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Updated: May 18, 2025
'Les manieres les agremens, les graces' cannot be learned by theory; they are only to be got by use among those who have them; and they are now the main object of your life, as they are the necessary steps to your fortune.
By the way, you may take your lodgings for one whole year certain, by which means you may get them much cheaper; for though I intend to see you here in less than a year, it will be but for a little time, and you will return to Paris again, where I intend you shall stay till the end of April twelvemonth, 1752, at which time, provided you have got all 'la politesse, les manieres, les attentions, et les graces du beau monde', I shall place you in some business suitable to your destination.
Make them therefore habitual to you; and resolve never to say the most common things, even to your footman, but in the best words you can find, and with the best utterance. This, with 'les manieres, la tournure, et les usages du beau monde', are the only two things you want; fortunately, they are both in your power; may you have them both! Adieu. LONDON, April 15, O. S. 1751
"Les manieres que l'on neglige comme de petites choses, sont souvent ce qui fait que les hommes decident de vous en bien ou en mal." I had long since, when I was at the University, been introduced to Lord Chester; but I had quite forgotten his person, and he the very circumstance.
Quelles manieres, quelles graces, quel art de Claire'! Nature, thank God, has given you all the powers necessary; and if she has not yet, I hope in God she will give you the will of exerting them. I have lately read with great pleasure Voltaire's two little histories of 'Les Croisades', and 'l'Esprit Humain'; which I recommend to your perusal, if you have not already read them.
'Y a-t-il quelque bon ton'? All fat and fair, I presume; too proud and too cold to make advances, but, at the same time, too well-bred and too warm to reject them, when made by 'un honnete homme avec des manieres'.
It is that interior domestic familiarity with people of fashion, that alone can give you 'l'usage du monde, et les manieres aisees'. It is only with women one loves, or men one respects, that the desire of pleasing exerts itself; and without the desire of pleasing no man living can please. Let that desire be the spring of all your words and actions.
'Les manieres les agremens, les graces' cannot be learned by theory; they are only to be got by use among those who have them; and they are now the main object of your life, as they are the necessary steps to your fortune.
Since you have time, you have done very well to take an Italian and a German master; but pray take care to leave yourelf time enough for company; for it is in company only that you can learn what will be much more useful to you than either Italian or German; I mean 'la politesse, les manieres et les graces, without which, as I told you long ago, and I told you true, 'ogni fatica a vana'. Adieu.
Even the derivation of the word does not let us forget this manners from manieres, from manier, from main, from manus, the touch of the human hand upon the art of living worthily in human society, without offence and without contention, with the gentleness of a race, the gens, that owns a common origin, the urbanity of those who have learned to dwell in a city "compact together," the respect of those who have some one to look to for approval and control, either above them in dignity, or beneath them in strength, and therefore to be considered with due reverence.
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