Part 17

KEEP THE PEACE.--Keep carefully out of all scrapes and quarrels. They lower a character extremely; and are particularly dangerous in France; where a man is dishonored by not resenting an affront, and utterly ruined by resenting it. The young Frenchmen are hasty, giddy, and petulant; extremely national, and _avantageux_. Forbear from any national jokes or reflections, which are always improper, and commonly unjust. The colder northern nations generally look upon France as a whistling, singing, dancing, frivolous nation; this notion is very far from being a true one, though many _petits maîtres_ by their behavior seem to justify it; but those very _petits maîtres_, when mellowed by age and experience, very often turn out very able men. The number of great generals and statesmen, as well as excellent authors, that France has produced, is an undeniable proof, that it is not that frivolous, unthinking, empty nation that the northern prejudices suppose it. [_No date._]

A NEW CONSTITUTION.--This epigram in Martial:

“Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare, Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te”--[49]

has puzzled a great many people; who cannot conceive how it is possible not to love anybody, and yet not to know the reason why. I think I conceive Martial’s meaning very clearly, though the nature of epigram, which is to be short, would not allow him to explain it more fully; and I take it to be this: “O Sabidis, you are a very worthy, deserving man; you have a thousand good qualities, you have a great deal of learning; I esteem, I respect, but for the soul of me, I cannot love you, though I cannot particularly say why. You are not amiable; you have not those engaging manners, those pleasing attentions, those graces, and that address, which are absolutely necessary to please, though impossible to define. I cannot say it is this or that particular thing which hinders me from loving you, it is the whole together; and upon the whole you are not agreeable.” How often have I, in the course of my life, found myself in this situation, with regard to many of my acquaintance, whom I have honored and respected, without being able to love? I did not know why, because, when one is young, one does not take the trouble, nor allow one’s self the time, to analyze one’s sentiments, and to trace them up to their source. [_Feb. 28, 1751._]

CARRIAGE OF THE BODY.--It sounds ridiculously to bid you study with your dancing master; and yet I do. The bodily carriage and graces are of infinite consequence to everybody, and more particularly to you. Adieu for this time, my dear child. Yours tenderly. [_No date._]

HOW TO PLEASE.--An air, a tone of voice, a composure of countenance to mildness and softness, which are all easily acquired, do the business; and without further examination, and possibly with the contrary qualities, that man is reckoned the gentlest, the modestest, and the best-natured man alive. Happy the man who, with a certain fund of parts and knowledge, gets acquainted with the world early enough to make it his bubble, at an age when most people are the bubbles of the world! for that is the common case of youth. They grow wiser when it is too late; and, ashamed and vexed at having been bubbles so long, too often turn knaves at last. Do not, therefore, trust to appearances and outside yourself, but pay other people with them, because you may be sure that nine in ten of mankind do, and ever will, trust to them. This is by no means a criminal or blamable simulation, if not used with an ill intention. I am by no means blamable in desiring to have other people’s good word, good-will, and affection, if I do not mean to abuse them. Your heart, I know, is good, your sense is sound, and your knowledge extensive. [_May 6, 1751._]

PICTURES.--I received yesterday, at the same time, your letters of the 4th and the 11th, N. S., and being much more careful of my commissions than you are of yours, I do not delay one moment sending you my final instructions concerning the pictures. The man, you allow to be a Titian, and in good preservation; the woman is an indifferent and a damaged picture; but, as I want them for furniture for a particular room, companions are necessary; and therefore I am willing to take the woman, for better for worse, upon account of the man; and if she is not too much damaged, I can have her tolerably repaired, as many a fine woman is, by a skilful hand here; but then I expect the lady should be, in a manner, thrown into the bargain with the man; and in this state of affairs, the woman being worth little or nothing, I will not go above fourscore louis for the two together. As for the Rembrandt you mention, though it is very cheap, if good, I do not care for it. I love _la belle nature_; Rembrandt paints caricatures. Now for your own commissions, which you seem to have forgotten. [_May 10, 1751._]

