Persian Letters. Montesquieu

       In London the people eat much fleshmeat, with the result that they become very stout, and collapse at forty or forty-five.

       The streets of London are so bad, that it is advisable to make one’s will before taking a hackney-coach.

       The young English noblemen are divided into two classes: those who, having been to the University, have some learning, and are consequently shamefaced and constrained; and the shameless ones who know nothing, and are the petits-maîtres of the nation. But the English in general are modest.

       Paris is a handsome city where there are ugly corners; London is a villainous place containing some very beautiful things.

       The complaints of foreigners, especially of the French, in London, are lamentable. They say that they cannot make a friend; and that their overtures are received as injuries. But how can the Kinski, the Broglies, and La Vilette, with their profuse French manners, expect the English to be like them? How should the English, who do not love each other, love strangers?

       I look on the King of England simply as a man who has a pretty wife, a hundred servants, a handsome equipage, and a good table. People think him fortunate; but when he is left alone, and his door closed, and he has to quarrel with his wife and his servant, and swear at his butler, he is not so much to be envied after all.

       By dint of suspecting everybody, people grow hard-hearted here.

       There are some Scotch members of parliament who can get only two hundred pounds for their votes, and who sell them at that price.

       A minister thinks only of defeating the opposition; and to that end he would sell England – the whole world.

       Extraordinary things are done in England for money. The English do not even know the meaning of honor and virtue.

       I do not know what will be the upshot of European emigration to Africa and the West Indies; but I am certain that England will be the first nation to be deserted by its colonies.

       The English make little effort at politeness, but are never impolite.

       Women in England are reserved because they see little of the men. If a foreigner speaks to them, they suspect his intentions. “’Je ne veux pas,’ disent-elles, ‘give to him encouragement.’”

       There is no religion in England. If religion is spoken of everybody laughs.

       England is at present the freest country in the world, not excepting any republic. I call it free, because unlimited power is in the hands of the King and the Parliament. A good English citizen will therefore endeavour to protect liberty as much against the Commons as against the King.

      Montesquieu’s impressions of England were written on his lands as well as in his books; for when he returned to France he had his ancestral estate of La Brède laid out in the English style.

VIII

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      The rest of Montesquieu’s life was spent at his estates in the country and at Paris.

      He made great improvements in his land, and increased his revenues largely. At his death his income is said to have been sixty thousand francs. He was not ambitious to be rich; but in all that he took in hand he wished to feel and to see signs of his ability. He has been accused of parsimony, but that is one of the commonest charges the weak have to bring against the strong. Order was the law of his being, and prodigality and dissipation as repugnant to him as anything else chaotic. Indeed there was always too little chaos about Montesquieu.¹ He saw life steadily and saw it whole, too soon, too easily; and he took a part for the whole. But, to return, he was certainly not avaricious. His enlightened benevolence appeared in the moderate rents he charged; and there are several specific acts of generosity recorded.

      Henry Sully, an English astronomer of note, being at Bordeaux pursuing experiments in horology, received much attention at the hands of Montesquieu, then President of the Bordeaux Academy. One day Sully, reduced to his last sou, “no uncommon thing with inventors,” wrote Montesquieu a brief note, “very English and very artless”—“I am in the mood to hang myself, but I don’t think I should do so if I had a hundred crowns.” “I send you a hundred crowns,” replied Montesquieu, “don’t hang yourself, and come and see me.”

      In the winter of 1747-48, Guienne, on account of the war with England, had been unable to import a sufficient quantity of grain. On the 7th of December, Montesquieu, being at La Brède, was told that the tenants on an estate of his fifty leagues away were almost famine-stricken. He drove to the place at once with hardly a halt; summoned the curés of “the four villages,” and while waiting for them examined the state of provisions. On their arrival, he said, “Gentlemen, I beg you to assist me in procuring some help for your parishioners. You know those who are in need of corn, or of money to buy it. I wish all the grain in my barns to be distributed gratuitously. My steward will hand it out in quantities to be fixed in proportion to the needs of those who are in want of it. It is not right that any one should lack the necessaries of life on my lands as long as I have a superabundance. Gentlemen, you are good fellows. I trust to you entirely to make this distribution. You will oblige me by carrying out my intentions promptly; and by keeping the thing a secret.”

      Montesquieu then went away at once, to escape the thanks of his tenants. According to the friend—of a scenic turn of mind evidently—who accompanied him, wheat to the value of 6400 livres was distributed by the curés. To prevent the recurrence of the distress which he had so munificently relieved, Montesquieu established on his estates granaries for the poor (greniers de charité).

      Montesquieu was, indeed, one of the best of landlords and country gentlemen. He was looked upon in France as a species of “Milord Anglais,” as interested in men as in books; and he was so—in the peasants of La Brède, who were “not learned enough to make the worse appear the better reason,” as well as in the wits of Paris. His habits and manners were as simple as could be. He would go about La Brède all day long with a white cotton cap on his head and a vine-pole over his shoulder; in which guise he was, of course, mistaken more than once for a vine-dresser, and asked by those who came to offer him “les hommages de l’Europe,” if that “was the chateau of Montesquieu.”² A Genevese naturalist, Trembley,³ whom he had met in England, wrote to a friend, after having passed several days at La Brède in the autumn of 1752, “I cannot describe the pleasure I enjoyed during my stay. How beautiful, how charming the things I heard! What do you think of conversations which begin at one o’clock in the day and last till eleven at night? Now there was talk of the loftiest subjects; anon full bodied laughter over some delightful story. . . I talked much of agriculture with M. de Montesquieu. In a conversation on that subject he exclaimed:

      ‘ O fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint Agricolas!’

      adding, ‘I have often thought of putting these words on the front of my house.’”

      The Earl of Charlemont wrote requesting an audience.⁴ The reply was favourable, and he and his companion, so excited were they at the prospect of seeing the great man, arrived at his house before he was up. The servant put them into the library, where “the first thing we saw was an open book lying on a table at which he had probably sat on the preceding evening: the extinguished lamp was still in position. Impatient to know the night reading of the great philosopher, we stepped at once to the volume: it was the Elegies of Ovid, open at one of the most gallant pages. We had not recovered from our surprise, when it was increased by the entrance of the president, whose appearance and manners were entirely opposed to the idea which we had formed of him. Instead of a grave and austere philosopher, whose very presence would have intimidated young folk like us, the person who addressed us was a Frenchman”—even the French philosophers are French! – “gay, polished, full of vivacity, who, after a thousand agreeable greetings, and a thousand thanks for the honour which we did him, invited us to breakfast; but”.