Letters, sentences and maxims

by Earl of Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield

III.

Let us turn to Lord Chesterfield’s son. Sainte-Beuve says of him—he was “one of those ordinary men of the world of whom it suffices to say there is nothing to be said.” But there is so much melancholy interest attaching to his history that we may well try to discern some of the features of the youth. No portrait of Philip Stanhope, so far as I am aware, has ever been given to the public, though we know from his father’s letters that one, if not more than one, was executed at Venice during his stay there, so that I am unable, as yet, to surmise anything from physical feature of form and angle. We know that his father sent him to Westminster School, and that there he was slovenly and dirty. Of his intellectual qualities we hear nothing. His father’s letter to the boy, then sixteen, is subtle:

“Since you do not care to be an Assessor of the Imperial Chamber, and desire an establishment in England, what do you think of being Greek Professor at one of our Universities? It is a very pretty sinecure, and requires very little knowledge (much less than, I hope, you have already) of that language. If you do not approve of this, I am at a loss to know what else to propose to you.”

The old earl, six months later, added as follows:

“The end I propose by your education, and which (if you please) I shall certainly attain, is, to unite in you all the knowledge of a scholar, with the manners of a courtier, and to join what is seldom joined in any of my countrymen, Books and the World. They are commonly twenty years old before they have spoken to anybody above their schoolmaster, and the Fellows of their College. If they happen to have learning, it is only Greek and Latin; but not one word of Modern History or Modern Languages. Thus prepared, they go abroad, as they call it; but, in truth, they stay at home all that while; for, being very awkward, confoundedly ashamed, and not speaking the languages, they go into no foreign company, at least none good, but dine and sup with one another at the tavern. Such example, I am sure you will not imitate, but carefully avoid.”

Young Stanhope went abroad with a tutor, Mr. Harte, to the chief towns, first, of Germany, followed everywhere by letters from his father, though, as his father says in one of them, “God knows whether to any purpose or not.” He never escaped from the paternal care. Wherever you are “I have Arguses with a hundred eyes,” his father told him. The boy was affectionately fond of his father, though he did not inherit his father’s epistolary taste. Yet we find him on corresponding terms with Lady Chesterfield. He was inclined to be stout, a fault which his father tells him to remedy by abstaining from Teutonic beer. He wore long hair. “I by no means agree to your cutting off your hair.” (Stanhope had suggested this as a remedy for headaches.) “Your own hair is at your age such an ornament; and a wig, however well made, such a disguise that I will upon no account whatever have you cut off your hair.” We hear that he was already within two inches of his father’s height. Boswell met him at Dresden, and has left us the following picture of him:—“Mr. Stanhope’s character has been unjustly represented as being diametrically opposed to what Lord Chesterfield wished him to be. He has been called dull, gross, awkward, but I knew him at Dresden when he was envoy to that Court, and though he could not boast of the Graces, he was, in fact, a sensible, civil, well-behaved man.” And what he was as envoy he seems to have been all his life. Lord Chesterfield sent him to Berlin first,[8] and Turin afterward, as there was to be found the next fittest training in Europe at that Court. Nothing could exceed his father’s care in warning him against such dangers as usually attend Court life. Against evils of all kind he cautions and guards him. Yet there is this continual insistence on the Graces. “The Graces! The Graces!” he writes, “Remember the Graces! I would have you sacrifice to the Graces.” By no means must a man neglect the Graces if he would pursue his object, the object of getting on.

After all this schooling he went to Paris, and seems to have made a tolerable début. There must have been a strange measuring up of qualities when father and son met. At twenty-two Lord Chesterfield obtained for him a seat in the House, but he was never a brilliant speaker. He, like the younger Pitt, was a parliamentary experiment; but it was not given to Stanhope to succeed. In 1757 he goes to Hamburg. Two years later his health broke down, and he came to England. But feeling better again, in 1763 he obtained a post at Ratisbon, whence he was once summoned to vote in the English Parliament. Next year he went to Dresden as envoy, but there his constitution was ruined, and he set off for Berlin, and afterward for France. In the spring of 1767 he returned to Dresden, fancying himself better, but in the following year the old symptoms returned, and he died on the 17th of October, 1768, near Avignon. It was then only that his father discovered he was the father of two children—by a secret marriage. And these, together with their mother, were thrown upon Lord Chesterfield for support. It is one of the examples of his characteristic traits that he supported and loved all three. There is no more charming pendant to the whole series of letters than a short one of three paragraphs which he wrote to the two children of his illegitimate son only two years before he left them forever.

Here my biographical notice of the three generations ends. But the lives of father and son will ever remain full of interest and suggestion to those who would study human character.

There are several portraits of the Earl of Chesterfield. The most striking, and at the same time probably the most faithful which we have, is that by Bartolozzi in the Maty Memoirs. It is clear, mobile, and benevolent. The features are very large, and the eyes of that cold meditative species which look as though they were the altar stone of that fire of wit and quaint humor which we know he possessed. It is a fine intellectual, if somewhat too receding, forehead, with protruding temples and clear-cut eyebrows; the nose prominent, and the mouth pronounced. There is a great diversity however in the portraits, and he seems sometimes to have been unable to hide the traits of sensuality. Yet, on the whole, it is as inscrutable as his own scheming diplomatic soul could ever have wished for its earthly representative in clay.