'Buy good books and read them; the best books are the commonest, and
the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not
blockheads.' So wrote Lord Chesterfield to his son, that
highly-favoured and much bewritten youth, on March 19, 1750, and his
words have been chosen with great cunning by Mr. Charles Strachey as a
motto for his new edition of these famous letters.[A]
[Footnote A: Published by Methuen and Co. in 2 vols.]
The quotation is full of the practical wisdom, but is at the same
time--so much, at least, an old book-collector may be allowed to
say--a little suggestive of the too-well-defined limitations of their
writer's genius and character. Lord Chesterfield is always clear and
frequently convincing, yet his wisdom is that of Mr. Worldly Wiseman,
and not only never points in the direction of the Celestial City, but
seldom displays sympathy with any generous emotion or liberal taste.
Yet as we have nobody like him in the whole body of our literature, we
can welcome even another edition--portable, complete, and cheap--of
his letters to his son with as much enthusiasm as is compatible with
the graces, and with the maxim, so dear to his lordship's heart, _Nil
admirari!_
What, I have often wondered, induced Lord Chesterfield to write this
enormously long and troublesome series of letters to a son who was not
even his heir? Their sincerity cannot be called in question. William
Wilberforce did not more fervently desire the conversion to God of his
infant Samuel than apparently did Lord Chesterfield the transformation
of his lumpish offspring into 'the all-accomplished man' he wished to
have him.
'All this,' so the father writes in tones of fervent pleading--'all
this you may compass if you please. You have the means, you have the
opportunities; employ them, for God's sake, while you may, and make
yourself the all-accomplished man I wish to have you. It entirely
depends upon the next two years; they are the decisive ones' (Letter
CLXXVII.).
It is the very language of an evangelical piety applied to the
manufacture of a worldling. But what promoted the anxiety? Was it
natural affection--a father's love? If it was, never before or since
has that world-wide and homely emotion been so concealed. There is a
detestable, a forbidding, an all-pervading harshness of tone
throughout this correspondence that seems to banish affection, to
murder love. Read Letter CLXXVIII., and judge for yourselves. I will
quote a passage:
'The more I love you now from the good opinion I have of you, the
greater will be my indignation if I should have reason to change
it. Hitherto you have had every possible proof of my affection,
because you have deserved it, but when you cease to deserve it you
may expect every possible mark of my resentment. To leave nothing
doubtful upon this important point, I will tell you fairly
beforehand by what rule I shall judge of your conduct: by Mr.
Harte's account.... If he complains you must be guilty, and I shall
not have the least regard for anything you may allege in your own
defence.'
Ugh! what a father! Lord Chesterfield despised the Gospels, and made
little of St. Paul; yet the New Testament could have taught him
something concerning the nature of a father's love. His language is
repulsive, repugnant, and yet how few fathers have taken the trouble
to write 400 educational letters of great length to their sons! All
one can say is that Chesterfield's letters are without natural
affection:
'If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, and no man ever loved.'
If affection did not dictate these letters, what did? Could it be
ambition? So astute a man as Chesterfield, who was kept well informed
as to the impression made by his son, could hardly suppose it likely
that the boy would make a name for himself, and thereby confer
distinction upon the family of which he was an irregular offshoot. A
respectable diplomatic career, with an interval in the House of
Commons, was the most that so clear-sighted a man could anticipate for
the young Stanhope. Was it literary fame for himself? This, of course,
assumes that subsequent publication was contemplated by the writer.
The dodges and devices of authors are well-nigh infinite and quite
beyond conjecture, and it is, of course, possible that Lord
Chesterfield kept copies of these letters, which bear upon their
faces evidence of care and elaboration. It is not to be supposed for a
moment that he ever forgot he had written them. It is hard to believe
he never inquired after them and their whereabouts. Great men have
been known to write letters which, though they bore other addresses,
were really intended for their biographers. It would not have been
surprising if Lord Chesterfield wrote these letters intending some day
to publish them, but not only is there no warrant for such an opinion,
but the opposite is clearly established. It is, no doubt, odd that the
son should have carefully preserved more than 400 letters written to
him during a period beginning with his tenderest years and continuing
whilst he was travelling on the Continent. It seems almost a miracle.
