Each epoch has produced its treatise intended for the formation of the
_polite man_, the man _of the world_, the _courtier_, when men only
lived for courts, and the accomplished _gentleman_. In these various
treatises on knowledge of life and politeness, if opened after a
lapse of ages, we at once see portions which are as antiquated as the
cut and fashion of our forefathers’ coats; the _model_ has evidently
changed. But looking into it carefully as a whole, if the book has been
written by a sensible man with a true knowledge of mankind, we shall
find profit in studying these models which have been placed before
preceding generations. The letters that Lord Chesterfield wrote to his
son, and which contain a whole school of _savoir vivre_ and worldly
science, are interesting in this particular, that there has been no
idea of forming a model for imitation, but they are simply intended
to bring up a pupil in the closest intimacy. They are confidential
letters, which, suddenly produced in the light of day, have betrayed
all the secrets and ingenious artifices of paternal solicitude. If,
in reading them nowadays, we are struck with the excessive importance
attached to accidental and promiscuous circumstances, with pure details
of costume, we are not less struck with the durable part, with that
which belongs to human observation in all ages; and this last part is
much more considerable than at a superficial glance would be imagined.
In applying himself to the formation of his son as a _polite man_ in
society, Lord Chesterfield has not given us a treatise on _duty_ as
Cicero has; but he has left letters which, by their mixture of justness
and lightness, by certain lightsome airs which insensibly mingle with
the serious graces, preserve the medium between the _Mémoires of the
Chevalier de Grammont_ and _Télémaque_.
Before going into detail, it will be necessary to know a little about
Lord Chesterfield, one of the most brilliant English wits of his time,
and one most closely allied to France. Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of
Chesterfield, was born in London on the 22d of September, 1694, the
same year as Voltaire. The descendant of an illustrious race, he knew
the value of birth, and wished to sustain its honor; nevertheless,
it was difficult for him not to laugh at genealogical pretensions
when carried too far. To keep himself from this folly, he had placed
amongst the portraits of his ancestors two old figures of a man and a
woman: beneath one was written, “_Adam_ de Stanhope”; and beneath the
other “_Eve_ de Stanhope.” Thus, while upholding the honor of race, he
put his veto upon chimerical vanities arising from it.
His father paid no attention whatever to his education; he was placed
under the care of his grandmother, Lady Halifax. From a very early age
he manifested a desire to excel in everything, a desire which later he
did his utmost to excite in the breast of his son, and which for good
or ill is the principle of all that is great. It appears that, in his
early youth, he was without guidance, he was deceived more than once
in the objects of his emulation, and followed some ridiculous chimera.
He confesses that at one period of inexperience he gave himself up
to wine, and other excesses, for which he was not at all inclined by
nature, but it flattered his vanity to hear himself cited as a man
of pleasure. In this way he plunged into play (which he considered a
necessary ingredient in the composition of a young man of fashion), at
first without passion, but afterwards without being able to withdraw
himself from it, and by that means compromised his fortune for years.
“Take warning by my conduct,” said he to his son, “choose your own
pleasures, and do not let others choose them for you.”
The desire to excel and to distinguish himself did not always lead him
astray, and he often applied it rightly; his first studies were the
best. Placed at the University of Cambridge, he studied all that was
there taught, civil law and philosophy; he attended the mathematical
classes of Saunderson, the blind professor, he read Greek fluently, and
sent accounts of his progress in French to his old tutor, M. Jouneau,
a French clergyman and refugee. Lord Chesterfield had, when a child,
learnt our tongue from a Norman nurse who attended him. When he visited
Paris the last time, in 1744, M. de Fontenelle having remarked a slight
Norman accent in his pronunciation, spoke of it to him, and asked him
if he had not first been taught French by a person from Normandy, which
turned out to be the case.
After two years of university life, he made his Continental tour,
according to the custom of young Englishmen. He visited Holland, Italy,
and France. He wrote from Paris to M. Jouneau on the 7th of December,
1714, as follows:
“I shall not tell you what I think of the French, because I am being
often taken for a Frenchman, and more than one of them has paid me the
highest possible compliment, by saying: ‘_Monsieur, you are quite one
of ourselves._’ I shall only tell you that I am impudent; that I talk a
great deal very loudly and with an air of authority; that I sing; that
I dance in my walk; and, finally, that I spend immense sums in powder,
feathers, white gloves, etc.”
