It speaks eloquently of the general public squalor into which the Republic is settling that there is scarcely a man left in the country who would not feel demeaned, humiliated or insulted if someone called him a gentleman. Indeed, the word is so rarely used these days that its sound has archaic overtones conjuring up memories of high-button shoes, horse collars and embroidered samplers over the velveteen settee.
In politics today it would be far more damaging to call a man a gentleman than to call him a thief, a rogue, a pimp, a boor, a loudmouth, an imbecile, an unprincipled lout or an unmitigated swine, for in this catalogue we recognize the heroic figures of the late twentieth century, whereas in the gentleman we detect a suspicious alien, somewhat like the notorious Outside Agitator whom we distrust simply because he is not one of us.
This is not to say that an occasional gentleman does not slip past us now and then and turn up in political office. There was one in the House of Representatives briefly in the late 1950’s. I forbear to identify him by name since I hear he is running once again for office and have no wish to destroy him by exposure. When he was in the House it did not take long for his fellow citizens to smell him out and replace him with someone more apt for mail fraud, pillaging the Treasury and suborning juries, but I believe he has since changed his ways, taken to gratifying the public taste for oleaginous hypocrisy and, so, gained a reputation as a formidable political philosopher.
It is misleading, however, to dwell on the absence of gentlemen in the nation’s capital. Nowadays, New York has even fewer than Washington, where I can count seven for certain. Admittedly, three of them are in retirement and a fourth is a scholar, and hence easily able to indulge an eccentric taste. In New York, however, it is hard to count beyond four gentlemen without resorting to statues and transient sea captains. I will not get into the matter of Southern California or the new South beyond saying that they are in the vanguard of the present trend.
Is it not curious that while men have been escaping the onerous social claims made upon them by the gentleman, women have had so little success at escaping the burden put upon them by ladyhood? Try as they will to convert “lady” into an insult, the feminists have had scant success, and this, I believe, is because they have failed to absorb the lesson of the American male’s escape from the gentleman.
The feminists appear to believe that a woman can quit being a lady by performing acts of loud public negation, by announcing her resignation, as it were. To treat a woman “like a lady,” the feminists maintain, is to oppress her, the theory being that the lady is a constraining social concept, a kind of cage for womanhood, created to stop women from flying.
And yet, although pronouncements are issued against ladyhood and women announce their resignations, the thing persists. The facile explanation is that too many reactionary sisters enjoy oppression and, hence, continue cultivating the abomination. In view of the ease with which men put the gentleman behind them, this strikes me as doubtful.
The gentleman, of course, was a social concept that oppressed men. As long as you were expected at least to try to be a gentleman, you could not come to the table in shirt-sleeves, much less in your undershirt. Nor could you commit family, social or public betrayals and continue to be regarded as a well-adjusted and representative man of the era. Unnatural constraints on male freedoms were extensive. One was forbidden barbarous discourse, coarse exclamations of contempt or ignorance, gross lies and, in general, everything that was rude and uncivilized.
In shucking off what now seem like oppressive constraints, men did not bother issuing pronouncements, publishing tracts or rebuking women as chauvinist beasts for calling them gentlemen. The gentleman was a creation of men to establish minimal standards of decency in relations among men. When men quit being interested, the gentleman’s time had passed.
Women can abandon the archaic lady in the same manner. By simply and quietly quitting. Perhaps then we could get them interested in becoming gentlemen, and the Republic might elevate itself a bit.
Saturday morning we woke up to distressing news. The President, said the papers, wanted to rally public opinion. Rallying public opinion on a weekend in June is almost unheard of. It made you wonder if the President had a firm grip on the calendar. June is for leaving people alone so they can fish, get married, graduate the children, wax the car, watch baseball and make the seasonal switch to gin and tonic. —This Is Not the Season to Stage a Rally
Shocking though it may seem, the Soviet Union and the United States now have enough salt to ruin every bowl of soup on earth at least thirty-six times. It is this grim statistic with its nasty implications for the palate of mankind that has led to the salt talks between Moscow and Washington.
—Saline Solution
Listening to the economics wizards talk about the recession, you get the feeling that things are going to get better as soon as they get worse.
—So Glad to Be Recessed
The Portrait of a Lady deals with a woman who doesn’t know what to do about a failing marriage because she doesn’t have access to a newspaper that carries the Ann Landers column. How lucky we are that journalism has left Henry James in the dust.
—How to Read Your Newspaper
Few persons of modest attainment hesitate these days about telling you how good they are. Turn on the electronics, open a paper, walk into an office—it doesn’t matter—in a few minutes on comes some character to thump his chest and treat you like a full-length mirror.
—Meatballs for Caviar