Gentlemen, Gentlemen

Like sweet corn and young children, few books of literary criticism or scholarship travel well. If you don’t know the writers under consideration, you’re not likely to pull such a volume off the shelves, which already groan under the burden of so many refried doctoral theses. No, most literary studies are written in the cloister, for the cloister, and exceptions are few and precious. John Bayley’s The Characters of Love and Christopher Ricks’ Keats and Embarrassment come to mind as works that transcend mere criticism and live on as books. No special training is necessary to enjoy them, not even having read, say, Henry James or Keats. They are books for the uncommon common reader. So is another, less well known than those I’ve mentioned, one I didn’t read until almost 20 years after its original publication in 1982 – The Gentleman in Trollope, by the late Shirley Robin Letwin. This is a literary study for grownups, even those, like myself, not deeply read in Trollope’s vast body of work.

I thought of Letwin’s book on Sunday during a visit to the library with my younger sons. My 7-year-old had already put on his Cub Scout uniform, to be prepared for a den meeting later in the afternoon. I had to remind him to remove his cap indoors, which he did, grudgingly. As we sat around the table, reviewing our choices, a woman and three boys, ages roughly 6, 8 and 10 – apparently her sons – started made a ruckus. This is the sort of woman who takes no interest in the behavior of her children until she yells at them and slaps their heads. Her boys argued among themselves, scraped their shoes across the linoleum, and punched and pushed each other. All wore caps and my Michael, a born sophist, took notice. To make this brief, even his opinion turned as we watched the foursome holler, punch each other and knock over a rack of CDs. Michael’s cap remained off until we left the library.

I’ll spare you another lamentation on public incivility and coarsened manners. This woman and her children were a loud, offensive blight on an institution once synonymous with respectful silence. (It’s significant that no one on the library staff said or did a thing.) I thought of Letwin’s book because she’s careful to distinguish a true gentleman, especially as embodied in some of Trollope’s characters, from the modern caricature of gentlemen as unctuous, pencil-necked twits. No gentleman would behave in such a rude, vulgar manner, thereby disturbing 30 or 40 library patrons and staff – for his sake and theirs. Letwin has written an essay on the proper conduct of life in the guise of literary scholarship:

“The gentleman’s world does not require a choice between rebellion and submission, violence and reason, alienation and unity, struggle and apathy, certainty and nihilism. It is a world full of nuances. Everything depends on fine distinctions – between wilfulness and originality, rigidity and discipline, distortion and disagreement. Nothing stands still but there is no sign of chaos. Order rests on proportion, harmony and continuity, not uniformity or changelessness. Men are not bound together by domination or submission but by affections, habits, duties and aspirations, as well as friendship, love, loyalty, obedience, respect, and admiration. They can alter and remain consistent. They can be amiable without being dishonest. Deference is no bar to independence nor respectability to originality. Firmness does not exclude sensitivity and moral clarity is one with compassion.”

By the way, Letwin concludes that “the most perfect gentleman” in Trollope’s novels is Madame Max Goesler, who appears in several works, most notably Phineas Finn.