My previous post addressed the issue of why Mr. Darcy—the much loved suitor in Pride and Prejudice—is a gentleman but not a lord. While working on that post I began to wonder: “What exactly is a gentleman?” As it happens I have a book here in my office that describes the rise and fall of the English gentleman.1 The author, Philip Mason, draws on the works of Chaucer, Thackeray, Trollope, Dickens, and, yes, Jane Austen to explain why the idea of the gentleman achieved such wide acceptance in English society:

The typical middle-class Englishman was a snob; he loved a lord. He did not think he could become a lord but he did think his son might become a gentleman.1

George_James_Welbore_Agar-Ellis,_1st_Lord_Dover, 1823 (Wikimedia Commons)

This is George Agar-Ellis, 1st Lord Dover, 1823—a good stand-in for Mr. Darcy (Wikimedia Commons)

The Ideal Gentleman

By the 1800s the term “gentleman” meant to some people “anyone as good as I am or better”; to others it meant anyone who owned land. To nearly everyone it meant a certain standard of conduct: a gentleman knew his place in Society and the world, he was careful of his reputation, and he behaved with integrity and honor in every situation.1 A gentleman was a man of principle.

Gentlemen weren’t awkwardly bashful or formal. They didn’t put themselves forward in social settings. A gentleman would never insult his valet or footman, much less belittle a dirty, illiterate beggar in the street. A gentleman was stylish and elegant and considerate of others.1 For many women in today’s rough world, where it seems there are few gentlemen to be found anywhere, Mr. Darcy remains the ideal.

Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman

Those of you who have read Pride and Prejudice recall the description of Mr. Darcy given by the Bennets’ neighbor Lady Lucas when he first entered the neighborhood: “quite young, wonderfully handsome, [and] extremely agreeable.”2 He drew attention at the Meryton assembly for being a “fine, tall person” with a noble mien. Later, after he refused to dance with anybody, he made a rather different impression: “He was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world, and everybody hoped that he would never come there again.”2 Mrs. Bennet found him shockingly rude and might well claim he wasn’t a gentleman for being so ungracious as to refuse to dance with her daughter Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Bennet’s poor opinion of him following the Meryton ball was later enhanced by Mr. Wickham’s tale of woe: Mr. Darcy had refused to honor his father’s wish that Mr. Wickham receive a promised gift of a living.2 (A living is a church benefice that provides a living or income for a vicar or rector.) Mr. Darcy’s supposed failure to honor his father’s wishes counted against him: he was not a gentleman. This impression was further reinforced by his marriage proposal. How could Elizabeth think well of him after he confessed his love while also denigrating her family? Elizabeth rang a peal over his head for his indelicate proposal:

You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.2

Ouch! Mr. Darcy looked the part of a gentleman but he didn’t always act like one. Perhaps that is only to be expected: no one is perfect. In the end, however, when he told Elizabeth that his wish to marry her remained unchanged, he spoke in an honest and forthright manner:

As a child … I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit. I was spoilt by my parents, who … allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing, to care for none beyond my own family circle, to think meanly of all the rest of the world, to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth!2

Well!—to confess his faults, to admit to being humbled, to describe his struggle to overcome resentment, to seek her forgiveness and affection. His words and action seem almost a fairytale today, but in the Regency world Mr. Darcy was every bit the gentleman—not perfect, but close to ideal.


Sources:
1Mason, Philip. The English Gentleman: The Rise and Fall of an Ideal. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1982, pp. 9, 12, 16, 66.
2Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. London: Penguin Books, 1813/1996, pp. 11 and 13 in Chapter 3, p. 78 in Chapter 16, p. 188 in Chapter 34, and p. 349 in Chapter 58.