Letters to His Son, 1749

T >> The Earl of Chesterfield >> Letters to His Son, 1749


I received in this instant a letter from Mr. Harte, of the 2d N. S.,
which I will answer soon; in the meantime, I return him my thanks for it,
through you. The constant good accounts which he gives me of you, will
make me suspect him of partiality, and think him 'le medecin tant mieux'.
Consider, therefore, what weight any future deposition of his against you
must necessarily have with me. As, in that case, he will be a very
unwilling, he must consequently be a very important witness. Adieu!




LETTER XC

DEAR Boy: My last was upon the subject of good-breeding; but I think it
rather set before you the unfitness and disadvantages of ill-breeding,
than the utility and necessity of good; it was rather negative than
positive. This, therefore, should go further, and explain to you the
necessity, which you, of all people living, lie under, not only of being
positively and actively well-bred, but of shining and distinguishing
yourself by your good-breeding. Consider your own situation in every
particular, and judge whether it is not essentially your interest, by
your own good-breeding to others, to secure theirs to you and that, let
me assure you, is the only way of doing it; for people will repay, and
with interest too, inattention with inattention, neglect with neglect,
and ill manners with worse: which may engage you in very disagreeable
affairs. In the next place, your profession requires, more than any
other, the nicest and most distinguished good-breeding. You will
negotiate with very little success, if you do not previously, by your
manners, conciliate and engage the affections of those with whom you are
to negotiate. Can you ever get into the confidence and the secrets of the
courts where you may happen to reside, if you have not those pleasing,
insinuating manners, which alone can procure them? Upon my word, I do not
say too much, when I say that superior good-breeding, insinuating
manners, and genteel address, are half your business. Your knowledge will
have but very little influence upon the mind, if your manners prejudice
the heart against you; but, on the other hand, how easily will you DUPE
the understanding, where you have first engaged the heart? and hearts are
by no means to be gained by that mere common civility which everybody
practices. Bowing again to those who bow to you, answering dryly those
who speak to you, and saying nothing offensive to anybody, is such
negative good-breeding that it is only not being a brute; as it would be
but a very poor commendation of any man's cleanliness to say that he did
not stink. It is an active, cheerful, officious, seducing, good-breeding
that must gain you the good-will and first sentiments of men, and the
affections of the women. You must carefully watch and attend to their
passions, their tastes, their little humors and weaknesses, and 'aller au
devant'. You must do it at the same time with alacrity and
'empressement', and not as if you graciously condescended to humor their
weaknesses.

For instance, suppose you invited anybody to dine or sup with you, you
ought to recollect if you had observed that they had any favorite dish,
and take care to provide it for them; and when it came you should say,
You SEEMED TO ME, AT SUCH AND SUCH A PLACE, TO GIVE THIS DISH A
PREFERENCE, AND THEREFORE I ORDERED IT; THIS IS THE WINE THAT I OBSERVED
YOU LIKED, AND THEREFORE I PROCURED SOME. The more trifling these things
are, the more they prove your attention for the person, and are
consequently the more engaging. Consult your own breast, and recollect
how these little attentions, when shown you by others, flatter that
degree of self-love and vanity from which no man living is free. Reflect
how they incline and attract you to that person, and how you are
propitiated afterward to all which that person says or does. The same
causes will have the same effects in your favor. Women, in a great
degree, establish or destroy every man's reputation of good-breeding; you
must, therefore, in a manner, overwhelm them with these attentions: they
are used to them, they expect them, and, to do them justice, they
commonly requite them. You must be sedulous, and rather over officious
than under, in procuring them their coaches, their chairs, their
conveniences in public places: not see what you should not see; and
rather assist, where you cannot help seeing. Opportunities of showing
these attentions present themselves perpetually; but if they do not, make
them. As Ovid advises his lover, when he sits in the Circus near his
mistress, to wipe the dust off her neck, even if there be none: 'Si
nullus, tamen excute nullum'. Your conversation with women should always
be respectful; but, at the same time, enjoue, and always addressed to
their vanity. Everything you say or do should convince them of the regard
you have (whether you have it or not) for their beauty, their wit, or
their merit. Men have possibly as much vanity as women, though of another
kind; and both art and good-breeding require, that, instead of
mortifying, you should please and flatter it, by words and looks of
approbation. Suppose (which is by no means improbable) that, at your
return to England, I should place you near the person of some one of the
royal family; in that situation, good-breeding, engaging address, adorned
with all the graces that dwell at courts, would very probably make you a
favorite, and, from a favorite, a minister; but all the knowledge and
learning in the world, without them, never would. The penetration of
princes seldom goes deeper than the surface.

