What Lord Chesterfield Taught Me About Child Rearing

The unread classics of literature are not, I dare say, Ulysses, War & Peace, Remembrance of Things Past and Don Quixote. Though one sometimes sees observations published such as that only fifty or so people living have finished, for example, all of Proust this is obviously nonsense. There must be alone at least fifty critics alive who have published books of their own about these novels, as well as hundreds more who have taken them up in Master's theses or as part of PhD studies. I, who know almost no one, probably know twenty people who have read it on account of the unignorable attraction of its cultural status even in this postliterate age. There are numerous websites on which others have recorded their efforts, generally successful, to conquer this iconic mountain of literature. The little village of Illiers-Combray apparently attracts enough tourist traffic through its Proust associations that cool people don't want to go there and snobs (who have presumably read the book) feel compelled to sneer or complain about it. Most importantly all of these books are easily available on the shelf at any remotely decent bookstore, with competing translations and editions, as parts of series of classics, sometimes with companion volumes of notes (as in the case of Ulysses) approximately as long as the actual book itself. This leads one to assume that even in the provinces there is enough of a market for and interest in these dinosaurs to make it worth the while to keep putting them out, which must translate, though unfortunately in geographic diffusion compared to the more cosmopolitan cultural concentration enjoyed by other peoples and other ages, into a fairly large audience for them.

It makes more sense that the classics--and yes, they still are classics--nobody reads anymore are those that require a considerable effort just to find a copy of, especially if one does not have privileges at a university library. The internet obviously has assuaged this problem a little for anyone actively searching for such books, but the chances of the general would-be educated or merely curious man at large stumbling across any of them and taking them up, which is still I believe the way many people come into possession of books, remain quite low. Works of this class, some of which are fairly monumental in the history of English literature at least, include Johnson's Lives of the Poets, The Spectator, Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, most of the plays of Dryden other than All For Love, Pope's Dunciad, and the letters of Lord Chesterfield to his son. (As a side note many of the Greek and Roman classics are only available now in the lovely Loeb bilingual editions, which can get expensive, and are not exactly ubiquitous unless you happen to be in the neighborhood of a college where Greek is widely studied. If you do want to pick up, say, the twelve surviving volumes of Diodorus Siculus's Library of History--the only ancient source for much information regarding the Sicilian Greeks, and one of the handful to give an extensive account of the career of Alexander, another section on Egypt that inspired Shelley's "Ozymandias", etc--it will set you back $240. But to get on with the point of the article).

That the Lord Chesterfield book has languished out of print, at least in a mass market edition that I know of, for 50 years, I find the most surprising. Its contents being intended as it were for a child and adolescent, it is eminently readable and is in fact extremely informative in an offhand way about many aspects of 18th-century culture and politics that are sometimes obscured in works in which knowledge of certain events and systems are assumed. For example, the tour of the various courts, particularly in Germany and Italy, which young Philip is sent on, gives a certain vividness both to the political situation of the day and the character of the cities in which these courts formerly existed even now that other books had failed to impress upon me. It was also here that the identities, particular adventures, dates, representative factions, etc, of those ubiquitous 18th-century characters the Old Pretender and Bonny Prince Charlie finally attained a degree of clarity in my understanding. Chesterfield is famous of course for his elegant and easy English style, as well as his amorality in social matters, of which the model of his prose is probably of more interest to the modern reader. His Lordship being who he was, his attitude and relationship towards his language and his motivations for writing as he did were considerably different than those a desperate American middle-class writer of the present day such as myself is going to be able to harness for the purposes of composition. Being near the pinnacle of his nation, from which in his time the language had just begun to disperse to all the ends of the earth where one finds it today, he very reasonably saw himself as one of its primary guardians, for whom the setting and adherence to rules and manners of expression were something of a duty and necessity for the continued health and vigor of the country. His position was such as to be nearly as capable of bestowing stature and validation on the literature of his nation as to seek the same for himself from the pursuit of it, and it is only when one is able to reach this point, in any artistic or scholarly undertaking, that interesting work can begin to be produced. (Note--In reading Boswell's Life I have come across the passage where he says that Chesterfield was eager for literary distinction. I still believe his case is significantly different than that of the completely obscure scribblers of the present day, to whom attaining such stature appears to require a much more miraculous series of events).

