CHESTERFIELD is referred to throughout as C, his son as Stanhope, and his heir as the godson. The top government positions during his career and retirement were First Lord of the Treasury (effectively Prime Minister since Walpole’s tenure) and Secretary of State, either for the Northern Department, hereafter (N) or the Southern (S). Responsibility for home affairs was divided between the three posts, but the Secretary of State (N) was responsible for European policy, and the Secretary of State (S) for the Colonies and Ireland. From 1768 to 1782 there was a separate Secretary of State for the Colonies, hereafter (C). For the convenience of the reader, a list of administrations during the years covered by the present edition is given below:
–Jan. 1742: Walpole
Feb. 1742–Nov. 1744: Carteret
Dec. 1744–Mar. 1754: Pelham
Mar. 1754–Oct. 1756: Newcastle
Nov. 1756–Apr. 1757: Pitt/Devonshire
June 1757–Oct. 1761: Pitt/Newcastle
Oct. 1761–May 1762: Bute/Newcastle
May 1762–Apr. 1763: Bute
Apr. 1763-July 1765: Grenville
July 1765–Aug. 1766: Rockingham
Aug. 1766–Oct. 1768: Grafton/Pitt
Oct. 1768–Jan. 1770: Grafton
Feb. 1770–: North.
Lord Townshend: Charles, 2nd Viscount Townshend (1674–1738), Secretary of State (N) 1714–16 and 1721–30, when he resigned after trying to procure for C, sympathetic to his anti-Austrian policies, Newcastle’s post as Secretary of State (S). He retired to cultivate turnips. His second wife was Walpole’s sister. C replies to a letter apart from official business.
the death of the Duke of York: Ernest Augustus, Bishop of Osnabrück and George I’s brother, died on 14 Aug. 1728. C had long wished to be a Knight of the Garter and was installed on 18 June 1730, following Walpole’s agreement.
the Pensionary… confidence: the Grand Pensionary controlled Dutch foreign policy during the 2nd Stadholderless period (1702–47), the last Stadholder (or supreme military commander) having been William III of England. In 1728 the Pensionary was Simon van Slingelandt, in office from 1727 until his death in 1736. Lt. Gen. Johan (or Jan) Rabo van Keppel (d. 1733) was Dutch ambassador extraordinary to Prussia.
the match … best consequences: i.e. the planned marriage between Frederick, Prince of Wales, and his cousin Princess Wilhelmina of Prussia; intended as half of a diplomatic coup which would also have married Prince Frederick of Prussia (later Frederick II) to the Prince of Wales’s sister, Amelia. The plan was to strengthen Prussia’s commitment to the coalition with Britain and France which followed the Treaty of Hanover (1725). Supported by the Queen of Prussia, Sophia Dorothea (George II’s sister), the arrangement was opposed decisively by her husband, Frederick William I, who wished to remain loyal to the anti-French interests of the Austrian Emperor, Charles VI.
Prince of Orange … vacant Garters: i.e. Willem Karel Hendrik Friso, William IV of Orange, the son of William Ill’s nephew. Stadholder of Friesland, Groningen, and Gelderland in 1728, he did not achieve control of the other provinces until 1747. The garter was granted, and announced to him by C in a letter of 22 May 1729.
ill effect … his Governor: it was suspected that the garter was granted to subdue William, then aged 17, to British interests. His Governor was Dirk van Lynden van de Parck (1679–1735), sometime canon of Utrecht Cathedral, and later his chief steward.
de Linden: i.e. the Prince of Orange’s Governor (see above note).
the Greffier: i.e. Dutch Secretary of State for home affairs, at this time Francis Fagel (1659–1746), in office for fifty-four years, and Pensionary Slingelandt’s brother-in-law.
Don Carlos … Orange: a match was proposed between Don Carlos (the first child of Philip V of Spain’s second marriage, and later King Carlos III of Spain) and Maria Theresa, daughter of Charles VI of Austria. It did not take place; under the 1731 Treaty of Vienna it was agreed that no Austrian archduchess should marry a Bourbon, whether French or Spanish. William of Orange married Anne, eldest daughter of George II, in 1734, so increasing fears of excessive British influence in the Dutch provinces.
Vander Haym and Teinhoven: Nicolaas Ten Hove (1693–1738) became Secretary of the State Council following Slingelandt’s appointment as Grand Pensionary in 1727. Anthony van der Heim was treasurer of the Dutch provinces in 1728, and succeeded Slingelandt as Pensionary in 1736.
