The PG Edition of Chesterfield\'s Letters to His Son

T >> The Earl of Chesterfield >> The PG Edition of Chesterfield\'s Letters to His Son

LETTERS TO HIS SON

1746-1747

By the EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

on the Fine Art of becoming a

MAN OF THE WORLD

and a

GENTLEMAN



PG Editor's Notes:

O. S. and N. S.: On consultation with several specialists I have learned
that the abbreviations O. S. and N. S. relate to the difference between
the old Julian calender used in England and the Gregorian calender which
was the standard in Europe. In the mid 18th century it is said that this
once amounted to a difference of eleven days. To keep track of the
chronology of letters back and forth from England to France or other
countries in mainland Europe, Chesterfield inserted in dates the
designation O. S. (old style) and N. S. (new style).

Chesterfield demonstrates his classical education by frequent words and
sometimes entire paragraphs in various languages. In the 1901 text these
were in italics; in this etext edition I have substituted single
quotation marks around these, as in 'bon mot', and not attempted to
include the various accent marks of all the languages.

Only obvious typographical errors have been corrected. The original and
occasionally variable spelling is retained throughout.
D.W.




SPECIAL INTRODUCTION

The proud Lord Chesterfield would have turned in his grave had he known
that he was to go down to posterity as a teacher and preacher of the
gospel of not grace, but--"the graces, the graces, the graces." Natural
gifts, social status, open opportunities, and his ambition, all conspired
to destine him for high statesmanship. If anything was lacking in his
qualifications, he had the pluck and good sense to work hard and
persistently until the deficiency was made up. Something remained
lacking, and not all his consummate mastery of arts could conceal that
conspicuous want,--the want of heart.

Teacher and preacher he assuredly is, and long will be, yet no thanks are
his due from a posterity of the common people whom he so sublimely
despised. His pious mission was not to raise the level of the multitude,
but to lift a single individual upon a pedestal so high that his lowly
origin should not betray itself. That individual was his, Lord
Chesterfield's, illegitimate son, whose inferior blood should be given
the true blue hue by concentrating upon him all the externals of
aristocratic education.

Never had pupil so devoted, persistent, lavish, and brilliant a guide,
philosopher, and friend, for the parental relation was shrewdly merged in
these. Never were devotion and uphill struggle against doubts of success
more bitterly repaid. Philip Stanhope was born in 1732, when his father
was thirty-eight. He absorbed readily enough the solids of the ideal
education supplied him, but, by perversity of fate, he cared not a fig
for "the graces, the graces, the graces," which his father so wisely
deemed by far the superior qualities to be cultivated by the budding
courtier and statesman. A few years of minor services to his country were
rendered, though Chesterfield was breaking his substitute for a heart
because his son could not or would not play the superfine gentleman--on
the paternal model, and then came the news of his death, when only
thirty-six. What was a still greater shock to the lordly father, now
deaf, gouty, fretful, and at outs with the world, his informant reported
that she had been secretly married for several years to Young Hopeful,
and was left penniless with two boys. Lord Chesterfield was above all
things a practical philosopher, as hard and as exquisitely rounded and
polished as a granite column. He accepted the vanishing of his lifelong
dream with the admirable stolidity of a fatalist, and in those last days
of his radically artificial life he disclosed a welcome tenderness, a
touch of the divine, none the less so for being common duty, shown in the
few brief letters to his son's widow and to "our boys." This, and his
enviable gift of being able to view the downs as well as the ups of life
in the consoling humorous light, must modify the sterner judgment so
easily passed upon his characteristic inculcation, if not practice, of
heartlessness.

