GREENWICH, June 6, O. S. 1751.
MY DEAR FRIEND: Solicitous and anxious as I have ever been to form your
heart, your mind, and your manners, and to bring you as near perfection
as the imperfection of our natures will allow, I have exhausted, in the
course of our correspondence, all that my own mind could suggest, and
have borrowed from others whatever I thought could be useful to you; but
this has necessarily been interruptedly and by snatches. It is now time,
and you are of an age to review and to weigh in your own mind all that
you have heard, and all that you have read, upon these subjects; and to
form your own character, your conduct, and your manners, for the rest of
your life; allowing for such improvements as a further knowledge of the
world will naturally give you. In this view I would recommend to you to
read, with the greatest attention, such books as treat particularly of
those subjects; reflecting seriously upon them, and then comparing the
speculation with the practice.
For example, if you read in the morning some of La Rochefoucault’s
maxims; consider them, examine them well, and compare them with the real
characters you meet with in the evening. Read La Bruyere in the morning,
and see in the evening whether his pictures are like. Study the heart and
the mind of man, and begin with your own. Meditation and reflection must
lay the foundation of that knowledge: but experience and practice must,
and alone can, complete it. Books, it is true, point out the operations
of the mind, the sentiments of the heart, the influence of the passions;
and so far they are of previous use: but without subsequent practice,
experience, and observation, they are as ineffectual, and would even lead
you into as many errors in fact, as a map would do, if you were to take
your notions of the towns and provinces from their delineations in it. A
man would reap very little benefit by his travels, if he made them only
in his closet upon a map of the whole world. Next to the two books that I
have already mentioned, I do not know a better for you to read, and
seriously reflect upon, than ‘Avis d’une Mere d’un Fils, par la Marquise
de Lambert’. She was a woman of a superior understanding and knowledge of
the world, had always kept the best company, was solicitous that her son
should make a figure and a fortune in the world, and knew better than
anybody how to point out the means. It is very short, and will take you
much less time to read, than you ought to employ in reflecting upon it,
after you have read it. Her son was in the army, she wished he might rise
there; but she well knew, that, in order to rise, he must first please:
she says to him, therefore, With regard to those upon whom you depend,
the chief merit is to please. And, in another place, in subaltern
employments, the art of pleasing must be your support. Masters are like
mistresses: whatever services they may be indebted to you for, they cease
to love when you cease to be agreeable. This, I can assure you, is at
least as true in courts as in camps, and possibly more so. If to your
merit and knowledge you add the art of pleasing, you may very probably
come in time to be Secretary of State; but, take my word for it, twice
your merit and knowledge, without the art of pleasing, would, at most,
raise you to the IMPORTANT POST of Resident at Hamburgh or Ratisbon. I
need not tell you now, for I often have, and your own discernment must
have told you, of what numberless little ingredients that art of pleasing
is compounded, and how the want of the least of them lowers the whole;
but the principal ingredient is, undoubtedly, ‘la douceur dans le
manieres’: nothing will give you this more than keeping company with your
superiors. Madame Lambert tells her son, Let your connections be with
people above you; by that means you will acquire a habit of respect and
politeness. With one’s equals, one is apt to become negligent, and the
mind grows torpid. She advises him, too, to frequent those people, and to
see their inside; In order to judge of men, one must be intimately
connected; thus you see them without, a veil, and with their mere
every-day merit. A happy expression! It was for this reason that I have
so often advised you to establish and domesticate yourself, wherever you
can, in good houses of people above you, that you may see their EVERY-DAY
character, manners, habits, etc. One must see people undressed to judge
truly of their shape; when they are dressed to go abroad, their clothes
are contrived to conceal, or at least palliate the defects of it: as
full-bottomed wigs were contrived for the Duke of Burgundy, to conceal
his hump back. Happy those who have no faults to disguise, nor weaknesses
to conceal! there are few, if any such; but unhappy those who know little
enough of the world to judge by outward appearances. Courts are the best
keys to characters; there every passion is busy, every art exerted, every
character analyzed; jealousy, ever watchful, not only discovers, but
exposes, the mysteries of the trade, so that even bystanders ‘y
apprennent a deviner’. There too the great art of pleasing is practiced,
taught, and learned with all its graces and delicacies. It is the first
thing needful there: It is the absolutely necessary harbinger of merit
and talents, let them be ever so great. There is no advancing a step
without it. Let misanthropes and would-be philosophers declaim as much as
they please against the vices, the simulation, and dissimulation of
courts; those invectives are always the result of ignorance, ill-humor,
or envy. Let them show me a cottage, where there are not the same vices
of which they accuse courts; with this difference only, that in a cottage
they appear in their native deformity, and that in courts, manners and
good-breeding make them less shocking, and blunt their edge. No, be
convinced that the good-breeding, the ‘tournure, la douceur dans les
manieres’, which alone are to be acquired at courts, are not the showish
trifles only which some people call or think them; they are a solid good;
they prevent a great deal of real mischief; they create, adorn, and
strengthen friendships; they keep hatred within bounds; they promote
good-humor and good-will in families, where the want of good-breeding and
gentleness of manners is commonly the original cause of discord. Get
then, before it is too late, a habit of these ‘mitiores virtutes’:
practice them upon every the least occasion, that they may be easy and
familiar to you upon the greatest; for they lose a great degree of their
merit if they seem labored, and only called in upon extraordinary
occasions. I tell you truly, this is now the only doubtful part of your
character with me; and it is for that reason that I dwell upon it so
much, and inculcate it so often. I shall soon see whether this doubt of
mine is founded; or rather I hope I shall soon see that it is not.
This moment I receive your letter of the 9th N. S. I am sorry to find
that you have had, though ever so slight a return of your Carniolan
disorder; and I hope your conclusion will prove a true one, and that this
will be the last. I will send the mohairs by the first opportunity. As
for the pictures, I am already so full, that I am resolved not to buy one
more, unless by great accident I should meet with something surprisingly
good, and as surprisingly cheap.
I should have thought that Lord-------, at his age, and with his parts
and address, need not have been reduced to keep an opera w---e, in such a
place as Paris, where so many women of fashion generously serve as
volunteers. I am still more sorry that he is in love with her; for that
will take him out of good company, and sink him into bad; such as
fiddlers, pipers, and ‘id genus omne’; most unedifying and unbecoming
company for a man of fashion!
Lady Chesterfield makes you a thousand compliments. Adieu, my dear child.