Dear Marcelo,marcelo wrote:Cher Frog in Suit
Waugh’s definitions of a gentleman may, indeed, be misleading. But the supposition that there is the ‘right’ definition is no less elusive. Waugh himself realised that any definition of a gentleman is usually contrived in such a way as to include the very person who proposes the definition, leaving aside everybody else he judges to be immediately bellow him. In a letter, Waugh affirms the following:
“… the basic principle of English social life is that everyone… thinks he is a gentleman. There is a second principle of almost equal importance: everyone draws the line of demarcation immediately below his own heel.”
Waugh himself seems to have been throughout his life quite unsure as to where to draw this line. John Howard Wilson recalls a telling episode in Waugh’s biography: after having been admitted to the gentleman’s club Beefsteak, Waugh once ordered a door man to go outside, under pouring rain, to get him a cab. The doorman refused and shouted: ‘A taxi for Mr Waugh, what isn’t a gentleman’. Waugh was outraged and expected the doorman to be fired. This did not happen and Waugh, then, resigned. But does one fail to be a gentleman if a doorman refuses to act upon one's wish? Indeed, maybe a gentleman would not even have made such a request, in those circumstances, in the first instance. But then I have already chosen a definition of gentleman…
Incidentally, this portion of Wilson’s book, narrating this episode in Waugh’s life, is available at:
http://books.google.com/books?id=RQ7Jiw ... #PPA103,M1 )
I must apologize for not responding sooner. I only unaccountably found your post now. I must have forgotten to follow up on the topic.
The Beefsteack Club anecdote is a good one. I have only read Selina Hastings' biography of E.W. (Vintage, Random House, 1994); Unless I am mistaken, it does not appear in her book.
Much of English litterature is concerned with the class system. I find it delightful to read about, but would find it heavy going if I had to live in it. I have been exposed to some class resentment while living in the UK, usually through my innocently putting my foot in it, and felt as if I had stumbled into someone else's conflict (not unlike a neighbour's marital scene), although not a party to it. I can always fall back to acting bloody-minded. It is half expected of the French, anyhow
.I have saved the link to the Wilson book for later. It is almost midnight here.
Frog in Suit
