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Authors: Gordon S. Wood
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late as 1761 the young attorney John Adams at least thought he knew when someone was not a gentleman, “neither by Birth, Education, Office, Reputation, or Employment,” nor by “Thought, Word, or Deed.” A person who springs “from ordinary Parents,” who “can scarcely write his Name,” whose “Business is Boating,” who “never had any Commissions”—to call such a person a gentleman was “an arrant Prostitution of the Title.” 55
For most people the principal means of distinction between the gentry and commoners was still “Birth and Parentage.” Many colonists continued to believe that all men were created unequal. God, it was said, had been “pleas’d to constitute a Difference in Families.” Although most children were of “low Degree or of Common Derivation, Some are Sons and Daughters of the Mighty: they are more honorably descended, and have greater Relations than others.” 56 The word “gentry” was after all associated with birth, derived from the Latin gens, or stock. English and colonial writers such as Henry Fielding and Robert Munford, even when poking fun at the false pretensions of the aristocracy, had to have—for the harmony of their stories and the comfort of their genteel audiences—their apparently plebeian heroes or heroines turn out to be secretly the offspring of gentlemen.
In addition to genealogy, wealth was important in distinguishing a gentleman, for “in vulgar reckoning a mean condition bespeaks a mean man.” But more and more in the eighteenth century these traditional sources of gentry status—birth and wealth—were surrounded and squeezed by other measures of distinction—artificial, man-made criteria having to do with manners, taste, and character. “No man,” it was increasingly said, “deserves the appellation a Gentleman until he has done something to merit it.” 57
Gentlemen walked and talked in certain ways and held in contempt those who did not. They ate with silver knives and forks while many common people still ate with their hands. Gentlemen prided themselves on their classical learning, and in their privately circulated verse and in their public polemics they took great pains to display their knowledge. They took up dancing and fencing, for both “contribute greatly to a graceful Carriage.” “A Gentleman,” they were told, “should know how to appear in an Assembly [in] Public to Advantage, and to defend himself if attacked.” Young aspiring gentlemen were urged by their parents to study poetry and to learn to play musical instruments. Unlike common people, gentlemen wore wigs or powdered their hair, believing that “nothing [was] a finer ornament to a young gentleman than a good head of hair well order’d and set forth,” especially when appearing “before persons of rank and distinction.” They dressed distinctively and fashionably. In contrast to the plain shirts, leather aprons, and buckskin breeches of ordinary men, they wore lace ruffles, silk stockings, and other finery. They sought to build elaborate houses and to have their portraits painted. Little gratified the gentry’s hearts more than to have a “coach and six,” or at least a “chariot and four,” to have servants decked out in “fine liveries,” to have a reputation for entertaining liberally, to be noticed. 58
But central to these cultural attributes of gentility was “politeness,” which had a far broader and richer significance for the eighteenth century than it does for us. It meant not simply good manners and refinement but being genial and sociable, possessing the capacity to relate to other human beings easily and naturally. It was what most obviously separated the genteel few from the vulgar and barbaric mass of the population.
“Politeness,” said the Reverend William Smith in 1752, “is the Bond of social life,—the ornament of human nature.” By “softening... our natural roughness,” politeness developed in men “a certain Easiness of
For most people the principal means of distinction between the gentry and commoners was still “Birth and Parentage.” Many colonists continued to believe that all men were created unequal. God, it was said, had been “pleas’d to constitute a Difference in Families.” Although most children were of “low Degree or of Common Derivation, Some are Sons and Daughters of the Mighty: they are more honorably descended, and have greater Relations than others.” 56 The word “gentry” was after all associated with birth, derived from the Latin gens, or stock. English and colonial writers such as Henry Fielding and Robert Munford, even when poking fun at the false pretensions of the aristocracy, had to have—for the harmony of their stories and the comfort of their genteel audiences—their apparently plebeian heroes or heroines turn out to be secretly the offspring of gentlemen.
In addition to genealogy, wealth was important in distinguishing a gentleman, for “in vulgar reckoning a mean condition bespeaks a mean man.” But more and more in the eighteenth century these traditional sources of gentry status—birth and wealth—were surrounded and squeezed by other measures of distinction—artificial, man-made criteria having to do with manners, taste, and character. “No man,” it was increasingly said, “deserves the appellation a Gentleman until he has done something to merit it.” 57
Gentlemen walked and talked in certain ways and held in contempt those who did not. They ate with silver knives and forks while many common people still ate with their hands. Gentlemen prided themselves on their classical learning, and in their privately circulated verse and in their public polemics they took great pains to display their knowledge. They took up dancing and fencing, for both “contribute greatly to a graceful Carriage.” “A Gentleman,” they were told, “should know how to appear in an Assembly [in] Public to Advantage, and to defend himself if attacked.” Young aspiring gentlemen were urged by their parents to study poetry and to learn to play musical instruments. Unlike common people, gentlemen wore wigs or powdered their hair, believing that “nothing [was] a finer ornament to a young gentleman than a good head of hair well order’d and set forth,” especially when appearing “before persons of rank and distinction.” They dressed distinctively and fashionably. In contrast to the plain shirts, leather aprons, and buckskin breeches of ordinary men, they wore lace ruffles, silk stockings, and other finery. They sought to build elaborate houses and to have their portraits painted. Little gratified the gentry’s hearts more than to have a “coach and six,” or at least a “chariot and four,” to have servants decked out in “fine liveries,” to have a reputation for entertaining liberally, to be noticed. 58
But central to these cultural attributes of gentility was “politeness,” which had a far broader and richer significance for the eighteenth century than it does for us. It meant not simply good manners and refinement but being genial and sociable, possessing the capacity to relate to other human beings easily and naturally. It was what most obviously separated the genteel few from the vulgar and barbaric mass of the population.
“Politeness,” said the Reverend William Smith in 1752, “is the Bond of social life,—the ornament of human nature.” By “softening... our natural roughness,” politeness developed in men “a certain Easiness of
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