`To Be Gentlemanly Without Being Genteel'

“To be gentlemanly without being genteel, free and blunt in expression in the manner of European intellectuals, was and is a style at the opposite extreme from the foam-rubber, public-relations language that we nowadays adapt to all occasions.”

 

Still true, except for the part about European intellectuals, or most of them. Jacques Barzun describes a lively, confident mode of speech among grownups, rooted in respect and fearlessness when it comes to cerebral and aesthetic roughhouse. So much of what we hear and read amounts to formulaic ass-kissing or sniffy little death sentences. Not much in between. Neither requires much thought.

 

Barzun is writing in A Stroll with William James (1983), my favorite among all of his books. James was his hero. The genius concentrated in the James Brothers, William and Henry, is almost indecent. He titles a chapter in his book “The Reign of William and Henry.” Here is a sample of what Barzun is talking about, from a characteristically spirited letter (not cited by Barzun) James writes to H.G. Wells on June 6, 1905. One need not agree with James’ enthusiasm for Wells’ work – in this case, A Modern Utopia (1905) -- to appreciate the enthusiastic prose in which it is expressed:

 

“You have a tri-dimensional human heart, and to use your own metaphor, don’t see different levels projected on one plane. In this last book you beautifully soften cocksureness by the penumbra of the outlines—in fact you’re a trump and a jewel, and for human perception you beat Kipling, and for hitting off a thing with the right word, you are unique. Heaven bless and preserve you!—You are now an eccentric; perhaps 50 years hence you will figure as a classic!”

 

Barzun laments the loss of so vivid a sensibility as James’ (he died in 1910) and the energized manner in which he had expressed it. After quoting a letter James wrote to John Jay Chapman, Barzun says their age encouraged development of “strong personalities, while manners permitted strength and individuality to be admired. What met with contempt was vulgar feelings—suspicion, envy, self-pity; they were not to be given room in heart or mind; indeed, they were to be chased out if they crept in, and conduct must be in keeping. I use ‘conduct,’ and not our social-science term ‘behavior,’ to stress the primacy of responsibility and control.”

 

The notion that manners permit and even encourage strength and individuality must sound quaint to many contemporary readers. But just as meter and rhyme inspire, refine and make stronger the meaning in verse, so does civility tame our self-indulgence and foster friendship and love. Barzun writes:     

 

“The surprise is that a facade-free personality should also be sensitive and possessed of genius. Long habit makes us want our geniuses scarred. The sign of their authenticity is their affliction. They must be disagreeable, self-centered, dissolute, unscrupulous, maniacal, enslaved to alcohol or drugs. The festering wound, like Philoctetes’, must be there or they can’t draw the bow.”