Standards for Victorian heroes

     British readers of this time (1894) liked their heroes to be proper gentlemen. A proper gentleman was not a paid professional. Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, for example, is not a professional detective, but an amateur. Professionalism implied vularity to Conan Doyle's and Anthony Hope's audiences. The amateur hero was above the pedestrian middle-class concerns of income. The amateur hero was of the noble class, not the laboring class. And the amateur hero, such as Rudolf Rassendyll, worked more for the mere thrill of adventure, or for the love of accomplishment, or for the requirements of city, or for protecting a higher understanding of justice and righteousness.

(From Gary Hoppenstand's introduction to The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope)