Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (Письма к сыну – полный вариант)

by Филип Дормер Стенхоп Честерфилд

  I am very sorry to hear that Lady Hervey is ill. Paris does not seem to agree with her; she used to have great health here. 'A propos' of her; remember, when you are with me, not to mention her but when you and I are quite alone, for reasons which I will tell you when we meet: but this is only between you and me; and I desire that you will not so much as hint it to her, or to anybody else.

  If old Kurzay goes to the valley of Jehoshaphat, I cannot help it; it will be an ease to our friend Madame Montconseil, who I believe maintains her, and a little will not satisfy her in any way.

  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 snuffbox of about five Louis; and you need bring over no other presents; you and I not wanting 'les petits presens pour entretenir l'amitee'.

  Since I wrote what goes before, I have talked you over minutely with Lord Albemarle, who told me, that he could very sincerely commend you upon every article but one; but upon that one you were often joked, both by him and others. I desired to know what that was; he laughed and told me it was the article of dress, in which you were exceedingly negligent. Though he laughed, I can assure you that it is no laughing matter for you; and you will possibly be surprised when I assert (but, upon my word, it is literally true), that to be very well dressed is of much more importance to you, than all the Greek you know will, be of these thirty years. Remember that the world is now your only business; and that you must adopt its customs and manners, be they silly or be they not. To neglect your dress, is an affront to all the women you keep company with; as it implies that you do not think them worth that attention which everybody else doth; they mind dress, and you will never please them if you neglect yours; and if you do not please the women, you will not please half the men you otherwise might. It is the women who put a young fellow in fashion even with the men. A young fellow ought to have a certain fund of coquetry; which should make him try all the means of pleasing, as much as any coquette in Europe can do. Old as I am, and little thinking of women, God knows, I am very far from being negligent of my dress; and why? From conformity to custom, and out of decency to men, who expect that degree of complaisance. I do not, indeed, wear feathers and red heels, which would ill suit my age; but I take care to have my clothes well made, my wig well combed and powdered, my linen and person extremely clean. I even allow my footman forty shillings a year extraordinary, that they may be spruce and neat. Your figure especially, which from its stature cannot be very majestic and interesting, should be the more attended to in point of dress as it cannot be 'imposante', it should be 'gentile, aimable, bien mise'. It will not admit of negligence and carelessness.

  I believe Mr. Hayes thinks that you have slighted him a little of late, since you have got into so much other company. I do not by any means blame you for not frequenting his house so much as you did at first, before you had got into so many other houses more entertaining and more instructing than his; on the contrary, you do very well; but, however, as he was extremely civil to you, take care to be so to him, and make up in manner what you omit in matter. See him, dine with him before you come away, and ask his commands for England.

  Your triangular seal is done, and I have given it to an English gentleman, who sets out in a week for Paris, and who will deliver it to Sir John Lambert for you.

  I cannot conclude this letter without returning again to the showish, the ornamental, the shining parts of your character; which, if you neglect, upon my word you will render the solid ones absolutely useless; nay, such is the present turn of the world, that some valuable qualities are even ridiculous, if not accompanied by the genteeler accomplishments. Plainness, simplicity, and quakerism, either in dress or manners, will by no means do; they must both be laced and embroidered; speaking, or writing sense, without elegance and turn, will be very little persuasive; and the best figure in the world, without air and address, will be very ineffectual. Some pedants may have told you that sound sense and learning stand in, need of no ornaments; and, to support that assertion, elegantly quote the vulgar proverb, that GOOD WINE NEEDS NO BUSH; but surely the little experience you have already had of the world must have convinced you that the contrary of that assertion is true. All those accomplishments are now in your power; think of them, and of them only. I hope you frequent La Foire St. Laurent, which I see is now open; you will improve more by going there with your mistress, than by staying at home and reading Euclid with your geometry master. Adieu. 'Divertissez-vous, il n'y a rien de tel'.

