<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0138" id="link2H_4_0138"></SPAN></p>
<h2> LETTER CXXXVI </h2>
<h3> LONDON, March 25, O. S. 1751. </h3>
<p>MY DEAR FRIEND: What a happy period of your life is this? Pleasure is now,
and ought to be, your business. While you were younger, dry rules, and
unconnected words, were the unpleasant objects of your labors. When you
grow older, the anxiety, the vexations, the disappointments inseparable
from public business, will require the greatest share of your time and
attention; your pleasures may, indeed, conduce to your business, and your
business will quicken your pleasures; but still your time must, at least,
be divided: whereas now it is wholly your own, and cannot be so well
employed as in the pleasures of a gentleman. The world is now the only
book you want, and almost the only one you ought to read: that necessary
book can only be read in company, in public places, at meals, and in
'ruelles'. You must be in the pleasures, in order to learn the manners of
good company. In premeditated, or in formal business, people conceal, or
at least endeavor to conceal, their characters: whereas pleasures discover
them, and the heart breaks out through the guard of the understanding.
Those are often propitious moments for skillful negotiators to improve. In
your destination particularly, the able conduct of pleasures is of
infinite use; to keep a good table, and to do the honors of it gracefully,
and 'sur le ton de la bonne compagnie', is absolutely necessary for a
foreign minister. There is a certain light table chit-chat, useful to keep
off improper and too serious subjects, which is only to be learned in the
pleasures of good company. In truth it may be trifling; but, trifling as
it is, a man of parts and experience of the world will give an agreeable
turn to it. 'L'art de badiner agreablement' is by no means to be despised.</p>
<p>An engaging address, and turn to gallantry, is often of very great service
to foreign ministers. Women have, directly or indirectly; a good deal to
say in most courts. The late Lord Strafford governed, for a considerable
time, the Court of Berlin and made his own fortune, by being well with
Madame de Wartenberg, the first King of Prussia's mistress. I could name
many other instances of that kind. That sort of agreeable 'caquet de
femmes', the necessary fore-runners of closer conferences, is only to be
got by frequenting women of the first fashion, 'et, qui donnent le ton'.
Let every other book then give way to this great and necessary book, the
world, of which there are so many various readings, that it requires a
great deal of time and attention to under stand it well: contrary to all
other books, you must not stay home, but go abroad to read it; and when
you seek it abroad, you will not find it in booksellers' shops and stalls,
but in courts, in hotels, at entertainments, balls, assemblies,
spectacles, etc. Put yourself upon the footing of an easy, domestic, but
polite familiarity and intimacy in the several French houses to which you
have been introduced: Cultivate them, frequent them, and show a desire of
becoming 'enfant de la maison'. Get acquainted as much as you can with
'les gens de cour'; and observe, carefully, how politely they can differ,
and how civilly they can hate; how easy and idle they can seem in the
multiplicity of their business; and how they can lay hold of the proper
moments to carry it on, in the midst of their pleasures. Courts, alone,
teach versatility and politeness; for there is no living there without
them. Lord Albermarle has, I hear, and am very glad of it, put you into
the hands of Messieurs de Bissy. Profit of that, and beg of them to let
you attend them in all the companies of Versailles and Paris. One of them,
at least, will naturally carry you to Madame de la Valiores, unless he is
discarded by this time, and Gelliot—[A famous opera-singer at Paris.]—retaken.
Tell them frankly, 'que vous cherchez a vous former, que vous etes en
mains de maitres, s'ils veulent bien s'en donner la peine'. Your
profession has this agreeable peculiarity in it, which is, that it is
connected with, and promoted by pleasures; and it is the only one in which
a thorough knowledge of the world, polite manners, and an engaging
address, are absolutely necessary. If a lawyer knows his law, a parson his
divinity, and a financier his calculations, each may make a figure and a
fortune in his profession, without great knowledge of the world, and
without the manners of gentlemen. But your profession throws you into all
the intrigues and cabals, as well as pleasures, of courts: in those
windings and labyrinths, a knowledge of the world, a discernment of
characters, a suppleness and versatility of mind, and an elegance of
manners, must be your clue; you must know how to soothe and lull the
monsters that guard, and how to address and gain the fair that keep, the
golden fleece. These are the arts and the accomplishments absolutely
necessary for a foreign minister; in which it must be owned, to our shame,
that most other nations outdo the English; and, 'caeteris paribus', a
French minister will get the better of an English one at any third court
in Europe. The French have something more 'liant', more insinuating and
engaging in their manner, than we have. An English minister shall have
resided seven years at a court, without having made any one personal
connection there, or without being intimate and domestic in any one house.
He is always the English minister, and never naturalized. He receives his
orders, demands an audience, writes an account of it to his Court, and his
business is done. A French minister, on the contrary, has not been six
weeks at a court without having, by a thousand little attentions,
insinuated himself into some degree of favor with the Prince, his wife,
his mistress, his favorite, and his minister. He has established himself
upon a familiar and domestic footing in a dozen of the best houses of the
place, where he has accustomed the people to be not only easy, but
unguarded, before him; he makes himself at home there, and they think him
so. By these means he knows the interior of those courts, and can almost
write prophecies to his own, from the knowledge he has of the characters,
the humors, the abilities, or the weaknesses of the actors. The Cardinal
d'Ossat was looked upon at Rome as an Italian, and not as a French
cardinal; and Monsieur d'Avaux, wherever he went, was never considered as
a foreign minister, but as a native, and a personal friend. Mere plain
truth, sense, and knowledge, will by no means do alone in courts; art and
ornaments must come to their assistance. Humors must be flattered; the
'mollia tempora' must be studied and known: confidence acquired by seeming
frankness, and profited of by silent skill. And, above all; you must gain
and engage the heart, to betray the understanding to you. 'Ha tibi erunt
artes'.</p>
<p>The death of the Prince of Wales, who was more beloved for his affability
and good-nature than esteemed for his steadiness and conduct, has given
concern to many, and apprehensions to all. The great difference of the
ages of the King and Prince George presents the prospect of a minority; a
disagreeable prospect for any nation! But it is to be hoped, and is most
probable, that the King, who is now perfectly recovered of his late
indisposition, may live to see his grandson of age. He is, seriously, a
most hopeful boy: gentle and good-natured, with good sound sense. This
event has made all sorts of people here historians, as well as
politicians. Our histories are rummaged for all the particular
circumstances of the six minorities we have had since the Conquest, viz,
those of Henry III., Edward III., Richard II., Henry VI., Edward V., and
Edward VI.; and the reasonings, the speculations, the conjectures, and the
predictions, you will easily imagine, must be innumerable and endless, in
this nation, where every porter is a consummate politician. Dr. Swift
says, very humorously, that "Every man knows that he understands religion
and politics, though he never learned them; but that many people are
conscious that they do not understand many other sciences, from having
never learned them." Adieu.</p>
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