MY DEAR FRIEND: It is a very old and very true maxim, that those kings
reign the most secure and the most absolute, who reign in the hearts of
their people. Their popularity is a better guard than their army, and the
affections of their subjects a better pledge of their obedience than
their fears. This rule is, in proportion, full as true, though upon a
different scale, with regard to private people. A man who possesses that
great art of pleasing universally, and of gaining the affections of those
with whom he converses, possesses a strength which nothing else can give
him: a strength which facilitates and helps his rise; and which, in case
of accidents, breaks his fall. Few people of your age sufficiently
consider this great point of popularity; and when they grow older and
wiser, strive in vain to recover what they have lost by their negligence.
There are three principal causes that hinder them from acquiring this
useful strength: pride, inattention, and ‘mauvaise honte’. The first I
will not, I cannot suspect you of; it is too much below your
understanding. You cannot, and I am sure you do not think yourself
superior by nature to the Savoyard who cleans your room, or the footman
who cleans your shoes; but you may rejoice, and with reason, at the
difference that fortune has made in your favor. Enjoy all those
advantages; but without insulting those who are unfortunate enough to
want them, or even doing anything unnecessarily that may remind them of
that want. For my own part, I am more upon my guard as to my behavior to
my servants, and others who are called my inferiors, than I am toward my
equals: for fear of being suspected of that mean and ungenerous sentiment
of desiring to make others feel that difference which fortune has, and
perhaps too, undeservedly, made between us. Young people do not enough
attend to this; and falsely imagine that the imperative mood, and a rough
tone of authority and decision, are indications of spirit and courage.
Inattention is always looked upon, though sometimes unjustly, as the
effect of pride and contempt; and where it is thought so, is never
forgiven. In this article, young people are generally exceedingly to
blame, and offend extremely. Their whole attention is engrossed by their
particular set of acquaintance; and by some few glaring and exalted
objects of rank, beauty, or parts; all the rest they think so little
worth their care, that they neglect even common civility toward them. I
will frankly confess to you, that this was one of my great faults when I
was of your age. Very attentive to please that narrow court circle in
which I stood enchanted, I considered everything else as bourgeois, and
unworthy of common civility; I paid my court assiduously and skillfully
enough to shining and distinguished figures, such as ministers, wits, and
beauties; but then I most absurdly and imprudently neglected, and
consequently offended all others. By this folly I made myself a thousand
enemies of both sexes; who, though I thought them very insignificant,
found means to hurt me essentially where I wanted to recommend myself the
most. I was thought proud, though I was only imprudent. A general easy
civility and attention to the common run of ugly women, and of middling
men, both which I sillily thought, called, and treated, as odd people,
would have made me as many friends, as by the contrary conduct I made
myself enemies. All this too was ‘a pure perte’; for I might equally, and
even more successfully, have made my court, when I had particular views
to gratify. I will allow that this task is often very unpleasant, and
that one pays, with some unwillingness, that tribute of attention to dull
and tedious men, and to old and ugly women; but it is the lowest price of
popularity and general applause, which are very well worth purchasing
were they much dearer. I conclude this head with this advice to you:
Gain, by particular assiduity and address, the men and women you want;
and, by an universal civility and attention, please everybody so far as
to have their good word, if not their goodwill; or, at least, as to
secure a partial neutrality.
‘Mauvaise honte’ not only hinders young people from making, a great many
friends, but makes them a great many enemies. They are ashamed of doing
the thing they know to be right, and would otherwise do, for fear of the
momentary laugh of some fine gentleman or lady, or of some ‘mauvais
plaisant’. I have been in this case: and have often wished an obscure
acquaintance at the devil, for meeting and taking notice of me when I was
in what I thought and called fine company. I have returned their notice
shyly, awkwardly, and consequently offensively; for fear of a momentary
joke, not considering, as I ought to have done, that the very people who
would have joked upon me at first, would have esteemed me the more for it
afterward. An example explains a rule best: Suppose you were walking in
the Tuileries with some fine folks, and that you should unexpectedly meet
your old acquaintance, little crooked Grierson; what would you do? I will
tell you what you should do, by telling you what I would now do in that
case myself. I would run up to him, and embrace him; say some kind of
things to him, and then return to my company. There I should be
immediately asked: ‘Mais qu’est ce que c’est donc que ce petit Sapajou
que vous avez embrasse si tendrement? Pour cela, l’accolade a ete
charmante’; with a great deal more festivity of that sort. To this I
should answer, without being the least ashamed, but en badinant: O je ne
vous dirai tas qui c’est; c’est un petit ami que je tiens incognito, qui
a son merite, et qui, a force d’etre connu, fait oublier sa figure. Que
me donnerez-vous, et je vous le presenterai’? And then, with a little
more seriousness, I would add: ‘Mais d’ailleurs c’est que je ne desavoue
jamais mes connoissances, a cause de leur etat ou de leur figure. Il faut
avoir bien peu de sentimens pour le faire’. This would at once put an end
to that momentary pleasantry, and give them all a better opinion of me
than they had before. Suppose another case, and that some of the finest
ladies ‘du bon ton’ should come into a room, and find you sitting by, and
talking politely to ‘la vieille’ Marquise de Bellefonds, the joke would,
for a moment, turn upon that ‘tete-a-tete’: He bien! avez vous a la fin
fixd la belle Marquise? La partie est-elle faite pour la petite maison?