  LETTER CLII

  GREENWICH, July 15, O. S. 1751

  MY DEAR FRIEND: As this is the last, or last letter but one, that I think I shall write before I have the pleasure of seeing you here, it may not be amiss to prepare you a little for our interview, and for the time we shall pass together. Before kings and princes meet, ministers on each side adjust the important points of precedence, arm chairs, right hand and left, etc., so that they know previously what they are to expect, what they have to trust to; and it is right they should; for they commonly envy or hate, but most certainly distrust each other. We shall meet upon very different terms; we want no such preliminaries: you know my tenderness, I know your affection. My only object, therefore, is to make your short stay with me as useful as I can to you; and yours, I hope, is to co-operate with me. Whether, by making it wholesome, I shall make it pleasant to you, I am not sure. Emetics and cathartics I shall not administer, because I am sure you do not want them; but for alteratives you must expect a great many; and I can tell you that I have a number of NOSTRUMS, which I shall communicate to nobody but yourself. To speak without a metaphor, I shall endeavor to assist your youth with all the experience that I have purchased, at the price of seven and fifty years. In order to this, frequent reproofs, corrections, and admonitions will be necessary; but then, I promise you, that they shall be in a gentle, friendly, and secret manner; they shall not put you out of countenance in company, nor out of humor when we are alone. I do not expect that, at nineteen, you should have that knowledge of the world, those manners, that dexterity, which few people have at nine-and-twenty. But I will endeavor to give them you; and I am sure you will endeavor to learn them, as far as your youth, my experience, and the time we shall pass together, will allow. You may have many inaccuracies (and to be sure you have, for who has not at your age?) which few people will tell you of, and some nobody can tell you of but myself. You may possibly have others, too, which eyes less interested, and less vigilant than mine, do not discover; all those you shall hear of from one whose tenderness for you will excite his curiosity and sharpen his penetration. The smallest inattention or error in manners, the minutest inelegance of diction, the least awkwardness in your dress and carriage, will not escape my observation, nor pass without amicable correction. Two, the most intimate friends in the world, can freely tell each other their faults, and even their crimes, but cannot possibly tell each other of certain little weaknesses; awkwardnesses, and blindnesses of self-love; to authorize that unreserved freedom, the relation between us is absolutely necessary. For example, I had a very worthy friend, with whom I was intimate enough to tell him his faults; he had but few; I told him of them; he took it kindly of me, and corrected them. But then, he had some weaknesses that I could never tell him of directly, and which he was so little sensible of himself, that hints of them were lost upon him. He had a scrag neck, of about a yard long; notwithstanding which, bags being in fashion, truly he would wear one to his wig, and did so; but never behind him, for, upon every motion of his head, his bag came forward over one shoulder or the other. He took it into his head too, that he must occasionally dance minuets, because other people did; and he did so, not only extremely ill, but so awkward, so disjointed, slim, so meagre, was his figure, that had he danced as well as ever Marcel did, it would have been ridiculous in him to have danced at all. I hinted these things to him as plainly as friendship would all
ow, and to no purpose; but to have told him the whole, so as to cure him, I must have been his father, which, thank God, I am not. As fathers commonly go, it is seldom a misfortune to be fatherless; and, considering the general run of sons, as seldom a misfortune to be childless. You and I form, I believe, an exception to that rule; for, I am persuaded that we would neither of us change our relation, were it in our power. You will, I both hope and believe, be not only the comfort, but the pride of my age; and, I am sure, I will be the support, the friend, the guide of your youth. Trust me without reserve; I will advise you without private interest, or secret envy. Mr. Harte will do so too; but still there may be some little things proper for you to know, and necessary for you to correct, which even his friendship would not let him tell you of so freely as I should; and some, of which he may not possibly be so good a judge of as I am, not having lived so much in the great world.

  One principal topic of our conversation will be, not only the purity but the elegance of the English language; in both which you are very deficient. Another will be the constitution of this country, of which, I believe, you know less than of most other countries in Europe. Manners, attentions, and address, will also be the frequent subjects of our lectures; and whatever I know of that important and necessary art, the art of pleasing. I will unreservedly communicate to you. Dress too (which, as things are, I can logically prove, requires some attention) will not always escape our notice. Thus, my lectures will be more various, and in some respects more useful than Professor Mascow's, and therefore, I can tell you, that I expect to be paid for them; but, as possibly you would not care to part with your ready money, and as I do not think that it would be quite handsome in me to accept it, I will compound for the payment, and take it in attention and practice.

