The Philosophy Club: Chesterfield

The Philosophy club continues. This time, Derek Guy joins to talk about Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. It's kind of a weird book! For links, and a special additional article from Derek, head to articlesofinterest.substack.com https://articlesofinterest.substack.com To hear the podcast in full on your podcast player of choice, go to articlesofinterest.substack.com/listen https://articlesofinterest.substack.com/listen Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Avery Trufelman?

  Maybe we can give a little introduction of, just in case people haven't heard the first one. So I'm Avery Trufelman.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  My name is Derek Guy.

• 0:09Avery Trufelman?

  And this is Derek Guy, and we're doing this little series. How would you explain it, Derek?

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Avery contacted me a couple of months ago and said, would you like to do a podcast where we read books and talk about them? And I thought it was fantastic. The books come from, hold on, let me grab the copy. The works come from The Rise of Fashion, edited by Daniel Purdy. The Rise of Fashion is worth purchasing, absolutely.

• 0:36Avery Trufelman?

  It's great.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  But we essentially go through the book in order. We essentially purchase the texts from each chapter in full, and then read those texts and talk about them and talk about how they relate to fashion.

• 0:51Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah, so we're sort of like systematically moving through pivotal texts that shape how we think about what we wear.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Why do we wear what we wear? Why do we purchase what we purchase? What are the motivations and the reasons why we judge things the way that we do? And there's, I think there's a lot of canonical texts in fashion that are often referenced. But many of these texts I've actually am reading for the first time. I've only ever seen them referenced. And we will go through each of them and encourage listeners to buy a copy of these texts if they'd like, read, and then follow along through these podcast episodes. But hopefully, the podcast episodes also stand on their own, so that you don't have to read the text, and you can just enjoy these Cliff Notes.

• 1:35Avery Trufelman?

  Although, I think readers can skip Lord Chesterfield's letters.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40Avery Trufelman?

  Man, what a annoying book. I really hated every second of reading this.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  You know, the thing about Lord Chesterfield's letters is that he obviously did not intend for not only, for them to not be published, so these are private letters, but they were only meant to be read by his son. So you have to kind of piece everything together, like what is going on in these two people's lives. But when you, I think when you take the whole thing together, it's, I think, a glimpse into some section of aristocratic life, and then also just a very tragic story of a man's relationship with his son. So this is Lord Chesterfield's letters, which were written in 18th century. They, there were like 400 letters, and they, he wrote them to his son. But yeah, I mean, what a

• 2:32Speaker 01

  remarkable read, but also quite a slog.

• 2:35Avery Trufelman?

  Such a slog. This episode of The Philosophy Club is about the letters of Lord Chesterfield, which you can listen to ad-free at articlesofinterest.substack.com/listen. But for now, a little ad break.

• 2:48Speaker 02

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• 3:33Speaker 02

  you get your podcasts.

• 3:34Avery Trufelman?

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• 4:16Avery Trufelman?

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• 4:58Avery Trufelman?

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• 5:37Speaker 01

  Let's get into who, who was Lord Chesterfield?

• 5:40Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah. So Lord Chesterfield, I was looking into his history, and it, well, it's really interesting, right? Because obviously, these letters, this epistolary, is before America. Lord Chesterfield dies shortly before 1776. And so it's really interesting to look at this, like, world of government before democracy. This was a time when you really could just buy a parliament seat. Like, you got your dad's parliament seat, you bought a parliament seat, and it's like, open. So this is all just to say, Lord Chesterfield ascended to his father's title, which is, you know, normal, and then maintains the relationship that his father had with the king. So George I dies, and then Lord Chesterfield, like this

• 6:24Avery Trufelman?

  next generation, becomes, and I love this title, he becomes Lord of the Bedchamber to George II. And I was like, what is Lord of the Bedchamber? And it's basically like a handmaiden. It's like who helped men get dressed.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:39Avery Trufelman?

