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 allow, 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.