His first public capacity was a diplomatic appointment: he afterwards attained to the rank of an ambassador, whose duty it is, according to a witticism of Sir Henry Wotton's 'to lie abroad for the good of his country;' and no man was in this respect more competent to fulfil these requirements than Chesterfield. Hating both wine and tobacco, he had smoked and drunk at Cambridge, 'to be in the fashion;' he gamed at the Hague, on the same principle; and, unhappily, gaming became a habit and a passion. Yet never did he indulge it when acting, afterwards, in a ministerial capacity. Neither when Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, or as Under-secretary of State, did he allow a gaming-table in his house. On the very night that he resigned office he went to White's.
The Hague was then a charming residence: among others who, from political motives, were living there, were John Duke of Marlborough and Queen Sarah, both of whom paid Chesterfield marked attention. Naturally industrious, with a ready insight into character—a perfect master in that art which bids us keep one's thoughts close, and our countenances open, Chesterfield was admirably fitted for diplomacy. A master of modern languages and of history, he soon began to like business. When in England, he had been accused of having 'a need of a certain proportion of talk in a day:' 'that,' he wrote to Lady Suffolk, 'is now changed into a need of such a proportion of writing in a day.'
In 1728 he was promoted: being sent as ambassador to the Hague, where he was popular, and where he believed his stay would be beneficial both to soul and body, there being 'fewer temptations, and fewer opportunities to sin,' as he wrote to Lady Suffolk, 'than in England.' Here his days passed, he asserted, in doing the king's business, very ill—and his own still worse:—sitting down daily to dinner with fourteen or fifteen people; whilst at five the pleasures of the evening began with a lounge on the Voorhoot, a public walk planted by Charles V.:—then, either a very bad French play, or a 'reprise quadrille,' with three ladies, the youngest of them fifty, and the chance of losing, perhaps, three florins (besides one's time)—lasted till ten o'clock; at which time 'His Excellency' went home, 'reflecting with satisfaction on the innocent amusements of a well-spent day, that left nothing behind them,' and retired to bed at eleven, 'with the testimony of a good conscience.'
All, however, of Chesterfield's time was not passed in this serene dissipation. He began to compose 'The History of the Reign of George II.' at this period. About only half a dozen chapters were written. The intention was not confined to Chesterfield: Carteret and Bolingbroke entertained a similar design, which was completed by neither. When the subject was broached before George II., he thus expressed himself; and his remarks are the more amusing as they were addressed to Lord Hervey, who was, at that very moment, making his notes for that bitter chronicle of his majesty's reign, which has been ushered into the world by the late Wilson Croker—'They will all three,' said King George II., 'have about as much truth in them as the Mille et Une Nuits. Not but I shall like to read Bolingbroke's, who of all those rascals and knaves that have been lying against me these ten years has certainly the best parts, and the most knowledge. He is a scoundrel, but he is a scoundrel of a higher class than Chesterfield. Chesterfield is a little, tea-table scoundrel, that tells little womanish lies to make quarrels in families: and tries to make women lose their reputations, and make their husbands beat them, without any object but to give himself airs; as if anybody could believe a woman could like a dwarf baboon.'
Lord Hervey gave the preference to Bolingbroke; stating as his reason, that 'though Lord Bolingbroke had no idea of wit, his satire was keener than any one's. Lord Chesterfield, on the other hand, would have a great deal of wit in them; but, in every page you see he intended to be witty: every paragraph would be an epigram. Polish, he declared, would be his bane;' and Lord Hervey was perfectly right.
In 1732 Lord Chesterfield was obliged to retire from his embassy on the plea of ill-health, but probably, from some political cause. He was in the opposition against Sir Robert Walpole in the Excise Bill; and felt the displeasure of that all-powerful minister by being dismissed from his office of High Steward.
Being badly received at court he now lived in the country; sometimes at Buxton, where his father drank the waters, where he had his recreations, when not persecuted by two young brothers. Sir William Stanhope and John Stanhope, one of whom performed 'tolerably ill upon a broken hautboy, and the other something worse upon a cracked flute.' There he won three half-crowns from the curate of the place, and a shilling from 'Gaffer Foxeley' at a cock-match. Sometimes he sought relaxation in Scarborough, where fashionable beaux 'danced with the pretty ladies all night,' and hundreds of Yorkshire country bumpkins 'played the inferior parts; and, as it were, only tumble, whilst the others dance upon the high ropes of gallantry.' Scarborough was full of Jacobites: the popular feeling was then all rife against Sir Robert Walpole's excise scheme. Lord Chesterfield thus wittily satirized that famous measure:—
'The people of this town are, at present, in great consternation upon a report they have heard from London, which, if true, they think will ruin them. They are informed, that considering the vast consumption of these waters, there is a design laid of excising them next session; and, moreover, that as bathing in the sea is become the general practice of both sexes, and as the kings of England have always been allowed to be masters of the seas, every person so bathing shall be gauged, and pay so much per foot square, as their cubical bulk amounts to.'
In 1733, Lord Chesterfield married Melusina, the supposed niece, but, in fact, the daughter of the Duchess of Kendal, the mistress of George I. This lady was presumed to be a great heiress, from the dominion which her mother had over the king. Melusina had been created (for life) Baroness of Aldborough, county Suffolk, and Countess of Walsingham, county Norfolk, nine years previous to her marriage.
Her father being George I., as Horace Walpole terms him, 'rather a good sort of man than a shining king,' and her mother 'being no genius,' there was probably no great attraction about Lady Walsingham, except her expected dowry.