MY DEAR FRIEND: Of all the various ingredients that compose the useful
and necessary art of pleasing, no one is so effectual and engaging as
that gentleness, that ‘douceur’ of countenance and manner, to which you
are no stranger, though (God knows why) a sworn enemy. Other people take
great pains to conceal or disguise their natural imperfections; some by
the make of their clothes and other arts, endeavor to conceal the defects
of their shape; women, who unfortunately have natural bad complexions,
lay on good ones; and both men and women upon whom unkind nature has
inflicted a surliness and ferocity of countenance, do at least all they
can, though often without success, to soften and mitigate it; they affect
‘douceur’, and aim at smiles, though often in the attempt, like the Devil
in Milton, they GRIN HORRIBLY A GHASTLY SMILE. But you are the only
person I ever knew in the whole course of my life, who not only disdain,
but absolutely reject and disguise a great advantage that nature has
kindly granted. You easily guess I mean COUNTENANCE; for she has given
you a very pleasing one; but you beg to be excused, you will not accept
it; but on the contrary, take singular pains to put on the most
‘funeste’, forbidding, and unpleasing one that can possibly be imagined.
This one would think impossible; but you know it to be true. If you
imagine that it gives you a manly, thoughtful, and decisive air, as some,
though very few of your countrymen do, you are most exceedingly mistaken;
for it is at best the air of a German corporal, part of whose exercise is
to look fierce, and to ‘blasemeer-op’. You will say, perhaps, What, am I
always to be studying my countenance, in order to wear this ‘douceur’? I
answer, No; do it but for a fortnight, and you never will have occasion
to think of it more. Take but half the pains to recover the countenance
that nature gave you, that you must have taken to disguise and deform it
as you have, and the business will be done. Accustom your eyes to a
certain softness, of which they are very capable, and your face to
smiles, which become it more than most faces I know. Give all your
motions, too, an air of ‘douceur’, which is directly the reverse of their
present celerity and rapidity. I wish you would adopt a little of ‘l’air
du Couvent’ (you very well know what I mean) to a certain degree; it has
something extremely engaging; there is a mixture of benevolence,
affection, and unction in it; it is frequently really sincere, but is
almost always thought so, and consequently pleasing. Will you call this
trouble? It will not be half an hour’s trouble to you in a week’s time.
But suppose it be, pray tell me, why did you give yourself the trouble of
learning to dance so well as you do? It is neither a religious, moral, or
civil duty. You must own, that you did it then singly to please, and you
were, in the right on’t. Why do you wear fine clothes, and curl your
hair? Both are troublesome; lank locks, and plain flimsy rags are much
easier. This then you also do in order to please, and you do very right.
But then, for God’s sake, reason and act consequentially; and endeavor to
please in other things too, still more essential; and without which the
trouble you have taken in those is wholly thrown away. You show your
dancing, perhaps six times a year, at most; but you show your countenance
and your common motions every day, and all day. Which then, I appeal to
yourself, ought you to think of the most, and care to render easy,
graceful, and engaging? Douceur of countenance and gesture can alone make
them so. You are by no means ill-natured; and would you then most
unjustly be reckoned so? Yet your common countenance intimates, and would
make anybody who did not know you, believe it. ‘A propos’ of this, I must
tell you what was said the other day to a fine lady whom you know, who is
very good-natured in truth, but whose common countenance implies
ill-nature, even to brutality. It was Miss H----n, Lady M--y’s niece,
whom you have seen both at Blackheath and at Lady Hervey’s. Lady M--y was
saying to me that you had a very engaging countenance when you had a mind
to it, but that you had not always that mind; upon which Miss H----n
said, that she liked your countenance best, when it was as glum as her
own. Why then, replied Lady M--y, you two should marry; for while you
both wear your worst countenances, nobody else will venture upon either
of you; and they call her now Mrs. Stanhope. To complete this ‘douceur’
of countenance and motions, which I so earnestly recommend to you, you
should carry it also to your expressions and manner of thinking, ‘mettez
y toujours de l’affectueux de l’onction’; take the gentle, the favorable,
the indulgent side of most questions. I own that the manly and sublime
John Trott, your countryman, seldom does; but, to show his spirit and
decision, takes the rough and harsh side, which he generally adorns with
an oath, to seem more formidable. This he only thinks fine; for to do
John justice, he is commonly as good-natured as anybody. These are among
the many little things which you have not, and I have, lived long enough
in the world to know of what infinite consequence they are in the course
of life. Reason then, I repeat it again, within yourself,
CONSEQUENTIALLY; and let not the pains you have taken, and still take, to
please in some things be a ‘pure perte’, by your negligence of, and
inattention to others of much less trouble, and much more consequence.
