Alas! It is the 255th anniversary of the death of Philip Stanhope, described by one historian as “merely a worthy, kindly, but dim diplomatic official at Dresden — not, as his father once dreamed, a Secretary of State”. Why, then, do we need to know about him? Well…
Stanhope was the illegitimate son of the fourth Earl of Chesterfield (above), and couldn’t inherit the title, so his father did the next best thing: used his influence to get him a diplomatic career, and tried to educate him up for it by writing him over 400 letters over 30 years.
Yes, you or I might think that one could use one’s influence as an earl to try to change society’s attitudes to illegitimacy, but it was the 18th century, and anyway such things take time.
Some of the letters contain advice, some of which has become commonplace: “it is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in”, “Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well”, “never put off till to-morrow, what you can do to-day”.
This didn’t bother the English reading public when the letters were published. It was the (by 18th century standards) saucy bits that did that. On the subject of Amusements and Pleasures, he asks the young man if it’s cards or cheerful suppers he favours…
To be fair, he didn’t start in on this when he began writing the letters when the boy was five — he did build up to it. There’s an awful lot of classical myth, Roman history, siege of Troy, and tutoring him in translation and grammar before we get to taking mistresses.
There is affection, but — as you can see – it’s distinctly qualified. There is more emphasis on manners and social graces than on good behaviour, too, leading Samuel Johnson to say the Earl was
teach[ing] the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.
…and he does seem to have been very keen that his son wouldn’t be boring:
Tell stories very seldom, and absolutely never but where they are very apt and very short.
It’s a sort of self-help book for snobs.
Never hold anybody by the button, or the hand, in order to be heard out; for, if people are not willing to hear you, you had much better hold your tongue ... Most long talkers single out some one unfortunate man in company … to convey a continuity of words to. This is excessively ill-bred, and, in some degree, a fraud; conversation-stock being a joint and common property. But, on the other hand, if one of these unmerciful talkers lays hold of you, hear him with patience, and at least seeming attention … Take, rather than give, the tone of the company you are in.
As one academic paper about the letters points out:
In a period when other writers described sociability as a source of pleasure or intimate communion, Chesterfield represented it as an arena for performance and control.
The earl might have helped his posthumous reputation if he’d treated his son’s wife Eugenia better, but — perhaps because, according to the ungracious Lord Charlemont, she was “Plain almost to ugliness”, and had a mother who “was … vulgar and unbred” — he didn’t.
Young Philip seems to have suspected what his father would make of the woman he was devoted to from the age of 18, because he kept the relationship secret. The old man only found out about her after his son had died at just 36 on this day 255 years ago — and this is where the letters come in.
They had been entirely private, but the earl left Eugenia nothing in his will. Her and Philip’s sons each got £100 a year and £10,000 when they came of age. She had to support herself. So she sold the letters to a publisher for 1,500 guineas.
The earl’s executors got an injunction, but the Lord Chancellor “recommended it to the executors to permit the publication” and out they came, selling by the cartload.
The Literary Encyclopedia points out that Samuel Richardson’s Pamela was seen as a “media sensation” for going through 22 editions in its first 60 years. Letters to His Son enjoyed more than 120 editions in 60 years.
In 1787,
Still, perhaps his tuition worked, and young Philip became a renowned drawing room wit? Er, no. F L Lucas’ 1958 work The Search for Good Sense: Four Eighteenth-century Characters, tells us that “Even if [his] boobyishness has been exaggerated by malicious gossip”…
…which sounds like something out of an H M Bateman cartoon.
The moral(s) of the story being, of course: don’t bother trying to raise your children; they’ll turn out how they want to, anyway – and treat their choice of partners with respect, or suffer the consequences.