The thirteenth-century mother church in the town from which Lord
Chesterfield's title came has a peculiar steeple, graceful in its lines,
but it points askew, from whatever quarter it is seen. The writer of
these Letters, which he never dreamed would be published, is the best
self-portrayed Gentleman in literature. In everything he was naturally a
stylist, perfected by assiduous art, yet the graceful steeple is somehow
warped out of the beauty of the perpendicular. His ideal Gentleman is the
frigid product of a rigid mechanical drill, with the mien of a posture
master, the skin-deep graciousness of a French Marechal, the calculating
adventurer who cuts unpretentious worthies to toady to society magnates,
who affects the supercilious air of a shallow dandy and cherishes the
heart of a frog. True, he repeatedly insists on the obligation of
truthfulness in all things, and of, honor in dealing with the world. His
Gentleman may; nay, he must, sail with the stream, gamble in moderation
if it is the fashion, must stoop to wear ridiculous clothes and ornaments
if they are the mode, though despising his weakness all to himself, and
no true Gentleman could afford to keep out of the little gallantries
which so effectively advertised him as a man of spirit sad charm. Those
repeated injunctions of honor are to be the rule, subject to these
exceptions, which transcend the common proprieties when the subject is
the rising young gentleman of the period and his goal social success. If
an undercurrent of shady morality is traceable in this Chesterfieldian
philosophy it must, of course, be explained away by the less perfect
moral standard of his period as compared with that of our day. Whether
this holds strictly true of men may be open to discussion, but his
lordship's worldly instructions as to the utility of women as
stepping-stones to favor in high places are equally at variance with the
principles he so impressively inculcates and with modern conceptions of
social honor. The externals of good breeding cannot be over-estimated, if
honestly come by, nor is it necessary to examine too deeply into the
prime motives of those who urge them upon a generation in whose eyes
matter is more important than manner. Superficial refinement is better
than none, but the Chesterfield pulpit cannot afford to shirk the duty of
proclaiming loud and far that the only courtesy worthy of respect is that
'politesse de coeur,' the politeness of the heart, which finds expression
in consideration for others as the ruling principle of conduct. This
militates to some extent against the assumption of fine airs without the
backing of fine behavior, and if it tends to discourage the effort to use
others for selfish ends, it nevertheless pays better in the long run.

Chesterfield's frankness in so many confessions of sharp practice almost
merits his canonization as a minor saint of society. Dr. Johnson has
indeed placed him on a Simeon Stylites pillar, an immortality of penance
from which no good member of the writers' guild is likely to pray his
deliverance. He commends the fine art and high science of dissimulation
with the gusto of an apostle and the authority of an expert. Dissimulate,
but do not simulate, disguise your real sentiments, but do not falsify
them. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and mouth mostly
shut. When new or stale gossip is brought to you, never let on that you
know it already, nor that it really interests you. The reading of these
Letters is better than hearing the average comedy, in which the wit of a
single sentence of Chesterfield suffices to carry an act. His
man-of-the-world philosophy is as old as the Proverbs of Solomon, but
will always be fresh and true, and enjoyable at any age, thanks to his
pithy expression, his unfailing common sense, his sparkling wit and
charming humor. This latter gift shows in the seeming lapses from his
rigid rule requiring absolute elegance of expression at all times, when
an unexpected coarseness, in some provincial colloquialism, crops out
with picturesque force. The beau ideal of superfineness occasionally
enjoys the bliss of harking back to mother English.

Above all the defects that can be charged against the Letters, there
rises the substantial merit of an honest effort to exalt the gentle in
woman and man--above the merely genteel. "He that is gentil doeth gentil
deeds," runs the mediaeval saying which marks the distinction between the
genuine and the sham in behavior. A later age had it thus: "Handsome is
as handsome does," and in this larger sense we have agreed to accept the
motto of William of Wykeham, which declares that "Manners maketh Man."
OLIVER H. G. LEIGH




LETTER I

BATH, October 9, O. S. 1746

DEAR BOY: Your distresses in your journey from Heidelberg to
Schaffhausen, your lying upon straw, your black bread, and your broken
'berline,' are proper seasonings for the greater fatigues and distresses
which you must expect in the course of your travels; and, if one had a
mind to moralize, one might call them the samples of the accidents, rubs,
and difficulties, which every man meets with in his journey through life.
In this journey, the understanding is the 'voiture' that must carry you
through; and in proportion as that is stronger or weaker, more or less in
repair, your journey will be better or worse; though at best you will now
and then find some bad roads, and some bad inns. Take care, therefore, to
keep that necessary 'voiture' in perfect good repair; examine, improve,
and strengthen it every day: it is in the power, and ought to be the
care, of every man to do it; he that neglects it, deserves to feel, and
certainly will feel, the fatal effects of that negligence.