Prince of Orange … till then: this did not happen until 1747, during a tide of nationalistic feeling resulting from the French invasion.
Sir Matthew Decker… the same view: Sir Matthew Decker (1679–1749) was an Amsterdam merchant who had settled in London in 1702. He became an MP and director of the East India Co., and was sometimes an unofficial intermediary between Britain and the Dutch provinces. Willem Hyacinth, Prince of Nassau-Siegen, disputed the inheritance of King William III of England, receiving limited recognition. Mr. Buys is probably Willem Buys (1661–1749), First Secretary of the States of Holland, although his son Abraham (1699–1770) was also prominent as Pensionary of Amsterdam, in favour of peace and trading interests; the Prince of Orange’s possible Stadholdership was seen as betokening Dutch involvement in British disputes. C’s own mediation in this affair considerably enhanced his standing with the King.
Geo. Tilson: George Tilson had been under-Secretary of State (N) since 1710; his present master was William Stanhope, Ist Earl of Harrington (c.1690–1756), in office 1730–42 and again 1744–6, whom C had supported as an alternative to Walpole in the late 17305.
silliest Minister in Europe: the French ambassador who insisted on the ‘scrupulous rectitude’ of the French court was Gabriel de Salignac, Marquis de la Mothe-Fénelon (1688–1746). At issue were the negotiations over the Treaty of Vienna (signed 16 Mar. 1731); Charles VI of Austria was keen to secure British recognition of Maria Theresa as his rightful heir (the so-called ‘Pragmatic Sanction’), but baulked at British conditions, particularly the suspension of the Ostend Company, which he had established in 1722 to trade in the East Indies. France was cool about the clause forbidding marital alliance between its own court and that of Austria (see above, note to p. 6).
the doctrine of Predestination: in 1730 Prince Frederick, later Frederick II, ‘the Great’ (1712–86), was in prison on his father’s orders, following an attempted escape to England. Frederick William had always disliked his son’s penchant for philosophy.
St James’s Square: C lived at no. 18 until his marriage in 1733.
the person … Richmond: William Lancelot (d. 1743) was the second husband of Swift’s impoverished cousin, Patty Rolt. Swift had written on 10 Nov. describing him as a servant of Lord Sussex and claimed that he had been promised a post by Lord Dorset, C’s predecessor as Lord Steward of the Household. He found C’s reply unsatisfactory, writing an ironic apology on 5 Jan. for not being an adequate courtier. Matthew Maty, in Miscellaneous Works of the Earl of Chesterfield, ed. J. O. Justamond (2 vols., London, 1777), ii. 572, reports that a minor post was eventually found for Lancelot. Swift met C during a visit to London in 1736, when they found each other’s distaste for Walpole’s Irish policies congenial.
Sic hoc Decorum … atque factorum: in a man’s life, decorum is what wins the approval of those around him, which shines in its regularity and consistency, and in unfailing sobriety of speech and action. From Cicero, De Officiis, 1. 28. 98.
Mr. Maittaire: Michael Maittaire (1668–1747), classical scholar and former 2nd master of Westminster, became Stanhope’s classics tutor in 1739. His patron, the Earl of Oxford, persuaded Pope to omit the following lines from The Dunciad: ‘On yonder part what fogs of gathered air | Invest the scene, there museful sits Maittaire’.
Curio … imperare: when the Samnites had brought Curio a large amount of gold as he sat before the fire, he scorned their gift. ‘For’, he said, ‘it seems to me that the glory is not in having the gold, but in ruling those who have it.’ From Cicero, De Senectute, 56.
Fabricim … vulsit: Fabricius dined at his fireside on the roots which he, an old man who had celebrated a triumph, had dug up while clearing his land. From Seneca, De Providentia, 3. 6.
Eximiae … Victor: a virgin of the utmost beauty he returned unharmed to her parents, whom he had summoned, and to her fiancé; even though he, Scipio, was not only young but unmarried and victorious. Adapted from Valerius Maximus, Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilia, 4. 3. 1.
Venisse Diis … ac beneficiis: that he came a young man, resembling the gods, and conquered all, first by arms and then by kindness and good deeds. From Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 26. 50. 13–14.
Virgil … laborum: from Aemid, 4. 522. Dryden’s translation best conveys the poetic effect described:
’Twas dead of night, when weary bodies close
Their eyes in balmy sleep and soft repose:
The winds no longer whisper thro’ the woods,
Nor murm’ring tides disturb the gentle floods.
The stars in silent order mov’d around;
And Peace, with downy wings, was brooding on the ground.