DANCING AND DEPORTMENT.--Lady Hervey, who is your puff and panegyrist, writes me word, that she saw you lately dance at a ball, and that you dance very genteelly. I am extremely glad to hear it; for (by the maxim that _omne majus continet in se minus_) if you dance genteelly, I presume you walk, sit, and stand genteelly too; things which are much more easy, though much more necessary, than dancing well. I have known many very genteel people, who could not dance well; but I never knew anybody dance very well, who was not genteel in other things. You will probably often have occasion to stand in circles, at the levees of princes and ministers, when it is very necessary, _de payer de sa personne, et d’être bien planté_, with your feet not too near nor too distant from each other. More people stand and walk, than sit genteelly. Awkward, ill-bred people, being ashamed, commonly sit up bolt upright and stiff; others, too negligent and easy, _se vautrent dans leur fauteuil_, which is ungraceful and ill-bred, unless where the familiarity is extreme. [_June 10, 1751._]

LITTLE NOTHINGS.--I know a man, and so do you, who, without a grain of merit, knowledge, or talents, has raised himself millions of degrees above his level, simply by a good air and engaging manners; insomuch that the very prince, who raised him so high, calls him, _mon aimable vaurien_[50]: but of this do not open your lips, _pour cause_. I give you this secret, as the strongest proof imaginable, of the efficacy of air, address, _tournure, et tous ces petits riens_. [_Same date._]

EASE OF MANNER.--_Les bienséances_[51] are a most necessary part of the knowledge of the world. They consist in the relations of persons, things, time, and place; good sense points them out, good company perfects them (supposing always an attention and a desire to please), and good policy recommends them.

Were you to converse with a king, you ought to be as easy and unembarrassed as with your own valet de chambre; but yet every look, word, and action should imply the utmost respect. What would be proper and well-bred with others much your superiors, would be absurd and ill-bred with one so very much so. You must wait till you are spoken to; you must receive, not give, the subject of conversation, and you must even take care that the given subject of such conversation do not lead you into any impropriety. [_June 13, 1751._]

SOCIAL RESPECT.--In mixed companies with your equals (for in mixed companies all people are to a certain degree equal) greater ease and liberty are allowed; but they too have their bounds within _bienséance_. There is a social respect necessary; you may start your own subject of conversation with modesty, taking great care, however, _de ne jamais parler de cordes dans la maison d’un pendu_. Your words, gestures, and attitudes have a greater degree of latitude, though by no means an unbounded one. You may have your hands in your pockets, take snuff, sit, stand, or occasionally walk, as you like; but I believe you would not think it very _bienséant_ to whistle, put on your hat, loosen your garters or your buckles, lie down upon a couch, or go to bed, and welter in an easy chair. These are negligences and freedoms which one can only take when quite alone; they are injurious to superiors, shocking and offensive to equals, brutal and insulting to inferiors. That easiness of carriage and behavior, which is exceedingly engaging, widely differs from negligence and inattention, and by no means implies that one may do whatever one pleases. [_Same date._]

RESPECT DUE TO WOMAN.--To women you should always address yourself with great outward respect and attention, whatever you feel inwardly; their sex is by long prescription entitled to it; and it is among the duties of _bienséance_; at the same time that respect is very properly, and very agreeably, mixed with a degree of _enjouement_, if you have it; but then, that _badinage_ must either directly or indirectly tend to their praise, and even not be liable to a malicious construction to their disadvantage. But here, too, great attention must be had to the difference of age, rank, and situation. A _maréchale_ of fifty must not be played with like a young coquette of fifteen; respect and _serious enjouement_, if I may couple those two words, must be used with the former, and mere _badinage, zesté même d’un peu de polissonerie_, is pardonable with the latter. [_Same date._]

HORSE-LAUGHTER.--Loud laughter is extremely inconsistent with _les bienséances_, as it is only the illiberal and noisy testimony of the joy of the mob, at some very silly thing. A gentleman is often seen, but very seldom heard, to laugh. Nothing is more contrary to _les bienséances_ than horse-play, or _jeux de main_ of any kind whatever, and has often very serious, sometimes very fatal consequences. Romping, struggling, throwing things at one another’s head, are the becoming pleasantries of the mob, but degrade a gentleman; _giuoco di mano, giuoco di villano_, is a very true saying, among the few true sayings of the Italians.

