47 TO HIS SON, PHILIP STANHOPE, ESQ.

D

LONDON, September 22, 1749 EAR BOY—If I had faith in philters and love potions, I should suspect that you had given Sir Charles Williams some, by the manner in which he speaks of you, not only to me but to everybody else. I will not repeat to you what he says of the extent and correctness of your knowledge, as it might either make you vain or persuade you that you had already enough of what nobody can have too much. You will easily imagine how many questions I asked, and how narrowly I sifted him upon your subject: he answered me, and I dare say with truth, just as I could have wished; till, satisfied entirely with his accounts of your character and learning, I inquired into other matters, intrinsically indeed of less consequence, but still of great consequence to every man, and of more to you than to almost any man; I mean, your address, manners, and air. To these questions, the same truth which he had observed before obliged him to give me much less satisfactory answers. And, as he thought himself, in friendship both to you and me, obliged to tell me the disagreeable as well as the agreeable truths, upon the same principle I think myself obliged to repeat them to you.

He told me, then, that in company you were frequently most provokingly inattentive, absent, and distrait.1 That you came into a room, and presented yourself, very awkwardly; that at table you constantly threw down knives, forks, napkins, bread, etc., and that you neglected your person and dress to a degree unpardonable at any age, and much more so at yours.

These things, how immaterial soever they may seem to

1 Absent-minded.

people who do not know the world and the nature of mankind, give me, who know them to be exceedingly material, very great concern. I have long distrusted you, and therefore frequently admonished you, upon these articles; and I tell you plainly that I shall not be easy till I hear a very different account of them. I know no one thing more offensive to a company than that inattention and distraction. It is showing them the utmost contempt; and people never forget contempt. No man is distrait with the man he fears, or the woman he loves; which is a proof that every man can get the better of that distraction when he thinks it worth his while to do so; and, take my word for it, it is always worth his while. For my own part, I would rather be in company with a dead man than with an absent one; for if the dead man gives me no pleasure, at least he shows me no contempt; whereas the absent man, silently indeed, but very plainly, tells me that he does not think me worth his attention. Besides, can an absent man make any observations upon the characters, customs, and manners of the company? No. He may be in the best companies all his lifetime (if they will admit him, which, if I were they, I would not), and never be one jot the wiser. I never will converse with an absent man; one may as well talk with a deaf one. It is, in truth, a practical blunder to address. ourselves to a man who we see plainly neither hears, minds, nor understands us. Moreover, I aver that no man is, in any degree, fit for either business or conversation, who cannot, and does not, direct and command his attention to the present object, be that what it will.

You know, by experience, that I grudge no expense in your education, but I will positively not keep you a flapper. You may read in Dr. Swift the description of these flappers, and the use they were of to your friends the Laputans; whose minds (Gulliver says) are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak nor attend to the discourses

of others, without being roused by some external action upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason those people who are able to afford it always keep a flapper in their family as one of their domestics, nor ever walk about or make visits without him. This flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and, upon occasion, to give a soft flap upon his eyes; because he is always so wrapt up in cogitation that he is in manifest danger of falling down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post, and, in the streets, of jostling others or being jostled into the kennel himself. If Christian will undertake this province into the bargain-with all my heart; but I will not allow him any increase of wages upon that score.

In short, I give you fair warning that when we meet, if you are absent in mind, I will soon be absent in body, for it will be impossible for me to stay in the room; and if at table you throw down your knife, plate, bread, etc., and hack the wing of a chicken for half an hour without being able to cut it off, and your sleeve all the time in another dish, I must rise from the table to escape the fever you would certainly give me. Good God! how I should be shocked if you came into my room, for the first time, with two left legs, presenting yourself with all the graces and dignity of a tailor, and your clothes hanging upon you like those in Monmouth Street, upon tenterhooks! whereas I expect, nay require, to see you present yourself with the easy and genteel air of a man of fashion who has kept good company. I expect you not only well dressed, but very well dressed; I expect a gracefulness in all your motions, and something particularly engaging in your address. All this I expect, and all this is in your power, by care and attention, to make me find; but, to tell you the plain truth, if I do not find it we shall not converse very much together; for I cannot stand inattention and awkwardness; it would endanger my health.

1

You have often seen, and I have often made you observe, L[yttelton]'s distinguished 1 inattention and awkwardness. Wrapped up, like a Laputan, in intense thought, and possibly sometimes in no thought at all-which, I believe, is very often the case of absent people-he does not know his most intimate acquaintance by sight, or answers them as if he were at crosspurposes. He leaves his hat in one room, his sword in another, and would leave his shoes in a third, if his buckles, though awry, did not save them: his legs and arms, by his awkward management of them, seem to have undergone the question extraordinaire;2 and his head, always hanging upon one or other of his shoulders, seems to have received the first stroke upon a block. I sincerely value and esteem him for his parts, learning, and virtue; but, for the soul of me, I cannot love him in company. This will be universally the case, in common life, of every inattentive, awkward man, let his real merit and knowledge be ever so great.

When I was of your age, I desired to shine, as far as I was able, in every part of life; and was as attentive to my manners, my dress, and my air, in company on evenings, as to my books and my tutor in the mornings. A young fellow should be ambitious to shine in everything; and, of the two, rather overdo than underdo. These things are by no means trifles; they are of infinite consequence to those who are to be thrown into the great world, and who would make a figure or a fortune in it. It is not sufficient to deserve well; one must please well too. Awkward, disagreeable merit will never carry anybody far. Wherever you find a good dancing-master, pray let him put you upon your haunches; not so much for the sake of dancing as for coming into a room and presenting yourself genteelly and gracefully. Women, whom you ought to en

1 Marked.

2 Extreme torture, formerly applied to accused or condemned persons in order to extort confessions.

deavor to please, cannot forgive a vulgar and awkward air and gestures; il leur faut du brillant.1 The generality of men are pretty like them, and are equally taken by the same exterior graces.

I am very glad that you have received the diamond buckles safe: all I desire in return for them is that they may be buckled even upon your feet, and that your stockings may not hide them. I should be sorry you were an egregious fop; but I protest that, of the two, I would rather have you a fop than a sloven. I think negligence in my own dress, even at my age, when certainly I expect no advantages from my dress, would be indecent with regard to others. I have done with fine clothes; but I will have my plain clothes fit me, and made like other people's. In the evenings, I recommend to you the company of women of fashion, who have a right to attention, and will be paid it. Their company will smooth your manners, and give you a habit of attention and respect; of which you will find the advantage among men.

My plan for you, from the beginning, has been to make you shine, equally in the learned and in the polite world; the former part is almost completed to my wishes, and will, I am persuaded, in a little time more be quite so. The latter part is still in your power to complete; and I flatter myself that you will do it; or else the former part will avail you very little, especially in your deportment, where the exterior address and graces do half the business; they must be the harbingers of your merit, or your merit will be very coldly received: all can and do judge of the former, few of the latter.

Mr. Harte 2 tells me that you have grown very much since your illness: if you get up to five feet ten, or even nine, inches, your figure will, probably, be a good one; and, if well dressed.

1 They require polished manners.

2 The young man's tutor and traveling companion.