The Natural History of the Gent

Albert Smith

9781465663009

213 pages

Library of Alexandria

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Overview

The species of the human race, to the consideration of which we are about to draw the attention of the reader, is of all others the most unbearable, principally from an assumption of style about him—a futile aping of superiority that inspires us with feelings of mingled contempt and amusement, when we contemplate his ridiculous pretensions to be considered “the thing.” The Gent is of comparatively late creation. He has sprung from the original rude untutored man by combinations of chance and cultivation, in the same manner as the later varieties of fancy pippins have been produced by the devices of artful market-gardeners, from the original stock wild crab of the hedges. The fashion which Gents have of occasionally addressing one another as “my pippin” favours this analogy: and when they use this figure of speech, they pronounce it as follows,—placing great stress on the first letter, and then waiting awhile for the rest,—“Ullo, my P—ippin!” After much diligent investigation, we find no mention made of the Gent in the writings of authors who flourished antecedent to the last ten years. In the older works we meet with “bucks” and “gay blades” and “pretty fellows;” and later with “men upon town,” “swells” and “downy ones,” or “knowing coves:” but the pure Gent comes not under any of these orders. He was not known in these times. He is scarcely understood now so universally as we could wish; but we trust that his real character will, before long, be properly appreciated. He is evidently the result of a variety of our present condition of society—that constant wearing struggle to appear something more than we in reality are, which now characterizes every body, both in their public and private phases.