In this extract one recognizes the mocking, satirical, and slightly
_insolent_ wit, who makes his mark for the first time at the expense of
the French; he will do justice later to our serious qualities. In his
letters to his son, he has pictured himself the first day he made his
_entrée_ into good society, still covered with the rust of Cambridge,
shamefaced, embarrassed, silent; and, finally, forcing his courage
with both hands to say to a beautiful woman near him: “Madame, don’t
you find it very warm to-day?” But Lord Chesterfield told his son that
to encourage him, and to show what it is necessary to pass through.
He makes himself an example to embolden him, and to draw the boy more
readily to him. I shall be careful not to take his word for this
anecdote. If he was for a moment embarrassed in the world, the moment
was assuredly very short, nor was he much concerned with it.
Immediately on the death of Queen Anne, Chesterfield hailed the
accession of the house of Hanover, of which he became an avowed
champion. He had at first a seat in the House of Commons, and made
his _début_ there with fair credit. But a circumstance, in appearance
frivolous, kept him, it is said, in check, and in some measure
paralyzed his eloquence. One of the members of the House, who was
distinguished by no talent of a superior order, had that of imitating
and counterfeiting to perfection the orators to whom he replied.
Chesterfield was afraid of ridicule; it was one of his weaknesses,
and he kept silence more than he otherwise would have done for fear
of giving occasion for the exercise of his colleague and opponent’s
talent. He inherited a large property on the death of his father, and
was raised to the Upper House, which was, perhaps, a better setting
for the grace, finish, and urbanity of his eloquence. He found no
comparison between the two scenes with regard to the importance of the
debates and the political influence to be acquired.
“It is surprising,” he said later of Pitt, at the time when that great
orator consented to enter the Upper House as Lord Chatham, “it is
surprising that a man in the plenitude of his power, at the very moment
when his ambition has obtained the most complete triumph, should leave
the House which procured him that power, and which alone could ensure
its maintenance, to retire into that Hospital for Incurables, the House
of Lords.”
It is not my intention here to estimate the political career of Lord
Chesterfield. Nevertheless, if I hazarded a judgment upon it as a
whole, I should say that his ambition was never wholly satisfied, and
that the brilliant distinctions with which his public life was filled,
covered, at bottom, many lost desires and the decay of many hopes.
Twice, in the two decisive circumstances of his political life, he
failed. Young, and in the first heat of ambition, he took an early
opportunity of staking his odds on the side of the heir presumptive
to the throne, who became George the Second. He was one of those who,
at the accession of that prince, counted most surely upon his favor,
and upon enjoying a share of power. But this clever man, wishing to
turn himself to the rising sun, knew not how to accomplish it with
perfect justice; he had paid court to the prince’s mistress, believing
in her destined influence, and he had neglected the legitimate wife,
the future queen, who alone had the real power. Queen Caroline never
pardoned him, and this was the first check in the political fortune of
Lord Chesterfield, then thirty-three years old, and in the full flush
of hope. He was in too great a hurry and took the wrong road. Robert
Walpole, less active, and with less apparent skill, took his measures
and made his calculations better.
Thrown with _éclat_ into the opposition, especially from 1732, the time
when he had to cease his court duties, Lord Chesterfield worked with
all his might for ten years for the downfall of Walpole, which did not
take place until 1742. But even then he inherited none of his power,
and he remained out of the new ministries. When two years afterward,
in 1744, he became one of the administration, first as ambassador to
The Hague and Viceroy of Ireland, then as Secretary of State and member
of the Cabinet (1746-1748), the honor was more nominal than real. In
a word, Lord Chesterfield, at all times a noted politician in his own
country, whether as one of the chiefs of the opposition, or as a clever
diplomatist, was never a powerful, or even a very influential, minister.
In politics he certainly possessed that far-sightedness and those
glimpses into the future which belong to very wide intelligence, but
he possessed those qualities to a much greater degree than the patient
perseverance and constant practical firmness that are so necessary
to the members of a government. It may truly be said of him, as of
Rochefoucauld, that politics served to make an accomplished moralist of
the imperfect man of action.
In 1744, when he was only fifty years of age, his political ambition,
seemed, in part, to have died out, and the indifferent state of his
health led him to choose a private life. And then the object of his
secret ideal and his real ambition we know now. Before his marriage he
had, about the year 1732, by a French lady (Madame de Bouchet) whom
he met in Holland, a natural son to whom he was tenderly attached.
