We may pass over the years in Germany, as the earl did, without much comment. Young Stanhope was quite satisfactory in the more solid parts of learning, and it was not until he reached Italy, there to begin his courtly training, that Chesterfield's interest was fully aroused.
"The manners of Leipsig must be shook off," he says emphatically. "No scramblings at your meals as at a German ordinary: no awkward overturns of glasses, plates, and salt-cellers."[369]
He is to mind the decent mirth of the courtiers--their discreet frankness, their natural, careless, but genteel air; in short, to acquire the Graces. Chesterfield sent letters of introduction to the best company in Venice, forwarded his own diamond shoe buckles for his son, and began to pour forth advice on the possible social problems confronting a young Englishman in Rome. With a contemptuous tolerance for Papists, Protestants, and all religious quarrels as obstructions to the art of pleasing, he bade Stanhope be civil to the Pope, and to kneel down while the Host was being carried through the streets. His tutor, though, had better not. With wonderful artistic insight, the earl perceives that the fitting attitude for Mr Harte is simple, ungracious honesty.[370]
On the subject of the Pretender, then resident in Rome, his advice is; never meet a Stuart at all if you can help it; but if you must, feign ignorance of him and his grievances. If he begins to talk politics, disavow any knowledge of events in England, and escape as soon as you can.[371]
Long before his son's year in Italy was completed, Chesterfield began preparing him for Paris. For the first six months Stanhope was to live in an academy with young Frenchmen of fashion; after that, to have lodgings of his own. The mornings were to belong to study, or serious conversation with men of learning or figure; the afternoons, to exercise; the evenings to be free for balls, the opera, or play. These are the pleasures of a gentleman, for which his father is willing to pay generously. But he will not, he points out frequently, subscribe to the extravagance of a rake. The eighteen-year-old Stanhope is to have his coach, his two valets and a footman, the very best French clothes--in fact, everything that is sensible. But he shall not be allowed money for dozens of cane-heads, or fancy snuff-boxes, or excessive gaming, or the support of opera-singers. One handsome snuff-box, one handsome sword, and gaming only when the presence of the ladies keeps down high stakes; but no tavern-suppers--no low company which costs so much more than dissipations among one's equals. There is no need for a young man of any address to make love to his laundress,[372] as long as ladies of his own class stoop to folly.