Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (Письма к сыну – полный вариант)

MY DEAR FRIEND: Very few celebrated negotiators have been eminent for their learning. The most famous French negotiators (and I know no nation that can boast of abler) have been military men, as Monsieur d'Harcourt, Comte d'Estrades, Marechal d'Uxelles, and others. 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. This is, in my opinion, very easily to be accounted for. A man of very deep learning must have employed the greatest part of his time in books; and a skillful negotiator must necessarily have employed much the greater part of his time with man. The sound scholar, when dragged out of his dusty closet into business, acts by book, and deals with men as he has read of them; not as he has known them by experience: he follows Spartan and Roman precedents, in what he falsely imagines to be similar cases; whereas two cases never were, since the beginning of the world, exactly alike; and he would be capable, where he thought spirit and vigor necessary, to draw a circle round the persons he treated with, and to insist upon a categorical answer before they went out of it, because he had read, in the Roman history, that once upon a time some Roman ambassador, did so. No; a certain degree of learning may help, but no degree of learning will ever make a skillful minister whereas a great knowledge of the world, of the characters, passions, and habits of mankind, has, without one grain of learning, made a thousand. Military men have seldom much knowledge of books; their education does not allow it; but what makes great amends for that want is, that they generally know a great deal of the world; they are thrown into it young; they see variety of nations and characters; and they soon find, that to rise, which is the aim of them all, they must first please: these concurrent causes almost always give them manners and politeness. In consequence of which, you see them always distinguished at courts, and favored by the women. I could wish that you had been of an age to have made a campaign or two as a volunteer. It would have given you an attention, a versatility, and an alertness; all which I doubt you want; and a great want it is.

A foreign minister has not great business to transact every day; so that his knowledge and his skill in negotiating are not frequently put to the trial; but he has that to do every day, and every hour of the day, which is necessary to prepare and smooth the way for his business; that is, to insinuate himself by his manners, not only into the houses, but into the confidence of the most considerable people of that place; to contribute to their pleasures, and insensibly not to be looked upon as a stranger himself. A skillful minister may very possibly be doing his master's business full as well, in doing the honors gracefully and genteelly of a ball or a supper, as if he were laboriously writing a protocol in his closet. The Marechal d'Harcourt, by his magnificence, his manners, and his politeness, blunted the edge of the long aversion which the Spaniards had to the French. The court and the grandees were personally fond, of him, and frequented his house; and were at least insensibly brought to prefer a French to a German yoke; which I am convinced would never have happened, had Comte d'Harrach been Marechal d'Harcourt, or the Marechal d'Harcourt Comte d'Harrach. The Comte d'Estrades had, by 'ses manieres polies et liantes', formed such connections, and gained such an interest in the republic of the United Provinces, that Monsieur De Witt, the then Pensionary of Holland, often applied to him to use his interest with his friend, both in Holland and the other provinces, whenever he (De Witt) had a difficult point which he wanted to carry. This was certainly not brought about by his knowledge of books, but of men: dancing, fencing, and riding, with a little military architecture, were no doubt the top of his education; and if he knew that 'collegium' in Latin signified college in French, it must have been by accident. But he knew what was more useful: from thirteen years old he had been in the great world, and had read men and women so long, that he could then read them at sight.