'A propos' of negligence: I must say something to you upon that subject.
You know I have often told you, that my affection for you was not a weak,
womanish one; and, far from blinding me, it makes me but more
quick-sighted as to your faults; those it is not only my right, but my
duty to tell you of; and it is your duty and your interest to correct
them. In the strict scrutiny which I have made into you, I have (thank
God) hitherto not discovered any vice of the heart, or any peculiar
weakness of the head: but I have discovered laziness, inattention, and
indifference; faults which are only pardonable in old men, who, in the
decline of life, when health and spirits fail, have a kind of claim to
that sort of tranquillity. But a young man should be ambitious to shine,
and excel; alert, active, and indefatigable in the means of doing it;
and, like Caesar, 'Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum.' You
seem to want that 'vivida vis animi,' which spurs and excites most young
men to please, to shine, to excel. Without the desire and the pains
necessary to be considerable, depend upon it, you never can be so; as,
without the desire and attention necessary to please, you never can
please. 'Nullum numen abest, si sit prudentia,' is unquestionably true,
with regard to everything except poetry; and I am very sure that any man
of common understanding may, by proper culture, care, attention, and
labor, make himself whatever he pleases, except a good poet. Your
destination is the great and busy world; your immediate object is the
affairs, the interests, and the history, the constitutions, the customs,
and the manners of the several parts of Europe. In this, any man of
common sense may, by common application, be sure to excel. Ancient and
modern history are, by attention, easily attainable. Geography and
chronology the same, none of them requiring any uncommon share of genius
or invention. Speaking and Writing, clearly, correctly, and with ease and
grace, are certainly to be acquired, by reading the best authors with
care, and by attention to the best living models. These are the
qualifications more particularly necessary for you, in your department,
which you may be possessed of, if you please; and which, I tell you
fairly, I shall be very angry at you, if you are not; because, as you
have the means in your hands, it will be your own fault only.

If care and application are necessary to the acquiring of those
qualifications, without which you can never be considerable, nor make a
figure in the world, they are not less necessary with regard to the
lesser accomplishments, which are requisite to make you agreeable and
pleasing in society. In truth, whatever is worth doing at all, is worth
doing well; and nothing can be done well without attention: I therefore
carry the necessity of attention down to the lowest things, even to
dancing and dress. Custom has made dancing sometimes necessary for a
young man; therefore mind it while you learn it that you may learn to do
it well, and not be ridiculous, though in a ridiculous act. Dress is of
the same nature; you must dress; therefore attend to it; not in order to
rival or to excel a fop in it, but in order to avoid singularity, and
consequently ridicule. Take great care always to be dressed like the
reasonable people of your own age, in the place where you are; whose
dress is never spoken of one way or another, as either too negligent or
too much studied.

What is commonly called an absent man, is commonly either a very weak, or
a very affected man; but be he which he will, he is, I am sure, a very
disagreeable man in company. He fails in all the common offices of
civility; he seems not to know those people to-day, whom yesterday he
appeared to live in intimacy with. He takes no part in the general
conversation; but, on the contrary, breaks into it from time to time,
with some start of his own, as if he waked from a dream. This (as I said
before) is a sure indication, either of a mind so weak that it is not
able to bear above one object at a time; or so affected, that it would be
supposed to be wholly engrossed by, and directed to, some very great and
important objects. Sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Locke, and (it may be) five or
six more, since the creation of the world, may have had a right to
absence, from that intense thought which the things they were
investigating required. But if a young man, and a man of the world, who
has no such avocations to plead, will claim and exercise that right of
absence in company, his pretended right should, in my mind, be turned
into an involuntary absence, by his perpetual exclusion out of company.
However frivolous a company may be, still, while you are among them, do
not show them, by your inattention, that you think them so; but rather
take their tone, and conform in some degree to their weakness, instead of
manifesting your contempt for them. There is nothing that people bear
more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt; and an injury is much
sooner forgotten than an insult. If, therefore, you would rather please
than offend, rather be well than ill spoken of, rather be loved than
hated; remember to have that constant attention about you which flatters
every man's little vanity; and the want of which, by mortifying his
pride, never fails to excite his resentment, or at least his ill will.
For instance, most people (I might say all people) have their weaknesses;
they have their aversions and their likings, to such or such things; so
that, if you were to laugh at a man for his aversion to a cat, or cheese
(which are common antipathies), or, by inattention and negligence, to let
them come in his way, where you could prevent it, he would, in the first
case, think himself insulted, and, in the second, slighted, and would
remember both. Whereas your care to procure for him what he likes, and to
remove from him what he hates, shows him that he is at least an object of
your attention; flatters his vanity, and makes him possibly more your
friend, than a more important service would have done. With regard to
women, attentions still below these are necessary, and, by the custom of
the world, in some measure due, according to the laws of good-breeding.