  It would be like the personal assistants, and they helped with dressing and dining, and they were sometimes guards. And then George II hated Lord Chesterfield, like the king really did not like him. So some of the biggest highlights of his career was the service he did abroad, which I was reading, these are appointments that are given to deserving people and those disliked too much to have at home. So he was the ambassador to the Hague, and he did that for a while. And then he resigns because of health issues. And that year that he resigns, 1732, a governess gives birth to his son, Philip, the boy

• 7:18Avery Trufelman?

  to young man he's writing to. And then the next year, 1733, it was like this act of revenge. Lord Chesterfield marries the king's illegitimate half-sister, and now the king really fucking hates him. And so he was Secretary of State when he wrote these letters to his son, which I guess is considered somewhat of a demotion from these foreign positions. And so he like pivoted to parenthood and decided to think about this child.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I found it so sad, because Chesterfield, as you know, he had this reasonably high-ranking career, although was demoted. And then he had these really grand hopes for his son, that he would become this man of the world, and

• 8:01Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  he would have this incredible career. My understanding is that his son, Philip Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield's actual name is Philip Stanhope, but we will call him Lord Chesterfield in this episode, because his son is also named Philip Stanhope. Philip, he was also a diplomat, but he didn't, he didn't advance his career as much as his father hoped.

• 8:21Avery Trufelman?

  Part of why his son did not have a very good career was kind of Lord Chesterfield's fault. His dad really did not set him up for success by trying to climb up King George II's court by marrying his half-sister. So to give you an idea of their relationship, his illegitimate son, Philip, married an illegitimate Irishwoman, and Lord Chesterfield had no idea.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  I don't quite understand why he kept his marriage a secret from his father, to the point that he bought a separate home for his wife and kids, possibly because his father wouldn't approve of him marrying a non-elite person. He married Eugenia, who was an Irishwoman who apparently did not come from a very elite background.

• 9:13Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah. This illegitimate Irishwoman who marries his son does not get a place in Lord Chesterfield's will. And she was the one who pushed for the publication of these letters. And it's sometimes seen as revenge, and she made a lot of money on it. So this was really Eugenia Stanhope's initiative to get these letters out there. And something that was really interesting is that this is sort of around the birth of libraries. There were like early library societies, and these letters were widely distributed. In the 1770s, they were often among like the top 10 most popular books. And the English editions had these really self-helpy names. In 1775, this book was called The Principles of Politeness. And in 1776, it was called The Fine Gentleman's Etiquette. And I think

• 9:58Avery Trufelman?

  it really was this attempt to like educate the masses in the gentlemanly ways of the court.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. That reminded me of, in the 12th century, people used to write these, like these letters and poems and these books called Mirrors of Princes, which were supposed to tell the prince how to behave. Over time, this grows from Mirror of the Princess, which is to tell the king how they should behave, to these increasingly complex codes, which then becomes a genre in itself to tell people that surrounded the king how to act by creating these codes of conduct. Like, certain bodily functions are not done in public, like burping and farting. You don't spit on the ground. You don't blow your nose. You

• 10:48Avery Trufelman?

  Or in Chesterfield's case, laughing.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Yes. In Chesterfield's case, laughing. Well, again, that was, that was an incredible part of the book.

• 10:56Avery Trufelman?

  That was incredible. Okay, we'll get to that.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Because there are all of these rules of how you're supposed to behave around the king or the queen, it also makes everyone very vulnerable to very small slights and faux pas and rumors. Oh, that person didn't wipe their nose the correct way, and that person farted during lunch, or whatever. And therefore, these things, which are kind of trifles, are actually very, very important, because

• 11:21Speaker 01

  For much of Europe, in these European societies, for some people, their livelihood depends on their literal, physical proximity to royalty. If you don't behave in a correct way, or if people even whisper and rumor that you are not behaving in a correct way, you can then get sent off and then lose your job, essentially. This is one of the weird things is that as I'm reading Chesterfield's letters, I do feel like I'm getting a glimpse of what some people in aristocracy think is important. And I get some sense of what they think it means to be refined, but also many people disagree with it. Samuel Johnson, who was a writer at the time, described Chesterfield's letters as "teaching the morals

• 12:05Speaker 01

  of a whore and the manners of a dancing master." And then John Quincy Adams really disliked Chesterfield. I think his wife had mentioned Chesterfield's letters to him, and Adams said, "Don't bother reading them and don't give them to the kids." But later, John Quincy Adams' wife did get a hold of it and agreed that the letters sucked. John Quincy Adams said that Chesterfield had "a stain of depravity which pervades all his ideas of morality." And I think as we get into this episode of what did Chesterfield write, you understand why Adams really disliked Chesterfield.

• 12:43Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah, exactly. I'm sorry. I just really don't like this guy.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Let's get into the core of his letters. What are his letters? What do they talk about?

• 12:54Avery Trufelman?

