LONDON, September 22, O. S. 1749.
DEAR BOY: If I had faith in philters and love potions, I should suspect
that you had given Sir Charles Williams some, by the manner in which he
speaks of you, not only to me, but to everybody else. I will not repeat
to you what he says of the extent and correctness of your knowledge, as
it might either make you vain, or persuade you that you had already
enough of what nobody can have too much. You will easily imagine how many
questions I asked, and how narrowly I sifted him upon your subject; he
answered me, and I dare say with truth, just as I could have wished; till
satisfied entirely with his accounts of your character and learning, I
inquired into other matters, intrinsically indeed of less consequence,
but still of great consequence to every man, and of more to you than to
almost any man: I mean, your address, manners, and air. To these
questions, the same truth which he had observed before, obliged him to
give me much less satisfactory answers. And as he thought himself, in
friendship both to you and me, obliged to tell me the disagreeable as
well as the agreeable truths, upon the same principle I think myself
obliged to repeat them to you.
He told me then, that in company you were frequently most PROVOKINGLY
inattentive, absent; and distrait; that you came into a room, and
presented yourself, very awkwardly; that at table you constantly threw
down knives, forks, napkins, bread, etc., and that you neglected your
person and dress, to a degree unpardonable at any age, and much more so
at yours.
These things, howsoever immaterial they may seem to people who do not
know the world, and the nature of mankind, give me, who know them to be
exceedingly material, very great concern. I have long distrusted you, and
therefore frequently admonished you, upon these articles; and I tell you
plainly, that I shall not be easy till I hear a very different account of
them. I know no one thing more offensive to a company than that
inattention and DISTRACTION. It is showing them the utmost contempt; and
people never forgive contempt. No man is distrait with the man he fears,
or the woman he loves; which is a proof that every man can get the better
of that DISTRACTION, when he thinks it worth his while to do so; and,
take my word for it, it is always worth his while. For my own part, I
would rather be in company with a dead man, than with an absent one; for
if the dead man gives me no pleasure; at least he shows me no contempt;
whereas, the absent man, silently indeed, but very plainly, tells me that
he does not think me worth his attention. Besides, can an absent man make
any observations upon the characters customs, and manners of the
company? No. He may be in the best companies all his lifetime (if they
will admit him, which, if I were they, I would not) and never be one jot
the wiser. I never will converse with an absent man; one may as well talk
to a deaf one. It is, in truth, a practical blunder, to address ourselves
to a man who we see plainly neither hears, minds, or understands us.
Moreover, I aver that no man is, in any degree, fit for either business
or conversation, who cannot and does not direct and command his attention
to the present object, be that what it will. You know, by experience,
that I grudge no expense in your education, but I will positively not
keep you a Flapper. You may read, in Dr. Swift, the description of these
flappers, and the use they were of to your friends the Laputans; whose
minds (Gulliver says) are so taken up with intense speculations, that
they neither can speak nor attend to the discourses of others, without
being roused by some external traction upon the organs of speech and
hearing; for which reason, those people who are able to afford it, always
keep a flapper in their family, as one of their domestics; nor ever walk
about, or make visits without him. This flapper is likewise employed
diligently to attend his master in his walks; and, upon occasion, to give
a soft flap upon his eyes, because he is always so wrapped up in
cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling down every
precipice, and bouncing his head against every post, and, in the streets,
of jostling others, or being jostled into the kennel himself. If
CHRISTIAN will undertake this province into the bargain, with all my
heart; but I will not allow him any increase of wages upon that score. In
short, I give you fair warning, that, when we meet, if you are absent in
mind, I will soon be absent in body; for it will be impossible for me to
stay in the room; and if at table you throw down your knife, plate,
bread, etc., and hack the wing of a chicken for half an hour, without
being able to cut it off, and your sleeve all the time in another dish, I
must rise from the table to escape the fever you would certainly give me.
