The Age of Voltaire Read online

  The three thousand coffeehouses in London were centers of reading as well as of talk. They took in newspapers and magazines, and circulated these among their customers; they provided pens, paper, and ink, accepted letters for mailing, and served as mailing addresses. Some coffee or chocolate houses, like White’s, evolved in this period into exclusive clubs, where men could be sure to find only the company they preferred, and could gamble in privacy. By the end of the eighteenth century there were as many clubs as there had been coffeehouses at the beginning. Apparently the Freemasons began their English history as a club—the “Grand Lodge”—organized in London in 1717. The clubs encouraged drinking, gambling, and political intrigue, but they taught men at least half the art of conversation. The other half was missing, for the clubs were baccalaureate retreats; the finer courtesy and subtler wit required by the presence of women received no stimulus there. England was a man’s land; women had little share in its cultural life; there were no salons; and when Lady Mary Montagu tried to establish one she was looked upon as an eccentric who did not know her place.95

  In the upper classes women could ply their arts at receptions, dances, and musicales at the court or in their homes. The weekend in country houses was a gracious feature of English life, tarnished a bit by the high gratuities expected by the servants; the parting guest had to run the gantlet of valets, butlers, footmen, stewards, porters, maids, cooks, and other help standing in a double row at the door, while coachman and groom waited sternly outside. The reputed fidelity of British servants to their masters had scant reality in the first half of the eighteenth century; they were in many cases inattentive, insolent, rebellious, and changed domiciles readily for a better wage. Many of them robbed master, mistress, and guests when they could; they drank their master’s wine, and donned their mistress’ finery.

  Next to acceptance at court, the crown of fashion was a stay at some watering place, to drink medicinal waters, or bathe with select bodies rather than in the promiscuous sea. Tunbridge was famous for its wells, but its clientele was indiscriminate. Epsom Wells offered music, morris dances, performing dogs, and purgative water, though its minerals had not yet been gathered into Epsom salts. Sea bathing was not popular, though Chesterfield noted some at Scarborough; but in 1753 Dr. Richard Russell’s book Of Glandular Consumption, and the Use of Sea-Water in Diseases of the Glands sent a human wave to the shore, and coastal villages like Brighton, which had known only the humble families of fishermen, blossomed into bathing resorts.

  The aristocracy preferred Bath. There, among the most distinguished of Britain’s valetudinarians, one might drink—and bathe in—smelly waters touted to cure the ailments of the too-well-fed. The little spa had opened its first pump room in 1704, its first theater in 1707, and a year later the first of the “assembly rooms” celebrated in Fielding and Smollett. In 1755 the great Roman bath was discovered. John Wood and his son, as we shall see, remade the town in classical style. In 1705 “Beau” Nash, a lawyer and gamester, became the dictator of its social life. He forbade swords in places of public amusement, and succeeded in making duels—in Bath—disreputable. He persuaded men to wear shoes instead of boots. He himself wore an immense white hat, and a coat with rich embroidery; he drove in a coach behind six horses that had to be gray; and he announced his coming with gay French horns. He improved the streets and buildings, laid out handsome gardens, provided music, and charmed all but a few with his geniality and wit. The English nobility flocked to his realm, for he gave them gaming tables as well as baths, and when laws were passed against gambling he invented new games of chance that bypassed the laws. Finally George II came, and Queen Caroline, and Prince Frederick Louis, and Bath was for a time a second court. The Earl of Chesterfield, who loved the town, would doubtless have applied to its elite the description that he gave of all courts, as places where “you must expect to meet with connections without friendship, enmities without hatred, honor without virtue, appearances saved and realities sacrificed; good manners with bad morals; and all vice and virtues so disguised that whoever has only reasoned upon both would know neither when he first met them at court.”96

  VII. CHESTERFIELD

  Let us spend half an hour with this perceptive earl. He typified the English aristocracy of the age, except that he wrote a good book. His Letters to His Son, which it has been the fashion to depreciate, is a treasury of wisdom in sterling prose, a compact guide to the manners and ideals of his class, and an engaging revelation of a subtle and gracious intelligence.

  At baptism (1694) he was Philip Dormer Stanhope, son of Philip Stanhope, third Earl of Chesterfield, and of Lady Elizabeth Savile, daughter of George Savile, Marquess of Halifax, the wily “Trimmer” of preceding reigns. His mother died in his childhood; his father neglected him; he was brought up by the Marchioness of Halifax. Under a private tutor he learned the classics and French uncommonly well, so that the culture of Rome and France in their maturity became part of his mind. He had a year at Cambridge, and set out in 1714 on the grand tour. At The Hague he gambled for heavy stakes; in Paris he sampled women with discriminating promiscuity. From Paris he wrote (December 7, 1714):

  I shall not give you my opinion of the French, because I am very often taken for one of them; and several have paid me the highest possible compliment they think it in their power to bestow, which is: “Sir, you are just like ourselves.” I shall only tell you that I am insolent, I talk a great deal, I am very loud and peremptory, I sing and dance as I walk along; and, above all, I spend an immense sum on hair, powder, feathers, and white gloves.97