  So, the reason his letters are so controversial is because they're basically like, "do whatever you have to do to charm everyone, like, do whatever you have to do to get ahead." He lacks backbone. There's nothing that's like, "you have to stand up for what's right." It's all about appealing to other people. He said, what was it? Like, "you can learn more from your dancing master than Aristotle." It's all about being charming, and it's all about, quote unquote, "good breeding," which I'm like, what is that?

• 13:22Speaker 01

  I take the same conclusion as you. I feel, as I'm reading through the letters, that there are often some obvious tensions. He talks about how a gentleman does not gossip. Only people of low character gossip. Towards the end of his life, as he's writing letters to his son, they're full of gossip. He writes about how a gentleman does not go out of his way to show that he's educated and intelligent. But he also advises his son to drop certain quotes, like a reference to a Roman emperor or something.

• 14:01Avery Trufelman?

  Oh, my God. He's obsessed with the Roman Empire.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Which, which is, you know, you're doing so in a performance. And there are also many parts of his letters where I think it is good advice.

• 14:14Avery Trufelman?

  Yes, I agree.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  And there are parts of the letters that are full of wisdom. So I'll give you one example. In one parts of his letters, he writes this, "The pleasures of virtue, of charity, and of learning is true and lasting pleasure, with which I hope you will be well and long acquainted." So, in that small passage, he does talk about, "you should be engaged in virtue and charity and learning, because these will make you happy." There are passages where he does talk about things that I think are wise and are reasonably good. But then there are also all of these parts where he often frames it as, "you need to do this because it will advance your career." In one of the letters, he writes, "The genteel

• 14:59Speaker 01

  manner prepossesses people in your favor, bends them towards you, and makes them wish to like you." This idea that you can behave in a certain way to get people to like you, and therefore, they can be of use to you, is a constant theme through his letters. I think of these things partly because there's a really tragic line in one of his letters at the very, very end, where he says, "I shall love you extremely while you deserve it, but not one moment longer."

• 15:31Avery Trufelman?

  Yes. That killed me. That killed me.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  I read that, I was like, whoa, dude. Like, what are you talking about? Let me just repeat the line. "I shall love you extremely while you deserve it, but not one moment longer." And this is, you have to put into context, these letters. The thing about the letters is, the very beginning, they're like, they always start, "Dear boy." And then later on in life, it'd be like, you know, "Dear friend." And there are very sweet moments, but they're constantly trying to shape this young man into this man of the world, excelling diplomat. And they grow increasingly sharp as Philip ages. And so, as you get towards

• 16:15Speaker 01

  the later years, those letters, there are parts where he reveals that he is disappointed with the way Philip dressed, or the way that he conducted himself. He said, "I spoke to Lord so-and-so, and he said these good things about you, but he said that you threw your knife on the table while they were dining."

• 16:35Avery Trufelman?

  Totally. The worst part is, he'll say, "He said lots of nice things, which I'm not going to tell you about, because I don't want you to get a big head, but only I, your father, will really tell you what other people think of you. So now I'm only going to tell you the bad stuff." It was like, kind of tra- I don't know.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. There's that phrase in Asian culture of the tiger mom. Lord Chesterfield's like the tiger dad. He's a tiger dad mixed with English aristocracy and ideas of gentlemanliness.

• 17:04Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah, this idea of like, "Mr. Bathurst tells me that he thinks you rather taller than I am. If so, you may well possibly get up to five feet eight inches, though I wish you five feet 10." Like, nothing is enough. Nothing is enough for this guy.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  He demands absolute perfection. And you can see his impatience and his disappointment in his later letters. And I always go back to that original line where he says, "I shall love you as long as you deserve it, not a moment longer," because then it's just kind of, I think, as you read the letters and you read his relationship, and then you read how his son hid his marriage from his father and his kids, it just seemed like it stemmed from partly, at least shaped by Lord Chesterfield's personality, this kind of overbearing pedological project to shape his son into this great person, and then being disappointed.

• 17:57Avery Trufelman?

  Exactly, exactly. Part of me thinks like, oh, my God, this is so similar to so many parents I know now, where like, "I don't hear from you enough. I want to know more from you. Hear all the things you did wrong, but see me like a friend." His dad is always like, "See me as a friend. Dear friend." It's like, he's not your fucking friend, dude. I don't know what to tell you. Like, this is your son who, you don't even know how tall he is. Like, you haven't seen him in years. Stop trying to raise him from a distant, like, you weren't there. It's really sad to me. And also, just knowing the ways in which Lord Chesterfield's own biography differs from what he preaches.

