THE GRAND MANNER.
THEgrand manner has gone from the world, and, the world seems little put out at its departure. Time was when it was the token at once of breeding and education. Scholarship unadorned with it was held up to scorn as naked pedantry; manners with no touch of the grand air could not
ass master in polite circles; literature saw in it the sum and substance of its being. It did duty for a whole lexicon of ivalities, but its outward aspect was unmistakable, depend- ing upon a very simple theory of society and human life. There are two classes of men, it held,—those who attain, and those who fail. It is for the latter to struggle, and complain, and show marks of the conflict; but for the former it is the
fi duty to preserve an untroubled mien, an elegant com- p:Aire, an aristocratic nonchalance. A man is more than his work, especially if that man be a gentleman. Therefore let him describe himself by no narrow profession, but shine in twenty spheres with a fine neglect of each. It is for the great lawyer to be a wit, the wit to be a statesman, the scholar a man of fashion. To specialise is to confess oneself incompetent. Let the rank-and-file make a fuss about their work, but for the master spirits the grand manner is the counsel of perfection. And with it came the chance for a real art of society. If men are to wear honours and successes lightly, the background of ease will come into prominence, and they will study to amuse. And so came that social fine which our great-grandmothers adored, those bowings and smirkings which their grandchildren scoffed at, and the whole pleasing science of the beau monde. The doctrine was both a theory of human conduct and a social law, preaching at 1-..re the arts of success and amusement ; and the "grand manuer " became the fine flower of accomplished gentility.
The tear of sensibility may be dropped over its tomb, but there can be no question of its revival. The most its admirers can do is to write the history of its fiopuit. It belonged to an age when wealth, leisure, culture, and all the good things of life were confined to a class, and it drooped and withered at the advent of democracy. Our modern seriousness and our modern businesslike air killed it, and they chose the cruellest of weapons. It might have survived frank opposition, it could not endure being made to look ridiculous. Like Aristotle's magnificent man, who smiled little and walked with slow and dignified step, our gentleman with the grand air could at times be almost comic. Your Sir Willoughby Patterne still stalked triumphant through the world, but a more modest person at a suggestion of farce shrivelled up like a gourd. Then people asked awkward questions. Were not these often elderly and generally erudite butterflies an anachronism, wanting in earnestness, in purpose, in a philosophy of life? Even its practical side was denied it. Specialists came to look askance at the scholar who professed to be a man of the world ; constituencies suspected a politician with a taste for letters ; and attorneys jibbed at the lawyer who had the dangerous trick of style. The populace lost its admiration for the fine gentleman; and the capitalist, in seeking to copy his ways, corrupted the model. Lace and brocade were (metaphorically) exchanged for broadcloth and mackintoshes, and the world looked complacently on the change and complimented itself on its good sense.
But with the rubbish went much that was admirable. At is best this grand manner meant an exuberant vitality, a genuine zest for life. Its exponents might fail, but they failed gallantly. It all worked out to a kind of intense self- respect, which might be ludicrous, but was rarely ignoble. The scholar who spends his life on a text-book may be a finer scholar, but we question if he is so fine a man as his prede- cessor, who had a dozen other accomplishments. It is better, of course, that a politician should study the housing of the poor or the drink question than annotate Horace or write a treatise on taste; but the result is too often a poor shrivelled creature, crammed with details, but thin in blood and weak in energy. It is all, perhaps, a gain for us, but are the men themselves the equal of their forefathers ? Once speeialisa- ;ion, if carried to an extreme, was accounted a sin against good taste; now it is the only sure way of salvation. Of course, the old school was wrong ; we live in a stirring practical age, and we should know better. But they had at least some philosophy to justify their foolishness, and the loss is ap- parent, if not on the market highways, at least in the by-paths of life.
