Things a Gentleman should never do.

I remember when a young man, wishful to conform to the rules of good society, I bought a book of etiquette for gentlemen.  Its fault was just this.  It told me through many pages what not to do.  Beyond that it seemed to have no idea.  I made a list of things it said a gentleman should never do: it was a lengthy list.

Determined to do the job completely while I was about it, I bought other books of etiquette and added on their list of “Nevers.”  What one book left out another supplied.  There did not seem much left for a gentleman to do.

I concluded by the time I had come to the end of my books, that to be a true gentleman my safest course would be to stop in bed for the rest of my life.  By this means only could I hope to avoid every possible faux pas, every solecism.  I should have lived and died a gentleman.  I could have had it engraved upon my tombstone:

“He never in his life committed a single act unbecoming to a gentleman.”

To be a gentleman is not so easy, perhaps, as a fashionable novelist imagines.  One is forced to the conclusion that it is not a question entirely for the outfitter.  My attention was attracted once by a notice in the window of a West-End emporium, “Gentlemen supplied.”

It is to such like Universal Providers that the fashionable novelist goes for his gentleman.  The gentleman is supplied to him complete in every detail.  If the reader be not satisfied, that is the reader’s fault.  He is one of those tiresome, discontented customers who does not know a good article when he has got it.

I was told the other day of the writer of a musical farce (or is it comedy?) who was most desirous that his leading character should be a perfect gentleman.  During the dress rehearsal, the actor representing the part had to open his cigarette case and request another perfect gentleman to help himself.  The actor drew forth his case.  It caught the critical eye of the author.

“Good heavens!” he cried, “what do you call that?”

“A cigarette case,” answered the actor.

“But, my dear boy,” exclaimed the author, “surely it is silver?”

“I know,” admitted the actor, “it does perhaps suggest that I am living beyond my means, but the truth is I picked it up cheap.”

The author turned to the manager.

“This won’t do,” he explained, “a real gentleman always carries a gold cigarette case.  He must be a gentleman, or there’s no point in the plot.”

“Don’t let us endanger any point the plot may happen to possess, for goodness sake,” agreed the manager, “let him by all means have a gold cigarette case.”