“Now, doctor, I always say I am a great dunce in some things; for, though there are few persons who have a quicker conception, a better judgment, and a nicer discrimination, with a firmer decision, than I have, yet, if I were to be taught for six hours things that do not suit my capacity, I should forget them all next morning, just as if I had never heard them: and so I told Prince Pückler Muskau, when we almost quarrelled about education. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you may educate a horse, and make him put a kettle on the fire, and drink tea, and dance a minuet on his hind legs, and a hundred things besides; but, leave him to himself, and he will do nothing of the kind:’ and so it is with the education of men. You may give a nobleman a tutor, and, so long as his father is alive, for fear he should be disinherited, or for fear of not marrying some particular woman who has got a large fortune, or to drink his father’s champagne, or for fear of being kicked out of society, he will keep to his books and to appearances; but, as soon as his father is dead, he’ll show himself what he really is, and, if he is by nature a blackguard, the greater will he prove in proportion to his rank. Such was Lord B., worse than a hackney-coachman; but if a man has such vices as come from nature alone—as when a peasant, from ambition, does things to rise in the world which even are crimes, I can forgive him; or if another, from an unaffected flow of spirits, must get into society and get drunk, or, from an over-vigorous constitution, becomes debauched, I can overlook all this.
“I knew a man, who, seeing a family in distress, out of sheer pity, gave bills for their relief, although he must have been aware he could never repay a sixpence of it: this may be swindling in the eyes of man, but is it in the eyes of God? When a cold, artificial character reads, and then assumes from books qualities and appearances not his own, studies for debauchery’s sake, runs after women for fashion and not from constitution—all such performances I detest, and would be the first to kick him out of society.
“I was acquainted with two persons in the great world, one a lover of the Duchess of R., the other a great politician in the House of Commons, and highly esteemed by his party: neither of them could write a common note without making one or two blunders. The former could not always spell his own name; for I knew his tutor, and he assured me that his pupil, at twenty, came to him sometimes to know if he had written his signature properly. He once wrote me a note so illegible, that all I could make out was that my letters were better than Madame de Sevigné’s; and then, with a scrawling hand, and with blots, he contrived to hide his blunders: but the latter was so fearful of betraying his ignorance, that, when any particular question about politics required a long explanation, he would evade it, if written to, by replying, in five words, that he had had for some time thoughts of going down in the country to visit his correspondent, and he would then talk over the business. It is said that the great Duke of Marlborough could not write a despatch without a dozen errors in it: but here the want of education did no harm. The lover could always be understood enough to know that an assignation was made, and the general that a victory had been gained.
“Education is all paint—it does not alter the nature of the wood that is under it, it only improves its appearance a little. Why I dislike education so much is that it makes all people alike, until you have examined into them: and it sometimes is so long before you get to see under the varnish! Education, beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic, is of no use to persons who have shops to attend to, household duties to perform, and indeed in all the ordinary occupations of life. I told the prince that, in reality, my lord’s gentleman and my lady’s-maid were much better off than a clergyman or a doctor. The rooms they live in, their fine wines, their dress, everything about them is better; and what education do they want more than keeping an account of their master’s and mistress’s linen, and such trifling inventories? I cannot let you remain in your error—an error so fatal to everybody—that accomplishments and learning give any decided advantage to their possessors; it is a man’s star that effects all: if men are to be great, they will be so as well without learning as with. Why, there was Lord Hood and Lord Bridport, both sons of country clergymen, with not more than a hundred a year, and they surely could not have had much education: for they robbed orchards, played the truant, hated school, and were sent to sea: yet one became a viscount with an immense fortune, and the other a lord, but not so rich. There was no remarkable talent in either—both were very honest men. Payne, the smuggler’s son, whom I sent to sea, had no education; but he had activity and luck, and made his way. I had admired his discretion and intelligence as a lad; and when, at a time that Lord St. Vincent had more prizes than he could well man, and Payne was put into one of them, he boldly asked for himself the command of it, little knowing that Lord St. Vincent and Mr. Pitt did not like each other at all. ‘Who are you, my brave lad?’ asked Lord St. Vincent.—‘Why,’ answered he, ‘Lady Hester Stanhope knows me.’—‘You know Lady Hester Stanhope?’ said my lord. ‘Yes,’ replied Payne, ‘I knew her at Deal, and Mr. Pitt I know too, and that’s no bad recommendation.’—‘I think so,’ cried Lord St. Vincent, laughing, and appointed him.
