LONDON,March 25,O.S.1751.
MY DEAR FRIEND:What a happy period of your life is this?Pleasure is now,and ought to be,your business.While you were younger,dry rules,and unconnected words,were the unpleasant objects of your labors.When you grow older,the anxiety,the vexations,the disappointments inseparable from public business,will require the greatest share of your time and attention;your pleasures may,indeed,conduce to your business,and your business will quicken your pleasures;but still your time must,at least,be divided:whereas now it is wholly your own,and cannot be so well employed as in the pleasures of a gentleman.The world is now the only book you want,and almost the only one you ought to read:that necessary book can only be read in company,in public places,at meals,and in 'ruelles'.You must be in the pleasures,in order to learn the manners of good company.In premeditated,or in formal business,people conceal,or at least endeavor to conceal,their characters:whereas pleasures discover them,and the heart breaks out through the guard of the understanding.Those are often propitious moments for skillful negotiators to improve.In your destination particularly,the able conduct of pleasures is of infinite use;to keep a good table,and to do the honors of it gracefully,and 'sur le ton de la bonne compagnie',is absolutely necessary for a foreign minister.There is a certain light table chit-chat,useful to keep off improper and too serious subjects,which is only to be learned in the pleasures of good company.In truth it may be trifling;but,trifling as it is,a man of parts and experience of the world will give an agreeable turn to it.'L'art de badiner agreablement'is by no means to be despised.
An engaging address,and turn to gallantry,is often of very great service to foreign ministers.Women have,directly or indirectly;a good deal to say in most courts.The late Lord Strafford governed,for a considerable time,the Court of Berlin and made his own fortune,by being well with Madame de Wartenberg,the first King of Prussia's mistress.
I could name many other instances of that kind.That sort of agreeable 'caquet de femmes',the necessary fore-runners of closer conferences,is only to be got by frequenting women of the first fashion,'et,qui donnent le ton'.Let every other book then give way to this great and necessary book,the world,of which there are so many various readings,that it requires a great deal of time and attention to under stand it well:contrary to all other books,you must not stay home,but go abroad to read it;and when you seek it abroad,you will not find it in booksellers'shops and stalls,but in courts,in hotels,at entertainments,balls,assemblies,spectacles,etc.Put yourself upon the footing of an easy,domestic,but polite familiarity and intimacy in the several French houses to which you have been introduced:Cultivate them,frequent them,and show a desire of becoming 'enfant de la maison'.
Get acquainted as much as you can with 'les gens de cour';and observe,carefully,how politely they can differ,and how civilly they can hate;how easy and idle they can seem in the multiplicity of their business;and how they can lay hold of the proper moments to carry it on,in the midst of their pleasures.Courts,alone,teach versatility and politeness;for there is no living there without them.Lord Albermarle has,I hear,and am very glad of it,put you into the hands of Messieurs de Bissy.Profit of that,and beg of them to let you attend them in all the companies of Versailles and Paris.One of them,at least,will naturally carry you to Madame de la Valiores,unless he is discarded by this time,and Gelliot --[A famous opera-singer at Paris.]--retaken.