It is the exterior that always engages their hearts; and I would never
advise you to give yourself much trouble about their understanding.
Princes in general (I mean those 'Porphyrogenets' who are born and bred
in purple) are about the pitch of women; bred up like them, and are to be
addressed and gained in the same manner. They always see, they seldom
weigh. Your lustre, not your solidity, must take them; your inside will
afterward support and secure what your outside has acquired. With weak
people (and they undoubtedly are three parts in four of mankind)
good-breeding, address, and manners are everything; they can go no
deeper; but let me assure you that they are a great deal even with people
of the best understandings. Where the eyes are not pleased, and the heart
is not flattered, the mind will be apt to stand out. Be this right or
wrong, I confess I am so made myself. Awkwardness and ill-breeding shock
me to that degree, that where I meet with them, I cannot find in my heart
to inquire into the intrinsic merit of that person--I hastily decide in
myself that he can have none; and am not sure that I should not even be
sorry to know that he had any. I often paint you in my imagination, in
your present 'lontananza', and, while I view you in the light of ancient
and modern learning, useful and ornamental knowledge, I am charmed with
the prospect; but when I view you in another light, and represent you
awkward, ungraceful, ill-bred, with vulgar air and manners, shambling
toward me with inattention and DISTRACTIONS, I shall not pretend to
describe to you what I feel; but will do as a skillful painter did
formerly--draw a veil before the countenance of the father.

I dare say you know already enough of architecture, to know that the
Tuscan is the strongest and most solid of all the orders; but at the same
time, it is the coarsest and clumsiest of them. Its solidity does
extremely well for the foundation and base floor of a great edifice; but
if the whole building be Tuscan, it will attract no eyes, it will stop no
passengers, it will invite no interior examination; people will take it
for granted that the finishing and furnishing cannot be worth seeing,
where the front is so unadorned and clumsy. But if, upon the solid Tuscan
foundation, the Doric, the Ionic, and the Corinthian orders rise
gradually with all their beauty, proportions, and ornaments, the fabric
seizes the most incurious eye, and stops the most careless passenger; who
solicits admission as a favor, nay, often purchases it. Just so will it
fare with your little fabric, which, at present, I fear, has more of the
Tuscan than of the Corinthian order. You must absolutely change the whole
front, or nobody will knock at the door. The several parts, which must
compose this new front, are elegant, easy, natural, superior
good-breeding; an engaging address; genteel motions; an insinuating
softness in your looks, words, and actions; a spruce, lively air,
fashionable dress; and all the glitter that a young fellow should have.

I am sure you would do a great deal for my sake; and therefore consider
at your return here, what a disappointment and concern it would be to me,
if I could not safely depute you to do the honors of my house and table;
and if I should be ashamed to present you to those who frequent both.
Should you be awkward, inattentive, and distrait, and happen to meet Mr.
L-----at my table, the consequences of that meeting must be fatal; you
would run your heads against each other, cut each other's fingers,
instead of your meat, or die by the precipitate infusion of scalding
soup.