I have been of late much engaged, or rather bewildered, in Oriental
history, particularly that of the Jews, since the destruction of their
temple, and their dispersion by Titus; but the confusion and uncertainty
of the whole, and the monstrous extravagances and falsehoods of the
greatest part of it, disgusted me extremely. Their Talmud, their Mischna,
their Targums, and other traditions and writings of their Rabbins and
Doctors, who were most of them Cabalists, are really more extravagant and
absurd, if possible, than all that you have read in Comte de Gabalis; and
indeed most of his stuff is taken from them. Take this sample of their
nonsense, which is transmitted in the writings of one of their most
considerable Rabbins: “One Abas Saul, a man of ten feet high, was digging
a grave, and happened to find the eye of Goliah, in which he thought
proper to bury himself, and so he did, all but his head, which the
Giant’s eye was unfortunately not quite deep enough to receive.” This, I
assure you, is the most modest lie of ten thousand. I have also read the
Turkish history which, excepting the religious part, is not fabulous,
though very possibly not true. For the Turks, having no notion of letters
and being, even by their religion, forbid the use of them, except for
reading and transcribing the Koran, they have no historians of their own,
nor any authentic records nor memorials for other historians to work
upon; so that what histories we have of that country are written by
foreigners; as Platina, Sir Paul Rycaut, Prince Cantimer, etc., or else
snatches only of particular and short periods, by some who happened to
reside there at those times; such as Busbequius, whom I have just
finished. I like him, as far as he goes, much the best of any of them:
but then his account is, properly, only an account of his own Embassy,
from the Emperor Charles the Fifth to Solyman the Magnificent. However,
there he gives, episodically, the best account I know of the customs and
manners of the Turks, and of the nature of that government, which is a
most extraordinary one. For, despotic as it always seems, and sometimes
is, it is in truth a military republic, and the real power resides in the
Janissaries; who sometimes order their Sultan to strangle his Vizir, and
sometimes the Vizir to depose or strangle his Sultan, according as they
happen to be angry at the one or the other. I own I am glad that the
capital strangler should, in his turn, be STRANGLE-ABLE, and now and then
strangled; for I know of no brute so fierce, nor no criminal so guilty,
as the creature called a Sovereign, whether King, Sultan, or Sophy, who
thinks himself, either by divine or human right, vested with an absolute
power of destroying his fellow-creatures; or who, without inquiring into
his right, lawlessly exerts that power. The most excusable of all those
human monsters are the Turks, whose religion teaches them inevitable
fatalism. A propos of the Turks, my Loyola, I pretend, is superior to
your Sultan. Perhaps you think this impossible, and wonder who this
Loyola is. Know then, that I have had a Barbet brought me from France, so
exactly like the Sultan that he has been mistaken for him several times;
only his snout is shorter, and his ears longer than the Sultan’s. He has
also the acquired knowledge of the Sultan; and I am apt to think that he
studied under the same master at Paris. His habit and his white band show
him to be an ecclesiastic; and his begging, which he does very earnestly,
proves him to be of a mendicant order; which, added to his flattery and
insinuation, make him supposed to be a Jesuit, and have acquired him the
name of Loyola. I must not omit too, that when he breaks wind he smells
exactly like the Sultan.
I do not yet hear one jot the better for all my bathings and pumpings,
though I have been here already full half my time; I consequently go very
little into company, being very little fit for any. I hope you keep
company enough for us both; you will get more by that, than I shall by
all my reading. I read simply to amuse myself and fill up my time, of
which I have too much; but you have two much better reasons for going
into company, pleasure and profit. May you find a great deal of both in a
great deal of company! Adieu.