He wrote to this son, in all sincerity: “From the first day of your
life, the dearest object of mine has been to make you as perfect as
the weakness of human nature will allow.” Toward the education of this
son all his wishes, all his affectionate and worldly predilections
tended. And whether Viceroy of Ireland or Secretary of State in London,
he found time to write long letters full of minute details to him, to
instruct him in small matters and to perfect him in mind and manner.
The Chesterfield, then, that we love especially to study is the man
of wit and experience, who knew all the affairs and passed through
all phases of political and public life only to find out its smallest
resources, and to tell us the last _mot_; he who from his youth was
the friend of Pope and Bolingbroke, the introducer into England of
Montesquieu and Voltaire, the correspondent of Fontenelle and Madame de
Teucin, he whom the Academy of Inscriptions placed among its members,
who united the wit of the two nations, and who, in more than one
intellectual essay, but particularly in his letters to his son, shows
himself to us as a moralist as amiable as he is consummate, and one
of the masters of life. It is the Rochefoucauld of England of whom
we speak. Montesquieu, after the publication of _L’Esprit des Lois_,
wrote to the Abbé de Guasco, who was then in England: “Tell my Lord
Chesterfield that nothing is so flattering to me as his approbation;
but that, though he is reading my work for the third time, he will
only be in a better position to point out to me what wants correcting
and rectifying in it; nothing could be more instructive to me than his
observations and his critique.” It was Chesterfield who, speaking to
Montesquieu one day of the readiness of the French for revolutions,
and their impatience at slow reforms, spoke this sentence, which is a
_résumé_ of our whole history: “You French know how to make barricades,
but you never raise barriers.”
Lord Chesterfield certainly appreciated Voltaire; he remarked, _à
propos_ of the _Siècle de Louis XIV._: “Lord Bolingbroke had taught me
how to read history; Voltaire teaches me how it should be written.”
But, at the same time, with that practical sense which rarely abandons
men of wit on the other side of the Straits, he felt the imprudences
of Voltaire, and disapproved of them. When he was old, and living in
retirement, he wrote to a French lady on the subject thus:
“Your good authors are my principal resource: Voltaire especially
charms me, with the exception of his impiety, with which he cannot help
seasoning all that he writes, and which he would do better carefully to
suppress, for one ought not to disturb established order. Let every one
think as he will, or rather as he can, but let him not communicate his
ideas if they are of a nature to trouble the peace of society.”
What he said then, in 1768, Chesterfield had already said more than
twenty years previously, writing to the younger Crebillon, a singular
correspondent and a singular confidant in point of morality. Voltaire
was under consideration, on account of his tragedy of _Mahomet_, and
the daring ideas it contains:
“What I do not pardon him for, and that which is not deserving of
pardon in him,” wrote Chesterfield to Crebillon, “is his desire to
propagate a doctrine as pernicious to domestic society as contrary to
the common religion of all countries. I strongly doubt whether it is
permissible for a man to write against the worship and belief of his
country, even if he be fully persuaded of its error, on account of the
trouble and disorder it might cause; but I am sure that it is in no
wise allowable to attack the foundations of true morality, and to break
necessary bonds which are already too weak to keep men in the path of
duty.”
Chesterfield, in speaking thus, was not mistaken as to the great
inconsistency of Voltaire. His inconsistency, in a few words, was this:
Voltaire, who looked upon men as fools or children, and who could never
laugh at them enough, at the same time put loaded firearms into their
hands, without troubling himself as to the use they would put them to.
Lord Chesterfield himself, in the eyes of the Puritans of his country,
has been accused, I should state here, of a breach of morality in the
letters addressed to his son. The strict Johnson, who was not impartial
on the subject, and who thought he had cause to complain against
Chesterfield, said, when the letters were published, that “they taught
the morals of a courtesan, and the manners of a dancing master.”
Such a judgment is supremely unjust, and if Chesterfield, in particular
instances, insists upon graces of manner at any price, it is because he
has already provided for the more solid parts of education, and because
his pupil is not in the least danger of sinning on the side which makes
man _respectable_, but rather on that which renders him _agreeable_.
Although more than one passage in these letters may seem very strange,
coming from a father to a son, the whole is animated with a true spirit
of tenderness and wisdom. If Horace had had a son, I imagine he would
not have written to him very differently.
The letters begin with the A B C of education and instruction.
