Gentlemanly Masculinity in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1790 to 1815

Abstract

The final chapter begins in the heady early days of the French Revolution, covers the long years of the French Wars, and ends in July 1815, a month after the decisive Battle of Waterloo. The Gentleman’s Magazine in the ‘Historical Chronicle’, special news sections and excerpts from the Gazette gave regular coverage to revolutionary affairs across the Channel and, from 1793, to Britain’s renewed world-wide military engagements. At war’s end in June 1815, Wellington’s dispatch from Waterloo filled ten pages, seven of them a doleful list of killed, wounded and missing officers.¹ Private soldiers were accorded only a summary total (5,087 unnamed rank-and-file on 18 June, for example) at the end. The effect was to highlight and personalize the selfless sacrifice of so many gallant gentlemen. Palpable relief on home soil was evident in correspondent M. (Mason jun.) Chamberlin’s poem, ‘On the Victories of the Duke of Wellington’, the final line of which looked to a new age, ‘When Wars and Tumults shall no more prevail’.²