|LORD CHESTERFIELD detested proverbs. For him they were not so much
the wit of one man and the wisdom of many, as the cheap rhetoric of the
vulgar, to which no person of condition could possibly condescend. Yet
it is his Lordship's misfortune to suggest one of the homeliest. Nothing
so well describes the state of his modern reputation as the familiar
adage, 'Give a dog a bad name, and hang him.' Dr. Johnson, who had more
or less valid reasons for antagonism, characterized the famous letters
in one of those vigorous verdicts, the compactness of which has
sometimes been allowed to condone injustice. They taught, he declared,
'the morals of a courtesan, * and the manners of a dancing-master.'
* Modern usage here requires the alteration of a word.
Cowper followed suit. Addressing the author in the 'Progress of Error'
as Petronius, he informed him that the tears of the Muses would 'scald
his memory;' and after apostrophizing him as a 'graybeard corrupter of
our listening youth,' and a 'polish'd and high-finish'd foe to Truth,'
adjured him finally (and rather fatuously) to send from the shades
some message of recantation,--in all of which there is more of
poetic phraseology than energy of reproach. With the novelists Lord
Chesterfield has hardly fared better. Dickens, who drew upon him for
Sir John Chester in 'Barnaby Rudge,' makes that personage declare
enthusiastically that 'in every page of this enlightened writer, he
finds some captivating hypocrisy which had never occurred to him before,
or some superlative piece of selfishness to which he was utterly a
stranger.' The picture in Thackeray's 'Virginians' is quieter and
more lifelike. We are shown Lord Chesterfield at Tunbridge, when Harry
Warrington makes his _debut_ there--'a little beetle-browed, hook-nosed,
high-shouldered gentleman,' much like his portrait by Gainsborough,
sitting over his wine at the White Horse with M. de Pollnitz, rallying
and ironically complimenting that ambiguous adventurer, making
magnificent apology to Mr. Warrington when he has unwittingly insulted
him, and, at a later period, with his customary composure, losing six
hundred pounds to him at cards. As to this last detail there may be
doubts. Thackeray probably counted upon human frailty and the inveteracy
of an ancient habit, but Lord Carnarvon says that Lord Chesterfield gave
up play when he accepted office, and he had been Ambassador at the Hague
and Viceroy in Ireland years before he met Colonel Esmond's grandson at
M. Barbeau's much-frequented ordinary in the Wells.
Turning to the two quarto volumes which, in March, 1774, were sent forth
from Golden Square by that not entirely discreet and certainly rapacious
representative, his Lordship's daughter-in-law, one's first impression
is that they have been more talked about in the light of Johnson's
epigram than read by that of their own merits. No one, of course, would
affirm, even allowing for the corrupt state of the society in which
they were written, that their moral tone, in one respect especially, is
defensible; nor can it be denied, even supposing them to emanate from
a friend rather than a parent, that they contain passages which, to
our modern taste, are more than unpleasant. But without in the
least attempting to extenuate these objectionable features of the
correspondence, it is but just to its author to remember that it was
never intended either for the public instruction or for the public eye.
When Mrs. Eugenia Stanhope trusted the letters would be of use 'to the
Youth of these Kingdoms,' she was palpably overlooking this obvious
fact. If Lord Chesterfield had published them himself, he would no doubt
have considerably edited them; but it is extremely unlikely that he
would ever have published them at all. The principles which he desired
to instil into Philip Stanhope were the principles of the society in
which Philip Stanhope was moving--they were those of his patron, Lord
Albemarle, and his preceptress, Lady Hervey. They were intended not for
the world at large, but for the narrower world of fashion.
The systematic dissimulation which they appear to inculcate has also
been urged against them. But here again it seems to have been forgotten
that young Stanhope was intended for a politician and statesman,--that
what his father most desired for him was the successes of a court and
the rewards of diplomacy. After all, the _volto sciolto_ and _pensieri
stretti_, the 'looks loose' and 'thoughts close,' * which he so
persistently enjoins, are no more than the unimpeachable Sir Henry
Wotton impressed upon the equally unimpeachable John Milton.