This is really so copious a subject, that there is no end of being either
serious or ludicrous upon it. It is impossible, too, to enumerate or
state to you the various cases in good-breeding; they are infinite; there
is no situation or relation in the world so remote or so intimate, that
does not require a degree of it. Your own good sense must point it out to
you; your own good-nature must incline, and your interest prompt you to
practice it; and observation and experience must give you the manner, the
air and the graces which complete the whole.

This letter will hardly overtake you, till you are at or near Rome. I
expect a great deal in every way from your six months' stay there. My
morning hopes are justly placed in Mr. Harte, and the masters he will
give you; my evening ones, in the Roman ladies: pray be attentive to
both. But I must hint to you, that the Roman ladies are not 'les femmes
savantes, et ne vous embrasseront point pour Pamour du Grec. They must
have 'ilgarbato, il leggiadro, it disinvolto, il lusinghiero, quel non so
che, che piace, che alletta, che incanta'.

I have often asserted, that the profoundest learning and the politest
manners were by no means incompatible, though so seldom found united in
the same person; and I have engaged myself to exhibit you, as a proof of
the truth of this assertion. Should you, instead of that, happen to
disprove me, the concern indeed would be mine, but the loss will be
yours. Lord Bolingbroke is a strong instance on my side of the question;
he joins to the deepest erudition, the most elegant politeness and
good-breeding that ever any courtier and man of the world was adorned
with. And Pope very justly called him "All-accomplished St. John," with
regard to his knowledge and his manners. He had, it is true, his faults;
which proceeded from unbounded ambition, and impetuous passions; but they
have now subsided by age and experience; and I can wish you nothing
better than to be, what he is now, without being what he has been
formerly. His address pre-engages, his eloquence persuades, and his
knowledge informs all who approach him. Upon the whole, I do desire, and
insist, that from after dinner till you go to bed, you make
good-breeding, address, and manners, your serious object and your only
care. Without them, you will be nobody; with them, you may be anything.

Adieu, my dear child! My compliments to Mr. Harte.




LETTER XCI

LONDON, November 24, O. S. 1749.

DEAR Boy: Every rational being (I take it for granted) proposes to
himself some object more important than mere respiration and obscure
animal existence. He desires to distinguish himself among his
fellow-creatures; and, 'alicui negotio intentus, prreclari facinoris, aut
artis bonae, faman quaerit'. Caesar, when embarking in a storm, said,
that it was not necessary he should live; but that it was absolutely
necessary he should get to the place to which he was going. And Pliny
leaves mankind this only alternative; either of doing what deserves to be
written, or of writing what deserves to be read. As for those who do
neither, 'eorum vitam mortemque juxta aestumo; quoniam de utraque
siletur'. You have, I am convinced, one or both of these objects in view;
but you must know and use the necessary means, or your pursuit will be
vain and frivolous. In either case, 'Sapere est princihium et fons'; but
it is by no means all. That knowledge must be adorned, it must have
lustre as well as weight, or it will be oftener taken, for lead than for
gold. Knowledge you have, and will have: I am easy upon that article. But
my business, as your friend, is not to compliment you upon what you have,
but to tell you with freedom what you want; and I must tell you plainly,
that I fear you want everything but knowledge.

I have written to you so often, of late, upon good-breeding, address,
'les manieres liantes', the Graces, etc., that I shall confine this
letter to another subject, pretty near akin to them, and which, I am
sure, you are full as deficient in; I mean Style.

Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your
style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much
disadvantage, and be as ill received as your person, though ever so well
proportioned, would, if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters. It is not
every understanding that can judge of matter; but every ear can and does
judge, more or less, of style: and were I either to speak or write to the
public, I should prefer moderate matter, adorned with all the beauties
and elegancies of style, to the strongest matter in the world, ill-worded
and ill-delivered. Your business is negotiation abroad, and oratory in
the House of Commons at home. What figure can you make, in either case,
if your style be inelegant, I do not say bad? Imagine yourself writing an
office-letter to a secretary of state, which letter is to be read by the
whole Cabinet Council, and very possibly afterward laid before
parliament; any one barbarism, solecism, or vulgarism in it, would, in a
very few days, circulate through the whole kingdom, to your disgrace and
ridicule. For instance, I will suppose you had written the following
letter from The Hague to the Secretary of State at London; and leave you
to suppose the consequences of it:

