little girls! Gentlemen whose practice would shame the beasts! Such is the perverted gentleman. But the real gentleman is a gentleman always. Not the riotous product of eating houses and theaters. He is still in the dark. He is that which the old-fashioned people still regard as the typical gentleman. He exists still, and he always will exist. Old or young, rich or poor, in broadcloth or in rags, he is still the only true man.
“Old or young, rich or poor, in broadcloth or in rags, he is still the only true man.”
This 1885 editorial reflects a perennial societal anxiety: the decay of honor and the appropriation of noble labels by those who cause harm. Much like modern debates over how we define character and civic integrity in the face of widespread public scandal, the author struggles to find a name for moral substance in a world obsessed with performance.
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