Chesterfield teaches his son in French the rudiments of mythology and
history. I do not regret the publication of these first letters. He
lets slip some very excellent advice in those early pages. The little
Stanhope is no more than eight years old when his father suits a
little rhetoric to his juvenile understanding, and tries to show him
how to use good language, and to express himself well. He especially
recommends to him _attention_ in all that he does, and he gives the
word its full value. “It is attention alone,” he says, “which fixes
objects in the memory. There is no surer mark of a mean and meagre
intellect in the world than inattention. All that is worth the trouble
of doing at all deserves to be done well, and nothing can be well
done without attention.” This precept he incessantly repeats, and
varies the application of it as his pupil grows, and is in a condition
to comprehend it to its fullest extent. Whether pleasure or study,
everything one does must be done well, done entirely and at its proper
time, without allowing any distraction to intervene. “When you read
Horace pay attention to the accuracy of his thoughts, to the elegance
of his diction, and to the beauty of his poetry, and do not think of
the ‘_De Homine et Cive_’ of Puffendorf; and when you read Puffendorf
do not think of Madame de St. Germain; nor of Puffendorf when you speak
of Madame de St. Germain.” But this strong and easy subjugation of
the order of thought to the will only belongs to great or very good
intellects. M. Royer-Collard used to say that “what was most wanting in
our day was _respect_ in the moral disposition, and _attention_ in the
intellectual.” Lord Chesterfield, in a less grave manner, might have
said the same thing. He was not long in finding out what was wanting in
this child whom he wished to bring up; whose bringing up was, indeed,
the end and aim of his life. “On sounding your character to its very
depths,” he said to him, “I have not, thank God, discovered any vice
of heart or weakness of head so far; but I have discovered idleness,
inattention, and indifference, defects which are only pardonable in
the aged, who, in the decline of life, when health and spirits give
way, have a sort of right to that kind of tranquillity. But a young man
ought to be ambitious to shine and excel.” And it is precisely this
sacred fire, this lightning, that makes the Achilles, the Alexanders,
and the Cæsars _to be the first in every undertaking_, this motto
of noble hearts and of eminent men of all kinds, that nature had
primarily neglected to place in the honest but thoroughly mediocre
soul of the younger Stanhope: “You appear to want,” said his father,
“that _vivida vis animi_ which excites the majority of young men to
please, to strive, and to outdo others.” “When I was your age,” he
again says, “I should have been ashamed for another to know his lesson
better, or to have been before me in a game, and I should have had no
rest till I had regained the advantage.” All this little course of
education by letters offers a sort of continuous dramatic interest; we
follow the efforts of a fine distinguished, energetic nature as Lord
Chesterfield’s was, engaged in a contest with a disposition honest but
indolent, with an easy and dilatory temperament, from which it would,
at any expense, form a masterpiece accomplished, amiable and original,
and with which it only succeeded in making a sort of estimable copy.
What sustains and almost touches the reader in this strife, where so
much art is used, and where the inevitable counsel is the same beneath
all metamorphoses, is the true fatherly affection which animates and
inspires the delicate and excellent master, as patient as he is full of
vigor, lavish in resources and skill, never discouraged, untiring in
sowing elegances and graces on this infantile soil. Not that this son,
the object of so much culture and zeal, was in any way unworthy of his
father. It has been pretended that there could be no one duller or more
sullen than he was, and Johnson is quoted in support of the statement.
There are caricatures which surpass the truth. It appears from the
best authorities, that Mr. Stanhope, without being a model of grace,
had the air of a man who had been well brought up, and was polite and
agreeable. But do you not think that that is the most grievous part of
all? It would have been better worth while, almost, to have totally
failed, and to have only succeeded in making an original in the inverse
sense, rather than with so much care and expense to have produced
nothing more than an ordinary and insignificant man of the world, one
of those about whom it suffices to say, there is nothing to be said of
them; he had cause to be truly grieved and pity himself for his work if
he were not a father.
Lord Chesterfield had early thought of France to polish his son, and
to give him that courtesy which cannot be acquired late in life. In
private letters written to a lady at Paris, whom I believe to be Madame
de Monconseil,[14] we see that he had thought of sending him to France
from his childhood.
“I have a boy,” he wrote to this friend, “who is now thirteen years
old; I freely confess to you that he is not legitimate; but his mother
was well born and was kinder to me than I deserved. As to the boy,
perhaps it is partiality, but I think him amiable; he has a pretty
face; he has much sprightliness, and I think intelligence, for his age.
