హోమ్పేజి
GRACES
PART - I
THE graces of the person, the countenance, and the way
of speaking, are essential things; the very same thing said by a genteel person
in an engaging way, and gracefully and distinctly spoken, would please; which
would shock, if muttered out by an awkward figure, with a sullen serious
countenance. The poets represent Venus as attended by the three Graces, to
intimate that even beauty will not do without. Minerva ought to have three
also; for, without them, learning has few attractions.
If we examine ourselves seriously, why particular
people please and engage us, more than others of equal merit, we shall always
find, that it is because the former have the Graces, and the latter not. I have
known many a woman, with an exact shape, and a symmetrical assemblage of
beautiful features, please nobody; while others, with very moderate shapes and
features, have charmed everybody. It is certain that Venus will not charm so
much without her attendant Graces, as they will without her. Among men, how
often has the most solid merit been neglected, unwelcome, or even rejected, for
want of them! While flimsy parts, little knowledge, and less merit, introduced
by the Graces, have been received, cherished, and admired.
We proceed now to investigate what these
Graces are, and to give some instructions for acquiring them.
ADDRESS
A MAN’S fortune is frequently decided for ever by his
first address. If it is pleasing, people are hurried involuntarily into a
persuasion that he has a merit, which possibly he has not: as, on the other
hand, if it is ungraceful, they are immediately prejudiced against him; and
unwilling to allow him the merit which, it may be, he has. The worst-bred man
in Europe, should a lady drop her fan, would certainly take it up and give it
to her; the best-bred man in Europe could do no more. The difference, however,
would be considerable: the latter would please by his graceful address in
presenting it; the former would be laughed at for doing it awkwardly. The
carriage of a gentleman should be genteel, and his motions graceful. He should
be particularly careful of his manner and address, when he presents himself in
company. Let them be respectful without meanness, easy without too much
familiarity, genteel without affectation, and insinuating without any seeming
art or design. Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than
by their understandings. The way to the heart is through the senses; please
their eyes and their ears, and the work is half done.
ART OF PLEASING
IT is a very old
and a very true maxim, that those kings reign the most secure, and the most
absolute, who reign in the hearts of their people. Their popularity is a better
guard than their army; and the affections of their subjects a better pledge of
their obedience than their fears. This rule is, in proportion, full as true,
though upon a different scale, with regard to private people. A man who possesses
that great art of pleasing universally, and of gaining the affections of those
with whom he converses, possesses a strength which nothing else can give him; a
strength which facilitates and helps his rise; and which, in case of accidents,
breaks his fall. Few young people of your age sufficiently consider this great
point of popularity; and when they grow older and wiser, strive in vain to
recover what they lost by their negligence. There are three principal causes
that hinder them from acquiring this useful strength; pride, inattention, and mauvaise
honte. The first I will not, I cannot suspect you of; it is too much below
your understanding. 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 which
fortune has made in your favor. Enjoy all 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. Young
people do not enough attend to this; but falsely imagine that the imperative
mood, and a rough tone of authority and decision, are indications of spirit and
courage.
Inattention is always looked upon, though
sometimes unjustly, as the effect of pride and contempt; and, where it is
thought so, is never forgiven. In this article young people are generally
exceedingly to blame, and offend extremely. Their whole attention is engrossed
by their particular set of acquaintance, and by some few glaring and exalted objects
of rank, beauty, or parts: all the rest they think so little worth their care,
that they neglect even common civility toward them. I will frankly confess to
you, that this was one of my great faults when I was of your age. Very attentive
to please that narrow court-circle in which I stood enchanted, I considered
everything else as bourgeois, and unworthy of common civility: I paid my
court assiduously and skillfully enough to shining and distinguished figures,
such as ministers, wits, and beauties: but then I most absurdly and imprudently
neglected, and consequently offended, all others. By this folly I made myself a
thousand enemies of both sexes, who, though I thought them very insignificant,
found means to hurt me essentially, where I wanted to recommend myself the
most. I was thought proud, though I was only imprudent. A general easy civility
and attention to the common run of ugly women, and of middling men, both which
I sillily thought, called, and treated as “odd people,” would have made me as
many friends, as by the contrary conduct I made myself enemies. All this too
was a pure parte; for I might equally, and even more successfully, have
made my court where I had particular views to gratify. I will allow that this
task is often very unpleasant, and that one pays, with some unwillingness, that
tribute of attention to dull and tedious men and to old and ugly women: but it
is the lowest price of popularity and general applause, which are very well
worth purchasing, were they much dearer. I conclude this head with this advice
to you: Gain, by a particular assiduity and address, the men and women you
want; and, by an universal civility and attention, please everybody so far as
to have their good word, if not their goodwill; or, at least, to secure a
partial neutrality.
Mauvaise
honte not only hinders young people
from making a great many friends, but makes them a great many enemies. They are
ashamed of doing the thing that they know to be right, and would otherwise do,
for fear of the momentary laugh of some fine gentleman or lady, or some mauvais
plaisant. I have been in this case: and have often wished an obscure acquaintance
at the devil for meeting and taking notice of me, when I was in what I thought
and called fine company. I have returned their notice shyly, awkwardly, and
consequently offensively, for fear of a momentary joke; not considering, as I
ought to have done, that the very people who would have joked upon me at first,
would have esteemed me the more for it afterwards.
