THE HERO AS GENTLEMAN
575
borne, shows signs of masochism and homosexuality. The first charge
is
justified, I think, but the second is perhaps a concession to a fashionable
craze.
If
anything, Buchan's heroes are undersexed; they
marry
late, on
the whole, or remain rather wistful bachelors. But it would be interesting
to see what a psychiatrist made of the strange gods and pagan rites
which figure in so many of his stories. Are they an inheritance from
Kipling, that rather tragic, would-be Gentleman with one foot in the
jungle? Or do they reflect old heathen stirrings in the Lowlands, beneath
the grim surface of the Church of Scotland? And what would the psy–
chiatrist make of Wodehouse's insect-like creatures, living in a servant–
organized, aunt-ridden, damsel-haunted world? We can guess what he
would say about Lord Peter Wimsey. We can imagine, too, his com–
ments on Mr. Waugh's young bounders and on the "narrow loins" which
were so startlingly "made free
of'
in
Brideshead Revisited.
And he
would cluck with Continental sympathy when Miss Mitford transfers her
search for masculine prowess from England to France. Clearly the
English gentleman, in his last incarnation, did not carry his heroism into
the bedroom. His unworthy brother, the intellectual, out-distanced him
in
this. D. H. Lawrence had no doubt some justification in contrasting
him unfavorably with his gamekeeper.
Buchan, Yates, Sapper and Miss Sayers show us the Gentleman in
all his glory; Wodehouse, Waugh and Miss Mitford poke fun at
him
for
his fecklessness, the various expedients to which he is reduced, and his
eccentricity, but at the same time they imply that there is no better life
than his. Waugh would like to bring Catholicism into it, yet his is not
a new departure; we are to think of it as a return to an epoch when
the Gentleman was even more truly himself. On the whole, however,
religion and art are not to the forefront in this kind of writing. It is
taken for granted that the Gentleman is a Christian, and he does not,
as a rule, bother to define his beliefs. He may have a faint respect for
art, but there is no suggestion that art is a vital matter. His concern is
leading the Good Life between club and country house, traveling, risking
his skin in the service of his country and his country's friends, comrade–
ship and occasional dabbling in politics. His main virtues are good
manners, courage, dash and patriotism. It is significant that even
Waugh's young bounders behaved well when the war became serious.
Only Bertie Wooster missed his cue through playing the ass a shade
too long; he has now got over this lapse by explaining intelligently
what an ass he was.
Have we to conclude, then, that the enonnous popularity of these
authors between the two wars was a good sign? They certainly en–
couraged initiative and bravery. No doubt many people who fought