MY LORD: I HAD, last night, the honor of your Lordship's letter of the
24th; and will SET ABOUT DOING the orders contained THEREIN; and IF so BE
that I can get that affair done by the next post, I will not fail FOR TO
give your Lordship an account of it by NEXT POST. I have told the French
Minister, AS HOW THAT IF that affair be not soon concluded, your Lordship
would think it ALL LONG OF HIM; and that he must have neglected FOR TO
have wrote to his court about it. I must beg leave to put your Lordship
in mind AS HOW, that I am now full three quarter in arrear; and if SO BE
that I do not very soon receive at least one half year, I shall CUT A
VERY BAD FIGURE; FOR THIS HERE place is very dear. I shall be VASTLY
BEHOLDEN to your Lordship for THAT THERE mark of your favor; and so I
REST or REMAIN, Your, etc.

You will tell me, possibly, that this is a caricatura of an illiberal and
inelegant style: I will admit it; but assure you, at the same time, that
a dispatch with less than half these faults would blow you up forever. It
is by no means sufficient to be free from faults, in speaking and
writing; but you must do both correctly and elegantly. In faults of this
kind, it is not 'ille optimus qui minimis arguetur'; but he is
unpardonable who has any at all, because it is his own fault: he need
only attend to, observe, and imitate the best authors.

It is a very true saying, that a man must be born a poet, but that he may
make himself an orator; and the very first principle of an orator is to
speak his own language, particularly, with the utmost purity and
elegance. A man will be forgiven even great errors in a foreign language;
but in his own, even the least slips are justly laid hold of and
ridiculed.

A person of the House of Commons, speaking two years ago upon naval
affairs; asserted, that we had then the finest navy UPON THE FACE OF THE
YEARTH. This happy mixture of blunder and vulgarism, you may easily
imagine, was matter of immediate ridicule; but I can assure you that it
continues so still, and will be remembered as long as he lives and
speaks. Another, speaking in defense of a gentleman, upon whom a censure
was moved, happily said that he thought that gentleman was more LIABLE to
be thanked and rewarded, than censured. You know, I presume, that LIABLE
can never be used in a good sense.

You have with you three or four of the best English authors, Dryden,
Atterbury, and Swift; read them with the utmost care, and with a
particular view to their language, and they may possibly correct that
CURIOUS INFELICITY OF DICTION, which you acquired at Westminster. Mr.
Harte excepted, I will admit that you have met with very few English
abroad, who could improve your style; and with many, I dare say, who
speak as ill as yourself, and, it may be, worse; you must, therefore,
take the more pains, and consult your authors and Mr. Harte the more. I
need not tell you how attentive the Romans and Greeks, particularly the
Athenians, were to this object. It is also a study among the Italians and
the French; witness their respective academies and dictionaries for
improving and fixing their languages. To our shame be it spoken, it is
less attended to here than in any polite country; but that is no reason
why you should not attend to it; on the contrary, it will distinguish you
the more. Cicero says, very truly, that it is glorious to excel other men
in that very article, in which men excel brutes; SPEECH.

