Project Gutenberg's Letters to His Son, 1751, by The Earl of Chesterfield

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Title: Letters to His Son, 1751

Author: The Earl of Chesterfield

Release Date: December 1, 2004 [EBook #3355]
[Last updated on February 14, 2007]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS TO HIS SON, 1751 ***

Produced by David Widger

LETTERS TO HIS SON
1751

By the EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

on the Fine Art of becoming a

MAN OF THE WORLD

and a

GENTLEMAN

LETTER CXXVI

LONDON, January 8, O.S. 1751

MY DEAR FRIEND: By your letter of the 5th, N. S., I find that your
'debut' at Paris has been a good one; you are entered into good company,
and I dare say you will, not sink into bad. Frequent the houses where you
have been once invited, and have none of that shyness which makes most of
your countrymen strangers, where they might be intimate and domestic if
they pleased. Wherever you have a general invitation to sup when you
please, profit of it, with decency, and go every now and then. Lord
Albemarle will, I am sure, be extremely kind to you, but his house is
only a dinner house; and, as I am informed, frequented by no French
people. Should he happen to employ you in his bureau, which I much doubt,
you must write a better hand than your common one, or you will get no
credit by your manuscripts; for your hand is at present an illiberal one;
it is neither a hand of business nor of a gentleman, but the hand of a
school-boy writing his exercise, which he hopes will never be read.

Madame de Monconseil gives me a favorable account of you; and so do
Marquis de Matignon and Madame du Boccage; they all say that you desire
to please, and consequently promise me that you will; and they judge
right; for whoever really desires to please, and has (as you now have)
the means of learning how, certainly will please and that is the great
point of life; it makes all other things easy. Whenever you are with
Madame de Monconseil, Madame du Boccage, or other women of fashion, with
whom you are tolerably free, say frankl