• 18:38Avery Trufelman?

  I'm really glad we read The Fable of the Bees before this, because it did help me think about like, okay, so this is his faux morality. He doesn't keep a consistent set of virtues.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Yes. I want to go back to this Mandeville point, which I totally agree with. I'm so glad that we read Mandeville first. There was a section in his letters that reminded me of Mandeville, and I'll read this part. "Give me but virtuous actions, and I will not quibble or chican about the motives." So, this idea of Mandeville, I thought, popped up there, because I think, as I'm going through his book, there are parts, again, where I'm like, this is a really good insight into not only human nature, but ideas of how to act in a virtuous way. But then you get the impression that he's only acting virtuous because it serves him. The general thing that I got from all of it is that throughout,

• 19:34Speaker 01

  when you're reading these parts, and he's talking about morality and virtue, which is often very good, sometimes then you'll just stumble into this part that's like, "Do you actually believe in these virtues? Or are you only performing the virtue to seem gentlemanly, and thus, higher status?" And then, does it really matter, in the end, if, essentially, all of these people crowded around the throne, and their lives essentially depend on this patronage system, so then they develop these rules and these conduct codes of how to behave? But many of the conduct codes are actually kind of good. Like, "I actually don't want

• 20:16Speaker 01

  you to spit on the ground." I would rather people act polite in society. And I think that part of Chesterfield's letter gets at, does it even matter if everyone's behaving in a more polite way? Does it matter if they have not very noble intents?

• 20:31Avery Trufelman?

  Oh, got to take a little ad break here. But if you'd like to become a paying subscriber and listen to The Philosophy Club ad-free, you can do it at articlesofinterest.substack.com/listen. Okay, Derek and I will be right back. I first heard about The RealReal, I think, a decade ago. Suddenly, it was this place where you could get Prada pumps and Burberry jackets and Gucci handbags for a song. Like, I recently got this vintage 90s Yoji Yamamoto skirt that I wear constantly. The RealReal is adding thousands and thousands of items every single day. So, it really does still feel like a treasure hunt, even though it has all the convenience of shopping online. And I periodically use it to clean out my closet. They make it so easy. The RealReal

• 21:13Avery Trufelman?

  sends a representative to my tiny apartment to pick up my things and assess them for me, and then it's done. Money just appears in my account. The RealReal is the most trusted name in authenticated luxury resale. With over 10,000 new arrivals daily, no one does resale like The RealReal. And now, get $25 off your first purchase when you go to therealreal.com articals. That's therealreal.com articals to get your $25 off. Start shopping now at therealreal.com articals. Okay, you're reminding me. Have you ever read George Washington's Rules of Civility?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  No.

• 21:54Avery Trufelman?

  I'm looking at them now. By age 16, George Washington had copied out 110 Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior. And it's just really interesting to see-

• 22:07Avery Trufelman?

  The difference in courtly rules and what, I mean, granted, George Washington wrote these when he was 16 years old. He didn't know that America would exist yet. But like, this emphasis on rules and behavior as sort of tantamount to democracy is like, okay, we all have to depend on each other. Like, if we are going to be ruled by ourselves, we've got to have an agreed upon set of manners. And they're all really basic stuff, especially at a time when people probably lived in closer quarters and sanitation was harder to reach. But, you know, these are George Washington's rules. It's like, put not off

• 22:49Avery Trufelman?

  your clothes in the presence of others, nor go out of your chamber half dressed. Shift not yourself in the sight of others, nor gnaw your nails, which is very Lord Chesterfield. He hates nervous tics. They're all so irked by like, little things people do. George Washington also hates laughter. It says, do not laugh too loud or too much at any public spectacle. But it's all about this like, way of being together.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Can I, can I, while we have that, I have, I, there are, Chesterfield talks about laughter, like, through many letters. Can I just read an excerpt of-

• 23:21Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah, he fucking hates laughter.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  -one of these for our listeners?

• 23:24Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  It is so good. So let me just read this passage. Having mentioned laughing, I must particularly warn you against it. And I could hardly wish that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard to laugh while you live. Frequent and loud laughing-

• 23:39Avery Trufelman?

  While you live!

