From my own Apartment, June 23.
Having lately turned my thoughts upon the consideration of the behaviour
of parents to children in the great affair of marriage, I took much
delight in turning over a bundle of letters which a gentleman's steward
in the country had sent me some time ago. This parcel is a collection
of letters written by the children of the family to which he belongs to
their father, and contain all the little passages of their lives, and
the new ideas they received as the years advanced. There is in them
an account of their diversions as well as their exercises; and what I
thought very remarkable is, that two sons of the family, who now make
considerable figures in the world, gave omens of that sort of character
which they now bear in the first rudiments of thought which they show
in their letters. Were one to point out a method of education, one could
not, methinks, frame one more pleasing or improving than this; where the
children get a habit of communicating their thoughts and inclinations
to their best friend with so much freedom, that he can form schemes for
their future life and conduct from an observation of their tempers; and
by that means be early enough in choosing their way of life, to make
them forward in some art or science at an age when others have not
determined what profession to follow. As to the persons concerned in
this packet I am speaking of, they have given great proofs of the force
of this conduct of their father in the effect it has upon their lives
and manners. The older, who is a scholar, showed from his infancy
a propensity to polite studies, and has made a suitable progress in
literature; but his learning is so well woven into his mind, that from
the impressions of it, he seems rather to have contracted a habit of
life than manner of discourse. To his books he seems to owe a good
economy in his affairs, and a complacency in his manners, though in
others that way of education has commonly a quite different effect. The
epistles of the other son are full of accounts of what he thought most
remarkable in his reading. He sends his father for news the last noble
story he had read. I observe he is particularly touched with the conduct
of Codrus, who plotted his own death, because the oracle had said, if he
were not killed, the enemy should prevail over his country. Many other
incidents in his little letters give omens of a soul capable of generous
undertakings; and what makes it the more particular is, that this
gentleman had, in the present war, the honour and happiness of doing an
action for which only it was worth coming into the world. Their father
is the most intimate friend they have; and they always consult him
rather than any other, when any error has happened in their conduct
through youth and inadvertency. The behaviour of this gentleman to his
sons has made his life pass away with the pleasures of a second youth;
for as the vexations which men receive from their children hasten the
approach of age, and double the force of years; so the comforts which
they reap from them, are balm to all other sorrows, and disappoint
the injuries of time. Parents of children repeat their lives in their
offspring; and their concern for them is so near, that they feel all
their sufferings and enjoyments as much as if they regarded their own
proper persons. But it is generally so far otherwise, that the common
race of 'squires in this kingdom use their sons as persons that are
waiting only for their funerals, and spies upon their health and
happiness; as indeed they are, by their own making them such. In cases
where a man takes the liberty after this manner to reprehend others, it
is commonly said, Let him look at home. I am sorry to own it; but
there is one branch of the house of the Bickerstaffs who have been as
erroneous in their conduct this way as any other family whatsoever. The
head of this branch is now in town, and has brought up with him his son
and daughter, who are all the children he has, in order to be put some
way into the world, and see fashions. They are both very ill-bred cubs;
and having lived together from their infancy, without knowledge of the
distinctions and decencies that are proper to be paid to each other's
sex, they squabble like two brothers. The father is one of those who
knows no better than that all pleasure is debauchery, and imagines, when
he sees a man become his estate, that he will certainly spend it. This
branch are a people who never had among them one man eminent either for
good or ill: however, have all along kept their heads just above water,
not by a prudent and regular economy, but by expedients in the matches
they have made in to their house. When one of the family has in the
pursuit of foxes, and in the entertainment of clowns, run out the third
part of the value of his estate, such a spendthrift has dressed up his
eldest son, and married what they call a good fortune: who has supported
the father as a tyrant over them during his life, in the same house or
neighbourhood. The son, in succession, has just taken the same method
to keep up his dignity, till the mortgages he has ate and drank himself
into have reduced him to the necessity of sacrificing his son also, in
imitation of his progenitor. This had been for many generations, the
whole that had happened in the family of Sam Bickerstaff, till the time
of my present cousin Samuel, the father of the young people we have just
now spoken of.
Samuel Bickerstaff, esquire, is so happy as that by several legacies
from distant relations, deaths of maiden sisters, and other instances
of good fortune, he has besides his real estate, a great sum of ready
money. His son at the same time knows he has a good fortune, which the
father cannot alienate; though he strives to make him believe he depends
only on his will for maintenance. Tom is now in his nineteenth year.
Mrs. Mary in her fifteenth. Cousin Samuel, who understands no one point
of good behaviour as it regards all the rest of the world, is an
exact critic in the dress, the motion, the looks, and gestures, of his
children. What adds to their misery is, that he is excessively fond of
them, and the greatest part of their time is spent in the presence of
this nice observer. Their life is one of continued constraint. The girl
never turns her head, but she is warned not to follow the proud minxes
of the town. The boy is not to turn fop, or be quarrelsome, at the same
time not to take an affront. I had the good fortune to dine with him
to-day, and heard his fatherly table-talk as we sat at dinner, which,
if my memory does not fail me, for the benefit of the world, I shall set
down as he spoke it; which was much as follows, and may be of great use
to those parents who seem to make it a rule, that their children's turn
to enjoy the world is not to commence till they themselves have left it.
"Now, Tom, I have bought you chambers in the inns of court. I allow you
to take a walk once or twice a day round the garden. If you mind your
business, you need not study to be as great a lawyer as Coke upon
Littleton. I have that that will keep you; but be sure you keep an exact
account of your linen. Write down what you give out to your laundress,
and what she brings home again. Go as little as possible to the other
end of the town; but if you do, come home early. I believe I was as
sharp as you for your years, and I had my hat snatched off my head
coming home late at a stop by St. Clement's church, and I do not know
from that day to this who took it. I do not care if you learn to fence a
little; for I would not have you made a fool of. Let me have an account
of everything, every post; I am willing to be at that charge, and I
think you need not spare your pains. As for you, daughter Molly, do not
mind one word that is said to you in London, for it is only for your
money."