Good God! how I should be shocked, if you came into my room, for the
first time, with two left legs, presenting yourself with all the graces
and dignity of a tailor, and your clothes hanging upon you, like those in
Monmouth street, upon tenter-hooks! whereas, I expect, nay, require, to
see you present yourself with the easy and genteel air of a man of
fashion, who has kept good company. I expect you not only well dressed
but very well dressed; I expect a gracefulness in all your motions, and
something particularly engaging in your address, All this I expect, and
all this it is in your power, by care and attention, to make me find; but
to tell you the plain truth, if I do not find it, we shall not converse
very much together; for I cannot stand inattention and awkwardness; it
would endanger my health. You have often seen, and I have as often made
you observe L----‘s distinguished inattention and awkwardness. Wrapped
up, like a Laputan, in intense thought, and possibly sometimes in no
thought at all (which, I believe, is very often the case with absent
people), he does not know his most intimate acquaintance by sight, or
answers them as if he were at cross purposes. He leaves his hat in one
room, his sword in another, and would leave his shoes in a third, if his
buckles, though awry, did not save them: his legs and arms, by his
awkward management of them, seem to have undergone the question
extraordinaire; and his head, always hanging upon one or other of his
shoulders, seems to have received the first stroke upon a block. I
sincerely value and esteem him for his parts, learning, and virtue; but,
for the soul of me, I cannot love him in company. This will be
universally the case, in common life, of every inattentive, awkward man,
let his real merit and knowledge be ever so great. When I was of your
age, I desired to shine, as far as I was able, in every part of life; and
was as attentive to my manners, my dress, and my air, in company of
evenings, as to my books and my tutor in the mornings. A young fellow
should be ambitious to shine in everything--and, of the two, always
rather overdo than underdo. These things are by no means trifles: they
are of infinite consequence to those who are to be thrown into the great
world, and who would make a figure or a fortune in it. It is not
sufficient to deserve well; one must please well too. Awkward,
disagreeable merit will never carry anybody far. Wherever you find a good
dancing-master, pray let him put you upon your haunches; not so much for
the sake of dancing, as for coming into a room, and presenting yourself
genteelly and gracefully. Women, whom you ought to endeavor to please,
cannot forgive vulgar and awkward air and gestures; ‘il leur faut du
brillant’. The generality of men are pretty like them, and are equally
taken by the same exterior graces.
I am very glad that you have received the diamond buckles safe; all I
desire in return for them is, that they may be buckled even upon your
feet, and that your stockings may not hide them. I should be sorry that
you were an egregious fop; but, I protest, that of the two, I would
rather have you a fop than a sloven. I think negligence in my own dress,
even at my age, when certainly I expect no advantages from my dress,
would be indecent with regard to others. I have done with fine clothes;
but I will have my plain clothes fit me, and made like other people’s: In
the evenings, I recommend to you the company of women of fashion, who
have a right to attention and will be paid it. Their company will smooth
your manners, and give you a habit of attention and respect, of which you
will find the advantage among men.
My plan for you, from the beginning, has been to make you shine equally
in the learned and in the polite world; the former part is almost
completed to my wishes, and will, I am persuaded, in a little time more,
be quite so. The latter part is still in your power to complete; and I
flatter myself that you will do it, or else the former part will avail
you very little; especially in your department, where the exterior
address and graces do half the business; they must be the harbingers of
your merit, or your merit will be very coldly received; all can, and do
judge of the former, few of the latter.
Mr. Harte tells me that you have grown very much since your illness; if
you get up to five feet ten, or even nine inches, your figure will
probably be a good one; and if well dressed and genteel, will probably
please; which is a much greater advantage to a man than people commonly
think. Lord Bacon calls it a letter of recommendation.
I would wish you to be the omnis homo, ‘l’homme universel’. You are
nearer it, if you please, than ever anybody was at your age; and if you
will but, for the course of this next year only, exert your whole
attention to your studies in the morning, and to your address, manners,
air and tournure in the evenings, you will be the man I wish you, and the
man that is rarely seen.
Our letters go, at best, so irregularly, and so often miscarry totally,
that for greater security I repeat the same things. So, though I
acknowledged by last post Mr. Harte’s letter of the 8th September, N. S.,
I acknowledge it again by this to you. If this should find you still at
Verona, let it inform you that I wish you would set out soon for Naples;
unless Mr. Harte should think it better for you to stay at Verona, or any
other place on this side Rome, till you go there for the Jubilee. Nay, if
he likes it better, I am very willing that you should go directly from
Verona to Rome; for you cannot have too much of Rome, whether upon
account of the language, the curiosities, or the company. My only reason
for mentioning Naples, is for the sake of the climate, upon account of
your health; but if Mr. Harte thinks that your health is now so well
restored as to be above climate, he may steer your course wherever he
thinks proper: and, for aught I know, your going directly to Rome, and
consequently staying there so much the longer, may be as well as anything
else. I think you and I cannot put our affairs in better hands than in
Mr. Harte’s; and I will stake his infallibility against the Pope’s, with
some odds on his side. Apropos of the Pope: remember to be presented to
him before you leave Rome, and go through the necessary ceremonies for
it, whether of kissing his slipper or his b---h; for I would never
deprive myself of anything that I wanted to do or see, by refusing to
comply with an established custom. When I was in Catholic countries, I
never declined kneeling in their churches at the elevation, nor
elsewhere, when the Host went by. It is a complaisance due to the custom
of the place, and by no means, as some silly people have imagined, an
implied approbation of their doctrine. Bodily attitudes and situations
are things so very indifferent in themselves, that I would quarrel with
nobody about them. It may, indeed, be improper for Mr. Harte to pay that
tribute of complaisance, upon account of his character.
This letter is a very long, and possibly a very tedious one; but my
anxiety for your perfection is so great, and particularly at this
critical and decisive period of your life, that I am only afraid of
omitting, but never of repeating, or dwelling too long upon anything that
I think may be of the least use to you. Have the same anxiety for
yourself, that I have for you, and all will do well. Adieu! my dear
child.