The Natural History of the Gent

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.

There is a peculiar race of Gents to be seen, through the windows, lounging in tobacco-shops; some leaning against the counter, others seated on tubs, or occupying the like positions. This employment is another variety of what Gents think “fast.”

The presiding goddess of this temple of smoke is a scantily educated woman, who has been more or less pretty at some time or another; but still retains, it would seem, sufficient attraction to draw the Gents about her. Here they will pass hours, finding intense pleasure in her commonplace uninteresting conversation—retailing dull jokes, worn-out anecdotes, or vapid inevitable puns to each other; and staring at any casual purchaser who may enter the shop, as if he were an intruder on their domain.

There are the Gents, also, who are afterwards seen in the theatres at half-price: in the slips during the performances, and in the saloon during the entr’acte—the class who, whilst they carry on brisk conversation and smart repartees (of a sort) with the least reputable in public life, form the vapid nonentities of private society when females are present. They are men, to use a phrase more expressive than elegant, strongly addicted to bear parties—who think “a glass of grog and a weed” the acme of social enjoyment, and who look upon all entertainments that throw them into the society of ladies, or, indeed, any one of intellect and refinement, as bores. They are the great men at the night taverns, before alluded to. All that is, however, harmless in its way; for the majority of those houses are exceedingly well conducted: and, indeed, it is only the Gents of the lowest sphere who deem it spirited to mix themselves up, in other resorts, with the ruffians of the ring and the most degraded of either sex, in an atmosphere of oaths and odours, where indecency is mistaken for broad humour and dull slang for first-rate wit.

It is the cheap tailor who advertises, to whom this style of Gent goes for his clothes. He is caught by the poetry and the names of the articles related; as well as of the establishment, whether it be “Paletot Palace,” “the Kingdom of Kerseymere,” or “the Walhalla of waistcoats,” as it is termed in those small but lively works of fiction thrown with such unsparing liberality through the windows of railway omnibuses. The following is an announcement peculiar to the Frankensteins of these strange creations. We have written it, and present the copy-right to any of them that may choose to adopt it.