The flocks and herds, and parti-colour’d fowl,
Which haunt the woods, or swim the weedy pool,
Stretch’d on the quiet earth, securely lay,
Forgetting the past labours of the day.
Amoto … ludo: pursue serious matters, put aside play. Adapted from Horace, Ars Poetica, 226.
Spa: in Belgium. C had set out on a seven-month tour of Europe in March.
Bubb Dodington: George Bubb Dodington, later Baron Melcombe (1691–1762), served in the administration of Sir Robert Walpole (1676–1745) for 16 of its 20 years before turning against him in 1740 and censuring his ‘infamy’, to general derision. Treasurer of the Navy from 1744. C first met him in Antwerp in 1714, and they remained on friendly terms.
majority … labor est: this is the task, this is the labour. From Virgil, Aemid., 6. 129 (the Sibyl tells Aeneas that it is easy to find the way down to hell, but harder to get out). The strength of parliamentary opposition might vary according to many factors, not least absenteeism and bribery, Walpole’s particular forte. The 1741 general election had left Walpole with a nominal majority of 14 (Dodington had predicted a minority of that number), which grew to 21 by Christmas, and shrank to a minority of 1 by the end of Jan. 1742, when Walpole lost the division on the legality of the Chippenham election. Dodington put down Walpole’s fall to ‘our laborious attendance in Parliament’ (Bod. MS Eng. Lett. 044 fo. 58).
Carteret and Pulteney: John Carteret, later 1st Earl Granville (1690–1763) had served under Walpole until 1730, when his dismissal as Ld.-Lt. of Ireland sent him into opposition. His oratory was a powerful weapon against Walpole, but intellectual arrogance and drunkenness made him unpopular in the Commons. Secretary of State (N) after Walpole’s fall, he resigned in 1744. More promising in C’s view was Sir William Pulteney, later Earl of Bath (1684–1764), who had been in opposition since 1725, occasionally with Bolingbroke’s Tories; after securing Walpole’s removal, however, he refused office and accepted a peerage, to intense criticism. C was associated with an aristocratic opposition Whig faction led by himself and the lords Stair, Bolton, and Scarborough. His disavowal of political interest with the exiled Tory leader and Jacobite Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751) is not necessarily compromised by the visit he paid to Bolingbroke’s Avignon residence within days of writing to Dodington; he claimed they talked only philosophy, although some alleged that he was canvassing assistance for Walpole’s removal.
Sandys, Rushout and Gibbon: Samuel Sandys (c.1695–1770) moved an address for Walpole’s removal in 1741, became Chancellor in 1742 only to defend policies he had criticized in opposition, and resigned for a peerage in 1743. Sir John Rushout (1684–1775) and Pulteney’s protégé, Phillips Gybbon (1678–1762) proved more sterling as lords of the treasury after Walpole; Rushout sat on a committee to inquire into the past ten years of his government.
Committee of Privileges and Elections: it was usual for the Opposition to challenge a small majority by contesting the choice of Speaker. Arthur Onslow (1691–1768), who was to oversee five successive parliaments and was the third of his family to hold the post, was too much respected, so the chairmanship of the Elections Committee was contested instead, the Opposition securing it for their own George Lee in Dec. 1741—a vital blow against Walpole since the post was crucial in deciding cases of electoral corruption.
Carthagena: Cartagena, a Colombian port, was one of many Spanish strongholds in the region which Britain hoped to seize when war was declared in 1739. Admiral Vernon’s initial success at Porto Bello was followed by a series of failures at Cartagena, Santiago de Cuba, and Panama. The expedition was recalled in 1742. Spain prohibited British ships from sailing anywhere in the Caribbean except to and from British-held islands, and searched vessels deemed to be trespassing. Walpole’s conduct of a war he had never wanted led to his fall.
Sweden … Bender: in 1713 Charles XII of Sweden, defeated by the Russians at Poltova, began to negotiate an alliance with the Turks, who were in fact arranging to hand him over to his old enemy the King of Poland. Charles’s discovery of this led to the battle of Bendery, in Moldavia, where he did indeed lead a depleted army.
the Duke of Argyle: John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll (1678–1743), leader of Scots opposition to Walpole following the latter’s censure of Edinburgh for mishandling the Porteous Riot of 1737. He resented Walpole’s refusing him the command of the army after his loyalty in putting down the 1715 rebellion in Scotland. His electioneering in 1741 proved vital in bringing about Walpole’s fall. C lived next door to Lady Chesterfield and her mother in Grosvenor Square.
