These ideals died with the millions of men killed in the first and second world wars. The decades after the wars could be described as the rise and triumph of sentimentality as the chief characteristic of our culture.
If you read writers like Waugh's trilogy, but also Maughm's Ashenden stories that pre-date Fleming's Bond by some 25 years, the wryness of the "gentleman," was a self possession and self consciousness that reflected a genuine humility, usually based on some religious understanding. A variation on it appears in the original secret identity/super hero story, The Scarlett Pimpernell, where his external ridiculousness also hides an underlying steel.
What made a "gentleman," was the choice to be one. He was necessarily accomplished and formidable at something first, capable of violence or some kind of power, but chose not to use it. Simply being mannered without the underlying steel, was called being a fop, dandy, flaneur, boulevardier, dude, etc.
The reason we don't value gentlemen today is because the necessary underlying competence, skill, and experience itself is humiliating to men who are largely elevated for their capacity for compliance.
If you read writers like Waugh's trilogy, but also Maughm's Ashenden stories that pre-date Fleming's Bond by some 25 years, the wryness of the "gentleman," was a self possession and self consciousness that reflected a genuine humility, usually based on some religious understanding. A variation on it appears in the original secret identity/super hero story, The Scarlett Pimpernell, where his external ridiculousness also hides an underlying steel.
What made a "gentleman," was the choice to be one. He was necessarily accomplished and formidable at something first, capable of violence or some kind of power, but chose not to use it. Simply being mannered without the underlying steel, was called being a fop, dandy, flaneur, boulevardier, dude, etc.
The reason we don't value gentlemen today is because the necessary underlying competence, skill, and experience itself is humiliating to men who are largely elevated for their capacity for compliance.