There is a _bienséance_ also with regard to people of the lowest degree; a gentleman observes it with his footman, even with the beggar in the street. He considers them as objects of compassion, not of insult; he speaks to neither _d’un ton brusque_, but corrects the one coolly, and refuses the other with humanity. There is no one occasion in the world in which _le ton brusque_ is becoming a gentleman. In short, _les bienséances_ are another word for _manners_. [_Same date._]

THE TWO AGES.--Now that all tumultuous passions and quick sensations have subsided with me, and that I have no tormenting cares nor boisterous pleasures to agitate me, my greatest joy is to consider the fair prospect you have before you, and to hope and believe you will enjoy it. You are already in the world, at an age when others have hardly heard of it. Your character is hitherto not only unblemished in its moral part, but even unsullied by any low, dirty, and ungentlemanlike vice; and will, I hope, continue so. Your knowledge is sound, extensive, and avowed, especially in everything relative to your destination. With such materials to begin, what then is wanting? Not fortune, as you have found by experience. You have had, and shall have, fortune sufficient to assist your merit and your industry; and, if I can help it, you never shall have enough to make you negligent of either. You have, too, _mens sana in corpore sano_, the greatest blessing of all. All, therefore, that you want is as much in your power to acquire, as to eat your breakfast when set before you; it is only that knowledge of the world, that elegancy of manners, that universal politeness, and those graces, which keeping good company, and seeing variety of places and characters, must inevitably, with the least attention on your part, give you. Your foreign destination leads to the greatest things, and your parliamentary situation will facilitate your progress; consider then this pleasing prospect as attentively for yourself, as I consider it for you. Labor on your part to realize it, as I will on mine to assist and enable you to do it. _Nullum numen abest, si sit prudentia._ [_Same date._]

A REFERENCE AT COURT.--I would wish you to be able to talk upon all these things, better and with more knowledge than other people; insomuch that, upon those occasions, you should be applied to, and that people should say, _I dare say Mr. Stanhope can tell us_. Second-rate knowledge, and middling talents, carry a man farther at courts, and in the busy part of the world, than superior knowledge and shining parts. Tacitus very justly accounts for a man’s having always kept in favor, and enjoyed the best employments, under the tyrannical reigns of three or four of the very worst emperors, by saying that it was not _propter aliquam eximiam artem, sed quia par negotiis neque supra erat_. Discretion is the great article; all those things are to be learned and only learned by keeping a great deal of the best company. Frequent those good houses where you have already a footing, and wriggle yourself somehow or other into every other. Haunt the courts particularly, in order to get that _routine_. [_June 20, 1751._]

FRENCH AND ENGLISH HUNTING.--Our abbé writes me word that you were gone to Compiègne; I am very glad of it; other courts must form you for your own. He tells me, too, that you have left off riding at the _manège_; I have no objection to that, it takes up a great deal of the morning; and if you have got a genteel and firm seat on horseback, it is enough for you, now that tilts and tournaments are laid aside. I suppose you have hunted at Compiègne. The king’s hunting there, I am told, is a fine sight. The French manner of hunting is gentlemanlike; ours is only for bumpkins and boobies. The poor beasts here are pursued and run down by much greater beasts than themselves; and the true British fox-hunter is most undoubtedly a species appropriated and peculiar to this country, which no other part of the globe produces. [_June 30, 1751._]

POLITE AFFECTION.--Remember to bring your mother some little presents; they need not be of value, but only marks of your affection and duty for one who has always been tenderly fond of you. You may bring Lady Chesterfield a little Martin snuff-box, of about five louis; and you need bring over no other presents; you and I not wanting _les petits présens pour entretenir l’amitié_. [_July 8, 1751._]

INATTENTION.--Laziness of mind, or inattention, are as great enemies to knowledge, as incapacity; for, in truth, what difference is there between a man who will not, and a man who cannot, be informed? This difference only, that the former is justly to be blamed, and the latter to be pitied. And yet how many are there, very capable of receiving knowledge, who, from laziness, inattention, and incuriousness, will not so much as ask for it, much less take the least pains to acquire it.