Constant experience has shown me, that great purity and elegance of
style, with a graceful elocution, cover a multitude of faults, in either
a speaker or a writer. For my own part, I confess (and I believe most
people are of my mind) that if a speaker should ungracefully mutter or
stammer out to me the sense of an angel, deformed by barbarism and
solecisms, or larded with vulgarisms, he should never speak to me a
second time, if I could help it. Gain the heart, or you gain nothing; the
eyes and the ears are the only roads to the heart. Merit and knowledge
will not gain hearts, though they will secure them when gained. Pray,
have that truth ever in your mind. Engage the eyes by your address, air,
and motions; soothe the ears by the elegance and harmony of your diction;
the heart will certainly follow; and the whole man, or woman, will as
certainly follow the heart. I must repeat it to you, over and over again,
that with all the knowledge which you may have at present, or hereafter
acquire, and with all merit that ever man had, if you have not a graceful
address, liberal and engaging manners, a prepossessing air, and a good
degree of eloquence in speaking and writing; you will be nobody; but will
have the daily mortification of seeing people, with not one-tenth part of
your merit or knowledge, get the start of you, and disgrace you, both in
company and in business.

You have read "Quintilian," the best book in the world to form an orator;
pray read 'Cicero de Oratore', the best book in the world to finish one.
Translate and retranslate from and to Latin, Greek, and English; make
yourself a pure and elegant English style: it requires nothing but
application. I do not find that God has made you a poet; and I am very
glad that he has not: therefore, for God's sake, make yourself an orator,
which you may do. Though I still call you boy, I consider you no longer
as such; and when I reflect upon the prodigious quantity of manure that
has been laid upon you, I expect that you should produce more at
eighteen, than uncultivated soils do at eight-and-twenty.

Pray tell Mr. Harte that I have received his letter of the 13th, N. S.
Mr. Smith was much in the right not to let you go, at this time of the
year, by sea; in the summer you may navigate as much as you please; as,
for example, from Leghorn to Genoa, etc. Adieu.




LETTER XCII

LONDON, November 27, O. S. 1749.

DEAR BOY: While the Roman Republic flourished, while glory was pursued,
and virtue practiced, and while even little irregularities and
indecencies, not cognizable by law, were, however, not thought below the
public care, censors were established, discretionally to supply, in
particular cases, the inevitable defects of the law, which must and can
only be general. This employment I assume to myself with regard to your
little republic, leaving the legislative power entirely to Mr. Harte; I
hope, and believe, that he will seldom, or rather never, have occasion to
exert his supreme authority; and I do by no means suspect you of any
faults that may require that interposition. But, to tell you the plain
truth, I am of opinion that my censorial power will not be useless to
you, nor a sinecure to me. The sooner you make it both, the better for us
both. I can now exercise this employment only upon hearsay, or, at most,
written evidence; and therefore shall exercise it with great lenity and
some diffidence; but when we meet, and that I can form my judgment upon
ocular and auricular evidence, I shall no more let the least impropriety,
indecorum, or irregularity pass uncensured, than my predecessor Cato did.
I shall read you with the attention of a critic, not with the partiality
of an author: different in this respect, indeed, from most critics, that
I shall seek for faults only to correct and not to expose them. I have
often thought, and still think, that there are few things which people in
general know less, than how to love and how to hate. They hurt those they
love by a mistaken indulgence, by a blindness, nay, often by a partiality
to their faults. Where they hate they hurt themselves, by ill-timed
passion and rage. Fortunately for you, I never loved you in that mistaken
manner. From your infancy, I made you the object of my most serious
attention, and not my plaything. I consulted your real good, not your
humors or fancies; and I shall continue to do so while you want it, which
will probably be the case during our joint lives; for, considering the
difference of our ages, in the course of nature, you will hardly have
acquired experience enough of your own, while I shall be in condition of
lending you any of mine. People in general will much better bear being,
told of their vices or crimes, than of their little failings and
weaknesses. They, in some degree, justify or excuse (as they think) the
former, by strong passions, seductions, and artifices of others, but to
be told of, or to confess, their little failings and weaknesses, implies
an inferiority of parts, too mortifying to that self-love and vanity,
which are inseparable from our natures. I have been intimate enough with
several people to tell them that they had said or done a very criminal
thing; but I never was intimate enough with any man, to tell him, very
seriously, that he had said or done a very foolish one. Nothing less than
the relation between you and me can possibly authorize that freedom; but
fortunately for you, my parental rights, joined to my censorial powers,
give it me in its fullest extent, and my concern for you will make me
exert it. Rejoice, therefore, that there is one person in the world who
can and will tell you what will be very useful to you to know, and yet
what no other man living could or would tell you. Whatever I shall tell
you of this kind, you are very sure, can have no other motive than your
interest; I can neither be jealous nor envious of your reputation or
fortune, which I must be both desirous and proud to establish and
promote; I cannot be your rival either in love or in business; on the
contrary, I want the rays of your rising to reflect new lustre upon my
setting light. In order to this, I shall analyze you minutely, and
censure you freely, that you may not (if possible) have one single spot,
when in your meridian.

