From the Desk of #1PG
It’s good to be home, last week I had to travel for some business unrelated to the Perfect Gentleman and I had time to reflect and think and write a few articles, more on those shortly. Part of my reflection was about the key principles of the modern Gentleman and why we are doing what we do.
One of the driving factors in developing the Perfect Gentleman, was the women of the world. I have mentioned before that one of the key pillars to what we teach is around Romance, why because I was asked a dozen times to teach some female friend of mine’s partner to be ‘more gentlemanly’, ‘more like Mr Darcy’ or ‘more like George Clooney’. The ideal of the romantic man, who will sweep a lady off her feet.
If we go back through the history of the Gentleman, it has always been a key pillar. The Chivalric Code, the principles of Courtly Love. All these things that existed as far back as the early Middle Ages, the drive to be a romantic. You, as a Gentleman, were expected to ‘woo’ (I love that word) your lady. You were to do it with word or song, even grand gesture. These things were to prove your love, your affection, to display your Romantic Soul.
I think in these modern, somewhat cynical and commercial times we have forgotten that is good to be romantic, it is good to be charming, it has purpose to woo those that you love. No, I am not asking you to immediately jump on your white charger draw your sword and chase dragons to prove your worth. I am talking about regaining our romantic soul.
As I have said many times the Gentleman of the past had to be a polymath and one of his skill sets he was expected to have was a creative one, this was to display his romantic soul. Now we are not all able to sculpt like Michelangelo; nor paint like Rubens; nor sing like Sinatra but we all have a modicum of some type of creative talent and use that, it could be anything. So use it, don’t be shy. It is only for the one you love not the world at large.
My small talent is with words and I think writing a small poem for your beloved is a great gift to show a romantic soul! In fact if you want help then I suggest grabbing the great Stephen Fry’s ‘The Ode Less Travelled’ which is great way to start writing poetry. I think we should do a series of articles on Poetry, I shall have a word with Nic!
In the meantime I should get back to scrawling my own poem. I am not sure whether it will graces these pages but I will drop one here for next time.
By the way the articles I mentioned, Over the course of the next week, I will be dropping a series of articles about Perfect Dates and how to prepare for Valentines Day, as preparation we wrote a great little piece here, for last year’s Valentines.
Please d0n’t forget that to succeed in wooing is to find your romantic soul, so don’t stop go out and find it and show the world your romantic side.
Respectfully & Romantically yours as always,
#1PG