What made the son treasure them so carefully? Did he look forward to
being his father's biographer? Hardly so at the age of ten, or even
twenty. Biographies were not then what they have since become. No
doubt in the middle of the eighteenth century letters were more
treasured than they are to-day, and young Stanhope's friends may also
have thought it wise to encourage him to preserve documentary evidence
of the great interest taken in him by his father. None the less, I
think the preservation of this correspondence is in the circumstances
a most extraordinary though well-established fact.
The son died in 1768 of a dropsy at Avignon, and the news was
communicated to the Earl by his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Eugenia
Stanhope, of whose existence he was previously unaware. Two grandsons
accompanied her. It was a shock; but 'les manières nobles et aisées,
la tournure d'un homme de condition, le ton de la bonne compagnie,
les grâces le je ne scais quoi qui plaît,' came to Lord Chesterfield's
assistance, and he received his son's widow, who was not a pleasing
person, and her two boys with kindness and good feeling, and provided
for them quite handsomely by his will. The Earl died in 1773, in his
seventy-ninth year, and thereupon Mrs. Stanhope, who was in possession
of all the original letters addressed to her late husband, carried
her wares to market, and made a bargain with Mr. Dodsley for their
publication, she to receive £1,575. Mr. Dodsley advertised the
forthcoming work, and on that the Earl's executors, relying upon the
well-known case of Pope _v._ Curl, decided by Lord Hardwicke in 1741,
filed their bill against Mrs. Stanhope, seeking an injunction to
restrain publication. The widow put in her sworn Answer, in which she
averred that she had, on more occasions than one, mentioned
publication to the Earl, and that he, though recovering from her
certain written characters of eminent contemporaries, had seemed quite
content to let her do what she liked with the letters, only remarking
that there was too much Latin in them. The executors seem to have
moved for what is called an interim injunction--that is, an injunction
until trial of the cause, and, from the report in _Ambler_, it appears
that Lord Apsley (a feeble creature) granted such an injunction, but
recommended the executors to permit the publication if, on seeing a
copy of the correspondence, they saw no objection to it. In the result
the executors gave their consent, and the publication became an
authorized one, so much so that Dodsley was able to obtain an
interdict in the Scotch Court preventing a certain Scotch bookseller,
caller McFarquhar, from reprinting the letters in Edinburgh. Whether
the executors believed Mrs. Stanhope's story, or saw no reason to
object to the publication of the letters, I do not know, but it is
clear that the opposition was a half-hearted one.
It would be hasty to assume that Lord Chesterfield wrote these letters
with any intention of publication, and I am therefore left without
being able to suggest any strong reason for their existence. A
restless, itching pen, perhaps, accounts for them. Some men find a
pleasure in writing, even at great length; others, of whom Carlyle was
one, though they hate the labour, are yet compelled by some fierce
necessity to blacken paper.
At all events, we have Lord Chesterfield's letters, and, having them,
they will always have readers, for they are readable.
That the letters are full of wit and wisdom and sound advice is
certain. Mr. Strachey, in his preface, seems to be under the
impression that in the popular estimate Chesterfield is reckoned an
elegant trifler, a man of no serious account. What the popular or
vulgar estimate of Chesterfield may be it would be hard to determine,
nor is it of the least importance, for no one who knows about Lord
Chesterfield can possibly entertain any such opinion. How it came
about that so able and ambitious a man made so poor a thing out of
life, and failed so completely, is puzzling at first, though a little
study would, I think, make the reasons of Chesterfield's failure plain
enough.
To prove by extracts from the Letters how wise a man Chesterfield was
would be easy, but tiresome; to exhibit him in a repulsive character
would be equally easy, but spiteful. I prefer to leave him alone, and
to content myself with but one quotation, which has a touch of both
wisdom and repulsiveness:
'Consult your reason betimes. I do not say it will always prove an
unerring guide, for human reason is not infallible, but it will
prove the least erring guide that you can follow. Books and
conversation may assist it, but adopt neither blindly and
implicitly; try both by that best rule God has given to direct
us--reason. Of all the truths do not decline that of thinking. The
host of mankind can hardly be said to think; their prejudices are
almost all adoptive; and in general I believe it is better that it
should be so, as such common prejudices contribute more to order
and quiet than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated
as they are. We have many of these useful prejudices in this
country which I should be very sorry to see removed. The good
Protestant conviction that the Pope is both Antichrist and the
Whore of Babylon is a more effectual preservative against Popery
than all the solid and unanswerable arguments of Chillingworth.'