Standing on one's head might have surmounted the difficulty; but the higher gymnastics Nature has denied to me.

"The Boneless Wonder" or the "Man Serpent" could, I felt, be a gentleman so easily.

To one to whom has been given only the common ordinary joints gentlemanliness is apparently an impossible ideal.
It is not only the tie.

I never read the fashionable novel without misgiving.

Some hopeless bounder is being described: "If you want to know what he is like," says the Peer of the Realm, throwing himself back in his deep easy-chair, and puffing lazily at his cigar of delicate aroma, "he is the sort of man that wears three studs in his shirt." The difficulty of being a Gentleman.
Merciful heavens! I myself wear three studs in my shirt.