<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0191" id="link2H_4_0191"></SPAN></p>
<h2> LETTER CLXXXIX </h2>
<h3> BATH, October 19, 1753 </h3>
<p>MY DEAR FRIEND: Of all the various ingredients that compose the useful and
necessary art of pleasing, no one is so effectual and engaging as that
gentleness, that 'douceur' of countenance and manner, to which you are no
stranger, though (God knows why) a sworn enemy. Other people take great
pains to conceal or disguise their natural imperfections; some by the make
of their clothes and other arts, endeavor to conceal the defects of their
shape; women, who unfortunately have natural bad complexions, lay on good
ones; and both men and women upon whom unkind nature has inflicted a
surliness and ferocity of countenance, do at least all they can, though
often without success, to soften and mitigate it; they affect 'douceur',
and aim at smiles, though often in the attempt, like the Devil in Milton,
they GRIN HORRIBLY A GHASTLY SMILE. But you are the only person I ever
knew in the whole course of my life, who not only disdain, but absolutely
reject and disguise a great advantage that nature has kindly granted. You
easily guess I mean COUNTENANCE; for she has given you a very pleasing
one; but you beg to be excused, you will not accept it; but on the
contrary, take singular pains to put on the most 'funeste', forbidding,
and unpleasing one that can possibly be imagined. This one would think
impossible; but you know it to be true. If you imagine that it gives you a
manly, thoughtful, and decisive air, as some, though very few of your
countrymen do, you are most exceedingly mistaken; for it is at best the
air of a German corporal, part of whose exercise is to look fierce, and to
'blasemeer-op'. You will say, perhaps, What, am I always to be studying my
countenance, in order to wear this 'douceur'? I answer, No; do it but for
a fortnight, and you never will have occasion to think of it more. Take
but half the pains to recover the countenance that nature gave you, that
you must have taken to disguise and deform it as you have, and the
business will be done. Accustom your eyes to a certain softness, of which
they are very capable, and your face to smiles, which become it more than
most faces I know. Give all your motions, too, an air of 'douceur', which
is directly the reverse of their present celerity and rapidity. I wish you
would adopt a little of 'l'air du Couvent' (you very well know what I
mean) to a certain degree; it has something extremely engaging; there is a
mixture of benevolence, affection, and unction in it; it is frequently
really sincere, but is almost always thought so, and consequently
pleasing. Will you call this trouble? It will not be half an hour's
trouble to you in a week's time. But suppose it be, pray tell me, why did
you give yourself the trouble of learning to dance so well as you do? It
is neither a religious, moral, or civil duty. You must own, that you did
it then singly to please, and you were, in the right on't. Why do you wear
fine clothes, and curl your hair? Both are troublesome; lank locks, and
plain flimsy rags are much easier. This then you also do in order to
please, and you do very right. But then, for God's sake, reason and act
consequentially; and endeavor to please in other things too, still more
essential; and without which the trouble you have taken in those is wholly
thrown away. You show your dancing, perhaps six times a year, at most; but
you show your countenance and your common motions every day, and all day.
Which then, I appeal to yourself, ought you to think of the most, and care
to render easy, graceful, and engaging? Douceur of countenance and gesture
can alone make them so. You are by no means ill-natured; and would you
then most unjustly be reckoned so? Yet your common countenance intimates,
and would make anybody who did not know you, believe it. 'A propos' of
this, I must tell you what was said the other day to a fine lady whom you
know, who is very good-natured in truth, but whose common countenance
implies ill-nature, even to brutality. It was Miss H——n, Lady
M—y's niece, whom you have seen both at Blackheath and at Lady
Hervey's. Lady M—y was saying to me that you had a very engaging
countenance when you had a mind to it, but that you had not always that
mind; upon which Miss H——n said, that she liked your
countenance best, when it was as glum as her own. Why then, replied Lady M—y,
you two should marry; for while you both wear your worst countenances,
nobody else will venture upon either of you; and they call her now Mrs.
