The Mid-Century Context

 

In this age of rivalry, money worship, and spurious equality … we all seek to be gentlemen and gentlewomen. The pursuit is laudable, the aim is noble; and what is more, in running this race, we may be all winners: for we each can reach the goal from our own point, and bear off our crown. To be a gentleman admits of such various interpretations, that whilst, on the one hand, nothing is so difficult, on the other nothing is so easy.

(James Hain Friswell, The Gentle Life, 1864)