• 23:40Speaker 01

  -is the characteristic of folly and ill manners. It is the manners in which the mob expresses their silly joy at silly things, and they call it being merry. In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, so ill-bred, as audible laughter. True wit, or sense, never made anybody laugh. But it is low buffoonery, or silly accidents, that always excite laughter.

• 24:04Avery Trufelman?

  The funny thing is, I, reading that part, I was like, you know what? Damn, he's kind of right. Like, I never realized, not that I disagree with laughter, but I never realized that laughter is what you do. Like, when someone farts, you know?

• 24:19Speaker 01

  There is a class thing to it.

• 24:21Avery Trufelman?

  There's a class thing to it, but also when someone sends me a very witty text, or I like, read a funny thing online, I'm not like, ha, ha, ha. Like, huh, you know, that's, that's really funny. Like, you, it's the thing when you, when you write LOL, but you didn't laugh, you know? That's what it means. It's like, you found that really funny, but it doesn't, it doesn't make you laugh, unless you're like, in a comedy club, and you're super primed for laughter. But yeah, I just didn't realize that that is kind of the nature of laughter, that it is visceral, funny things, embarrassing things, that give you that physical response, and that the intellectual stuff doesn't really give you a physical response, at least to me. I don't know, maybe you're different.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  No, no, I totally agree. There's, there's another section of what he defines as low class behavior. He writes, horseplay, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, waggonery, and indiscriminate familiarity will sink both merit and knowledge into a degree of contempt. They compose at most a merry fellow, and a merry fellow was never yet a respected man. I think if you, if you put this in context of, I, you know, was not alive in the 18th century, but I think what he's talking about is this kind of character in a pub, you know, who likes horseplay, everyone's laughing. And I think what he's really saying is that if you do this kind of thing, you will then not be allowed near the king, because you're not considered one of them. He stresses the importance of like,

• 25:45Speaker 01

  a well-timed bon monte, or a witty remark, but all of, nobody ever laughs. Everyone just folds their hands and just smiles a little bit, and their spirits are uplifted, but nobody horseplays and does this kind of low-class behavior.

• 26:01Avery Trufelman?

  The thing about laughing, and nervous habits, and awkwardness, he's obsessed with awkwardness. He finds it so symptomatic of the company you keep. And this is another time where I was like, damn, Chesterfield, you're kind of right. He's, when he said, awkwardness can come from two causes, either not having kept good company, or not attending to it. I was like, oh, woof. That is totally when I feel awkward. If I've been inside on deadline, and I haven't gone out in a little bit, and then it's time to go out, and I'm like, ugh, I feel so weird. It is like a matter of practice. It is this exercise. And that if you're around people, and he's very aware of human behavior in that if

• 26:44Avery Trufelman?

  you're around people who don't bite their nails, you probably won't bite your nails. If you're around people who do bite their nails, you will probably bite your nails. That we're, we're so prone to mimicry.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:54Avery Trufelman?

  And laughter is the most contagious thing of all. It's the most obvious example. It, it, it feels like he's almost grasping, he's almost clinging to it, because it's just so easy to recognize, like, a group of people laughing. He's like, just don't join, don't join that group. That's the wrong company. But it really seems that underneath it is this deep-seated, very paternal insecurity. I'm trying to find the page. He starts berating his son in his letters when his son is seven years old, and he's like, time to focus on study, son, time to stop playing. He's clearly relentless. But as his son gets older, you really do start to understand, it's like, oh, he's really scared of him not fitting in. Maybe out of awareness of the ways that he has already kind of mucked up relationships

• 27:39Avery Trufelman?

  within the court. But, um, when my friend had her kid, she was like, I just want him to be hot and cool. And like, Lord Chesterfield just wants his son to be hot and cool. Like, he just wants him to be a well-liked guy who will do well.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  As I was reading these letters, it reminded me of, um, I cite him all, if, if people follow me online, or they read anything I've written, they'll probably already heard the spiel. But have you read Cardinal John Henry Newman's essay, Definition of a Gentleman?

• 28:13Avery Trufelman?

  No.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Cardinal John Henry Newman gave a series of lectures in, I think it was like, the 1840s or so. So well after Chesterfield. He gave these lectures at a university, and they were later packaged together into a book. That book was published in 1852. But Definition of a Gentleman is super short. You could get through it in five, seven minutes.

• 28:36Avery Trufelman?

  Okay.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Can I read you a portion of it?