Stanhope. To complete this 'douceur' of countenance and motions, which I
so earnestly recommend to you, you should carry it also to your
expressions and manner of thinking, 'mettez y toujours de l'affectueux de
l'onction'; take the gentle, the favorable, the indulgent side of most
questions. I own that the manly and sublime John Trott, your countryman,
seldom does; but, to show his spirit and decision, takes the rough and
harsh side, which he generally adorns with an oath, to seem more
formidable. This he only thinks fine; for to do John justice, he is
commonly as good-natured as anybody. These are among the many little
things which you have not, and I have, lived long enough in the world to
know of what infinite consequence they are in the course of life. Reason
then, I repeat it again, within yourself, CONSEQUENTIALLY; and let not the
pains you have taken, and still take, to please in some things be a 'pure
perte', by your negligence of, and inattention to others of much less
trouble, and much more consequence.</p>
<p>I have been of late much engaged, or rather bewildered, in Oriental
history, particularly that of the Jews, since the destruction of their
temple, and their dispersion by Titus; but the confusion and uncertainty
of the whole, and the monstrous extravagances and falsehoods of the
greatest part of it, disgusted me extremely. Their Talmud, their Mischna,
their Targums, and other traditions and writings of their Rabbins and
Doctors, who were most of them Cabalists, are really more extravagant and
absurd, if possible, than all that you have read in Comte de Gabalis; and
indeed most of his stuff is taken from them. Take this sample of their
nonsense, which is transmitted in the writings of one of their most
considerable Rabbins: "One Abas Saul, a man of ten feet high, was digging
a grave, and happened to find the eye of Goliah, in which he thought
proper to bury himself, and so he did, all but his head, which the Giant's
eye was unfortunately not quite deep enough to receive." This, I assure
you, is the most modest lie of ten thousand. I have also read the Turkish
history which, excepting the religious part, is not fabulous, though very
possibly not true. For the Turks, having no notion of letters and being,
even by their religion, forbid the use of them, except for reading and
transcribing the Koran, they have no historians of their own, nor any
authentic records nor memorials for other historians to work upon; so that
what histories we have of that country are written by foreigners; as
Platina, Sir Paul Rycaut, Prince Cantimer, etc., or else snatches only of
particular and short periods, by some who happened to reside there at
those times; such as Busbequius, whom I have just finished. I like him, as
far as he goes, much the best of any of them: but then his account is,
properly, only an account of his own Embassy, from the Emperor Charles the
Fifth to Solyman the Magnificent. However, there he gives, episodically,
the best account I know of the customs and manners of the Turks, and of
the nature of that government, which is a most extraordinary one. For,
despotic as it always seems, and sometimes is, it is in truth a military
republic, and the real power resides in the Janissaries; who sometimes
order their Sultan to strangle his Vizir, and sometimes the Vizir to
depose or strangle his Sultan, according as they happen to be angry at the
one or the other. I own I am glad that the capital strangler should, in
his turn, be STRANGLE-ABLE, and now and then strangled; for I know of no
brute so fierce, nor no criminal so guilty, as the creature called a
Sovereign, whether King, Sultan, or Sophy, who thinks himself, either by
divine or human right, vested with an absolute power of destroying his
fellow-creatures; or who, without inquiring into his right, lawlessly
exerts that power. The most excusable of all those human monsters are the
Turks, whose religion teaches them inevitable fatalism. A propos of the
Turks, my Loyola, I pretend, is superior to your Sultan. Perhaps you think
this impossible, and wonder who this Loyola is. Know then, that I have had
a Barbet brought me from France, so exactly like the Sultan that he has
been mistaken for him several times; only his snout is shorter, and his
ears longer than the Sultan's. He has also the acquired knowledge of the
Sultan; and I am apt to think that he studied under the same master at
Paris. His habit and his white band show him to be an ecclesiastic; and
his begging, which he does very earnestly, proves him to be of a mendicant
order; which, added to his flattery and insinuation, make him supposed to
be a Jesuit, and have acquired him the name of Loyola. I must not omit
too, that when he breaks wind he smells exactly like the Sultan.</p>
<p>I do not yet hear one jot the better for all my bathings and pumpings,
though I have been here already full half my time; I consequently go very
little into company, being very little fit for any. I hope you keep
company enough for us both; you will get more by that, than I shall by all
my reading. I read simply to amuse myself and fill up my time, of which I
have too much; but you have two much better reasons for going into
company, pleasure and profit. May you find a great deal of both in a great
deal of company! Adieu.</p>
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