The Refined Man, Much More Than Mere Manners

The concept of the “gentleman” (an abused title if ever there was one) which nowadays I refer to as the Refined or Well-bred Man, has always fascinated me. I am conservative by nature; I believe that there are things in life worth saving and it is my purpose to do so. Reform is sometimes necessary, but only when it is beneficial to such traditions and institutions as are worth preserving.

One such tradition is that of the Refined Man¹: the man who is governed by a code of conduct which requires him to live an upright life, which calls on him to be self-possessed and to cultivate in his character whatever is admirable and mature; the man whose life, as far as is humanly possible, is known for its moral rectitude. Descriptions of him are numerous: he is honourable and loyal, compassionate and genuine, generous and kind, righteous and courageous, dependable and dignified, possessing every attribute of an excellent, beautiful character.

Yet how can one attain so high a standard? Where to begin to cultivate these fine qualities? As with all ambitions, it must begin with an intense desire from which must naturally flow the necessary motivation to achieve the objective. Daily application and devotion to the course one has taken will ensure success. Slowly but surely a change will be effected, each triumph will inspire further improvement, each disappointment become a reminder of what needs further attention ― there is not the fatalist’s acquiescence of personal flaws, neither are such flaws foolishly glorified; there is only the rapt determination to overcome weakness in a resolute quest for self-mastery. It is this determination which ultimately establishes a true level of refinement, which is primarily internal (deportment is the secondary, external expression on which countless volumes have been written, most of which willfully fail to stress the necessity of an inner standard).

Life will inevitably expose those of weak and superficial character; no matter how witty or charming, dapper or groomed, while they may well enjoy a brief period of popularity and success (which is probably all they desire), they will ultimately be despised (and by none more than themselves). May we not be counted amongst them. May we be the happy Snobs who live with integrity, steadfast in our convictions, consistent from day-to-day, with the courage to face our flaws and improve upon them. Let us be internally sound, let us have moral courage, let us live our lives in harmony with conscience; let us be an asset to society as well as civilisation.


¹ I am not referring to the breed put forward in the media: James Bond, as an immediate example, whether within Mr Fleming’s novels or on the silver screen, certainly does not qualify.

Kwikstertjie (Cape Wagtail)

Another jolly little bird which frequents our garden and often adorns the pergola outside my room is the Cape Wagtail — it visited again this morning.

The Cape Wagtail’s tail bounces rhythmically up and down when the bird is at rest and is at rest when the bird starts moving. In Afrikaans (the local language) it is known as “Kwikstertjie” (“verkwik” means “to refresh or quicken”, and “stertjie” means “little tail”). My mother delighted me with a little Afrikaans riddle: “As hy gaan, dan staan hy. As hy staan, dan gaan hy. Wie is hy?”¹ — to which the answer is: “Kwikkie!” (nickname for the bird).

The bird has a pleasant tsee-chee-chee call and a trilled whistled song² as a variation on the theme. I find it very refreshing indeed.


¹ “When it moves it’s not moving. When it’s not moving, it moves. Who is it?”
² Answers.com

Image from outdoorphoto.co.za

A Smart-Casual Age

“This is a sign of the times," proclaims Richard Harden, co-editor of Harden’s UK Restaurant Guide 2008. "Smart-casual is the order of the day. You already see it in London – the only people dressed up in restaurants these days are people on business or provincials up in town”¹ (to my mind, placing a dashing feather in the provincial cap.)

“The rules of fine dining have been turned upside down,” echoes Valerie Elliott, Consumer Editor for Times Online¹. “There is no longer any need for dressing up or a starched tablecloth, and eating out in British restaurants is now officially an informal occasion.”

Yes, forever gone are the days of formality; let us brace ourselves (yet again) for the “active”, "rugged”, “sporty”, “dressy” and “business casual” mob. Nevertheless, here hopefully I remain, always dressing for dinner, even at my home.

Is it because I am a Snob and know how to use the word "hopefully" properly? Yes — for while eating is a necessity, Dining is an Art.


¹ Source: Dress for dinner? How provincial (Nov. 5, 2007) by Valerie Elliott, Consumer Editor for Times Online.