Our young English travellers generally distinguish themselves by a voluntary privation of all that useful knowledge for which they are sent abroad; and yet, at that age, the most useful knowledge is the most easy to be acquired; conversation being the book, and the best book, in which it is contained. [_Jan. 2, 1752._]

THE DRAMA.--I could wish there were a treaty made between the French and the English theatres, in which both parties should make considerable concessions. The English ought to give up their notorious violations of all the unities; and all their massacres, racks, dead bodies, and mangled carcasses, which they so frequently exhibit upon their stage. The French should engage to have more action, and less declamation; and not to cram and crowd things together to almost a degree of impossibility, from a too scrupulous adherence to the unities. The English should restrain the licentiousness of their poets, and the French enlarge the liberty of theirs: their poets are the greatest slaves in their country, and that is a bold word; ours are the most tumultuous subjects in England, and that is saying a good deal. Under such regulations, one might hope to see a play, in which one should not be lulled to sleep by the length of a monotonical declamation, nor frightened and shocked by the barbarity of the action. The unity of time extended occasionally to three or four days, and the unity of place broke into, as far as the same street, or sometimes the same town; both which, I will affirm, are as probable, as four-and-twenty hours, and the same room.

More indulgence, too, in my mind, should be shown, than the French are willing to allow, to bright thoughts, and to shining images; for though I confess, it is not very natural for a hero or a princess to say fine things, in all the violence of grief, love, rage, etc., yet I can as well suppose that, as I can that they should talk to themselves for half an hour; which they must necessarily do, or no tragedy could be carried on, unless they had recourse to a much greater absurdity, the choruses of the ancients. Tragedy is of a nature, that one must see it with a degree of self-deception; we must lend ourselves, a little, to the delusion; and I am very willing to carry that complaisance a little further than the French do.

Tragedy must be something bigger than life, or it would not affect us. In nature the most violent passions are silent; in tragedy they must speak, and speak with dignity, too. Hence the necessity of their being written in verse, and, unfortunately for the French, from the weakness of their language, in rhymes. And for the same reason, Cato, the Stoic, expiring at Utica, rhymes masculine and feminine,[52] at Paris; and fetches his last breath at London, in most harmonious and correct blank verse.

It is quite otherwise with comedy, which should be mere common life, and not one jot bigger. Every character should speak upon the stage, not only what it would utter in the situation there represented, but in the same manner in which it would express it. For which reason, I cannot allow rhymes in comedy, unless they were put into the mouth and came out of the mouth of a mad poet. But it is impossible to deceive one’s self enough (nor is it the least necessary in comedy) to suppose a dull rogue of a usurer cheating, or _gros Jean_ blundering, in the finest rhymes in the world.

As for operas, they are essentially too absurd and extravagant to mention: I look upon them as a magic scene, contrived to please the eyes and the ears, at the expense of the understanding; and I consider singing, rhyming, and chiming heroes, and princesses, and philosophers, as I do the hills, the trees, the birds, and the beasts, who amicably joined in one common country dance, to the irresistible tune of Orpheus’s lyre. Whenever I go to an opera, I leave my sense and reason at the door with my half guinea, and deliver myself up to my eyes and my ears. [_Jan. 23, 1752._]

RIDICULE.--It is commonly said, and more particularly by Lord Shaftesbury, that ridicule is the best test of truth; for that it will not stick where it is not just. I deny it.[53] A truth learned in a certain light, and attacked in certain words by men of wit and humor, may, and often doth, become ridiculous, at least so far, that the truth is only remembered and repeated for the sake of the ridicule. The overturn of Mary of Medicis into a river, where she was half drowned, would never have been remembered, if Madame de Vernueil, who saw it, had not said _la Reine boit_. Pleasure or malignity often gives ridicule a weight, which it does not deserve. [_Same date._]

