GENTLEMAN HELPS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5043, 23 May 1877, Page 2 (Supplement)

GENTLEMAN HELPS.

(From the Saturday Review.) When Thackeray invented, in “The Fitz Boodle Papers,” some new professions for younger sons, he did not think of suggesting competition with Jeames. That gentlemen should become servants is the latest idea of the shiftless persons who can never find any work for their hands to do, and who are constantly appealing to the tender mercies of society. A “ Poor Gentleman” states his sad experience to The Times, and makes a pitiful proposal, which is characteristic of his class. He is “by birth and education a gentleman;” he is thirty years old ; and, “ owing to recent losses, earnestly seeks work.” There is something very pathetic in the notion of a born gentleman being compelled by losses to seek occupation. Had it not been for cruel fortune, he might have lived through all the length of all his years as idly as in his first thirty. Fate has decided otherwise, and we gain some insight into the “ education of a gentleman” when we learn that only two sorts of career are open to this luckless one. He scorns “ a miserable city clerkship at .-£SO or TOO per annum.” He, “ and many like him,” lie says, “ would gladly serve some nobleman or gentleman as game and forest-keeper, or even as coachman or head-gardener.” The “ Poor Gentleman,” and people of his sort, seem unable to guess how mean a figure they make when they express their anxiety to wear a coachman’s wig or a keeper’s velveteens. What manner of education can that have been which has left them with a clerk's knowledge of reading and writing at the best ? What sort of spirit is that which prefers the lot of a menial, pampered or otherwise, to tire rough freedom of a miner in South Africa or Australia, or even of a shepherd in the Pampas ? At least, a gentleman, if he has the health and strength and courage which a gamekeeper requires, in addition to the habit of command, might aspire to bo an overseer on a sheep station, or a gang-master in Chili or Peru. The world should bo his oyster at the ago of thirty, and he needs little but the muscles and heart that nature has given him to find an opening somewhere between Alaska and Borneo. He and Ids liico prefer “ tiro largo salaries,” and probably the tips, “ obtained by head-gardeners, gamekeepers, huntsmen, &o„” “ coupled with employment more congenial to their taste than a three-legged stool in some city counting-house.” A threelegged stool is certainly an odd, and not perhaps a lucrative employment; but there are alternatives, and, to use the same stylo of writing, a stockwhip or a pickaxe might ho more congenial employment to a gentleman with a taste for freedom.

Setting aside the poverty of spirit shown in this kind of appeal, there is apparent that incurable ignorance and blindness to the facts of life which make it quite impossible to help people unable to help themselves. The person who wrote to The Tunes had received no education but that useful one “of a gentleman,” and had apparently lived in indolence. Yet he seems to think that he could at once take a high, indeed the highest, place in any one of three sorts of skilled labor. Shooting is a pleasant amusement, and the life of a headkeeper seems therefore to be an easy one. The gentleman who sighs for the place probably thinks the keeper does nothing but potter about with a gun over his shoulder and a dog at his heels during the greater part of the year. In August or October he places gentlemen in warm -corners, or sends them on the best beat, or manages that they shall have the surest chance of a shot at a stag, being guided by their rank in the peerage, and by his expectation of tips. These

feats may he congenial to the tastes of some persons of birth and education ; hut they do not make the whole duties of a keeper. Io rise early and go to bed late, to manage in the best and most economical way a fairly complicated organisation, to know woodcraft as men only know it who have studied it from then boyhood, -all this and much more that implies toil and pain nfakes the duty of a keeper. We do not mean to say that no gentleman could win golden opinions in a gamekeeper s place, for many seem to have been intended by nature for this very occupation. But if they have energy enough to he good servants, they are also capable of something bettor, and do in fact use their ability in some more honorable way. It is only in way of by-work that gentlemen show that they might have been watermen, or keepers, or professional cricketers. Absurd as is the notion of an amateur turning head-gamekeeper at thirty, the ambition to be a head-gardener is even more childish. Head gardeners are a class of beings whom it is impossible to contemplate without awe aud humility. They are so wonderfully intelligent that they may he excused if they share the foible attributed to Mr. Craig by Mrs. Poyser —“ He’s welly like a cock as thinks the sun s rose of purpose to hear him crow.” Headgardeuers need a minute knowledge of all soits of facts about climate, soils, even chemistry, which is not to he gained without the watchful experience of half a lifetime. They are men of culture, too, and write learned books on Virgil’s treatment of the vine, aud on modern improvements on the method recommended in the “ Georgies.” They have long Latin and Greek names at the tips of their tongues, and pronounco them witli a rapidity aud in a manner rather baffling and bewildering to the mere scholar. It is not easy to find any occupation suited to a gentleman who fancies that he can blossom in a moment into a head-gardeucr. As for the other object of our “Poor Gentleman’s” aspirations, it would be easy to show that a headcoaohman has duties more complicated than the mere administration of antimony to the steeds in his charge. How does a “ Poor Gentleman” propose to acquire in an hour the respectful sourness which will frighten a lady out iff her wish to “take out his horses” ? This gift comes not without thought and study, and probably a head coachman has other accomplishments into which it would he profane to jiry too closely. There is really no analogy between these occupations and that of henchman and general overseer which used to be held by poor relations or dependents. Will Wimble would have declined to wear Sir Roger's livery, and Di Vernon’s brothers, grooms aud keepers as they were by nature, turned over Gwillym, at least on winter nights, and knew that a gentleman cannot sink to the rank of a servant without self-contempt. It may be said that the markets are more crowded new that many gentlefolk . have “ gone into trade ” without a shudder; aud why should not others go into service ? The distinction is pretty clear, especially at a time when the classes who used to fill menial positions seem, whether wisely or not, to prefer a class of work which leaves them more independence.