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Updated: May 21, 2025
Is not Lavengro, when he leaves London on foot with twenty pounds in his pocket, entitled to more respect than Mr. Flamson flaming in his coach with a million? And is not even the honest jockey at Horncastle, who offers a fair price to Lavengro for his horse, entitled to more than the scoundrel lord, who attempts to cheat him of one-fourth of its value?
The beau-ideal with those of the lower classes, with peasants and mechanics, is some flourishing railroad contractor: look, for example, how they worship Mr. Flamson. This person makes his grand debut in the year 'thirty-nine, at a public meeting in the principal room of a country inn.
Now a person may be genteel according to one or another of the three standards described above, and not possess one of the characteristics of a gentleman. Is the emperor a gentleman, with spatters of blood on his clothes, scourged from the backs of noble Hungarian women? Are the aristocracy gentlefolks, who admire him? Is Mr. Flamson a gentleman, although he has a million pounds?
Does not a blood-spot, or a lust-spot, on the clothes of a blooming emperor, give a kind of zest to the genteel young god? Do not the pride, superciliousness, and selfishness of a certain aristocracy make it all the more regarded by its worshippers? and do not the clownish and gutter- blood admirers of Mr. Flamson like him all the more because they are conscious that he is a knave?
Flamson, call him genteel? and gentility with them is everything! Assuredly they would not; and assuredly they would consider him respectively as a being to be shunned, despised, or hooted. Genteel! Why at one time he is a hack author writes reviewals for eighteenpence a page edits a Newgate chronicle.
He was not, however, the man quietly to sit down before what he conceived to be an unjustifiable outrage to his right to be quiet. He never forgave railways, although forced sometimes to make use of them. Samuel Morton Peto became to him the embodiment of evil, and as "Mr Flamson flaming in his coach with a million" he is immortalised in The Romany Rye.
Is not Lavengro, when he leaves London on foot with twenty pounds in his pocket, entitled to more respect than Mr. Flamson flaming in his coach with a million? And is not even the honest jockey at Horncastle, who offers a fair price to Lavengro for his horse, entitled to more than the scroundrel lord, who attempts to cheat him of one-fourth of its value. . . ."
Flamson a clown who will, perhaps, shout "I say he is no gentleman; for who can be a gentleman who keeps no gig?" The indifference exhibited by Lavengro for what is merely genteel, compared with his solicitude never to infringe the strict laws of honour, should read a salutary lesson.
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