* A more popular rendering of this useful maxim is the
'heyes hopen and mouth shut' of Thomas the footman in 'The
Newcomes,' eh. xlvii.
Lord Chesterfield puts his points coldly and cynically; but by his
excellent sermon on the _suaviter in modo_ and the _fortiter in re_,
he preaches in reality little beyond that necessary conciliation of the
feelings of others which is inculcated by almost every manual of
ethics. Again, if he harps somewhat wearisomely upon '_les manières, les
bienséances, les agrémens_, it is precisely because these were the
weak points of his pupil, who, master at twenty of Latin, Greek, and
political history, speaking readily German, French, and Italian,
having a remarkable memory and a laudable curiosity, still retained an
awkwardness of address which neither Marcel nor Desnoyers could wholly
overcome, * and a defective enunciation which would have resisted all
the pebbles of Demosthenes.
* Desnoyers was the fashionable English dancing-master;
Marcel, the French one.
For the rest, Lord Chesterfield's teaching is, in great measure,
unexceptionable. Its worst fault, in addition to those already
mentioned, is that it too frequently confuses being with seeming, and
the assumption of a virtue with the actual possession of it. But many of
its injunctions are most praiseworthy, and even admirable as aphorisms;
and those to whom their note of worldly wisdom is distasteful must
blame not so much the writer, as Horace and Cicero, Bolingbroke and La
Bruyère, De Retz and La Rochefoucault, from whom he had compiled his
rules for conduct, and shaped his scheme of life.
When Philip Stanhope died at six-and-thirty, neither '_paitri [sic] de
graces_' as Lord Chesterfield hoped, nor particularly distinguished in
statecraft (he was simply Envoy at Dresden), it was discovered that he
had so far adopted the policy of '_pensieri stretti_ as to have been
married privately for some years. Probably the shock of this discovery
was softened to his father (who nevertheless behaved liberally to the
widow) by the fact that, in the failure of his plans for his son, he had
already begun to interest himself in the training of another member of
his family, a little boy who was destined to be his successor in the
earldom. Seven years before Philip Stanhope's death he had opened a new
series of letters with a godchild, also Philip Stanhope, and the son of
Mr. Arthur Stanhope, of Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire. Beginning when
the boy was five and a half, the correspondence was continued for nine
years, following him from 'Mr. Robert's boarding School at Marybone by
London' to the house in Southampton Row of his tutor, the notorious
Dr. Dodd. When the first letter was written, Lord Chesterfield was
sixty-seven, and the last was penned only three years before his death.
This is the collection which, after being mislaid for a long period,
was published in 1889 by the late Lord Carnarvon, to whom it had been
presented by his father-in-law, the sixth Earl of Chesterfield. It
contributes not a little to the revision of the popular idea formed of
the writer,--an idea, it may be added, which, upon re-examination of the
earlier correspondence, had already been considerably modified by such
critics as Mr. Abraham Hayward and M. Sainte-Beuve. Superficially, the
letters resemble their predecessors, and the outline of education is
much the same. Little Philip was to be 'perfectly master' of that French
which his godfather loved so dearly, and in which he wrote so often
and so well; he was to be thoroughly grounded in History, Geography,
Dancing, Italian, German; he was to be proficient in Greek and Latin,
and he was to complete his studies in the 'well-regulated republic' of
Geneva, the salutary austerity of which was then usefully tempered
by the presence of Voltaire and the French refugees. Many of the new
letters reproduce the old precepts; there are even similarities of
thought and phraseology; and though the _volto sciolto_ is not obtruded,
the _suaviter in modo_ is still persistently advocated. But age has
brought its softening influences--the moral tone is ostensibly higher,
and the old worldly _savoir-faire_ has lost much of its ancient
cynicism. Some of the axioms which Lord Carnarvon quotes are remarkable
for their accent of earnestness; others, as he observes, are 'almost
theological' in tone. Saint Augustine, for example, could hardly say
more than this: 'Si je pouvois empêcher qu'il n'y eut un seul malheureux
sur la Terre, j'y sacrifierois avec plaisir mon bien, mes soins, et
même ma santé. C'est le grand devoir de l'homme, surtout de l'homme
chrétien.' The next is nearer to the elder manner: 'Ayez une grande
Charité pour l'amour de Dieu et une extrême politesse pour l'amour de
vous même.' And here is a graver utterance than either: 'God has been
so good as to write in all our hearts the duty that He expects from us,
which is adoration and thanksgiving and doing all the good we can to our
fellow creatures.'