“Now, take the reverse of the picture, and look at the O***s, with their polished education and every sort of accomplishment, and compare their splendid misery—for misery I call it—with those I have mentioned. There was Mrs. W*****, Lady A***, and Mrs. B*******. Lady A. might be said to be well off, as a baronet’s wife; but the other two!—I have witnessed the anxious countenances of those people, who, at every knock at the door, involuntarily turned their eyes, as if expecting some troublesome dun or some unpleasant news; and then, if the husband was called out of the room, what a look the wife gave when he came in again, as seemingly fearful something might have happened! What a fool and abominable wretch the Prince must have been, to go and invite himself to dine with such people, when he knew he put them to the expense of a quarter’s income!
“There you would see him at some party, at the doorway of two rooms, speaking loudly to some one:—‘Well, then, it’s all fixed; on Wednesday next I dine with you, and shall bring about a dozen friends.’ ‘Why does your royal highness say a dozen? let it be fifteen.’—‘Well, a dozen—fifteen; but we shall dine precisely at four.’ And there was the man’s wife, standing breathless, with scarce strength to keep down a suppressed sigh, thinking with herself, ‘What shall we do, and how shall we provide for all this?’ Then the husband, with a forced smile, would endeavour to relieve her with, ‘My dear, did you hear? his royal highness intends us the honour of dining with us on Wednesday—you forget to thank him:’ and the poor wife, who strains at a compliment, ill-worded from her uneasiness—Oh! Lord!—oh! Lord, doctor, it has made my heart ache.
“I recollect B******* going down into Kent, and going round among the farmers to buy up chestnut horses with white foreheads and white legs; and, when he had got nine of them, he trimmed them up, made them good-looking, and, by going about, pretending first he would not sell them on any account, then that he would sell them only for money down, contrived to get a buyer for them, and sold them at a hundred pounds a pair, when he had given twenty-five, thus getting himself a little claret and champagne for the winter.
“These O***s were brought up from H. to be married to the Prince’s friends; for you know men will not go into society where there are no attractions from women; and the Prince, who saw them, said, ‘You must get them to town into our parties:’ but would they not have done better to have married some country squire, where at least they would have had their own mutton, a comfortable house, and plenty around them?”
Thursday, April 26.—Lady Hester was in better health, and in the best of humours: a gleam of sunshine seemed for awhile to dispel the gloom which had for so many months pervaded this unhappy abode. She talked over the gay scenes of her early travels, in which I had shared; of the festivities of Constantinople; reminded me of the sea captains (as she was accustomed to call them); of Mr. Fazakerly and Mr. Galley Knight; then how Mr. Tom Sheridan fell on his knees before her and made fine speeches at Malta; of General Oakes’s splendid parties; how Mr. Frederick North ran about in search of a —— he could not find; and related a hundred anecdotes, which her inexhaustible memory supplied at the suggestion of the moment.
She at last brought the conversation round to the Prince Pückler Muskau. “Now do tell me, doctor,” she continued, “what the Prince said of me; for, you know, when they come to me, they all come with a set speech and a prepared bow, that they may put down in their book what passed; but I want you to tell me how he comes into a room in a common way, as when he paid your family a visit: what sort of a bow does he make? He is a handsome man; but, although his hands are very good and very white, I don’t think them as good as old Pierre’s. What beautiful fingers Pierre has got! and, with the dirty work he has to do, they are even now white:—what would they be if he wore gloves constantly? The Prince’s nails are very good, but Pierre’s are incomparably fine: his hand is like some of those you see in the pictures at the Vatican; and, when it hangs loose, with his arm extended, it falls at right angles to his wrist—and all this with no intention on his part: he never suspected even that I was looking at them. Poor old Pierre! he walked about his room, the maids say, praying for me half the night. I have sent him home to his wife. I shall make him up a basket of some potatoes and vermicelli, and salmon, and some brawn—he likes brawn: and perhaps we shall have some news how the Prince made out at the Emir Beshýr’s.”