Letters to His Son - Lord Chesterfield

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773), was a statesman, diplomat, and man of letters, responsible for such famous epigrams as:

• "Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well."
• "Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today."
• "Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves."
• "Wear your learning like a pocket watch and keep it hidden. Do not pull it out to count the hours, but give the time when you are asked."

Despite his successful political and literary career, today he is most remembered for a collection of writings that he never intended for the public: his private correspondence with his illegitimate son, Philip.

The more than 400 letters, written over three decades, span every subject from history, literature, and philosophy, to advice on life, love, manners, and worldly success. Upon their posthumous publication (1774), the letters gained a reputation as a complete manual of etiquette and education, although not without controversy: as an accomplished politician, much of his "gentlemanly" advice was tinged with Machiavellian expedience.

Samuel Johnson railed that the letters "teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing-master." John Quincy Adams complained of a "stain of depravity which pervades all his ideas of morality," apparently preferring his father's advice to "wear mean [clothes], and work hard." A more moderate reviewer concluded that "It is not surprising" that Stanhope "has been condemned in the mass," but his letters "contain a great amount of practical good sense" and "the animation and grace which we should expect from a highly cultivated mind, occupied with delightful visions of a young man rising into brilliant fame under its guidance."

For this meetup, we will read letters 1 through 23.

Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son:

• Kindle
• Gutenberg
• Google books
• Librivox

Supplemental:

• Lord Chesterfield on the Art of Dress from the Marginalian

Extracts:

• "Not,—let me hurry to say,—that I put hand in tar bucket with a squeamish air, or ascended the rigging with a Chesterfieldian mince." (Mardi, 1.3)
• "We know not what we do when we hate. And I have the word of my gentlemanly friend Stanhope, for it; that he who declared he loved a good hater was but a respectable sort of Hottentot, at best. No very genteel epithet this, though coming from the genteelest of men." (Mardi, 1.13)
• "Pretensions and substitutions are only the recourse of under-graduates in the science of the world; in which science, on his own ground, my Lord Chesterfield, is the poorest possible preceptor. The earliest instinct of the child, and the ripest experience of age, unite in affirming simplicity to be the truest and profoundest part for man." (Pierre, 15.2)
• "Parlor-men, dancing-masters, the graduates of the Albe Bellgarde, may shrug their laced shoulders at the boisterousness of Allen in England. True, he stood upon no punctilios with his jailers; for where modest gentlemanhood is all on one side, it is a losing affair; as if my Lord Chesterfield should take off his hat, and smile, and bow, to a mad bull, in hopes of a reciprocation of politeness." (Israel Potter, 22)
• "...I say, this thirtieth boy was in person not ungraceful...and in manner, why, in a plebeian way, a perfect Chesterfield; very intelligent, too—quick as a flash. But, such suavity! ‘Please sir! please sir!’ always bowing and saying, ‘Please sir.’" (The Confidence-Man, 22)
• "The son is going abroad, and for the first. What does the father? Invoke God’s blessing upon him? Put the blessed Bible in his trunk? No. Crams him with maxims smacking of my Lord Chesterfield, with maxims of France, with maxims of Italy." (The Confidence-Man, 30)
• "You remember how you used to rate me for my hang-dog modesty, my mauvaise honte, as my Lord Chesterfield would style it." ("Fragments From a Writing Desk No. 1")
• "Books, gentlemen, are a species of men, and introduced to them you circulate in the “very best society” that this world can furnish, without the intolerable infliction of “dressing” to go into it. In your shabbiest coat and cosiest slippers you may socially chat even with the fastidious Earl of Chesterfield, and lounging under a tree enjoy the divinest intimacy with my late lord of Verulam." ("A Thought on Book Binding")
• "Letters from a Father to a Son, inculcating the Virtue of Vice." (Mardi, 2.19)

This meetup is part of a series on Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.