FAMOUS LETTERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 71, 25 March 1938, Page 4

FAMOUS LETTERS

LORD CHESTERFIELD

INSTRUCTIONS TO HIS SON

ROLE OF THE GRACES

When you were very young, you must. have, heard other . children reproved in some such Words as these: "Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well, and never put off to tomorrow what youcan do today," says a writer in the Melbourne "Age." You" wonder perhaps now where they came from. I do not know.who first said them, but the writer who gave them currency was Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield; a 'statesman of the eighteenth century, and one of the many letter-writers of that letter-writing age. The story of his official career as Ambassador to Holland, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Secretary of State belongs tq the historians; though we might note that he was distinguished for his conversation and his wit, and, above all, for his grace of manner, which has become legendary and proverbial. ' The book by virtue of which he lives is that volume of letters to his son, in which he strove to make his son a perfect gentleman of the eighteenth' century, rational; urbane, and fastidious. Lord Chesterfield's "letters" are the letters of a father to a son about education, character, and manners. His attitude is that of a man of the world, polite but selfish, upright but cynical, and the result ,is the description of the ideal of the gentleman as conceived by an eighteenth century nobleman. ~ ■ ■ . CHANGED NOTIONS. ■ ■ . It. is curious how the idea of a gentleman has altered. If proof were wanted that human nature was not the sanie in all ages, here, one would think, were proof enough. Think of Chaucer's knight, Shakespeare's Hamlet, though Hamlet, it is true, is seen in very distressing circumstances; Wycherley's Homer, and Richardson's Grandison. Today I suppose the word gentleman stands for considerateness, refinement, modesty, fairness, generosity. The gentleman need not be clever, but he is disciplined, gentle, arid tactful, and, above all, he has courage and fortitude. .He is, in fact, much more like Chaucer's knight than a gentlemen of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. But to Lore! Chesterfield the gentleman was a man of rank, above the vulgar and common herd, a man of dignity, polished in manner, witty in conversation, who by right of birth demands and is conceded privileges both of behaviour and of morals. From this he has been superannuated by both orthodox and heterodox critics', of whom Dr. Johnson and Charles Dickens may serve as types; and if (as we assume) privilege is wrong, they are right. Nevertheless I still hold that though Chesterfield's . ethics , may ,be .a bundle of contradictions,' his "letters" form one of the most entertaining and diverting of books, containing a fund of worldly wisdom and practical philosophy Which is of as high value to. critics and moralists as to the rest of mankind. HIS APHORISMS. Chesterfield was ambassador to. Holland .in 1730, when he .became', the father of Philip Stanhope the younger,: to whom during twenty-nine years, from his .eighth, to his thirty-seventh year,, these distinguished letter^ were written. His object was", to make his son Philip ah accomplished man of the-world; and, with that in.vie^, the letters contain a good deal of common sense and a genially cynical observation of human life and character. His ideal was the manners of the polite man and the duty of. shining in society by means of tact and-refined conversation.; It was Chesterfield who said, "Dispatch is the soul ' of business, and nothing contributes more to dispatch than method." He was tact's greatest advocate. "Whatever pleases you most in others will please others in you." "Be wiser than other people, if you can, but do not tell them so." "An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.'" He objected both to laughter, the loud guffaw, and to the flurry that.comes of haste. "I could heartily wish that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard to laugh. Frequent and loud laughter is*, characteristic of folly and illmanners. . In my mind there is nothing so.ill-bred as audible laughter." "Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about,is too big for him. Haste .and hurry,'are.very different things." And .as a to this refinement and tact he'recommended the art of deportment,, 'ißemember to take the best dancing master, more to teach you to'sit, stand, and walk'gracefully than to dance finely^ -The graces, the graces, remember'the graces." THE MARK OF STYLE. If falls quaintly, upon our ears. We are in danger of forgetting the graces. The age of artificiality and manners is past. We are more natural today. We 'care nothing for. dignity, and little for that polite deference which Chesterfield called "complaisance." But just as there is something to be said for reverence, so there is something to be •said for complaisance. It oils the wheels of-society and business. It is also a. mark of style. And there is something to be said for Loi?d Chesterfield's view: "For my part, I really think that, next to the consciousness of doing a good action, that of doing a polit-s one is the most pleasing; and the epithet which I should covet most would be that of 'well-bred.'" s The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, had other claims to fame. .He was instrumental in reforming the, calendar in 1751. He introduced Voltaire to London. But though he was one of the important statesmen of his age, and though he was the acquaintance of Addison, Swift, and Pope, the record of his actions has passed from memory, and he is remembered now only for two things, the letters to his son, and the fact that Dr. Johnson declined Chesterfield's patronage of the dictionary in 1755 in a letter which contained a stinging . rebuke. That letter, which may be read in Boswell's Johnson, was not only a slap in the face to one whom Johnson despised for his French manners, it was the death of literary patronage; it signalised the independence of the man of letters.