Julius Caesar … advanced age: see Plutarch, Life of Caesar, 11. 2.
Rev. Dr. Chenevix: Richard Chenevix (1698–1779) was C’s chap-lain at The Hague. Nominated by C, the new Ld.-Lt. of Ireland, as Bishop of Clonfert but refused because it was said that he had written anti-government pamphlets; when C threatened to resign, Killaloe was granted, whence C had him translated to Waterford a year later.
David Mallet: originally David Malloch (c. 1705–65), Scots poet and dramatist who according to Willard Connely, The True Chesterfield (1939), 215, was in C’s retinue during his second embassy to The Hague. Later patronized by Bolingbroke, whose Letters on the Study and Use of History he published in 1752.
8,000 of your countrymen … for much: C exaggerates the size of the Pretender’s army and that of the population of England and Wales. At this stage Prince Charles Edward had captured Perth, Edinburgh, and Carlisle; C’s coolness masked a contempt for the highlanders (‘beggarly rascals’, as he described them later) which encompassed delight at the appointment of Cumberland to pursue and exterminate them.
as Rowe does a Lord: from Nicholas Rowe’s play Jane Shore (1714), 23 in the Scolar Press facsimile edn.
sixteen new regiments: 16 companies were raised in Ireland to combat the Jacobite threat on the mainland.
1689: C declares his allegiance to the Glorious Revolution and to a balance of the powers of monarch and parliament.
The Duke of Newcastle: Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle (1693–1768), Secretary of State (S) almost continuously from 1724 until 1748, when he succeeded C in the Northern Department.
the Council door … Legislature: the Irish Privy Council supervised the activities of the Irish Parliament, preparing and approving bills. No decision of the Lord-Lieutenant’s could be imposed without its consent. C’s nominees were: James Fitzgerald, Duke of Leinster and 20th Earl of Kildare (1722–73), who had raised a company against the Pretender; William Fitzmaurice, 2nd Earl of Kerry (d. 1747); Somerset Butler, 8th Viscount Ikerrin and later Earl of Carrick (1718–74), married to the daughter of Henry Boyle, Speaker of the Commons and later Earl of Shannon; Clotworthy Skeffington, 5th Viscount and later Ist Earl Massarene (d. 1757), who like Richard Wingfield, Ist Viscount Powers-court (d. 1751), was loyal to the seat of HM government in Ireland, Dublin Castle; James Hamilton, Viscount Limerick and later Earl of Clanbrassil (c. 1691–1758); Wills Hill, 2nd Viscount Hillsborough, later the Marquis of Downshire, nephew of Arthur Hill, a landowner, and in later life Secretary of State (C), 1768–72, and (S), 1779–82; and Richard, 6th Viscount Fizwilliam of Meryon (d. 1776).
The Earl of Grandisom: i.e. John Villiers, 5th Viscount and Ist Earl (c.1684–1766), whose application on behalf of his daughter Elizabeth was granted.
Barrack Patent … Board: military barracks were placed at the discretion of the Barrack Board, according to gentry and mercantile interests rather than military needs, and therefore also to money offered to its members. An inquiry into barrack administration was held in 1751.
The Dublin Society: founded in 1731 by Thomas Prior, Samuel Madden, and other philanthropists, its full title explains its purpose—the Dublin Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Manufactures, Arts, and Sciences. The money C requested was granted in 1749.
Cavan … Mayo: C successfully requested pensions for Ford Lambart, 5th Earl of Cavan (d. 1772); Richard Parsons, Ist Earl of Rosse; and Theobold Bourke, 7th Viscount Mayo (d. 1759).
the embargo: i.e. on the exporting of Irish glass. The measure was intended to restrict a small but growing industry.
Thomas Prior: Prior (c. 1682–1751) promoted industry among Irish Protestants, co-founding the Dublin Society and writing books on linen production and the benefits of drinking tar-water (1746, dedicated to C).
tax upon glass: an Act of 1746 further forbade the export of Irish glass and the importing of glass into Ireland from anywhere but England. C’s ambitions for Irish industry were in this case contrary to government policy.
starch … day: potato-starch came to be used in the 17805 chiefly for finishing fine cotton. Technology for its extraction was developed by many hands from c.1720. See R. Salaman, The History and Social Influence of the Potato, rev. edn. (Cambridge, 1985).
