“That’s a great expression of yours, isn’t it?” said
Tom sharply.
“What is?”
“All this ‘old sport’ business. Where’d you pick that
up?”
Tom’s (or Fitzgerald’s) question is for us to find the answer.
The term “old sport” was used by several authors before the publication of The
Great Gatsby in April 1925, but only in few occasions without details, and hardly can they answer Tom’s question.
Harry P. Dodge (1812–?)
used this term 20 times in his 1885 book, Fifty Years at the Card Table, the
Autobiography of an Old Sport, where he defined old sport in page 93:
There are hundreds of up and up fellows in this
world, who, like myself, are old sports. I know them by the score, who would
give their last dollar to help a friend.
Jay Gatsby is one of the “up and up
fellows” himself. This is sealed in the elevator boy scene in chapter two. The
elevator concept is similar to Jacob’s ladder† in chapter six. Besides that,
at the bottom of Dodge’s title page there is a quote can well describe Gatsby:
“A gentleman
and a gamester, the varnish of a complete man.” — Shakespeare
Varnish has the usage of an attractive appearance of certain
quality without sustaining reality. The quote answers Tom’s question of
Gatsby’s “old sport business†” in chapter seven.
Gatsby is a gentleman and a gamester and the varnish of a complete man. The
quote is taken from Loves Labour’s Lost:
MOTH. You are a gentleman and
a gamester, sir.
ARMADO. I
confess both, they are both the varnish of a complete man.
Dodge’s book has terms of “billiard room,” “three card monte,”
and “bogus government bonds.” They can match Winebrenner’s poolroom,
Montenegro, and Parke’s bond crime in The Great Gatsby.
Gatsby might wish everyone could be an old sport as himself. With
this in mind, reading mood of The Great Gatsby may change a little, for
the term appears 45 times in the novel. Besides that, old has the usage
of old-fashion or skillful; sport of a game or a good fellow. Combining
these usages may generate various meanings to fit related situations.
In Fitzgerald’s pencil manuscript, Gatsby calls Nick old man,
not old sport. He changed old man to old sport in the galley proof and first
print. In Dodge’s Autobiography, people call Dodge old man or old sport;
in The Great Gatsby, Nick has “an old Dodge,” which can be a car, or an
old book by Dodge.
Visualization. After the first “old sport” heard in chapter three,
Zelda (or a friend of Fitzgerald, or his imaginary patron) with the manuscript
on hand, asks the meaning of “old sport.” Fitzgerald takes out Dodge’s Autobiography
and explains Dodge’s view on old sport.