COMEDIES.--I chiefly mind dialogue and character in comedies. Let dull critics feed the carcasses of plays; give me the taste and the dressing. [_Feb. 6, 1752._]

THE WEIGHT OF LOW PEOPLE.--In courts a universal gentleness and _douceur dans les manières_ is most absolutely necessary: an offended fool, or a slighted _valet de chambre_, may, very possibly, do more hurt at court, than ten men of merit can do you good. Fools, and low people, are always jealous of their dignity; and never forget nor forgive what they reckon a slight. [_Same date._]

AT COURT.--There is a court garment, as well as a wedding garment, without which you will not be received. That garment is the _volto sciolto_: an imposing air, an elegant politeness, easy and engaging manners, universal attention, an insinuating gentleness, and all those _je ne sais quoi_ that compose the _grâces_. [_Same date._]

PERFECTION.--In all systems whatsoever, whether of religion, government, morals, etc., perfection is the object always proposed, though possibly unattainable; hitherto, at least, certainly unattained. However, those who aim carefully at the mark itself, will unquestionably come nearer to it than those who, from despair, negligence, or indolence, leave to chance the work of skill. This maxim holds equally true in common life; those who aim at perfection will come infinitely nearer it than those desponding or indolent spirits, who foolishly say to themselves, nobody is perfect; perfection is unattainable; to attempt it is chimerical; I shall do as well as others; why then should I give myself trouble to be what I never can, and what, according to the common course of things, I need not be, _perfect_? [_Feb. 20, 1752._]

OMNIS HOMO.--I would have him have lustre as well as weight. Did you ever know anybody that reunited all these talents? Yes, I did; Lord Bolingbroke joined all the politeness, the manners, and the graces of a courtier, to the solidity of a statesman, and to the learning of a pedant. He was _omnis homo_; and pray what should hinder my boy of doing so too, if he hath, as I think he hath, all the other qualifications that you allow him? [_Same date._]

KNOWLEDGE OF LITERATURE.--A gentleman should know those which I call classical works, in every language: such as Boileau, Corneille, Racine, Molière, etc., in French; Milton, Dryden, Pope, Swift, etc., in English; and the three authors above mentioned[54] in Italian: whether you have any such in German I am not quite sure, nor, indeed, am I inquisitive. These sort of books adorn the mind, improve the fancy, are frequently alluded to by, and are often the subjects of conversations of, the best companies. As you have languages to read, and memory to retain them, the knowledge of them is very well worth the little pains it will cost you, and will enable you to shine in company. It is not pedantic to quote and allude to them, which it would be with regard to the ancients. [_March 2, 1752._]

NOTHING BY HALVES.--Whatever business you have, do it the first moment you can; never by halves, but finish it without interruption, if possible. Business must not be sauntered and trifled with; and you must not say to it, as Felix did to Paul, “at a more convenient season I will speak to thee.” The most convenient season for business is the first; but study and business, in some measure, point out their own times to a man of sense; time is much oftener squandered away in the wrong choice and improper methods of amusement and pleasures. [_March 5, 1752._]

FORMATION OF MANNERS.--Nothing forms a young man so much as being used to keep respectable and superior company, where a constant regard and attention is necessary. It is true, this is at first a disagreeable state of restraint; but it soon grows habitual, and consequently easy; and you are amply paid for it, by the improvement you make, and the credit it gives you. [_Same date._]

THE BEST SCHOOL.--Company, various company, is the only school for this knowledge. You ought to be, by this time, at least in the third form of that school, from whence the rise to the uppermost is easy and quick; but then you must have application and vivacity, you must not only bear with, but even seek, restraint in some companies, instead of stagnating in one or two only, where indolence and love of ease may be indulged. [_March 16, 1752._]