I read this list in a biography of the English writer Sydney Smith, in Hesketh Pearson’s The Smith of Smiths. In 1820, Smith wrote a letter to an unhappy friend, Lady Morpeth, in which he offered her tips for cheering up.
I have my own variety of tips lists for cheering up, and I was interested to hear what someone from two centuries ago would recommend. Most of Smith’s suggestions are as sound now as they were almost 200 years ago; “attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you,” for example, is thoroughly modern. A few, though, are amusingly odd. It might be tougher today to work “good blazing fires” into everyday life.
1 Live as well as you dare.
2. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75 or 80 degrees.
3. [Read] amusing books.
4. Be as busy as you can.
5. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you. And of those acquaintances who amuse you.
6. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely—they are always worse for dignified concealment.
7. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you.
8. Compare your lot with that of other people.
9. Don’t expect too much from human life—a sorry business at the best.
10. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy, sentimental people, and everything likely to excite feeling or emotion, not ending in active benevolence.
11. Do good, and endeavor to please everybody of every degree.
12. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.