He speaks French perfectly; he knows a good deal of Latin and Greek,
and he has ancient and modern history at his fingers’ ends. He is at
school at present, but as they never dream of forming the manners of
young people, and they are almost all foolish, awkward, and unpolished,
in short such as you see them when they come to Paris at the age of
twenty or twenty-one, I do not wish my boy to remain here to acquire
such bad habits; for this reason, when he is fourteen I think of
sending him to Paris. As I love the child dearly, and have set myself
to make something good of him, as I believe he has the stuff in him,
my idea is to unite in him what has never been found in one person
before--I mean the best qualities of the two nations.”
And he enters into the details of his plan, and the means he thinks
of using: a learned Englishman every morning, a French teacher after
dinner, but above all the help of the fashionable world and good
society. The war which broke out between France and England postponed
this plan, and the young man did not make his _début_ in Paris until
1751, when he was nineteen years old, and had finished his tour through
Switzerland, Germany, and Italy.
Everything has been arranged by the most attentive of fathers for his
success and well-being upon this novel scene. The young man is placed
at the Academy with M. de la Guérinière; the morning he devotes to
study, and the rest of the time is to be consecrated to the world.
“Pleasure is now the last branch of your education,” this indulgent
father writes; “it will soften and polish your manners; it will incite
you to seek and finally to acquire _graces_.” Upon this last point he
is exacting, and shows no quarter. _Graces_, he returns continually to
them, for without them all effort is vain. “If they are not natural to
you, cultivate them,” he cries. He indeed speaks confidently; as if to
cultivate graces, it is not necessary to have them already!
Three ladies, friends of his father, are especially charged to
watch over and guide the young man at his _début_; they are his
_governantes_: Madame de Monconseil, Lady Hervey, and Madame de
Bocage. But these introducers appear essential for the first time
only; the young man must afterward depend upon himself, and choose
some charming and more familiar guide. Upon this delicate subject of
women, Lord Chesterfield breaks the ice: “I shall not talk to you on
this subject like a theologian, or a moralist, or a father,” he says;
“I set aside my age, and only take yours into consideration. I wish to
speak to you as one man of pleasure would to another if he has taste
and spirit.” And he expresses himself in consequence, stimulating the
young man as much as possible toward _polite arrangements_ and delicate
pleasures, to draw him from common and coarse habits. His principle is
that “a polite arrangement becomes a gallant man.” All his morality on
this point is summed up in a line of Voltaire:
“Il n’est jamais de mal en bonne compagnie.”
It is at these sentences more especially that the modesty of the grave
Johnson is put to the blush; ours is content to smile at them.
The serious and the frivolous are perpetually mingling in these
letters. Marcel, the dancing master, is very often recommended,
Montesquieu no less. The Abbé de Guasco, a sort of toady to
Montesquieu, is a useful personage for introductions. “Between you
and me,” writes Chesterfield, “he has more knowledge than genius; but
_a clever man knows how to make use of everything_, and every man
is good for something. As to the Président of Montesquieu, he is in
all respects a precious acquaintance: _He has genius, with the most
extensive reading in the world. Drink of his fountain as much as
possible._”
Of authors, those whom Chesterfield particularly recommends at this
time, and those whose names occur most frequently in his counsels,
are La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère. “If you read some of La
Rochefoucauld’s maxims in the morning, consider them, examine them
well, and compare them with the originals you meet in the evening. Read
La Bruyère in the morning, and see in the evening if his portraits
are correct.” But these guides, excellent as they are, have no other
use by themselves than that of a map. Without personal observation
and experience, they would be useless, and would even be conducive
to error, as a map might be if one thought to get from it a complete
knowledge of towns and provinces. Better read one man than ten books.
“The world is a country that no one has ever known by means of
descriptions; each of us must traverse it in person to be thoroughly
initiated into its ways.”
Here are some precepts or remarks which are worthy of those masters of
human morality:
“The most essential of all knowledge, I mean the knowledge of the
world, is never acquired without great attention, and I know a great
many aged persons who, after having had an extensive acquaintance, are
still mere children in the knowledge of the world.”
“Human nature is the same all over the world; but its operations are
so varied by education and custom that we ought to see it in all its
aspects to get an intimate knowledge of it.”