  Pray remember to part with all your friends, acquaintances, and mistresses, if you have any at Paris, in such a manner as may make them not only willing but impatient to see you there again. Assure them of your desire of returning to them; and do it in a manner that they may think you in earnest, that is 'avec onction et une espece d'attendrissement'. All people say, pretty near the same things upon those occasions; it is the manner only that makes the difference; and that difference is great. Avoid, however, as much as you can, charging yourself with commissions, in your return from hence to Paris; I know, by experience, that they are exceedingly troublesome, commonly expensive, and very seldom satisfactory at last, to the persons who gave them; some you cannot refuse, to people to whom you are obliged, and would oblige in your turn; but as to common fiddle-faddle commissions, you may excuse yourself from them with truth, by saying that you are to return to Paris through Flanders, and see all those great towns; which I intend you shall do, and stay a week or ten days at Brussels. Adieu! A good journey to you, if this is my last; if not, I can repeat again what I shall wish constantly.

  LETTER CLIII

  LONDON, December 19, O. S. 1751-[Note the date, which indicates that the sojourn with the author has ended.]

  MY DEAR FRIEND: You are now entered upon a scene of business, where I hope you will one day make a figure. Use does a great deal, but care and attention must be joined to it. The first thing necessary in writing letters of business, is extreme clearness and perspicuity; every paragraph should be so clear and unambiguous, that the dullest fellow in the world may not be able to mistake it, nor obliged to read it twice in order to understand it. This necessary clearness implies a correctness, without excluding an elegance of style. Tropes, figures, antitheses, epigrams, etc., would be as misplaced and as impertinent in letters of business, as they are sometimes (if judiciously used) proper and pleasing in familiar letters, upon common and trite subjects. In business, an elegant simplicity, the result of care, not of labor, is required. Business must be well, not affectedly dressed; but by no means negligently. Let your first attention be to clearness, and read every paragraph after you have written it, in the critical view of discovering whether it is possible that any one man can mistake the true sense of it: and correct it accordingly.

  Our pronouns and relatives often create obscurity or ambiguity; be therefore exceedingly attentive to them, and take care to mark out with precision their particular relations. For example, Mr. Johnson acquainted me that he had seen Mr. Smith, who had promised him to speak to Mr. Clarke, to return him (Mr. Johnson) those papers, which he (Mr. Smith) had left some time ago with him (Mr. Clarke): it is better to repeat a name, though unnecessarily, ten times, than to have the person mistaken once. WHO, you know, is singly relative to persons, and cannot be applied to things; WHICH and THAT are chiefly relative to things, but not absolutely exclusive of persons; for one may say, the man THAT robbed or killed such-a-one; but it is better to say, the man WHO robbed or killed. One never says, the man or the woman WHICH. WHICH and THAT, though chiefly relative to things, cannot be always used indifferently as to things, and the 'euoovca' must sometimes determine their place. For instance, the letter WHICH I received from you, WHICH you referred to in your last, WHICH came by Lord Albemarle's messenger WHICH I showed to such-a-one; I would change it thus-The letter THAT I received from you; WHICH you referred to in your last, THAT came by Lord Albemarle's messenger, and WHICH I showed to such-a-one.

  Business does not exclude (as possibly you wish it did) the usual terms of politeness and good-breeding; but, on the contrary, strictly requires them: such as, I HAVE THE HONOR TO ACQUAINT YOUR LORDSHIP; PERMIT ME TO ASSURE YOU; IF I MAY BE ALLOWED TO GIVE MY OPINION, etc. For the minister abroad, who writes to the minister at home, writes to his superior; possibly to his patron, or at least to one who he desires should be so.

  Letters of business will not only admit of, but be the better for CERTAIN GRACES-but then, they must be scattered with a sparing and skillful hand; they must fit their place exactly. They must decently adorn without encumbering, and modestly shine without glaring. But as this is the utmost degree of perfection in letters of business, I would not advise you to attempt those embellishments, till you have first laid your foundation well.

  Cardinal d'Ossat's letters are the true letters of business; those of Monsieur d'Avaux are excellent; Sir William Temple's are very pleasing, but, I fear, too affected. Carefully avoid all Greek or Latin quotations; and bring no precedents from the VIRTUOUS SPARTANS, THE POLITE ATHENIANS, AND THE BRAVE ROMANS. Leave all that to futile pedants. No flourishes, no declamation. But (I repeat it again) there is an elegant simplicity and dignity of style absolutely necessary for good letters of business; attend to that carefully. Let your periods be harmonious, without seeming to be labored; and let them not be too long, for that always occasions a degree of obscurity. I should not mention correct orthography, but that you very often fail in that particular, which will bring ridicule upon you; for no man is allowed to spell ill. I wish too that your handwriting were much better; and I cannot conceive why it is not, since every man may certainly write whatever hand he pleases. Neatness in folding up, sealing, and directing your packets, is by no means to be neglected; though, I dare say, you think it is. But there is something in the exterior, even of a packet, that may please or displease; and consequently worth some attention.

