Even gentlemen, it seems, can fall out.
Such writers rarely noted the strictures on female education — most girls had little beyond basic reading and ciphering; even gentlemen's daughters learned less of history than of needlework — that underlay the trope of the silly, prattling woman.
Leaders bitter rejoynder as she left the room was, "Even Jimmy, Gentleman Jimmy, would have treated us better than that".
About 160 years later, the barbed-tongued Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, silenced a Republican House colleague who had complained that he did not know what was inside a proposed bill: "This bill is five and a half pages — even the gentleman from Texas could have read it by now".
Under the tutelage of Mr. Weintraub, who bought the rights to the Tarzan franchise in 1958, Edgar Rice Burroughs's jungle hero metamorphosed from a loincloth-wearing, knife-carrying, monosyllabic strongman into a well-mannered, soft-spoken, even introspective gentleman worthy of the new James Bond era.
Recently, we have seen major allegations against football (government by FIFA), athletics and even the "gentlemen's" sport of cricket.
The wide access to capital for entrepreneurs isn't going away anytime soon, especially with a slew of tech IPOs on the horizon, which will create even more Gentlemen VCs.
I can think of Chick and Herbie Hancock, and there are a few left, and even these gentlemen who I also admire beyond belief change with the times.
Edward asked him "not even when gentlemen have given their word not to divulge it?"; Somerset replied that "It is impossible, sir. Nothing in the world known to ten people was ever kept secret".
But our maestro's story goes back a few years to the group (or legend) known as Dr Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, which he co-ran and all too seldom co-runs with a man named Stony Browder Jr, an even more elusive gentleman than August.