There is nothing that a young fellow, at his first appearance in the
world, has more reason to dread, and consequently should take more pains
to avoid, than having any ridicule fixed upon him. It degrades him with
the most reasonable part of mankind; but it ruins him with the rest; and
I have known many a man undone by acquiring a ridiculous nickname: I
would not, for all the riches in the world, that you should acquire one
when you return to England. Vices and crimes excite hatred and reproach;
failings, weaknesses, and awkwardnesses, excite ridicule; they are laid
hold of by mimics, who, though very contemptible wretches themselves,
often, by their buffoonery, fix ridicule upon their betters. The little
defects in manners, elocution, address, and air (and even of figure,
though very unjustly), are the objects of ridicule, and the causes of
nicknames. You cannot imagine the grief it would give me, and the
prejudice it would do you, if, by way of distinguishing you from others
of your name, you should happen to be called Muttering Stanhope, Absent
Stanhope, Ill-bred Stanhope, or Awkward, Left-legged Stanhope: therefore,
take great care to put it out of the power of Ridicule itself to give you
any of these ridiculous epithets; for, if you get one, it will stick to
you, like the envenomed shirt. The very first day that I see you, I shall
be able to tell you, and certainly shall tell you, what degree of danger
you are in; and I hope that my admonitions, as censor, may prevent the
censures of the public. Admonitions are always useful; is this one or
not? You are the best judge; it is your own picture which I send you,
drawn, at my request, by a lady at Venice: pray let me know how far, in
your conscience, you think it like; for there are some parts of it which
I wish may, and others, which I should be sorry were. I send you,
literally, the copy of that part of her letter, to her friend here, which
relates to you.--[In compliance to your orders, I have examined young
Stanhope carefully, and think I have penetrated into his character. This
is his portrait, which I take to be a faithful one. His face is pleasing,
his countenance sensible, and his look clever. His figure is at present
rather too square; but if he shoots up, which he has matter and years
for, he will then be of a good size. He has, undoubtedly, a great fund of
acquired knowledge; I am assured that he is master of the learned
languages. As for French, I know he speaks it perfectly, and, I am told,
German as well. The questions he asks are judicious; and denote a thirst
after knowledge. I cannot say that he appears equally desirous of
pleasing, for he seems to neglect attentions and the graces. He does not
come into a room well, nor has he that easy, noble carriage, which would
be proper for him. It is true, he is as yet young and inexperienced; one
may therefore reasonably hope that his exercises, which he has not yet
gone through, and good company, in which he is still a novice, will
polish, and give all that is wanting to complete him. What seems
necessary for that purpose, would, be an attachment to some woman of
fashion, and who knows the world. Some Madame de l'Ursay would be the
proper person. In short, I can assure you, that he has everything which
Lord Chesterfield can wish him, excepting that carriage, those graces,
and the style used in the best company; which he will certainly acquire
in time, and by frequenting the polite world. If he should not, it would
be great pity, since he so well deserves to possess them. You know their
importance. My Lord, his father, knows it too, he being master of them
all. To conclude, if little Stanhope acquires the graces, I promise you
he will make his way; if not, he will be stopped in a course, the goal of
which he might attain with honor.]