Ed Miliband shows why ladies need gentlemen
Ed Miliband shows why ladies need gentlemen - Telegraph
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The modern gentleman, we were informed last week, is one who sends romantic texts, puts the rubbish out, and regularly brings the woman in his life a cup of tea in bed. In short, he is a bit like Prince Charles's valet, but with extra feelings.
The survey of 3,000 women, conducted by the clothes chain Austin Reed, found that it is no longer necessary for a gentleman routinely to pay for dinner or throw his coat over puddles. In fact, someone who recklessly throws his coat over puddles would actively disqualify himself from a second date: think of the dry-cleaning bills, if one were ever to branch into marriage.
It is interesting to hear an open discussion of what makes a gentleman at all, because the topic has largely fallen out of fashion. Yet for centuries, in ale-halls and coffee houses, men appeared to debate very little else. Richard Steele, writing in Tatler in 1710, was already following a long, idealistic tradition when he asserted that "the appellation of Gentleman is never to be affixed to a man's circumstances, but to his behaviour in them".
The fundamental concept of a gentleman, I would venture, is more dignified, complicated and robust than the rather dubious collection of gestures cobbled together in last week's survey (which included "cries openly" and "uploads your favourite songs to your iPod"). Cardinal Newman famously pronounced that "it is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain". Since few can avoid the occasional, accidental infliction, I would add the qualifier "deliberately", but otherwise it seems a reasonable starting point.
Although Newman's gentleman can sometimes seem a bit wet – he studiously avoids "all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling" lest it jar with his companions – he offers some pointers that still go to the heart of the matter: "He has eyes on all his company: he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd."
The gent, I suggest, is still someone for whom the feelings of others generally take precedence over his own immediate convenience. Although this quality is less heavily discussed and celebrated than before, it is no less attractive when one stumbles across it. When you glimpse a man who, when at ease among friends, still takes the trouble to speak kindly to the nervous newcomer at the table, or makes light of a waiter's spillage without causing further upset, he exudes the rare confidence of an alpha male who doesn't need to squawk about it.
It is all too often observed that women flock to a rotter, but a far greater proportion of us cannot resist a gent. Indeed, women have both a nose for gentlemanly behaviour, and for its opposite, which is why so many of us made instinctive lemon-sucking faces at the unfortunate news last week that Ed Miliband had been "too busy" to register as the father on his son's birth certificate.
Freed from its class associations, the inherent qualities of a gentleman crop up in many different circumstances. When I was growing up in Northern Ireland, the word "gent" would have seemed like a Cockney term, but it was very important to be considered "decent". A man could be excused any failure to make a significant mark on his career, or absence of ready wit, by the phrase: "Och, but he's a very decent fellow", which suggested a moral hinterland next to which all more facile achievements became irrelevant. In Yiddish, the word is "mensch", which – although a little earthier than "gentleman" – carries the same burden of manly personal integrity.
I can think, off the top of my head, of a number of people who could not be considered gentlemen: Jonathan Ross, Russell Brand, Wayne Rooney. Among those who could are Leonard Cohen, Seamus Heaney and Sir David Attenborough. Frank Sinatra, great entertainer though he was, was not a gent; Gene Kelly was.
You may disagree, of course: the defining, and divining, of a true gent is an enjoyable parlour game. But it is touching to think of the days when both men and boys were publicly preoccupied with questions of how to build character, as opposed to a sizeable bank balance. It is time, surely, for the gentleman to return.
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I should point out, for reasons of safety, that the moment you do send a romantic text or cry in public she will drop you with a look of inexpressible disgust as the clingy, castrato loser you doubtless are. The real trick is to look as though you might do these things at some point, but without ever actually doing them.
I would have liked to have been a cad, but it doesn't really exist any more now that we have such a flabby, self-indulgent society. It's just called being empowered or taking some me time or whatever. A bit like being a libertine - the concept loses all meaning when everyone's doing it.
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