• 28:39Avery Trufelman?

  Please.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Okay. It is a little bit long. Okay, here we go. It's almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain. He is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed actions of those about him, like an easy chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold and fatigue. The true gentleman, in like manner, carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast. His great concern being to make everyone at ease and at home. He is seldom prominent in conversation, and never worrisome. He has no ears for slander or gossip. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never

• 29:20Speaker 01

  takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned. He submits to pain because it is inevitable, to bereavement because it is irreparable, and to death because it is his destiny. That passage of, whenever I, I think of, there are, there are often debates online of like, what it means to be a gentleman. And I think John Henry Newman, Cardinal John Henry Newman's Definition of a Gentleman is still to date, after writing about men's wear for so long, and then having to deal with these ideas of what it means to be a gentleman. Newman's essay, short essay, on Definition of a Gentleman, is still the best that I've read. And in that passage that I read, I think you can get the sense

• 30:04Speaker 01

  that he always approaches it from the perspective of what it means to be good for somebody else. There's nothing in the essay of, you should do this for somebody else, because it raises your own status, or because this person may help you in the end, or because it allows you to keep your job, or whatever. There's no mention of-

• 30:27Avery Trufelman?

  There's no pragmatism to it.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  There's no pragmatism, there's no ego, there's no self. There is simply, what does it mean to be a good person? And therefore, it's always, I love, I love this line, like, an easy chair or a good fire which do their part in dispelling cold and fatigue. In other words, people want to be around you because you are a good person. You help uplift their spirits.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  And that removes all of the class connotations. It just becomes about how do you become a better person? And the simple rule is you are kind to other people. You make the bashful feel less anxious. You make the distant feel more secure, so on and so forth, as he writes. And I think that, to me, as I was reading Chesterfield's letter, that was in the back of my mind of Newman's definition of a gentleman, which removes the self-serving nature of Chesterfield's letters. So there are many passages in Chesterfield's letters where his ideas of virtue are really just about class mannerisms.

• 31:30Avery Trufelman?

  That's so interesting, though, because to me, this really, I wrote a number of times in the margins as I was reading Lord Chesterfield's letters, that it's like, man, it's really about how to be a politician. He's really talking about like what a politician needs to do. Lord Chesterfield is trying to groom his son for the political life. And he's like, listen, the people who will give you this position won't like you unless you look like them. And Newman's definition is absolutely based on democracy, or at least with the rise of democracy as a concept. Like, everything that you're talking about, you listen to people and you are kind. This is everything we dream of a politician being now.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it reminds me, this tension reminds me of an Instagram reel I came across. There's a made-to-measure clothier in New York who has this shtick of like, he just rants about random things. And then presumably through these rants, you then follow him and then he'll sell you a set of clothes or whatever. But he had one rant where he talked about this TikTok reel that he saw showing men behaving in ways that were not gentlemanly, specifically towards women. So there's a TikTok reel showing, for example, a man walking in the rain with his female companion. He's holding the umbrella, but he's holding it in a way that's not fully covering her and she has to contort her body to fit under the umbrella.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Or men with their female companions walking away from the beach. All of the women are carrying literally everything, the beach towels and the cooler and everything. And the men are just like walking unencumbered. A man is sitting in an airplane seat and the woman on the aisle is struggling to put this luggage into the bin, so on and so forth. And so this made-to-measure clothier does this video saying that he wants to talk about old-school chivalry. And he goes through the videos and he says, as a man, as you're seeing women are struggling with all of this luggage or they're walking on the beach and they're carrying all this stuff, you should also take up some of the load.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  He has other rules in there that I'd never even heard of or even occurred to me. According to him, as a man, if you're walking with a female companion on a sidewalk, you should always be on the side closest to the road in case something happens, like a car is barreling down. They'll hit you first, I guess, and therefore possibly, I don't know, somehow protect the woman. And then at the end, he says, chivalry is dead because women want equal rights, but then they wind up with all of this stuff.

• 34:07Avery Trufelman?

  Oh, my God.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  And so, you know, I remember watching that video and thinking, there's something like really weird about this. And as I was reading Chesterfield's letters and reminded of Newman's definition of a gentleman, it occurred to me that, I think it is true. If you are walking with a companion, whether they're a man or a woman, whether you're dating them or not, you should help carry things.

• 34:31Avery Trufelman?