Chesterfield's great weak point however, was that he had but one (illegitimate) son, whom he quite naturally and reasonably attempted to form into an even more perfect version of himself, and it is said, suffered a great disappointment in the utter failure of this plan. Indeed, his poor son has gone down in literary history as one of the greatest dolts ever to play so prominent a role in its action, though his real shortcomings appear to have been more in the way of being a less than sparkling conversationalist and of a saturnine disposition rather than being actually stupid; scholars forming a race of men apparently so inured from ever having to encounter any truly stupid and ignorant people that any figure from history who falls far short of greatness in current estimation is considered an appropriate target for ridicule, though in 99% of the cases the object of mirth was a more significant figure as well as better educated in relation to his own age than his critics. In any event young Chesterfield appears to have been at least accomplished in languages, Latin, French and German certainly, possibly Greek and Italian too, with regard to both the spoken and literary aspects of these tongues, and his education in math, music, history, literature, probably made a greater impression upon his dull mind than that of most modern college graduates has had on theirs due, if nothing else, to the persistence and effort and time bestowed on it by his tutors. Nonetheless he was an unqualified disappointment, who not only failed to make any figure in Europe's better circles either social or intellectual, but ended up marrying a barely literate water-carrier or something of the sort, and died around the age of 30, predeceasing his father. If he was truly the loser his reputation makes him out to be, naturally I have to wonder what, if anything, can be made of my own male offspring, even should some remarkable circumstance of genetics reveal one or another of them to have superior ability in any serious adult endeavor? My personal resources and access to the upper reaches of learning, competitive athletics, business, beautiful women, etc, which prevail in my own age are hardly, after all, to be compared to Lord Chesterfield's.

One possible mitigation of this inevitable and generally hopeless problem of parental ambition may be to simply have more children, as a means both of relieving the pressure that (in my particular instance) an only son must feel to attain all of the qualities and successes his father impresses upon him as desirable in a man, as well as increasing the possibility of some of those various desirable successes being attained by one son or another. What, the philosophers will ask, might these successes be, and why are they important anyway? Naturally they are those which the father considers his own deficiency in to have been most crippling to his own enjoyment and experience of life. I am certain that my life would be much more satisfying if I were a master of the classical Greek language, if I spoke French or Russian or any other important language (including English) well enough to engage in intrigues and vigorous contentions at dinner parties, if I were proficient enough in advanced mathematics, physics and chemistry that at least I could remember how basic instruments work and phenomena are explained, if I could play piano, if I had been more aggressive and vigorous and confident in my youth on the athletic field, if I were able go to Paris or Istanbul and actually contribute to the vitality and brilliance of such places rather than be a sapper of their most charming qualities, if I had a real profession in which I was accomplished, if I had well-made shoes and pants, if I could generate a lively scene on my own rather than be forever having to fruitlessly seek for one. If I would not wish them to be ruthless and amoral ladykillers, I certainly desire for them, when they get into the later years of high school and college, and on their travels and other youthful adventures, to be competitive for such women as interest them as erotic companions whether the attractions are of an intellectually seasoned or more purely animal nature. I can hardly think of a point that, in the type of society we live in, would have a greater power at those ages of transforming one's experience of life entirely, yet this charming state of being in constant communication and interaction with a variety of desirable women is reserved to but a very small number of men, the majority being lucky if in the prime of their health and vigor they can latch on to one cutie (and hopefully that, at least) and eagerly submit to whatever particular slavery their mistress favors in return for the wholly undeserved pleasures she is gracious enough to provide them. The young man who is in a constant state of worry over either the supply or security of his nookie--especially when everyone around him is actively participating in the game to some extent--is generally of little ornament to his college and little interest to his society. The virus of erotic failure eventually renders modest but still worthwhile quantities of native wit, vigor, education, good cheer, handsomeness irrelevant and calls their very existence into question, until they do wither and are found no more.

In short, the man who expects himself or is expected to be the master of too many qualities beyond his capacity may end up developing none at all to his satisfaction.