LONDON, June 26, O. S. 1752.
MY DEAR FRIEND: As I have reason to fear, from your M last letter of the
18th, N. S., from Manheim, that all, or at least most of my letters to
you, since you left Paris, have miscarried; I think it requisite, at all
events, to repeat in this the necessary parts of those several letters,
as far as they relate to your future motions.
I suppose that this will either find you, or be but a few days before you
at Bonn, where it is directed; and I suppose too, that you have fixed
your time for going from thence to Hanover. If things TURN OUT WELL AT
HANOVER, as in my opinion they will, ‘Chi sta bene non si muova’, stay
there till a week or ten days before the King sets out for England; but,
should THEY TURN OUT ILL, which I cannot imagine, stay, however, a month,
that your departure may not seem a step of discontent or peevishness; the
very suspicion of which is by all means to be avoided. Whenever you leave
Hanover, be it sooner or be it later, where would you go? ‘Lei Padrone’,
and I give you your choice: would you pass the months of November and
December at Brunswick, Cassel, etc.? Would you choose to go for a couple
of months to Ratisbon, where you would be very well recommended to, and
treated by the King’s Electoral Minister, the Baron de Behr, and where
you would improve your ‘Jus publicum’? or would you rather go directly to
Berlin, and stay there till the end of the Carnival? Two or three months
at Berlin are, considering all circumstances, necessary for you; and the
Carnival months are the best; ‘pour le reste decidez en dernier ressort,
et sans appel comme d’abus’. Let me know your decree, when you have
formed it. Your good or ill success at Hanover will have a very great
influence upon your subsequent character, figure, and fortune in the
world; therefore I confess that I am more anxious about it, than ever
bride was on her wedding night, when wishes, hopes, fears, and doubts,
tumultuously agitate, please, and terrify her. It is your first crisis:
the character which you will acquire there will, more or less, be that
which will abide by you for the rest of your life. You will be tried and
judged there, not as a boy, but as a man; and from that moment there is
no appeal for character; it is fixed. To form that character
advantageously, you have three objects particularly to attend to: your
character as a man of morality, truth, and honor; your knowledge in the
objects of your destination, as a man of business; and your engaging and
insinuating address, air and manners, as a courtier; the sure and only
steps to favor.
Merit at courts, without favor, will do little or nothing; favor, without
merit, will do a good deal; but favor and merit together will do
everything. Favor at courts depends upon so many, such trifling, such
unexpected, and unforeseen events, that a good courtier must attend to
every circumstance, however little, that either does, or can happen; he
must have no absences, no DISTRACTIONS; he must not say, “I did not mind
it; who would have thought it?” He ought both to have minded, and to have
thought it. A chamber-maid has sometimes caused revolutions in courts
which have produced others in kingdoms. Were I to make my way to favor in
a court, I would neither willfully, nor by negligence, give a dog or a
cat there reason to dislike me. Two ‘pies grieches’, well instructed, you
know, made the fortune of De Luines with Lewis XIII. Every step a man
makes at court requires as much attention and circumspection, as those
which were made formerly between hot plowshares, in the Ordeal, or fiery
trials; which, in those times of ignorance and superstition, were looked
upon as demonstrations of innocence or guilt. Direct your principal
battery, at Hanover, at the D of N ‘s: there are many very weak places in
that citadel; where, with a very little skill, you cannot fail making a
great impression. Ask for his orders in everything you do; talk Austrian
and Anti-gallican to him; and, as soon as you are upon a foot of talking
easily to him, tell him ‘en badinant’, that his skill and success in
thirty or forty elections in England leave you no reason to doubt of his
carrying his election for Frankfort; and that you look upon the Archduke
as his Member for the Empire. In his hours of festivity and compotation,
drop that he puts you in mind of what Sir William Temple says of the
Pensionary De Witt,--who at that time governed half Europe,--that he
appeared at balls, assemblies, and public places, as if he had nothing
else to do or to think of. When he talks to you upon foreign affairs,
which he will often do, say that you really cannot presume to give any
opinion of your own upon those matters, looking upon yourself at present
only as a postscript to the corps diplomatique; but that, if his Grace
will be pleased to make you an additional volume to it, though but in
duodecimo, you will do your best that he shall neither be ashamed nor
repent of it. He loves to have a favorite, and to open himself to that
favorite. He has now no such person with him; the place is vacant, and if
you have dexterity you may fill it. In one thing alone do not humor him;
I mean drinking; for, as I believe, you have never yet been drunk, you do
not yourself know how you can bear your wine, and what a little too much
of it may make you do or say; you might possibly kick down all you had
done before.
You do not love gaming, and I thank God for it; but at Hanover I would
have you show, and profess a particular dislike to play, so as to decline
it upon all occasions, unless where one may be wanted to make a fourth at
whist or quadrille; and then take care to declare it the result of your
complaisance, not of your inclinations. Without such precaution you may
very possibly be suspected, though unjustly, of loving play, upon account
of my former passion for it; and such a suspicion would do you a great
deal of hurt, especially with the King, who detests gaming. I must end
this abruptly. God bless you!