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

Do you visit Soltikow, the Russian Minister, whose house, I am told, is the great scene of pleasures at Hamburg? His mistress, I take for granted, is by this time dead, and he wears some other body's shackles. Her death comes with regard to the King of Prussia, 'comme la moutarde apres diner'. I am curious to see what tyrant will succeed her, not by divine, but by military right; for, barbarous as they are now, and still more barbarous as they have been formerly, they have had very little regard to the more barbarous notion of divine, indefeasible, hereditary right.

The Praetorian bands, that is, the guards, I presume, have been engaged in the interests of the Imperial Prince; but still I think that little John of Archangel will be heard upon this occasion, unless prevented by a quieting draught of hemlock or nightshade; for I suppose they are not arrived to the politer and genteeler poisons of Acqua Tufana,-[Acqua Tufana, a Neapolitan slow poison, resembling clear water, and invented by a woman at Naples, of the name of Tufana.]-sugar-plums, etc.

Lord Halifax has accepted his old employment, with the honorary addition of the Cabinet Council. And so we heartily wish you a goodnight.

LETTER CCXII

BATH, November 4, 1757

MY DEAR FRIEND: The Sons of Britain, like those of Noah, must cover their parent's shame as well as they can; for to retrieve its honor is now too late. One would really think that our ministers and generals were all as drunk as the Patriarch was. However, in your situation, you must not be Cham; but spread your cloak over our disgrace, as far as it will go. M--t calls aloud for a public trial; and in that, and that only, the public agree with him. There will certainly be one, but of what kind is not yet fixed. Some are for a parliamentary inquiry, others for a martial one; neither will, in my opinion, discover the true secret; for a secret there most unquestionably is. Why we stayed six whole days in the island of Aix, mortal cannot imagine; which time the French employed, as it was obvious they would, in assembling their troops in the neighborhood of Rochfort, and making our attempt then really impracticable. The day after we had taken the island of Aix, your friend, Colonel Wolf, publicly offered to do the business with five hundred men and three ships only. In all these complicated political machines there are so many wheels, that it is always difficult, and sometimes im possible, to guess which of them gives direction to the whole. Mr. Pitt is convinced that the principal wheels, or, if you will, the spoke in his wheel, came from Stade. This is certain, at least that M--t was the man of confidence with that person. Whatever be the truth of the case, there is, to be sure, hitherto an 'hiatus valde deflendus'.

The meeting of the parliament will certainly be very numerous, were it only from curiosity: but the majority on the side of the Court will, I dare say, be a great one. The people of the late Captain-general, however inclined to oppose, will be obliged to concur. Their commissions, which they have no desire to lose, will make them tractable; for those gentlemen, though all men of honor, are of Sosia's mind, 'que le vrai Amphitrion est celui ou l'on dine'. The Tories and the city have engaged to support Pitt; the Whigs, the Duke of Newcastle; the independent and the impartial, as you well know, are not worth mentioning. It is said that the Duke intends to bring the affair of his Convention into parliament, for his own justification; I can hardly believe it; as I cannot conceive that transactions so merely electoral can be proper objects of inquiry or deliberation for a British parliament; and, therefore, should such a motion be made, I presume it will be immediately quashed. By the commission lately given to Sir John Ligonier, of General and Commander-in-chief of all his Majesty's forces in Great Britain, the door seems to be not only shut, but bolted, against his Royal Highness's return; and I have good reason to be convinced that that breach is irreparable. The reports of changes in the Ministry, I am pretty sure, are idle and groundless. The Duke of Newcastle and Mr. Pitt really agree very well; not, I presume, from any sentimental tenderness for each other, but from a sense that it is their mutual interest: and, as the late Captain-general's party is now out of the question, I do not see what should produce the least change.

The visit made lately to Berlin was, I dare say, neither a friendly nor an inoffensive one. The Austrians always leave behind them pretty lasting monuments of their visits, or rather visitations: not so much, I believe, from their thirst of glory, as from their hunger of prey.

This winter, I take for granted, must produce a piece of some kind or another; a bad one for us, no doubt, and yet perhaps better than we should get the year after. I suppose the King of Prussia is negotiating with France, and endeavoring by those means to get out of the scrape with the loss only of Silesia, and perhaps Halberstadt, by way of indemnification to Saxony; and, considering all circumstances, he would be well off upon those terms. But then how is Sweden to be satisfied? Will the Russians restore Memel? Will France have been at all this expense 'gratis'? Must there be no acquisition for them in Flanders? I dare say they have stipulated something of that sort for themselves, by the additional and secret treaty, which I know they made, last May, with the Queen of Hungary. Must we give up whatever the French please to desire in America, besides the cession of Minorca in perpetuity? I fear we must, or else raise twelve millions more next year, to as little purpose as we did this, and have consequently a worse peace afterward. I turn my eyes away, as much as I can, from this miserable prospect; but, as a citizen and member of society, it recurs to my imagination, notwithstanding all my endeavors to banish it from my thoughts. I can do myself nor my country no good; but I feel the wretched situation of both; the state of the latter makes me better bear that of the former; and, when I am called away from my station here, I shall think it rather (as Cicero says of Crassus) 'mors donata quam vita erepta'.

I have often desired, but in vain, the favor of being admitted into your private apartment at, Hamburg, and of being informed of your private life there. Your mornings, I hope and believe, are employed in business; but give me an account of the remainder of the day, which I suppose is, and ought to be, appropriated to amusements and pleasures. In what houses are you domestic? Who are so in yours? In short, let me in, and do not be denied to me.

Here I am, as usual, seeing few people, and hearing fewer; drinking the waters regularly to a minute, and am something the better for them. I read a great deal, and vary occasionally my dead company. I converse with grave folios in the morning, while my head is clearest and my attention strongest: I take up less severe quartos after dinner; and at night I choose the mixed company and amusing chit-chat of octavos and duodecimos. 'Ye tire parti de tout ce gue je puis'; that is my philosophy; and I mitigate, as much as I can, my physical ills by diverting my attention to other objects.

Here is a report that Admiral Holborne's fleet is destroyed, in a manner, by a storm: I hope it is not true, in the full extent of the report; but I believe it has suffered. This would fill up the measure of our misfortunes. Adieu.

LETTER CCXIII

BATH, November 20, 1757

MY DEAR FRIEND: I write to you now, because I love to write to you; and hope that my letters are welcome to you; for otherwise I have very little to inform you of. The King of Prussia's late victory you are better informed, of than we are here. It has given infinite joy to the unthinking public, who are not aware that it comes too late in the year and too late in the war, to be attended with any very great consequences. There are six or seven thousand of the human species less than there were a month ago, and that seems to me to be all. However, I am glad of it, upon account of the pleasure and the glory which it gives the King of Prussia, to whom I wish well as a man, more than as a king. And surely he is so great a man, that had he lived seventeen or eighteen hundred years ago, and his life been transmitted to us in a language that we could not very well understand-I mean either Greek or Latin-we should have talked of him as we do now of your Alexanders, your Caesars, and others; with whom, I believe, we have but a very slight acquaintance. 'Au reste', I do not see that his affairs are much mended by this victory. The same combination of the great Powers of Europe against him still subsists, and must at last prevail. I believe the French army will melt away, as is usual, in Germany; but this army is extremely diminished by battles, fatigues, and desertion: and he will find great difficulties in recruiting it from his own already exhausted dominions. He must therefore, and to be sure will, negotiate privately with the French, and get better terms that way than he could any other.