Letters to His Son, 1752: On the Fine Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a GentlemanChesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of
General
Letters to His Son, 1752: On the Fine Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman
Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of
Conduct of life
I recommend to you again, though I have already done it twice or thrice,
to speak German, even affectedly, while you are at Hanover; which will
show that you prefer that language, and be of more use to you there with
SOMEBODY, than you can imagine. When you carry my letters to Monsieur
Munchausen and Monsieur Schwiegeldt, address yourself to them in German;
the latter speaks French very well, but the former extremely ill. Show
great attention to Madame, Munchausen's daughter, who is a great
favorite; those little trifles please mothers, and sometimes fathers,
extremely. Observe, and you will find, almost universally, that the least
things either please or displease most; because they necessarily imply,
either a very strong desire of obliging, or an unpardonable indifference
about it. I will give you a ridiculous instance enough of this truth,
from my own experience. When I was Ambassador the first time in Holland,
Comte de Wassenaer and his wife, people of the first rank and
consideration, had a little boy of about three years old, of whom they
were exceedingly fond; in order to make my court to them, I was so too,
and used to take the child often upon my lap, and play with him. One day
his nose was very dirty, upon which I took out my handkerchief and wiped
it for him; this raised a loud laugh, and they called me a very, handy
nurse; but the father and mother were so pleased with it, that to this
day it is an anecdote in the family, and I never receive a letter from
Comte Wassenaer, but he makes me the compliments 'du morveux gue j'ai
mouche autrefois'; who, by the way, I am assured, is now the prettiest
young fellow in Holland. Where one would gain people, remember that
nothing is little. Adieu.
LETTER CLXXI
LONDON, June 26, O. S. 1752.
MY DEAR FRIEND: As I have reason to fear, from your M last letter of the
18th, N. S., from Manheim, that all, or at least most of my letters to
you, since you left Paris, have miscarried; I think it requisite, at all
events, to repeat in this the necessary parts of those several letters,
as far as they relate to your future motions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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