Le souper sera galant sans doute: Mais ne faistu donc point scrupule de
seduire une jeune et aimable persone comme celle-la’? To this I should
answer: ‘La partie n’etoit pas encore tout-a fait liee, vous nous avez
interrompu; mais avec le tems que fait-on? D’ailleurs moquezvous de mes
amours tant qu’il vous plaira, je vous dirai que je respecte tant les
jeunes dames, que je respecte meme les vieilles, pour l’avoir ete. Apre
cela il y a souvent des liaisons entre les vieilles et les jeunes’. This
would at once turn the pleasantry into an esteem for your good sense and
your good-breeding. Pursue steadily, and without fear or shame, whatever
your reason tells you is right, and what you see is practiced by people
of more experience than yourself, and of established characters of good
sense and good-breeding.
After all this, perhaps you will say, that it is impossible to please
everybody. I grant it; but it does not follow that one should not
therefore endeavor to please as many as one can. Nay, I will go further,
and admit that it is impossible for any man not to have some enemies. But
this truth from long experience I assert, that he who has the most
friends and the fewest enemies, is the strongest; will rise the highest
with the least envy; and fall, if he does fall, the gentlest, and the
most pitied. This is surely an object worth pursuing. Pursue it according
to the rules I have here given you. I will add one observation more, and
two examples to enforce it; and then, as the parsons say, conclude.
There is no one creature so obscure, so low, or so poor, who may not, by
the strange and unaccountable changes and vicissitudes of human affairs,
somehow or other, and some time or other, become an useful friend or a
trouble-some enemy, to the greatest and the richest. The late Duke of
Ormond was almost the weakest but at the same time the best-bred, and
most popular man in this kingdom. His education in courts and camps,
joined to an easy, gentle nature, had given him that habitual affability,
those engaging manners, and those mechanical attentions, that almost
supplied the place of every talent he wanted; and he wanted almost every
one. They procured him the love of all men, without the esteem of any. He
was impeached after the death of Queen Anne, only because that, having
been engaged in the same measures with those who were necessarily to be
impeached, his impeachment, for form’s sake, became necessary. But he was
impeached without acrimony, and without the lest intention that he should
suffer, notwithstanding the party violence of those times. The question
for his impeachment, in the House of Commons, was carried by many fewer
votes than any other question of impeachment; and Earl Stanhope, then Mr.
Stanhope, and Secretary’ of State, who impeached him, very soon after
negotiated and concluded his accommodation with the late King; to whom he
was to have been presented the next day. But the late Bishop of
Rochester, Atterbury, who thought that the Jacobite cause might suffer by
losing the Duke of Ormond, went in all haste, and prevailed with the poor
weak man to run away; assuring him that he was only to be gulled into a
disgraceful submission, and not to be pardoned in consequence of it. When
his subsequent attainder passed, it excited mobs and disturbances in
town. He had not a personal enemy in the world; and had a thousand
friends. All this was simply owing to his natural desire of pleasing, and
to the mechanical means that his education, not his parts, had given him
of doing it. The other instance is the late Duke of Marlborough, who
studied the art of pleasing, because he well knew the importance of it:
he enjoyed and used it more than ever man did. He gained whoever he had a
mind to gain; and he had a mind to gain everybody, because he knew that
everybody was more or less worth gaining. Though his power, as Minister
and General, made him many political and party enemies, they did not make
him one personal one; and the very people who would gladly have
displaced, disgraced, and perhaps attainted the Duke of Marlborough, at
the same time personally loved Mr. Churchill, even though his private
character was blemished by sordid avarice, the most unamiable of all
vices. He had wound up and turned his whole machine to please and engage.
He had an inimitable sweetness and gentleness in his countenance, a
tenderness in his manner of speaking, a graceful dignity in every motion,
and an universal and minute attention to the least things that could
possibly please the least person. This was all art in him; art of which
he well knew and enjoyed the advantages; for no man ever had more
interior ambition, pride, and avarice, than he had.
Though you have more than most people of your age, you have yet very
little experience and knowledge of the world; now, I wish to inoculate
mine upon you, and thereby prevent both the dangers and the marks of
youth and inexperience. If you receive the matter kindly, and observe my
prescriptions scrupulously, you will secure the future advantages of time
and join them to the present inestimable ones of one-and-twenty.
I most earnestly recommend one thing to you, during your present stay at
Paris. I own it is not the most agreeable; but I affirm it to be the most
useful thing in the world to one of your age; and therefore I do hope
that you will force and constrain yourself to do it. I mean, to converse
frequently, or rather to be in company frequently with both men and women
much your superiors in age and rank. I am very sensible that, at your
age, ‘vous y entrez pour peu de chose, et meme souvent pour rien, et que
vous y passerez meme quelques mauvais quart-d’heures’; but no matter; you
will be a solid gainer by it: you will see, hear, and learn the turn and
manners of those people; you will gain premature experience by it; and it
will give you a habit of engaging and respectful attentions. Versailles,
as much as possible, though probably unentertaining: the Palais Royal
often, however dull: foreign ministers of the first rank, frequently, and
women, though old, who are respectable and respected for their rank or
parts; such as Madame de Pusieux, Madame de Nivernois, Madame
d’Aiguillon, Madame Geoffrain, etc. This ‘sujetion’, if it be one to you,
will cost you but very little in these three or four months that you are
yet to pass in Paris, and will bring you in a great deal; nor will it,
nor ought it, to hinder you from being in a more entertaining company a
great part of the day. ‘Vous pouvez, si vous le voulex, tirer un grand
parti de ces quatre mois’. May God make you so, and bless you! Adieu.