  You say that your time is very well employed; and so it is, though as yet only in the outlines, and first ROUTINE of business. They are previously necessary to be known; they smooth the way for parts and dexterity. Business requires no conjuration nor supernatural talents, as people unacquainted with it are apt to think. Method, diligence, and discretion, will carry a man, of good strong common sense, much higher than the finest parts, without them, can do. 'Par negotiis, neque supra', is the true character of a man of business; but then it implies ready attention and no ABSENCES, and a flexibility and versatility of attention from one object to another, without being engrossed by anyone.

  Be upon your guard against the pedantry and affectation of business which young people are apt to fall into, from the pride of being concerned in it young. They look thoughtful, complain of the weight of business, throw out
mysterious hints, and seem big with secrets which they do not know. Do you, on the contrary, never talk of business but to those with whom you are to transact it; and learn to seem vacuus and idle, when you have the most business. Of all things, the 'volte sciollo', and the 'pensieri stretti', are necessary. Adieu.

  LETTER CLIV

  LONDON, December 30, O. S. 1751

  MY DEAR FRIEND: The parliaments are the courts of justice of France, and are what our courts of justice in Westminster-Hall are here. They used anciently to follow the court, and administer justice in presence of the King. Philip le Bel first fixed it at Paris, by an edict of 1302. It consisted then of but one chambre, which was called 'la Chambre des Prelats', most of the members being ecclesiastics; but the multiplicity of business made it by degrees necessary to create several other chambres. It consists now of seven chambres:

  'La Grande Chambre', which is the highest court of justice, and to which appeals lie from the others.

  'Les cinq Chambres des Enquetes', which are like our Common Pleas, and Court of Exchequer.

  'La Tournelle', which is the court for criminal justice, and answers to our Old Bailey and King's Bench.

  There are in all twelve parliaments in France: 1. Paris 2. Toulouse 3. Grenoble 4. Bourdeaux 5. Dijon 6. Rouen 7. Aix en Provence 8. Rennes en Bretagne 9. Pau en Navarre 10. Metz 11. Dole en Franche Comte 12. Douay

  There are three 'Conseils Souverains', which may almost be called parliaments; they are those of:

  Perpignan Arras Alsace

  For further particulars of the French parliaments, read 'Bernard de la Rochefavin des Parlemens de France', and other authors, who have treated that subject constitutionally. But what will be still better, converse upon it with people of sense and knowledge, who will inform you of the particular objects of the several chambres, and the businesses of the respective members, as, 'les Presidens, les Presidens a Mortier' (these last so called from their black velvet caps laced with gold), 'les Maitres tres des Requetes, les Greffiers, le Procureur General, les Avocats Generaux, les Conseillers', etc. The great point in dispute is concerning the powers of the parliament of Paris in matters of state, and relatively to the Crown. They pretend to the powers of the States-General of France when they used to be assembled (which, I think, they have not been since the reign of Lewis the Thirteenth, in the year 1615). The Crown denies those pretensions, and considers them only as courts of justice. Mezeray seems to be on the side of the parliament in this question, which is very well worth your inquiry. But, be that as it will, the parliament of Paris is certainly a very respectable body, and much regarded by the whole kingdom. The edicts of the Crown, especially those for levying money on the subjects, ought to be registered in parliament; I do not say to have their effect, for the Crown would take good care of that; but to have a decent appearance, and to procure a willing acquiescence in the nation. And the Crown itself, absolute as it is, does not love that strong opposition, and those admirable remonstrances, which it sometimes meets with from the parliaments. Many of those detached pieces are very well worth your collecting; and I remember, a year or two ago, a remonstrance of the parliament of Douay, upon the subject, as I think, of the 'Vingtieme', which was in my mind one of the finest and most moving compositions I ever read. They owned themselves, indeed, to be slaves, and showed their chains: but humbly begged of his Majesty to make them a little lighter, and less galling.