Bishop of Meath: i.e. Dr Henry Maule (d. 1758), formerly Bishop of Dromore, translated to Meath in 1744, where he remained until death. In 1717 he had begun agitating for charter-schools which would attempt the conversion of Catholic children and encourage manufacturing skills. The first school opened in 1733, and there were about fifty by 1746; parliamentary subsidies had been granted in 1745. Modern historians dispute their efficiency and morality.
Bishop of Clojne … Dr. Madden: George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne (1685–1753) and author of works of sceptical philosophy. After the success of Siris (1744), a eulogy to tar-water, C offered to translate him to the more lucrative see of Clogher, but he declined. Samuel Madden (1686–1765) was a Dublin philanthropist and dramatist who established funds for giving prizes to Trinity College students and for improving manufacturing technology in Ireland.
wine … here: claret was cheaper and poorer than in England. In 1736 Lord Orrery had written of the Irish gentry, ‘Drunkenness is the Touch Stone by which they try every man; and he that cannot or will not drink, has a mark set upon him’ (quoted by R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland (Harmondsworth, 1988), 177). Communibus annis means the yearly average.
the Linen Board: founded in 1711 to encourage and regulate linen production, but widely agreed to be of dubious benefit.
Pope … spring: Pope, An Essay on Criticism; 215–16, writes,
A little Learning is a dang’rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring.
Cicero … rusticantur: these tasks give sustenance in youth, pleasure in old age, elegance in prosperity, and a refuge and solace in adversity. At home they afford pleasure and don’t encumber us when we are out; with us they spend the night and stay in foreign lands or in the country. From Cicero, Pro Archia Poeta, 7. 16.
Mr. Harte … dead: for Moses and the Prophets, see Luke 16: 31. The Revd. Walter Harte (1709–74) was Stanhope’s tutor and travelling companion, 1745–9. Ex-Vice Principal of St Mary Hall, Oxford. C’s editor Maty blamed him for Stanhope’s failings: ‘long accustomed to college life’, Harte was ‘too awkward both in his person and address to be able to familiarise the graces with his young pupil.’
that ruling passion: see Pope, Epistle to Cobham, 174—‘Search then the Ruling Passion …’.
Schaffhausen: the northernmost canton of present-day Switzerland; also its principal city.
berline: a covered four-wheeled carriage with a hooded seat behind.
like Caesar … agendum: reckoning nothing done while anything remained to be done. Slightly misquoted from Lucan, De Bello Civili, 2. 656.
vivida vis animi: lively force of mind. From Lucretius, De Rerum Natura., 1. 73.
Nullum … prudentia: no divinity is absent if prudence is present. Adapted from Juvenal, Satires, 10. 365.
Solomon Dayrolles: Dayrolles (d. 1786) was at this time HM Resident at The Hague. He was C’s godson and the nephew of James Dayrolles, former Resident at The Hague. He had been C’s secretary at The Hague in 1745 and in Ireland later the same year.
30,000 Russians: hiring Russian troops had been C’s solution to the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–8). The Dutch entered the war against France with reluctance in 1744. At one stage C made the hire of Russians a condition of becoming Secretary of State. They were en route to the Austrian Netherlands in 1748 when the fighting stopped.
des mercuriales: reprimands.
the Dutch frontier … corps: of these three towns near the border with present-day Belgium, the French captured Bergen-op-Zoom in September 1747, soon to halt their progress when Louis XV abandoned the war effort. Prince Josef of Saxen-Hildburghausen (1702–87), a favourite of Empress Maria Theresa, was a Field-Marshal and head of the Austrian high command until 1749.
Spanish proverb: already an old English proverb in 1747. Wilson, The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (Oxford, 1970), 807, finds ‘Tell me with whom thou goest, and I’ll tell thee what thou doest’ in 1581. C’s dislike of ‘vulgar’ English proverbs made him prefer ‘Dime con quien andas, decirte he quien eres’ (see Cervantes, Don Quixote ‘, ii. 10).
Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope: C had met the two authors at Hampton Court in Sept. 1717. Addison (1672–1719) was at the time celebrated not only as an essayist and dramatist but as Secretary of State; C thought him ‘the most timid and awkward man in good company I ever saw’. With Pope (1688–1744) C shared an admiration of John Gay, Henrietta Howard, Mary Lepell (later Hervey), and Dr John Arbuthnot; C’s ‘Attic wit’ is praised in Pope’s Epilogue to the Satires: Dialogue II, and he ranks among those who were not patrons but friends. See also Pope’s One Thousand Seven Hundred and Forty.
Arguses: i.e. Argus Panoptes, son of Inachus, watchman over the cow into which Io had been transformed, but killed by Hermes.
