ABSTRACT
One great strength of the novelist as a historian of manners is that he can do justice to that element of the je ne sais quoi which has always been so important and so elusive in the appeal of gentlemanliness. A clear indication of changing attitudes is the declining status of the word 'genteel' in the early Victorian period, and to some extent that of 'gentility' also, and the increased prestige of 'gentle' and 'manly'. In Jane Austen 'genteel' is still used in its old un-ironic sense, and as late as 1838 one finds Dickens in Nicholas Nickleby describing Kate Nickleby as possessing 'true gentility of manner'. Gentleness, then, and manliness went together, and both received equal stress in the new Victorian concept of the gentleman. More problematic was knowing what weight to give to 'gentle' in its meaning of 'gentle birth' and what to its more modern sense of 'tender'.
