Lord Chesterfield's Letters

481 Pages·1998·18.59 MB·English

by  Lord Chesterfield

OXFORD WORLD S CLASSICS
LORD CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS
PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, was born in
1694, the grandson of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax. Brought
up to be bilingual in English and French, he spent a year at
Cambridge before travelling in the Low Countries. In 1715 he was
made gentleman of the bedchamber to George, Prince of Wales,
and became an under-age MP for St Germans, Cornwall, moving to
Paris later the same year. After his return he became acquainted
with Pope, Addison, and Arbuthnot, and sat in Parliament as the
member for Lostwithiel, moving to the Lords on his father's death
in 1726. From this time he was active in opposition. He accepted the
embassy at The Hague in 1728, where he met Elizabeth du Bouchet,
the mother of his son, Philip Stanhope, born in 1732. In 1737 he
began the thirty-year correspondence with Stanhope on which
his fame now rests. He became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and
ambassador extraordinary to The Hague in 1744, and Secretary of
State in 1746. It was during this period in high office that Johnson
approached him with the plan for his Dictionary, Chesterfield's
neglect of which became notorious. His resignation in 1748 marked
the end of his political career except as an occasional orator and
mediator. Deafness made his long retirement increasingly solitary.
Polite in the face of death in March 1773, with his last words he
offered a chair to his friend Dayrolles. He was succeeded by his
godson, another pupil by correspondence, and a year after his death
his letters began to be published.
PHYLLIS M. JONES edited the 1929 World's Classics selection of
Chesterfield's letters.
DAVID ROBERTS is Senior Lecturer in English and Drama at
University College Worcester. He has published extensively
on literature from the Renaissance to the Eighteenth Century,
including, for Oxford University Press, The Ladies (1989) and the
introduction to Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year for Oxford
World's Classics.
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OXFORD WORLD'S CLASSICS
LORD CHESTERFIELD
Letters
Edited with an Introduction and Notes by
DAVID ROBERTS
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
OXFORD
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First published as a World's Classics paperback 1992
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of, 1694-1773.
[Correspondence]
Lord Chesterfield's letters / edited with an introduction by David Roberts.
p. cm.—(Oxford world's classics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of, 1694-1773—
Correspondence. 2. Statesmen—Great Britain—Correspondence.
3. Authors, English—18th century—Correspondence.. I. Roberts,
David, 1960- . II. Title. III. Series.
DA501.C5A4 1992 941.07'0'092—dc20 92-7195
ISBN 0-19-283715-X
3579 10 8642
Printed in Great Britain by
Cox & Wyman Ltd.
Reading, Berkshire
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THE apparatus of this edition needs some apology, since it is
both extensive and limited. The learning Chesterfield displays
in his letters is extraordinarily wide and sometimes out of
focus, and I hope the present edition goes further than its
predecessors in making his obscurities accessible to modern
readers. There have, regrettably, been occasions when calcu-
lated guesses or mere blanks were all that the most intensive
enquiries could turn up—these things of darkness I acknow-
ledge mine. Chesterfield had his own cheerfully acerbic view of
new editions and their compilers: 'the last editions are always
the best, if the editors are not blockheads, for they may profit of
the former'. Although I have profited particularly from
Bonamy Dobree's heroic six-volume edition of the letters, my
chief debts are to the friends, relations, and correspondents
whose generous assistance has on more occasions than I wish
to count saved me from blockheadedness. Those who have
supplied or helped me to find information are Dr Peter
Davidson, Ms Annemiek Scholten, Dr Albert van der Heide,
and members of the Sir Thomas Browne Institute, University
of Leiden; Professor Roy Foster of Hertford College, Oxford;
Dr Tom Bartlett of University College, Galway; Ms Petra
Hesse of the Leipzig University Archive; Mr Horst Flechsig of
the Leipzig Theaterhochschule; Dr Bernd Neumann of Kyoto
University; Mr Simon Rees; Mrs Elizabeth Roberts; Mr
Michael Walling; and Mr Stephen Wood, Keeper of the
Department of Armed Forces History, National Museum of
Scotland. None of these kind people is responsible for any
errors which remain. Simon Rees also saved me from the sort
of debacle which can only befall a certified computer block-
head. My greatest debt is to my wife, who assisted with proof-
reading and surrendered to Chesterfield and his son much of
the time I should have been spending with ours.
D.R.
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CONTENTS
Introduction ix
Note on the Text xxiv
Select Bibliography xxv
A. Chronology of Lord Chesterfield xxvii
LETTERS I
Explanatory Notes 384
Index of Persons 447
This page intentionally left blank
INTRODUCTION
IN the summer of 1773 there came to the attention of Edward
Gibbon a bundle of manuscript letters from a recently deceased
earl to his illegitimate son. Gibbon recalled the episode to his
friend Holroyd on 10 September: 'I forgot to tell you, that I
have declined the publication of Lord Chesterfield's Letters.
The public will see them, and upon the whole, I think, with
pleasure; but the family were strongly against it.' A month later
came another refusal. Horace Walpole informed an intermedi-
ary appointed by the owner of the letters that he too declined to
prepare them for the press: he would not offend the families of
people mentioned in them, or the memory of his own father,
whom Chesterfield had opposed as first minister, and he
certainly would not publish without the consent of the author's
family.1 Personal memoirs often give offence, but Walpole's
knowledge of Chesterfield himself suggested that these letters,
which he probably had not read, must be a special case. In fact
the author's family was not unanimous in opposing publica-
tion; had they known what vices were soon to be associated
with the name of Chesterfield, they might have been. His
widow, ever complaisant, favoured the publication of letters so
'elegant' and 'instructive'; it was left to his executors to oppose
James Dodsley's plan to bring them out in two suitably
'elegant' royal quarto volumes. The story of the injunction
which they brought against Dodsley neatly sums up Chester-
field's current reputation as a man more reviled than read, for
having been advised by the judge to go away and read the
volumes they were intending to prohibit, the executors
returned after six days to waive their objections, 'tho there are
some things in [the letters] which it might have been better to
have omitted'.2 If this whimper which ended the dress rehearsal
of the scandal of Lord Chesterfield's letters bodes ill for the
1 Letter to Lady Louisa Lennox, 14 Oct. 1773.
2 Letter of Beaumont Hotham and Lovel Stanhope to Mrs Eugenia
Stanhope, 29 Mar. 1774, quoted by S. L. Gulick, 'The Publication of Lord
Chesterfield's Letters to his Son' PMLA 51 (1936).