It is extraordingry to note what an infinity of trouble Lord
Chesterfield took to arouse and amuse his little pupil. Sometimes the
letter is an anecdote, biographical or historical; sometimes a cunningly
contrived French vocabulary, one of which, _inter alia_, comprehensively
defines 'Les Graces' as 'Something gracefull, genteel, and engaging in
the air and figure.' Others (like the admirable papers in 'The World')
denounce the prevailing vice of drunkenness. 'Fuyez le vin, car c'est
un poison lent, mais sur.' Occasionally a little diagram aids the
exposition, as when a rude circle, with a tiny figure at top, stands for
'le petit Stanhope' and 'ses antipodes;' in other cases, the course
of instruction in politeness and public speaking is diversified
by definitions of similes and metaphors, epigrams, anagrams, and
_logogriphes_. Finally, there is a complete treatise, in fourteen
epistles, on the 'Art of Pleasing,' from which we extract the following
on wit and satire:
'When wit exerts itself in satyr it is a most malignant distemper; wit
it is true may be shown in satyr, but satyr does not constitute wit,
as most fools imagine it does. A man of real wit will find a thousand
better occasions of showing it. Abstain therefore most carefully from
satyr, which though it fall upon no particular person in company, and
momentarily from the malignity of the human heart, pleases all; upon
reflexion it frightens all too, they think it may be their turn next,
and will hate you for what they find you could say of them more, than
be obliged to you for what you do not say. Fear and hatred are next door
neighbours. The more wit you have the more good nature and politeness
you must show, to induce people to pardon your superiority, for that is
no easy matter.'
Alas! and alas! that so much labour and patience should have been lost.
For Philip the Second, though he made no secret marriage, was not a
much greater success than Philip the First. He turned out a commonplace
country gentleman, amiable, methodical, agricultural, but wholly
overshadowed and obliterated by the fame of the accomplished statesman
and orator who had directed his studies.
'The bows of eloquence are buried with the Archers.' It is impossible,
even with the aid of the phonograph, to recapture the magnetic
personality, the fervour of gesture that winged the words and carried
conviction to the hearer. Equally impossible is it, in this age of
egotisms and eccentricities that pass for character, to realize the
fascination of those splendid manners for which Lord Chesterfield was
celebrated.
The finished elegance, the watchful urbanity, the perfect ease and
self-possession, which Fielding commended, and Johnson could not
contest, are things too foreign to our restless overconsciousness to
be easily intelligible. But we can at least call up--not without
compassionate admiration--the pathetic picture of the deaf old gentleman
who had been the rival of 'silver-tongued Murray' and the correspondent
of Montesquieu, sitting down at seventy in his solitary study at Babiole
* to write, in that wonderful hand of which Lord Carnarvon gives a
facsimile, his periodical letter of advice to a _petit bout d'homme_ at
Parson Dodd's in Southampton Row, concerning whose career in life he had
formed the fondest--and the vainest--expectations.
* Babiole was His Lordship's country-house at Blackheath, so
entitled in imitation of Bagatelle, the seat near Paris of
his friend Madame la Marquise de Monconseil. It was also the
name of a house of Madame de Pompadour.