Reverent Before Beauty

Kindred Spirits
Past, Present and Fictional

Old Jolyon

Far-off a cuckoo called; a wood-pigeon was cooing from the first elm-tree in the field, and how the daisies and buttercups had sprung up after the last mowing! The wind had got into the sou’ west, too—a delicious air, sappy! He pushed his hat back and let the sun fall on his chin and cheek. Somehow, to-day, he wanted company—wanted a pretty face to look at. People treated the old as if they wanted nothing. And with the un-Forsytean philosophy which ever intruded on his soul, he thought: ‘One’s never had enough. With a foot in the grave one’ll want something, I shouldn’t be surprised!’ Down here—away from the exigencies of affairs—his grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of his little domain, to say nothing of sun and moon and stars above them, said, ‘Open, sesame,’ to him day and night. And sesame had opened—how much, perhaps, he did not know. He had always been responsive to what they had begun to call ‘Nature,’ genuinely, almost religiously responsive, though he had never lost his habit of calling a sunset a sunset and a view a view, however deeply they might move him. But nowadays Nature actually made him ache, he appreciated it so. Every one of these calm, bright, lengthening days, with Holly’s hand in his, and the dog Balthasar in front looking studiously for what he never found, he would stroll, watching the roses open, fruit budding on the walls, sunlight brightening the oak leaves and saplings in the coppice, watching the water-lily leaves unfold and glisten, and the silvery young corn of the one wheat field; listening to the starlings and skylarks, and the Alderney cows chewing the cud, flicking slow their tufted tails; and every one of these fine days he ached a little from sheer love of it all, feeling perhaps, deep down, that he had not very much longer to enjoy it. The thought that some day—perhaps not ten years hence, perhaps not five—all this world would be taken away from him, before he had exhausted his powers of loving it, seemed to him in the nature of an injustice brooding over his horizon. If anything came after this life, it wouldn’t be what he wanted; not Robin Hill, and flowers and birds and pretty faces—too few, even now, of those about him! With the years his dislike of humbug had increased; the orthodoxy he had worn in the ‘sixties, as he had worn side-whiskers out of sheer exuberance, had long dropped off, leaving him reverent before three things alone—beauty, upright conduct, and the sense of property; and the greatest of these now was beauty. He had always had wide interests, and, indeed could still read The Times, but he was liable at any moment to put it down if he heard a blackbird sing. Upright conduct, property—somehow, they were tiring; the blackbirds and the sunsets never tired him, only gave him an uneasy feeling that he could not get enough of them. Staring into the stilly radiance of the early evening and at the little gold and white flowers on the lawn, a thought came to him: This weather was like the music of ‘Orfeo,’ which he had recently heard at Covent Garden. A beautiful opera, not like Meyerbeer, nor even quite Mozart, but, in its way, perhaps even more lovely; something classical and of the Golden Age about it, chaste and mellow, and the Ravogli ‘almost worthy of the old days’—highest praise he could bestow. The yearning of Orpheus for the beauty he was losing, for his love going down to Hades, as in life love and beauty did go—the yearning which sang and throbbed through the golden music, stirred also in the lingering beauty of the world that evening.


From Indian Summer of a Forsyte by John Galsworthy.

Image: John Galsworthy (© E.O. Hoppé/CORBIS)

This Mongrel Age

Kindred Spirits
Past, Present and Fictional

Jack Muskham

He was, in fact, an idealist. To breed the perfect horse was his ideal, as little realisable, perhaps, as the ideals of other men, and far more absorbing—in his view. Not that he ever mentioned it—one did not use such a word! Nor did he bet, so that he was never deflected in his judgments by earthly desires. Tall, in his cigar-brown overcoat, specially lined with camel’s hair, and his fawn-coloured buckskin shoes and fawn-coloured face, he was probably the most familiar figure at Newmarket; nor was there any member of the Jockey Club, with the exception of three, whose dicta were more respected. He was in fact an outstanding example of the eminence in his walk of life that can be attained by a man who serves a single end with complete and silent fidelity. In truth, behind this ideal of the ‘perfect horse’ lay the shape of his own soul. Jack Muskham was a formalist, one of the few survivors in a form-shattering age; and that his formalism had pitched on the horse for its conspicuous expression was due in part to the completeness with which the race-horse was tied to the stud book, in part to the essential symmetry of that animal, and in part to the refuge the cult of it afforded from the whirr, untidiness, glare, blare, unending scepticism, and intrusive blatancy of what he termed “this mongrel age.”


From Flowering Wilderness by John Galsworthy.

Image: John Galsworthy (© Bettmann/CORBIS)

Solveigs Sang

Surely one of the greatest songs ever written is Edvard Grieg's Solveigs Sang:

“Kanske vil der gå både Vinter og Vår, og næste Sommer med, og det hele År, men engang vil du komme, det ved jeg vist, og jeg skal nok vente, for det lovte jeg sidst.

“Gud styrke dig, hvor du i Verden går, Gud glæde dig, hvis du for hans Fodskammel står. Her skal jeg vente til du kommer igjen; og venter du hist oppe, vi træffes der, min Ven!”

It is so haunting in its simplicity that one feels an intruder overhearing Solveig's prayer. Perfection.

TRANSLATION — The winter may wane and the springtime may fly, the summer may depart and the year may die; to me thou wilt return, thou art mine soon or late, I gave thee my promise and faithfully can wait. God give you strength wherever you go in the world. God is pleased if you stand at His footstool. Here I shall wait, until you return, and if you wait in Heaven, we will meet there my friend.

Image: Solitude by Lord Frederick Leighton

Our Best Theology

Something I deplore in certain members of my circle is the ease with which they summarily dismiss Theology. What calls this to mind presently is a passage from George Bell’s The English Gentlemen (a most edifying volume) which concerns itself in it’s final chapter with the Gentleman’s pursuits, chief amongst which should be, both in the opinion of this and that author, an admirable knowledge of “our best Theology” (italics mine).

The persons in question base their rejection upon a misconception of Theology as an idea born of an ignorant nature, rather than a sound one cognisant of revealed Truth, neither of which are, ultimately, a possibility worthy of their serious investigation*.

George Bell’s passage suggests, quite correctly, that our Theology is largely a quest for that Perfect Knowledge of the subject in question, which we should happily possess. A quest which does not indiscriminately reject what has been revealed to humanity. In the accounts of the life of Christ, for example, a Truth to which I particularly subscribe, we can clearly observe the reality of Divine Being, and the most sceptic of minds must conclude, if it has any discernment (upon sober investigation), that it is not merely optimistic conjecture, but recognition of an historic incident of momentous theological import.

I hold that in this study we might approach an understanding of a Divine Being to a very high degree indeed. The arrogance and inadequacy of a sentiment which discards this noble and honest pursuit astounds the unbiased mind.

As it is, I am often faced with limited views on the subject, posing as munificence. Perhaps the instruction of the old preachers of etiquette to avoid the subject altogether is now more relevant than ever. I tend to think so; it preserves one from being inflamed by the ignorance and indiscretion of those with whom one is cast.


* — Yet how intensely they pride themselves upon their non-judgmental attitude.

Image: The Flagellation of Christ by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, © The Art Archive/Corbis