The Corvey Novels Project at the University of Nebraska
— Studies in British Literature of the Romantic Period —
George P. James. The Gentleman of the Old School
London: G. Routledge, 1839.
Synopsis of The Gentleman of the Old School
This three-volume novel takes place in the 1700s over the course of two
weeks in the countryside of England. Much of the action centers on Stalbrooke
Castle, home of Sir Andrew Stalbrooke, the title character, a regal gentleman
who does right by everyone, and Mallory Hall, home of Lady Mallory, a young
widow in her late twenties.
Staying with Sir Andrew is his nephew Ralph Strafford, a handsome and kind lad. One day he meets up with a former schoolmate, John Forrest, on the road to town. John is a pretty despicable and arrogant guy, we're told right from the start, and is on his way to visit with Lady Mallory, who is the cousin of his uncle, who himself is in a carriage just ahead. A hailstorm causes his family's carriage to get overturned, and the Forrest family is invited to stay the night in Stalbrooke Castle while their carriage is fixed.
Immediately we learn that Ralph and Edith, the daughter of Mr. Ferdinand Forrest, are long-lost lovers, which makes Mr. Forrest upset as he means for Edith to marry her cousin John. The next day, Mr. Forrest is attacked by a stag in the countryside, and is forced to stay longer at Stalbrooke than anticipated, so he can heal. This gives Edith and Ralph time to share their love, and John time to run about in the nearby town of Lallington, where he is trying to persuade Lucy, the daughter of his old schoolmaster, to run off with him to London. She is in love with another, Castle Ball, a farmer who lives nearby with his mother, and so she refuses.
John hatches a plan to abduct Lucy and remove her to the city, but this plan is foiled by her uncle, Timothy Meakes, a poacher who has been taken into John's confidence. As the abduction is going on, Ralph happens upon the scene while riding back from Mallory Hall. In the struggle over Lucy, John raises his sword to Ralph and gets killed in the process by Ralph acting in self-defense.
This sets the houses in high drama and tension. Mr. Forrest revives and removes his family to Mallory Hall, saying he will not rest until his nephew's murderer is hanged. The witnesses to the event are all cronies of John's and allege that Ralph murdered him in cold blood. Ralph decides to stay away from Stalbrooke while people are looking to imprison him, and during his wanderings encounters a "Hindoo" woman, who is wise about the future and relays messages between him and Edith.
We've known for some time that Lady Mallory is in love with Ralph, and is distraught by his wishes to marry Edith. She selfishly tries to drive a wedge between them. While Edith is staying at Mallory Hall, she learns that John has been killed by Ralph. Lady Mallory asks Edith whether she can really marry the man who killed her cousin, and she says she never loved her cousin. Then Lady Mallory tells Edith the story of John's past, and it turns out that he isn't her cousin, but rather her own brother. She claims to have the documentation to prove this.
Such information changes things for Edith, and she tells Ralph that while she could marry the man who killed her cousin, she cannot marry the man who killed her brother. Ralph swears not to marry any other woman, and they both decide to live a life of lonesome devotion to one another. All the while, the prosecution against Ralph is making its case and pushing for a trial, all led by Mr. Waters, a weasly justice-of-the-peace working under the employ of Lady Mallory. He's working in close contact with the vengeful Mr. Forrest, who learns on his own that Lady Mallory is in love with Ralph, and tries to convince her that she'd rather see him hanged than in the arms of another woman. Such a suggestion horrifies Lady Mallory, and she vows to change her ways and do everything she can to help Ralph and Edith get together.
With the help of Timothy Meakes, who knew Mr. Forrest back in Germany when he was posing under the name of Mason, all kinds of character defects on the part of Mr. Forrest are uncovered. In the end, it's revealed that not only was John the son, and not the nephew, of Ferdinand Forrest (born out of an illegitimate union and posed, unknowingly, as the son of Ferdinand's brother so that Ferdinand could inherit his riches), but also that Edith is the daughter of Sir Andrew. The daughter that Mrs. Forrest carried died in childbirth, while they were living in Germany, and thinking Sir Andrew had died in the war, Mr. Forrest stole Edith from her nursemaid and claimed the baby as his own. The papers proving all this are found by Lucy and delivered to the auuthorities at the eleventh hour.
So it turns out that Edith and Ralph are in fact cousins, and thus free to marry one another and live in Stalbrooke Castle happily ever after. And while Sir Andrew Stalbrooke is our title character, he remains in the sidelines for much of the novel, only acting when needed, doing the right thing by the right people. And it's this that seems to be the novel's chief message: what a gentleman is, and how a gentleman acts. Stalbrooke, Ralph, Meakes are all men of different backgrounds, but all are gentlemen. The Forrests, however, are not.