Pursue steadily, and without fear or
shame, whatever your reason tells you is right, and what you see is practiced
by people of more experience than yourself, and of established characters of
good sense and good-breeding.
After all this, perhaps you will say, that
it is impossible to please everybody. I grant it; but it does not follow that
one should not therefore endeavor to please as many as one can. Nay, I will go
farther, and admit, that it is impossible for any man not to have some enemies.
But this truth, from long experience, I assert, that he who has the most
friends, and the fewest enemies, is the strongest; will rise the highest with
the least envy; and fall, if he does fall, the gentlest and the most pitied.
This is surely an object worth pursuing. Pursue it according to the rules I
have here given you. I will add one observation more, and two examples to
enforce it; and then, as the parsons say, conclude.
The late duke of Ormond was almost the
weakest, but, at the same time, the best-bred and most popular man in this
kingdom. His education in courts and camps, joined to an easy gentle nature,
had given him that habitual affability, those engaging manners, and those
mechanical attentions, that almost supplied the place of every talent he
wanted; and he wanted almost every one. They procured him the love of all men,
without the esteem of any. He was impeached after the death of Queen Anne, only
because that, having been engaged in the same measures with those who were
necessarily to be impeached, his impeachment for form's sake, became necessary.
But he was impeached without acrimony, and without the least intention that he
should suffer, notwithstanding the party violence of those times. The question
for his impeachment, in the House of Commons, was carried by many fewer votes
than any other question of impeachment; and Earl Stanhope, then Mr. Stanhope
and secretary of state, who impeached him, very soon after negotiated and
concluded his accommodation with the late king; to whom he was to have been
presented the next day. But the late bishop of Rochester, Atterbury, who
thought that the Jacobite cause might suffer by losing the duke of Ormond, went
in all haste and prevailed with the poor weak man to run away; assuring him,
that he was only to be gulled into a disgraceful submission, and not to be
pardoned in consequence of it. When his subsequent attainder passed, it excited
mobs and disturbances in town. He had not a personal enemy in the world, and
had a thousand friends. All this was singly owing to his natural desire of
pleasing; and to the mechanical means that his education, not his parts, had
given him of doing it. The other instance is the late duke of Marlborough, who
studied the art of pleasing, because he well knew the importance of it: he
enjoyed and used it more than ever man did. He gained whoever he had a mind to
gain; and he had a mind to gain everybody, because he knew that everybody was
more or less worth gaining. Though his power, as minister and general, made him
many political and party enemies, they did not make him one personal one; and
the very people who would gladly have displaced, disgraced, and perhaps
attainted, the duke of Marlborough, at the same time personally loved Mr.
Churchill, even though his private character was blemished by sordid avarice,
the most unamiable of all vices. He had wound up and turned his whole machine
to please and engage. He had an inimitable sweetness and gentleness in his
countenance, a tenderness in his manner of speaking, a graceful dignity in
every motion, and an universal and minute attention to the least things that
could possibly please the least person. This was all art in him; art, of which
he well knew and enjoyed the advantages; for no man ever had more interior
ambition, pride, and avarice, than he had.
CHOICE
OF AMUSEMENTS
A GENTLEMAN always attends even to the choice of
his amusements. If at cards, he will not play at cribbage, all fours, or putt;
or, in sports of exercise, be seen at skittles, foot-ball, leap-frog, cricket,
driving of coaches, &c. for he knows that such an imitation of the manners
of the mob will indelibly stamp him with vulgarity. I cannot likewise avoid
calling playing upon any musical instrument illiberal in a gentleman. Music is usually
reckoned one of the liberal arts, and not unjustly; but a man of fashion who is
seen piping or fiddling at a concert degrades his own dignity. If you love
music, hear it; pay fiddlers to play to you, but never fiddle yourself. It makes
a gentleman appear frivolous and contemptible, leads him frequently into bad
company, and wastes that time which might otherwise be well employed.
CARVING
HOWEVER trifling some things may seem, they are no
longer so when about half the world thinks them otherwise. Carving, as it
occurs at least once in every day, is not below our notice. We should use
ourselves to carve adroitly and genteelly, without hacking half an hour across
a bone, without bespattering the company with the sauce, and without
overturning the glasses into your neighbor's pockets. To be awkward in this
particular, is extremely disagreeable and ridiculous. It is easily avoided by a
little attention and use; and a man who tells you gravely that he cannot carve,
may as well tell you that he cannot blow his nose; it is both as easy and as
necessary.
CHIT-CHAT
STUDY to acquire
that fashionable kind of small-talk, or chit-chat, which prevails
in all polite assemblies, and which, trifling as it may appear, is of use in
mixed companies and at table. It turns upon the public events of Europe, and
then is at its best; very often upon the number, the goodness or badness, the
discipline or the clothing of the troops of different princes; sometimes upon
the families, the marriages, the relations of princes and considerable people;
and sometimes the magnificence of public entertainments, balls, masquerades,
etc. Upon such occasions, likewise, it is not amiss to know how to parler
cuisine, and to be able to dissert upon the growth and flavor of wines.
These, it is true, are very little things; but they are little things that
occur very often, and therefore should be said avec gentillesse et grace.
(to be continued in Part - II & III)
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