My long and frequent letters, which I send you, in great doubt of their
success, put me in mind of certain papers, which you have very lately,
and I formerly, sent up to kites, along the string, which we called
messengers; some of them the wind used to blow away, others were torn by
the string, and but few of them got up and stuck to the kite. But I will
content myself now, as I did then, if some of my present messengers do
but stick to you. Adieu!




LETTER II

DEAR BOY: You are by this time (I suppose) quite settled and at home at
Lausanne; therefore pray let me know how you pass your time there, and
what your studies, your amusements, and your acquaintances are. I take it
for granted, that you inform yourself daily of the nature of the
government and constitution of the Thirteen Cantons; and as I am ignorant
of them myself, must apply to you for information. I know the names, but
I do not know the nature of some of the most considerable offices there;
such as the Avoyers, the Seizeniers, the Banderets, and the Gros Sautier.
I desire, therefore, that you will let me know what is the particular
business, department, or province of these several magistrates. But as I
imagine that there may be some, though, I believe, no essential
difference, in the governments of the several Cantons, I would not give
you the trouble of informing yourself of each of them; but confine my
inquiries, as you may your informations, to the Canton you reside in,
that of Berne, which I take to be the principal one. I am not sure
whether the Pays de Vaud, where you are, being a conquered country, and
taken from the Dukes of Savoy, in the year 1536, has the same share in
the government of the Canton, as the German part of it has. Pray inform
yourself and me about it.

I have this moment received yours from Berne, of the 2d October, N. S.
and also one from Mr. Harte, of the same date, under Mr. Burnaby's cover.
I find by the latter, and indeed I thought so before, that some of your
letters and some of Mr. Harte's have not reached me. Wherefore, for the
future, I desire, that both he and you will direct your letters for me,
to be left ches Monsieur Wolters, Agent de S. M. Britanique, a Rotterdam,
who will take care to send them to me safe. The reason why you have not
received letters either from me or from Grevenkop was that we directed
them to Lausanne, where we thought you long ago: and we thought it to no
purpose to direct to you upon your ROUTE, where it was little likely that
our letters would meet with you. But you have, since your arrival at
Lausanne, I believe, found letters enough from me; and it may be more
than you have read, at least with attention.

I am glad that you like Switzerland so well; and am impatient to hear how
other matters go, after your settlement at Lausanne. God bless you!




LETTER III

LONDON, December 2, O.S. 1746.

DEAR BOY: I have not, in my present situation,--[His Lordship was, in the
year 1746, appointed one of his Majesty's secretaries of state.]--time
to write to you, either so much or so often as I used, while I was in a
place of much more leisure and profit; but my affection for you must not
be judged of by the number of my letters; and, though the one lessens,
the other, I assure you, does not.

I have just now received your letter of the 25th past, N. S., and, by the
former post, one from Mr. Harte; with both which I am very well pleased:
with Mr. Harte's, for the good account which he gives me of you; with
yours, for the good account which you gave me of what I desired to be
informed of. Pray continue to give me further information of the form of
government of the country you are now in; which I hope you will know most
minutely before you leave it. The inequality of the town of Lausanne
seems to be very convenient in this cold weather; because going up hill
and down will keep you warm. You say there is a good deal of good
company; pray, are you got into it? Have you made acquaintances, and with
whom? Let me know some of their names. Do you learn German yet, to read,
write, and speak it?

