DEAR BOY: The art of pleasing is a very necessary one to possess; but a
very difficult one to acquire. It can hardly be reduced to rules; and
your own good sense and observation will teach you more of it than I can.
Do as you would be done by, is the surest method that I know of pleasing.
Observe carefully what pleases you in others, and probably the same thing
in you will please others. If you are pleased with the complaisance and
attention of others to your humors, your tastes, or your weaknesses,
depend upon it the same complaisance and attention, on your part to
theirs, will equally please them. Take the tone of the company that you
are in, and do not pretend to give it; be serious, gay, or even trifling,
as you find the present humor of the company; this is an attention due
from every individual to the majority. Do not tell stories in company;
there is nothing more tedious and disagreeable; if by chance you know a
very short story, and exceedingly applicable to the present subject of
conversation, tell it in as few words as possible; and even then, throw
out that you do not love to tell stories; but that the shortness of it
tempted you. Of all things, banish the egotism out of your conversation,
and never think of entertaining people with your own personal concerns,
or private, affairs; though they are interesting to you, they are tedious
and impertinent to everybody else; besides that, one cannot keep one’s
own private affairs too secret. Whatever you think your own excellencies
may be, do not affectedly display them in company; nor labor, as many
people do, to give that turn to the conversation, which may supply you
with an opportunity of exhibiting them. If they are real, they will
infallibly be discovered, without your pointing them out yourself, and
with much more advantage. Never maintain an argument with heat and
clamor, though you think or know yourself to be in the right: but give
your opinion modestly and coolly, which is the only way to convince; and,
if that does not do, try to change the conversation, by saying, with good
humor, “We shall hardly convince one another, nor is it necessary that we
should, so let us talk of something else.”
Remember that there is a local propriety to be observed in all companies;
and that what is extremely proper in one company, may be, and often is,
highly improper in another.
The jokes, the ‘bonmots,’ the little adventures, which may do very well
in one company, will seem flat and tedious, when related in another. The
particular characters, the habits, the cant of one company, may give
merit to a word, or a gesture, which would have none at all if divested
of those accidental circumstances. Here people very commonly err; and
fond of something that has entertained them in one company, and in
certain circumstances, repeat it with emphasis in another, where it is
either insipid, or, it may be, offensive, by being ill-timed or
misplaced. Nay, they often do it with this silly preamble; “I will tell
you an excellent thing”; or, “I will tell you the best thing in the
world.” This raises expectations, which, when absolutely disappointed,
make the relater of this excellent thing look, very deservedly, like a
fool.
If you would particularly gain the affection and friendship of particular
people, whether men or women, endeavor to find out the predominant
excellency, if they have one, and their prevailing weakness, which
everybody has; and do justice to the one, and something more than justice
to the other. Men have various objects in which they may excel, or at
least would be thought to excel; and, though they love to hear justice
done to them, where they know that they excel, yet they are most and best
flattered upon those points where they wish to excel, and yet are
doubtful whether they do or not. As, for example, Cardinal Richelieu, who
was undoubtedly the ablest statesman of his time, or perhaps of any
other, had the idle vanity of being thought the best poet too; he envied
the great Corneille his reputation, and ordered a criticism to be written
upon the “Cid.” Those, therefore, who flattered skillfully, said little
to him of his abilities in state affairs, or at least but ‘en passant,’
and as it might naturally occur. But the incense which they gave him, the
smoke of which they knew would turn his head in their favor, was as a
‘bel esprit’ and a poet. Why? Because he was sure of one excellency, and
distrustful as to the other. You will easily discover every man’s
prevailing vanity, by observing his favorite topic of conversation; for
every man talks most of what he has most a mind to be thought to excel
in. Touch him but there, and you touch him to the quick. The late Sir
Robert Walpole (who was certainly an able man) was little open to
flattery upon that head; for he was in no doubt himself about it; but his
prevailing weakness was, to be thought to have a polite and happy turn to
gallantry; of which he had undoubtedly less than any man living: it was
his favorite and frequent subject of conversation: which proved, to those
who had any penetration, that it was his prevailing weakness. And they
applied to it with success.
Women have, in general, but one object, which is their beauty; upon
which, scarce any flattery is too gross for them to swallow. Nature has
hardly formed a woman ugly enough to be insensible to flattery upon her
person; if her face is so shocking, that she must in some degree, be
conscious of it, her figure and her air, she trusts, make ample amends
for it. If her figure is deformed, her face, she thinks, counterbalances
it. If they are both bad, she comforts herself that she has graces; a
certain manner; a ‘je ne sais quoi,’ still more engaging than beauty.
This truth is evident, from the studied and elaborate dress of the
ugliest women in the world. An undoubted, uncontested, conscious beauty,
is of all women, the least sensible of flattery upon that head; she knows
that it is her due, and is therefore obliged to nobody for giving it her.
She must be flattered upon her understanding; which, though she may
possibly not doubt of herself, yet she suspects that men may distrust.
Do not mistake me, and think that I mean to recommend to you abject and
criminal flattery: no; flatter nobody’s vices or crimes: on the contrary,
abhor and discourage them. But there is no living in the world without a
complaisant indulgence for people’s weaknesses, and innocent, though
ridiculous vanities. If a man has a mind to be thought wiser, and a woman
handsomer than they really are, their error is a comfortable one to
themselves, and an innocent one with regard to other people; and I would
rather make them my friends, by indulging them in it, than my enemies, by
endeavoring (and that to no purpose) to undeceive them.
There are little attentions likewise, which are infinitely engaging, and
which sensibly affect that degree of pride and self-love, which is
inseparable from human nature; as they are unquestionable proofs of the
regard and consideration which we have for the person to whom we pay
them. As, for example, to observe the little habits, the likings, the
antipathies, and the tastes of those whom we would gain; and then take
care to provide them with the one, and to secure them from the other;
giving them, genteelly, to understand, that you had observed that they
liked such a dish, or such a room; for which reason you had prepared it:
or, on the contrary, that having observed they had an aversion to such a
dish, a dislike to such a person, etc., you had taken care to avoid
presenting them. Such attention to such trifles flatters self-love much
more than greater things, as it makes people think themselves almost the
only objects of your thoughts and care.
These are some of the arcana necessary for your initiation in the great
society of the world. I wish I had known them better at your age; I have
paid the price of three-and-fifty years for them, and shall not grudge
it, if you reap the advantage. Adieu.