“Almost all men are born with every passion to some extent, but there
is hardly a man who has not a dominant passion to which the others
are subordinate. Discover this governing passion in every individual;
search into the recesses of his heart, and observe the different
effects of the same passion in different people. And when you have
found the master passion of a man, remember never to trust to him where
that passion is concerned.”
“If you wish particularly to gain the good graces and affection of
certain people, men or women, try to discover their most striking
merit, if they have one, and their dominant weakness, for every one has
his own, then do justice to the one, and _a little more than justice to
the other_.”
“Women, in general, have only one object, which is their beauty, upon
which subject hardly any flattery can be too gross to please them.”
“The flattery which is most pleasing to really beautiful or decidedly
ugly women, is that which is addressed to their intellect.”
On the subject of women, again, if he seems disdainful now and then,
he makes reparation elsewhere; and, above all, whatever he thinks of
them, he never allows his son to slander them too much. “You appear to
think that from the days of _Eve_ to the present time they have done
much harm: as regards _that lady_ I agree with you; but from her time
history teaches you that men have done more harm in the world than
women; and to speak truly, I would warn you not to trust either sex
more than is absolutely necessary. But what I particularly advise you
is this: never to attack whole bodies, whatever they may be.”
“Individuals occasionally forgive, but bodies and societies never do.”
In general, Chesterfield counsels his son to be circumspect and to
preserve a sort of prudent neutrality, even in the case of the knaves
and fools with which the world abounds. “After their friendship there
is nothing more dangerous than to have them for enemies.” It is not the
morality of Cato nor of Zeno, but that of Alcibiades, of Aristippus,
or Atticus.
Upon religion he shall speak, in reply to some trenchant opinion that
his son had expressed: “The reason of every man is and ought to be his
guide; and I shall have as much right to expect every man to be of my
height and temperament, as to wish that he should reason precisely as I
do.”
In everything he is of the opinion that the good and the best should
be known and loved, but that it is not necessary to make one’s self a
champion for or against everything. One must know even in literature
how to tolerate the weaknesses of others: “Let them enjoy quietly their
errors both in taste and religion.” Oh! how far from such wisdom is the
bitter trade of criticism, as we do it!
He does not, however, advise lying; he is precise in this particular.
His precept always runs thus: do not tell all, but never tell a lie. “I
have always observed,” he frequently repeats, “that the greatest fools
are the greatest liars. For my part, I judge of the truth of a man by
the extent of his intellect.”
We see how really he mixes the useful and the agreeable. He is
perpetually demanding from the intellect something resolute and subtle,
sweetness in the manner, energy at bottom.
Lord Chesterfield thoroughly appreciated the serious state of France
and the dread events that the eighteenth century brought to light.
According to him, Duclos, in his _Reflections_, is right when he says
that “_a germ of reason is beginning to appear in France_.” “What I can
confidently predict,” adds Chesterfield, “is that before the end of
this century the trades of king and priest will have lost half their
power.”
Our revolution has been clearly predicted by him since 1750.
He warned his son from the beginning against the idea that the French
are entirely frivolous. “The cold inhabitants of the north look upon
the French as a frivolous people who sing and whistle and dance
perpetually; this is very far from being the truth, though the army
of _fops_ seems to justify it. But these _fops_, ripened by age and
experience, often turn into very able men.” The ideal, according to
him, would be to unite the merits of the two nations; but in this
mixture he still seems to lean toward France: “I have said many times,
and I really think, that a Frenchman who joins to a good foundation
of virtue, learning, and good sense, the manners and politeness of
his country, has attained the perfection of human nature.” He unites
sufficiently well in himself the advantages of the two nations, with
one characteristic which belongs exclusively to his race--there is
imagination even in his wit. Hamilton himself has this distinctive
characteristic, and introduces it into French wit. Bacon, the great
moralist, is almost a poet by expression. One cannot say so much of
Lord Chesterfield; nevertheless, he has more imagination in his sallies
and in the expression of his wit than one meets with in Saint Evremond
and our acute moralists in general. He resembles his friend Montesquieu
in this respect.
If in the letters to his son we can, without being severe, lay hold
of some cases of slightly damaged morality, we should have to point
out, by way of compensation, some very serious and really admirable
passages, where he speaks of the Cardinal de Retz, of Mazarin, of
Bolingbroke, of Marlborough, and of many others. It is a rich book. One
cannot read a page without finding some happy observation worthy of
being remembered.
