selections from ‘the american chesterfield’
Philip Stanhope, the Earl of Chesterfield, was an 18th century British statesman. Hoping to educate his son in the most honourable (excuses for the Brit spelling in this context), gentlemanly, and learned way possible, he wrote a series of extensive letters to him over the course of 20 years on everything from friendship, choice of company, and knowledge to ‘genteel carriage,’ employment of time, and rules for conversation.
In the early 1800s, his work was adapted into The American Chesterfield, a selected edition of some of his letters with additions from American advice-givers “suited to the youth of America.” I happened to find in my house a pocket-sized, rather raggedy and cover-lacking copy of this very work, dating from 1847.
Many of the letters are somewhat loquacious, wandering around a bit before getting to the point, and the author frequently inserts French words where English ones would probably do fine. I suppose it was intended to give the text an “air of douceur” (to quote from the chapter on Genteel Carriage).
My favorite passage, somewhat more timeless in its applicability than others, at least to me, was entitled Eloquence of Expression. Part of his point was that speaking well will at the least lead people not to become uninterested in your subject, or annoyed with you, while those who speak well incline you towards their opinions and ideas. He writes:
No one can attend, with pleasure, to a bad speaker…He who mumbles out a set of ill-chosen words, utters them ungrammatically, or with dull monotony, will tire and disgust. Do you not suffer, when people accost you in a stammering or hesitating manner; in an untuneful voice, with false accents and cadences; puzzling and blundering through solecisms, barbarisms, and vulgarisms; misplacing even their bad words, and inverting all method?
In order to avoid such problems, and speak pleasantly and eloquently, it is necessary to
Not neglect your style, in whatever language you speak, or whomsoever you speak to, were it your footman. Seek always for the best words, and the happiest expressions, you can find. Do not content your self with being barely understood; but adorn your thoughts, and dress them as you would your person; which, however well proportioned it might be, it would be very improper and indecent to exhibit naked, or even worse dressed than people of your rank are.
Would that our generation (and Presidents) heed such a warning and discard their sloppy and degenerate speech!
Lord Chesterfield warns that one’s career in government depends on one’s ability to speak well in public, for one will have to speak in front of one’s peers at some point, and people’s impressions, opinions, and even their personal like or dislike may depend upon it. He goes on for 12 small-type pages, citing the examples of classical Greece and Rome, quoting from Cicero, referring to his own political experience, and coming up with paragraph long analogies like the above one about speech as clothing. I think his son probably just wanted to be left alone after a while to do his own thing.
Not only that, but his son had a short, undistinguished political career, and died young after eloping with a peasant woman. Lord Chesterfield died of a broken heart or something shortly after.
If you want to browse through his letters or read them, they’re available online at Project Gutenberg.