  Right, be nice, yeah.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  I think if it's raining, you should try to make an effort to make sure your companion is covered. And I think that's true whether the person is a man or a woman, if you're in a romantic relationship or not. These are just nice things to do in the Newman sense of the term. What went weird for me was this idea, for example, of walking on the outside of a sidewalk to protect a woman in case like a car comes barreling down. Because to me, then you're not actually being chivalrous. You're performing chivalry. You're performing a male gender role. You're performing the idea of gentlemanliness. And therefore, all of a sudden, all of these gestures are then centered on your ego.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  It's about you and your performance and showing that you're a gentleman and that you're a man. And it becomes less about what makes the other person feel comfortable. Your companion, whether they're a woman or not, might feel uncomfortable if you're constantly in these performances. And I think that is what, to some degree, what offended John Quincy Adams is that, I think, Adams thought that Chesterfield was constantly performing and thus was not ever really sincere. And that offended him. The idea that you could perform all of these virtues only for it to be self-serving meant to some degree that you didn't really believe in the righteousness of the virtues in the first place.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  And that, I think, is the tension as I was reading Chesterfield's letters and thinking of Newman, is going back to that Instagram reel that I saw where it was questionable whether you are being chivalrous in the sense that you actually want other people to feel good or if you're just simply performing a role and therefore centering your own ego, which is not really centering the other person at all, it's centering yourself.

• 36:24Avery Trufelman?

  I mean, I will say, my fiance sometimes walks on the side of the, on the side of the street where the cars are. And I find it so cute. In the same way, I wouldn't want him to like stand up, you know, at a table before I sit down, that would be too much. But I do think there are little performances of it that just hint at awareness. I personally love it.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:51Avery Trufelman?

  But, but, um, that said, insisting that it's de rigueur and that chivalry is dead, it's, um, but no, I agree with you. It should just be about kindness to everyone, decency to everyone. And that is so not what lurks inside the heart of Lord Chesterfield. He is clearly wants his son to be better than everyone, wants his son to be more like him. He's not a caring guy. But there are some things that I'm like, okay, Lord Chesterfield, you catty little bitch, I love you. Something that was interesting that was in the introduction is that he, if we want to be charitable about it, that he's sort of presenting a different idea of masculinity.

• 37:36Avery Trufelman?

  But like, instead of being the sort of Spartan stoic, he is saying, dance, go to the theater, speak lots of languages, be very charming. Lord Chesterfield is definitely foppish, you know? You can see his picture on the front cover. He wore this big white wig and a lot of brightly colored velvet. And I want to get into what he wrote about clothing and what this all means for fashion, but can you help me situate this in time?

• 38:09Speaker 01

  When was Chesterfield's letters actually published? Do we have a date?

• 38:13Avery Trufelman?

  Oh.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  1774. So you're right that when you look at the cover of Chesterfield and his portrait shows him in this really elaborate frilly shirt and this red velvet jacket with a beautiful sash and he's wearing this wig. That was just aristocratic dress at the time, although fops did wear many of those like really big poofy wigs. I think some of the changes that you point out, the shift towards rising democracy, the shift towards a parliamentary rule of law in Britain. As democracy spreads for a variety of reasons, people are increasingly suspicious of people who dress in overly ornate ways, especially if they're in positions or even near power,

• 38:59Speaker 01

  that instead of figuring out how it's a better lives of people, you are spending it on this crazy wardrobe. I mean, if you just imagine one of the King Georges, I can't remember at the moment, I think it may have been King George IV, landed himself in an incredible scandal when it was revealed that his wardrobe cost a ton of money and this caused a huge scandal in England. But we were already towards our way into simpler form of dress, especially of people of Chesterfield's class, that if you wanted to have any position of power, you had to dress in a more austere way to signal that you were of the people, that you'd be a good steward of their tax dollars, essentially.

• 39:39Avery Trufelman?

  Right, that you're trustworthy, that you're basically that you're not Lord Chesterfield. Like, he is the embodiment of every, that he's self-serving, that he's interested in only himself, he's not really interested in governance. But can we talk a little bit about what he writes about fashion?

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 39:56Avery Trufelman?

  How does any of this actually relate to clothing and fashion? Derek and I get into that in the second half of our conversation, which you can hear when you become a paid subscriber on the Substack. And then you can get it in the podcatcher of your choice. Go to articlesofinterest.substack.com/listen.