Lord Chesterfield intended this beloved son for a diplomatic life;
he at first found some difficulties in the way on account of his
illegitimacy. To cut short these objections, he sent his son to
Parliament; it was the surest method of conquering the scruples of the
court. Mr. Stanhope, in his maiden speech, hesitated a moment, and was
obliged to have recourse to notes. He did not make a second attempt at
speaking in public. It appears that he succeeded better in diplomacy,
in those second-rate places where solid merit is sufficient. He filled
the post of ambassador extraordinary to the court of Dresden. But his
health, always delicate, failed before he was old, and his father
had the misfortune to see him die before him when he was scarcely
thirty-six years old (1768). Lord Chesterfield at that time lived
entirely retired from the world, on account of his infirmities, the
most painful of which was complete deafness. Montesquieu, whose sight
failed, said to him once, “_I know how to be blind._” But he was not
able to say as much; he did not know how to be deaf. He wrote of it to
his friends, even to those in France, thus: “The exchange of letters,”
he remarked, “is the conversation of deaf people, and the only link
which connects them with society.” He found his latest consolations
in his pretty country-house at Blackheath, which he had called by the
French name of Babiole. He employed his time there in gardening and
cultivating his melons and pineapples; he amused himself by vegetating
_in company with them_.
“I have vegetated here all this year,” he wrote to a French friend
(September, 1753), “without pleasures and without troubles; my age and
deafness prevented the first; my philosophy, or rather my temperament
(for one often confounds them), guaranteed me against the last. I
always get as much as I can of the quiet pleasures of gardening,
walking, and reading, and in the meantime _I await death without
desiring or fearing it_.”
He never undertook long works, not feeling himself sufficiently strong,
but he sometimes sent agreeable essays to a periodical publication,
_The World_. These essays are quite worthy of his reputation for skill
and urbanity. Nevertheless, nothing approaches the work--which was no
work to him--of those letters, which he never imagined any one would
read, and which are yet the foundation of his literary success.
His old age, which was an early one, lasted a long time. His wit gave
a hundred turns to this sad theme. Speaking of himself and one of his
friends, Lord Tyrawley, equally old and infirm: “Tyrawley and I,” he
said, “have been dead two years, but we do not wish it to be known.”
Voltaire, who under the pretence of being always dying, had preserved
his youth much better, wrote to him on the 24th of October, 1771, this
pretty letter, signed “_Le vieux malade de Ferney_”:
“Enjoy an honorable and happy old age, after having passed through
the trials of life. Enjoy your wit and preserve the health of your
body. Of the five senses with which we are provided, you have only one
enfeebled, and Lord Huntingdon assures me that you have a good stomach,
which is worth a pair of ears. It will be perhaps my place to decide
which is the most sorrowful, to be deaf or blind, or have no digestion.
I can judge of all these three conditions with a knowledge of the
cause; but it is a long time since I ventured to decide upon trifles,
least of all upon things so important. I confine myself to the belief
that, if you have sun in the beautiful house that you have built, you
will spend some tolerable moments; that is all we can hope for at our
age. Cicero wrote a beautiful treatise upon old age, but he did not
verify his words by deeds; his last years were very unhappy. You have
lived longer and more happily than he did. You have had to do neither
with perpetual dictators nor with triumvirs. Your lot has been, and
still is, one of the most desirable in that great lottery where good
tickets are so scarce, and where the Great Prize of continual happiness
has never been gained by any one. Your philosophy has never been upset
by chimeras which have sometimes perplexed tolerably good brains. _You
have never been in any sense a charlatan, nor the dupe of charlatans_,
and that I reckon as a rare merit, which adds something to the shadow
of happiness that we are allowed to taste of in this short life.”
Lord Chesterfield died on the 24th of March, 1773. In pointing out his
charming course of worldly education, we have not thought it out of
place even in a Democracy,[15] to take lessons of _savoir vivre_ and
politeness, and to receive them from a man whose name is so closely
connected with those of Montesquieu and Voltaire, who, more than any
other of his countrymen in his own time, showed singular fondness
for our nation; who delighted, more than was right, perhaps, in our
amiable qualities; who appreciated our solid virtues, and of whom it
might be said, as his greatest praise, that he was a French wit, if he
had not introduced into the _verve_ and vivacity of his sallies that
inexplicable something of imagination and color that bears the impress
of his race.