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

'Mauvaise honte' not only hinders young people from making, a great many friends, but makes them a great many enemies. They are ashamed of doing the thing they know to be right, and would otherwise do, for fear of the momentary laugh of some fine gentleman or lady, or of some 'mauvais plaisant'. I have been in this case: and have often wished an obscure acquaintance at the devil, for meeting and taking notice of me when I was in what I thought and called fine company. I have returned their notice shyly, awkwardly, and consequently offensively; for fear of a momentary joke, not considering, as I ought to have done, that the very people who would have joked upon me at first, would have esteemed me the more for it afterward. An example explains a rule best: Suppose you were walking in the Tuileries with some fine folks, and that you should unexpectedly meet your old acquaintance, little crooked Grierson; what would you do? I will tell you what you should do, by telling you what I would now do in that case myself. I would run up to him, and embrace him; say some kind of things to him, and then return to my company. There I should be immediately asked: 'Mais qu'est ce que c'est donc que ce petit Sapajou que vous avez embrasse si tendrement? Pour cela, l'accolade a ete charmante'; with a great deal more festivity of that sort. To this I should answer, without being the least ashamed, but en badinant: O je ne vous dirai tas qui c'est; c'est un petit ami que je tiens incognito, qui a son merite, et qui, a force d'etre connu, fait oublier sa figure. Que me donnerez-vous, et je vous le presenterai'? And then, with a little more seriousness, I would add: 'Mais d'ailleurs c'est que je ne desavoue jamais mes connoissances, a cause de leur etat ou de leur figure. Il faut avoir bien peu de sentimens pour le faire'. This would at once put an end to that momentary pleasantry, and give them all a better opinion of me than they had before. Suppose another case, and that some of the finest ladies 'du bon ton' should come into a room, and find you sitting by, and talking politely to 'la vieille' Marquise de Bellefonds, the joke would, for a moment, turn upon that 'tete-a-tete': He bien! avez vous a la fin fixd la belle Marquise? La partie est-elle faite pour la petite maison? Le souper sera galant sans doute: Mais ne faistu donc point scrupule de seduire une jeune et aimable persone comme celle-la'? To this I should answer: 'La partie n'etoit pas encore tout-a fait liee, vous nous avez interrompu; mais avec le tems que fait-on? D'ailleurs moquezvous de mes amours tant qu'il vous plaira, je vous dirai que je respecte tant les jeunes dames, que je respecte meme les vieilles, pour l'avoir ete. Apre cela il y a souvent des liaisons entre les vieilles et les jeunes'. This would at once turn the pleasantry into an esteem for your good sense and your good-breeding. Pursue steadily, and without fear or shame, whatever your reason tells you is right, and what you see is practiced by people of more experience than yourself, and of established characters of good sense and good-breeding.

After all this, perhaps you will say, that it is impossible to please everybody. I grant it; but it does not follow that one should not therefore endeavor to please as many as one can. Nay, I will go further, and admit that it is impossible for any man not to have some enemies. But this truth from long experience I assert, that he who has the most friends and the fewest enemies, is the strongest; will rise the highest with the least envy; and fall, if he does fall, the gentlest, and the most pitied. This is surely an object worth pursuing. Pursue it according to the rules I have here given you. I will add one observation more, and two examples to enforce it; and then, as the parsons say, conclude.

There is no one creature so obscure, so low, or so poor, who may not, by the strange and unaccountable changes and vicissitudes of human affairs, somehow or other, and some time or other, become an useful friend or a trouble-some enemy, to the greatest and the richest. The late Duke of Ormond was almost the weakest but at the same time the best-bred, and most popular man in this kingdom. His education in courts and camps, joined to an easy, gentle nature, had given him that habitual affability, those engaging manners, and those mechanical attentions, that almost supplied the place of every talent he wanted; and he wanted almost every one. They procured him the love of all men, without the esteem of any. He was impeached after the death of Queen Anne, only because that, having been engaged in the same measures with those who were necessarily to be impeached, his impeachment, for form's sake, became necessary. But he was impeached without acrimony, and without the lest intention that he should suffer, notwithstanding the party violence of those times. The question for his impeachment, in the House of Commons, was carried by many fewer votes than any other question of impeachment; and Earl Stanhope, then Mr. Stanhope, and Secretary' of State, who impeached him, very soon after negotiated and concluded his accommodation with the late King; to whom he was to have been presented the next day. But the late Bishop of Rochester, Atterbury, who thought that the Jacobite cause might suffer by losing the Duke of Ormond, went in all haste, and prevailed with the poor weak man to run away; assuring him that he was only to be gulled into a disgraceful submission, and not to be pardoned in consequence of it. When his subsequent attainder passed, it excited mobs and disturbances in town. He had not a personal enemy in the world; and had a thousand friends. All this was simply owing to his natural desire of pleasing, and to the mechanical means that his education, not his parts, had given him of doing it. The other instance is the late Duke of Marlborough, who studied the art of pleasing, because he well knew the importance of it: he enjoyed and used it more than ever man did. He gained whoever he had a mind to gain; and he had a mind to gain everybody, because he knew that everybody was more or less worth gaining. Though his power, as Minister and General, made him many political and party enemies, they did not make him one personal one; and the very people who would gladly have displaced, disgraced, and perhaps attainted the Duke of Marlborough, at the same time personally loved Mr. Churchill, even though his private character was blemished by sordid avarice, the most unamiable of all vices. He had wound up and turned his whole machine to please and engage. He had an inimitable sweetness and gentleness in his countenance, a tenderness in his manner of speaking, a graceful dignity in every motion, and an universal and minute attention to the least things that could possibly please the least person. This was all art in him; art of which he well knew and enjoyed the advantages; for no man ever had more interior ambition, pride, and avarice, than he had.

Though you have more than most people of your age, you have yet very little experience and knowledge of the world; now, I wish to inoculate mine upon you, and thereby prevent both the dangers and the marks of youth and inexperience. If you receive the matter kindly, and observe my prescriptions scrupulously, you will secure the future advantages of time and join them to the present inestimable ones of one-and-twenty.

I most earnestly recommend one thing to you, during your present stay at Paris. I own it is not the most agreeable; but I affirm it to be the most useful thing in the world to one of your age; and therefore I do hope that you will force and constrain yourself to do it. I mean, to converse frequently, or rather to be in company frequently with both men and women much your superiors in age and rank. I am very sensible that, at your age, 'vous y entrez pour peu de chose, et meme souvent pour rien, et que vous y passerez meme quelques mauvais quart-d'heures'; but no matter; you will be a solid gainer by it: you will see, hear, and learn the turn and manners of those people; you will gain premature experience by it; and it will give you a habit of engaging and respectful attentions. Versailles, as much as possible, though probably unentertaining: the Palais Royal often, however dull: foreign ministers of the first rank, frequently, and women, though old, who are respectable and respected for their rank or parts; such as Madame de Pusieux, Madame de Nivernois, Madame d'Aiguillon, Madame Geoffrain, etc. This 'sujetion', if it be one to you, will cost you but very little in these three or four months that you are yet to pass in Paris, and will bring you in a great deal; nor will it, nor ought it, to hinder you from being in a more entertaining company a great part of the day. 'Vous pouvez, si vous le voulex, tirer un grand parti de ces quatre mois'. May God make you so, and bless you! Adieu.