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.