The history of English society, which some day the Germans may undertake, will be a study of the decline and fall of the grand manner. Originally an Elizabethan product, and nobly typified in Sidney and Raleigh, it came to maturity in the seventeenth century. A manlike Sir Thomas Urquhart in Scotland, with his craze for distinction and his mania for versatility, is the manner carried to an extreme; and the Suckling and Lovelace school, who were at once cavaliers and poets, and a Lord Her. bert of Cherbury, who was philosopher, poet, physicist, soldier, and bravo in one, are shining instances of its
best. But the eighteenth century was its hey-day. In that modish world of Ranelagh and St. James's, Brooks's and the
Cocoa Tree, we have a thousand instances of its perfection. Let it he clearly understood what we mean. It was versatility followed as a fashion and joined with an affectation of ease and indifference, a manner and not necessarily a character. Most great men have been many-sided, but with the gentlemen of the grand air it was a social duty, and all traces of the process must be hidden from sight. A whole hierarchy of statesmen—Carteret, Bolingbroke, Charles Townshend—were also wits and scholars. A large school, from Wilkes to Fox, were also rakes. When the city apprentice went down St. James's Street of a morning, and saw in the clear sun- shine through the open window Fox at cards in his shirt-sleeves, and reflected that this man the afternoon before had made an epoch-making speech in the Commons, and had during the night in all likelihood lost a for. tune, he recognised the grand manner, and, we trust, shook his head at its folly. A better instance is Lord Mans- field. One of the greatest of English Judges, he was perhaps also, since Bacon, the most accomplished. The keen eyes, massive brows, and tart, humorous mouth of the Reynolds portrait reveal a man as versed in letters and the arts of the polite worldas in the common law. He was a great lawyer, and, what is rarer, a scholar in law, a man of the widest learning, a wit, a lover of poetry, a man of fashion, and one of the first Parliamentary debaters of his day. Some, too, would call him a statesman, but the matter is doubtful. He was the only man whom Boswell thought worthy of admission into the company of general officers who had seen service. Dr. Johnson, who did not favour the Lord Chief Justice's countrymen, shared the prevalent admiration, as witness this fragment of dialogue. Boswell : "Lord Mansfield is not a mere lawyer." Johnson : "No, Sir, I never was in Lord Mansfield's company. But Lord Mansfield was distinguished at the University. Lord Mansfield, when he first came to town, drank champagne with the wits. He was the friend of Pope." And Pope has given us his own testimony:- " How sweet an Ovid, Murray, was our boast ! How many Martials were in Pulteney lost !"
But the most typical story is that of the would-be biographer who asked for materials for his Life. Mansfield declared that his life was in no way remarkable, for he had always been a man of rank and fashion with every opportunity. " Take Lord Hardwicke " he said ; " he was the son of a peasant, and he made himself Chancellor." The peasant happened to be a leading London attorney, and Mansfield's father was a poverty-stricken Scotch Peer suspected of Jacobitism. As far as success at the Bar went, the former had all the advan- tages; but the grand manner could not stoop to consider them.
It is the word " mere " in BoswelPs question which is the ground of the whole difference. To Raleigh or Lord Herbert Wordsworth would have been a "mere " poet, Mr. Spencer a " mere " philosopher. Gibbon, when he declared that he was not a historian but a gentleman, and Disraeli, when before his great Oxford speech in '64 he sauntered into the Theatre in a shooting-coat and a wideawake, each in his own absurd way protested against professional limitations. Nowadays we would have a parson be a parson and a statesman a statesman ; when the grand manner flourished a gentleman was insulted by being labelled with a single name. To be sure, the results were often disastrous, and fools, who might have done decently had their aspirations been small, made bide for greatness and had lamentable falls. But the art never professed to be for the rank-and-file, but for the master- spirits ; and much of the criticism proceeded from the incom- petents. "It is with genius as with a fine fashion," wrote Pope ; "all those are displeased at it who are not able to follow it."
But whatever the cause be, the grand manner is discredited. Disraeli was almost the last of its disciples, and the abuse of him which was current for so long shows how people had oome to regard the affectation. For an affectation it was, though a charming and sometimes a noble one. Versatility can never be abolished, but a pretence of ease and insouciance and a parade of divers accomplishments may easily be discredited. The splendid impassiveness of the great gentleman has succumbed to modern worry and haste, and for the most part we frankly confess that dignity is a nuisance and an anachronism. But the other side of the thing—the taste for a liberal culture—shows signs of revival, and we may see a return to the grand manner, brought up to date and purged of its silliness.
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