Pass the butter (knife)

I SEE in this year’s GENTLEMAN’S LIFE () the answers to that perennial question: what is a gentleman? Because it has nothing to do with class or status, I’ve always liked John Henry Newman’s reply, in his , that a gentleman is one who does not cause pain. The most understated definition I know comes not from an Englishman (whose province it might be thought to be), but from a Frenchman: Jean de La Fontaine. That great teller of fables says a gentleman is one who, when dining alone, uses the butter knife: not modern, I grant you, but from a more fastidious age.