  On his return to England he was appointed gentleman of the bedchamber to the current Prince of Wales (later George II). George I’s favorite minister, James Stanhope, was Philip’s relative. A borough was found for him to represent, and for eleven years he sat in Commons as a Whig. Becoming fourth Earl of Chesterfield on the death of his father (1726), he was transferred to the House of Lords, which he later called “the House of Incurables.” Sent to The Hague as ambassador (1728), he managed his mission so well that he was rewarded with a knightly Garter and appointment as lord high steward. In 1732 a mistress, Mile, du Bouchet, presented him with a son, Philip Stanhope, future recipient of the Letters. A year later he married the Countess of Walsingham, natural daughter of George I by the Duchess of Kendal. He may have expected her to bring him a royal dowry; she did not, and the marriage proved genteelly miserable.

  He might have risen to higher place had he not opposed Walpole’s bill for an excise tax on tobacco and wine. He helped to defeat the measure, and was soon dismissed from the government (1733). He labored for Walpole’s fall, lost his health, retired to the Continent (1741), visited Voltaire in Brussels, associated with Fontenelle and Montesquieu in Paris. Back in England, he continued in opposition. The articles that he contributed as “Jeffrey Broadbottom” to a new journal, Old England, so pleased Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that she willed him twenty thousand pounds. In 1744 his “Broad Bottom” party won. He joined Pelham in the ministry, and was sent to The Hague to persuade the Dutch to join England in the War of the Austrian Succession. He accomplished this with tact and skill, and was advanced to the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland (1745). His one year in Ireland was the most successful in his career. He established schools and industries, cleansed the government of corruption and jobbery, administered affairs with competence and impartiality. He ended the persecution of Catholics, promoted several of them to office, and so earned the respect of the Catholic population that when the Young Pretender invaded England from Scotland, and England expected a simultaneous revolt in Ireland, the Irish refused to rise against Chesterfield.

  He was brought back to London as secretary of state (1746). But now the master of delicacy and tact made a ruinous mistake: he paid court to the King’s mistress rather than to the Queen, and Caroline succeeded in maneuvering his fall. In 1748 he abandoned public life, and retired to “my horse, my books, and my friends.”98 He was offered a dukedom by George II; he
declined it. In 1751 he led the movement to adopt the Gregorian calendar, and bore the brunt of popular resentment against the “Popish theft” of eleven days from the English people. In 1755 he fell under Johnson’s blunderbuss over the dedication to the Dictionary; we shall look at that fracas later on.

  Meanwhile, since 1737, he had been writing letters to his son. His love for this by-product of his first embassy to Holland betrays the tenderness that he kept hidden from the public through most of his career. “From the time that you have had life,” he told the youth, “it has been the principal and favorite object of mine to make you as perfect as the imperfections of human nature will allow.”99 He planned Philip’s education not to make him a model Christian, but to prepare him for statesmanship and diplomacy. He began when the boy was five, with letters on classical mythology and history. Two years later he struck the note that was to recur so persistently in the correspondence:

  In my last I wrote concerning the politeness of people of fashion, such as are used to courts, the elegant part of mankind. Their politeness is easy and natural, and you must distinguish it from the civilities of inferior people and rustics, which are always constraining or trouble some.… A well-bred man shows a constant desire of pleasing, and takes care that his attentions be not troublesome. Few English are thoroughly polite; either they are shamefaced or impudent; whereas most French people are easy and polite in their manners. And as by the better half you are a little Frenchman, so I hope you will at least be half polite. You will be more distinguished in a country where politeness is not very common.100

  So, when Philip was fourteen, his father sent him to Paris as the finishing school of manners, though quite aware that Paris would finish his morals too. The young man had to learn the ways of the world if he was to be useful to his government. The proper study of a statesman is man. After schooling Philip through tutors and letters in classic and literary lore, the Earl, who had such lore at his fingers’ ends, steered him back from books to men.

  MY DEAR FRIEND: Very few celebrated negotiators have been eminent for their learning.… The late Duke of Marlborough, who was at least as able a negotiator as a general, was exceedingly ignorant of books but extremely knowing in men, whereas the learned Grotius appeared, both in Sweden and in France, to be a very bungling minister.101

  If Philip proposed to enter government, he should, above all, study the governing classes, their background, morals, manners, aims, and means. He should read only the best literature, in order to acquire a good style of writing, for this too is part of the art of rule; and he should be acquainted with music and the arts; but God forbid that he should aspire to be an author or a musician.102 He should study carefully the modern history of the European states, their kings and ministers, their laws and constitutions, their finances and diplomacy. He should read La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère on the nature of man; they are cynical, but there would be no great mistake, at least in politics, in expecting every man to pursue his own interest as he sees it; let us suspect any politician who pretends anything else. Don’t expect men to be reasonable; allow for their prejudices. “Our prejudices are our mistresses; reason is at best our wife, very often heard indeed, but seldom minded.”103 Learn to flatter, for only the greatest sages and saints are immune to flattery; but the higher you go, the more delicate and indirect your flattery must be. Study the genealogy of the most important families, for men are prouder of their pedigrees than of their virtues.104 Make your court to women, chiefly to get their help; for even powerful statesmen are influenced by weak women, especially if these are not their wives.

