On the subject of the Pretender, then resident in Rome, his advice is; never meet a Stuart at all if you can help it; but if you must, feign ignorance of him and his grievances. If he begins to talk politics, disavow any knowledge of events in England, and escape as soon as you can.[371]
Long before his son's year in Italy was completed, Chesterfield began preparing him for Paris. For the first six months Stanhope was to live in an academy with young Frenchmen of fashion; after that, to have lodgings of his own. The mornings were to belong to study, or serious conversation with men of learning or figure; the afternoons, to exercise; the evenings to be free for balls, the opera, or play. These are the pleasures of a gentleman, for which his father is willing to pay generously. But he will not, he points out frequently, subscribe to the extravagance of a rake. The eighteen-year-old Stanhope is to have his coach, his two valets and a footman, the very best French clothes--in fact, everything that is sensible. But he shall not be allowed money for dozens of cane-heads, or fancy snuff-boxes, or excessive gaming, or the support of opera-singers. One handsome snuff-box, one handsome sword, and gaming only when the presence of the ladies keeps down high stakes; but no tavern-suppers--no low company which costs so much more than dissipations among one's equals. There is no need for a young man of any address to make love to his laundress,[372] as long as ladies of his own class stoop to folly.
Above all, Stanhope is not to associate with his own countrymen in Paris. On them Chesterfield is never tired of pouring the vials of scorn. He began while Stanhope was at Leipsic to point out the deficiences of English boys:
"They are commonly twenty years old before they have spoken to anybody above their schoolmaster, and the Fellows of their college. If they happen to have learning, it is only Greek and Latin; but not one word of modern history, or modern languages. Thus prepared, they go abroad as they call it; but in truth, they stay at home all that while; for being very awkward, confoundedly ashamed, and not speaking the languages, they go into no foreign company, at least none good, but dine and sup with one another only, at the tavern.[373]...
"The life of les Milords Anglais is regularly, or if you will, irregularly, this. As soon as they rise, which is very late, they breakfast together to the utter loss of two good morning hours. Then they go by coachfuls to the Palais, the Invalides, and Notre-Dame; from thence to the English coffee-house where they make up their tavern party for dinner. From dinner, where they drink quick, they adjourn in clusters to the play, where they crowd up the stage, drest up in very fine clothes, very ill made by a Scotch or Irish tailor. From the play to the tavern again, where they get very drunk, and where they either quarrel among themselves, or sally forth, commit some riot in the streets, and are taken up by the watch."[374]
To avoid these monsters, and to cultivate the best French society, was what a wise young man must do in Paris. He must establish an intimacy with the best French families. If he became fashionable among the French, he would be fashionable in London.
Chesterfield considered it best to show no erudition at Paris before the rather illiterate society there. As the young men were all bred for and put into the army at the age of twelve or thirteen, only the women had any knowledge of letters. Stanhope would find at the academy a number of young fellows ignorant of books, and at that age hasty and petulant, so that the avoidance of quarrels must be a young Englishman's great care. He will be as lively as these French boys, but a little wiser; he will not reproach them with their ignorance, nor allow their idlenesses to break in on the hours he has laid aside for study.
Such was the plan of a Grand Tour laid down by one of the first gentlemen of Europe. It remains one of the best expressions of the social influence of France upon England, and for that reason properly belongs to the seventeenth century more than to the Georgian era in which the letters were written. Chesterfield might be called the last of the courtiers. He believed in accomplishments and personal elegance as a means of advancing oneself in the world, long after the Court had ceased to care for such qualities, or to be of much account in the destinies of leading Englishmen. Republicanism was in the air. Chesterfield was thinking of the France of his youth; but France had changed. In 1765, Horace Walpole was depressed by the solemnity and austerity of French society. Their style of conversation was serious, pedantic, and seldom animated except by a dispute on some philosophic subject.[375] In fact, Chesterfield was admiring the France of Louis the Fourteenth long after "Le Soleil" had set, and the country was sombre. It was the eve of the day when France was to imitate the democratic ideals of England. England, at last, instead of being on the outskirts of civilization, was coming to be the most powerful, respected, and enlightened country in Europe. When that day dawned, Englishmen no longer sought the Continent in the spirit of the Elizabethans--the spirit which aimed at being "A citizen of the whole world."