Gentleman [ Taste & Manners / Politics & Society ]
… term broadened away from men of lineage to encompass the rising middling sort. One criterion used to define these ‘new’ gentlemen’ was sociability, but this was a sociability that now had to conform to other qualities making the new gentlemen: industriousness, sincerity, honesty, benevolence. Lord Chesterfield's instructions to his son on the art of … daughter of a gentleman’. 3 Her father was a ship’s carpenter. 2 . Penelope J. Corfield, ‘The Rivals: Landed and Other Gentlemen’, Negley Harte and Roland Quinault, eds, Land and Society in Britain, 1700-1914: Essays in Honour of F.M.L. …
Benevolence | Middling sort | Politeness | Rank
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