  In matters of sex Chesterfield’s advice to his son amused the French and horrified the English. He thought a few liaisons were an excellent preparation for marriage and maturity. He merely insisted that Philip’s mistresses should be women of good manners, so that they might refine him while sinning. He recommended Mme. du Pin because of her “good breeding and delicacy.”105 He instructed his son in the strategy of seduction. No refusal should be supinely accepted, for

  the most virtuous woman, far from being offended at a declaration of love, is flattered by it, if it is made in a polite and agreeable manner.… If she listens, and allows you to repeat your declaration, be persuaded that if you do not dare all the rest, she will laugh at you.… If you are not listened to the first time, try a second, a third, and a fourth. If the place is not already taken, depend upon it, it may be conquered.106

  The Earl, having had no luck or taste in marriage, passed on to his son no very high opinion about women:

  I will, upon this subject, let you into certain Arcana that will be very useful to you to know, but which you must, with the utmost care, conceal and never seem to know. Women, then, are only children of a larger growth; they have an entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit; but for solid reasoning, good sense, I never knew in my life one that had, or who reasoned or acted consequentially for four-and-twenty hours together.… A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humors and flatters them, … but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters, though he often makes them believe that he does both; which is the thing in the world that they are most proud of; for they love mightily to be dabbling in business (which, by the way, they always spoil).… No flattery is either too high or too low for them. They will greedily swallow the highest, and gratefully accept the lowest; and you may safely flatter any woman from her understanding down to the exquisite taste of her fan. Women who are indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered on the score of their understanding.107

  In France, said the Earl, it is necessary to flatter women with both assiduity and tact, for two reasons: they can make or break a man at court, and they can teach him the graces of life. It is by their grace of movement, manners, and speech, rather than by their beauty, that women maintain their lure; beauty without grace becomes invisible, but grace without beauty can still charm. “Women are the only refiners of the merit of men; it is true, they cannot add weight, but they polish and give luster to it.”108 The Earl cautioned his son against speaking ill of women; that would be trite, vulgar, foolish, and unfair; for women have done much less harm in this world than men. Besides, it is never wise to attack “whole bodies,” classes, or groups; “individuals forgive, sometimes; but bodies and societies never do.”109

  Chesterfield never tired of inculcating good manners.

  Good manners are the settled medium of social, as specie is of commercial, life; returns are equally expected for both; and people will no more advance their civility to a bear than their money to a bankrupt.110

  Here a good dancing master is helpful; he will at least teach us how to sit, stand, or walk with an economy of attention and energy. Being an aristocrat, the Earl called good manners “good breeding”; unconsciously, and perhaps rightly, he recognized how difficult it is to acquire good manners without being brought up in a family, and moving in a circle, that already has them. A “characteristic of a well-bred man is to converse with his inferiors without insolence, and with his superiors with respect and ease.”111 One must not take advantage of the accident of superiority.

  You cannot, and I am sure you do not, think yourself superior by nature to the Savoyard who cleans your room, or the footman who cleans your shoes; but you may rejoice, and with reason, at the difference that fortune has made in your favor. Enjoy those advantages, but without insulting those who are unfortunate enough to want them, or even doing anything unnecessarily that may remind them of that want. For my own part, I am more upon my guard as to my behavior to my servants, and others who are called my inferiors, than I am towards my equals: for fear of being suspected of that mean and ungenerous sentiment of desiring to make others feel that difference which fortune has, and perhaps too undeservedly, made between us.112

  Good manners are of the mind as well of the body, and both kinds will be influenced by the company we keep.

  There are two sorts of good company: one, which
is called the beau monde, and consists of the people who have the lead in courts, and in the gay parts of life; the other consists of those who are distinguished by some peculiar merit, or excel in some particular and valuable art or science. For my own part, I used to think myself in company as much above me when I was with Mr. Addison or Mr. Pope, as if I had been with all the princes in Europe.113

  In either of these good companies it is advisable to keep a certain reserve: not to speak too much or too candidly; to be “dexterous enough to conceal a truth without telling a lie,” and to appear frank while being reserved.

  Even where you are sure, seem rather doubtful; … and if you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself.… Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket, and do not pull it out … merely to show.114 … Above all things, avoid speaking of yourself, if it be possible.115

  Say nothing about religion; if you praise it, sophisticates will smile; if you condemn it the mature will mourn. You will profit by reading Voltaire’s histories, but you will be on your guard against the philosophes who attack religion.