Yesterday, I saw a letter from Monsieur Bochat to a friend of mine; which
gave me the greatest pleasure that I have felt this great while; because
it gives so very good an account of you. Among other things which
Monsieur Bochat says to your advantage, he mentions the tender uneasiness
and concern that you showed during my illness, for which (though I will
say that you owe it to me) I am obliged to you: sentiments of gratitude
not being universal, nor even common. As your affection for me can only
proceed from your experience and conviction of my fondness for you (for
to talk of natural affection is talking nonsense), the only return I
desire is, what it is chiefly your interest to make me; I mean your
invariable practice of virtue, and your indefatigable pursuit of
knowledge. Adieu! and be persuaded that I shall love you extremely, while
you deserve it; but not one moment longer.




LETTER IV

LONDON, December 9, O. S. 1746.

DEAR BOY: Though I have very little time, and though I write by this post
to Mr. Harte, yet I cannot send a packet to Lausanne without a word or
two to yourself. I thank you for your letter of congratulation which you
wrote me, notwithstanding the pain it gave you. The accident that caused
the pain was, I presume, owing to that degree of giddiness, of which I
have sometimes taken the liberty to speak to you. The post I am now in,
though the object of most people's views and desires, was in some degree
inflicted upon me; and a certain concurrence of circumstances obliged me
to engage in it. But I feel that to go through with it requires more
strength of body and mind than I have: were you three or four years
older; you should share in my trouble, and I would have taken you into my
office; but I hope you will employ these three or four years so well as
to make yourself capable of being of use to me, if I should continue in
it so long. The reading, writing, and speaking the modern languages
correctly; the knowledge of the laws of nations, and the particular
constitution of the empire; of history, geography, and chronology, are
absolutely necessary to this business, for which I have always intended
you. With these qualifications you may very possibly be my successor,
though not my immediate one.

I hope you employ your whole time, which few people do; and that you put
every moment to, profit of some kind or other. I call company, walking,
riding, etc., employing one's time, and, upon proper occasions, very
usefully; but what I cannot forgive in anybody is sauntering, and doing
nothing at all, with a thing so precious as time, and so irrecoverable
when lost.

Are you acquainted with any ladies at Lausanne? and do you behave
yourself with politeness enough to make them desire your company?

I must finish: God bless you!




LETTER V

LONDON, February 24, O. S. 1747

SIR: In order that we may, reciprocally, keep up our French, which, for
want of practice, we might forget; you will permit me to have the honor
of assuring you of my respects in that language: and be so good to answer
me in the same. Not that I am apprehensive of your forgetting to speak
French: since it is probable that two-thirds of our daily prattle is in
that language; and because, if you leave off writing French, you may
perhaps neglect that grammatical purity, and accurate orthography, which,
in other languages, you excel in; and really, even in French, it is
better to write well than ill. However, as this is a language very proper
for sprightly, gay subjects, I shall conform to that, and reserve those
which are serious for English. I shall not therefore mention to you, at
present, your Greek or Latin, your study of the Law of Nature, or the Law
of Nations, the Rights of People, or of Individuals; but rather discuss
the subject of your Amusements and Pleasures; for, to say the truth, one
must have some. May I be permitted to inquire of what nature yours are?
Do they consist in little commercial play at cards in good company? are
they little agreeable suppers, at which cheerfulness and decency are
united? or, do you pay court to some fair one, who requires such
attentions as may be of use in contributing to polish you? Make me your
confidant upon this subject; you shall not find a severe censor: on the
contrary, I wish to obtain the employment of minister to your pleasures:
I will point them out, and even contribute to them.

Many young people adopt pleasures, for which they have not the least
taste, only because they are called by that name. They often mistake so
totally, as to imagine that debauchery is pleasure. You must allow that
drunkenness, which is equally destructive to body and mind, is a fine
pleasure. Gaming, that draws you into a thousand scrapes, leaves you
penniless, and gives you the air and manners of an outrageous madman, is
another most exquisite pleasure; is it not? As to running after women,
the consequences of that vice are only the loss of one's nose, the total
destruction of health, and, not unfrequently, the being run through the
body.