Cardinal Richelieu … the Cid: Corneille’s play appeared in 1637 to general acclaim. Richelieu, Louis XIII’s first minister, supported the dramatist Georges de Scudéry in applying to the Académic française for a judgement on it, resulting in Jean Chapelain’s Sentiments de l’Académic sur le Cid (1638), which criticized the style and grammar of the play. Richelieu also employed five hack dramatists to write plays under his direction and himself penned a justly neglected tragi-comedy, Mirame.
scribendi cacoethes: the incurable itch of writing. From Juvenal, Satires, 7. 52.
an Elzevir classic: the Elseviers were a Dutch family of publishers and booksellers active between 1581 and 1712. Their series of small duodecimo classics proved especially popular and portable.
Leonidas and Curtius: Leonidas, King of Sparta, secured the pass of Thermopylae in 480 BC with 300 men; Marcus Curtius leapt fully armed and on horseback into a chasm which had opened in the Roman forum (362 BC), and which the seers declared would never close except over Rome’s most precious possession.
Vittorio Siri: a reference to Siri’s 8-vol. history of France, Memorie recondite dall’anno 1601 sino a I 1640 (1677–9), published in Paris and Lyons. Siri is better known by his pseudonym, Nicocleonte.
my present … situation’. C had resigned as Secretary of State on 6 Feb. 1748. He had wanted to end the war with France, but his colleague Newcastle was pressing for a continuation in secret talks with Bentinck, the Prince of Orange’s envoy. In addition, George II had consistently refused to advance members of his family. Three days after his resignation Newcastle began to talk of peace and C’s family prospered. C is presumed to have written an acerbic Apology for a late designation (4 edns., 1748); a pamphlet war followed, in which he was attacked for seeking to betray Britain’s interests.
Commissioner of the Admiralty: C’s younger brother John Stanhope (1705–48) was MP for Nottingham from 1727 and for Derby from 1736. He died 10 months after accepting his admiralty post.
George Stanhope: C had sought the promotion of his cousin George (1717–54) since taking office in 1746.
Countess Flemming … passablement décrotté: Karl Georg Friedrich, Graf von Flemming (1706–67) was Saxon envoy to the court of Savoy at Turin and then England. He and his wife found Stanhope ‘acceptably polished’ in a visit to the Leipzig salon of Benigna von Treiden, Duchess of Courland, in Latvia (b. 1703).
Lord Sandwich … Envoy: John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (1718–92) was plenipotentiary at peace conferences at Breda prior to the full congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, 24 Apr. 1748, where he represented Britain. Dayrolles’s ambition to be promoted to ambassador remained unfulfilled; his next position was as Resident in Brussels (1751–7). In command of the French army were Comte Hermann Maurice de Saxe (1696–1750), Marshal-General of France and natural son of King Augustus II of Poland, and Ulrik LØvendal (1700–55), his Danish protégé and Maréchal de France.
Et sachez … comprise aussi: be mindful that there is a lady involved as well. Cp. Gay, ‘The Hare and Many Friends’: ‘For when a lady’s in the case, | You know all other things give place’ (41–2). This lady was Anne, wife of the Prince of Orange, and in touch with her sister Emily at the English Court.
sacrifice to the Graces: Plato’s advice to Xenophon. See Plutarch, Life of Cairn Marius, 2. 3.
L’esprit … du cæur: the mind is often the dupe of the heart. C underestimates the pessimism of the French moralist, François, Due de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80), whose Maxim 102 reads, ‘L’esprit est toujours la dupe du cœur’. From Maximes et réflections diverses, ed. Jacques Truchet (Paris, 1972), 54.
mauvaise honte: bashfulness.
Mr. Waller: C’s friend Edmund Waller, with whom he wrote pamphlets in 1743 opposing the pro-Hanover policies of Carteret. C’s aversion to laughter, shared by Swift, Pope, and Voltaire, was not as eccentric as it may appear. See V. Heltzel, ‘Chesterfield and the Anti-Laughter Tradition’, Modern Philology, 26 (1928).
les manières prévenantes: prepossessing manners.
a good Easter fair at Leipsig: founded as a cloth and hide market c.1170. There was another fair in September.
hoc genus omne: all that tribe. From Horace, Satires, 1. 2. 2.
Munster: the Peace of Westphalia (1648), consisting of the two treaties of Münster and Osnabrück, put an end to the so-called Thirty Years War between France, Sweden, and the German Protestant Princes on one side, and the Austrians and German Catholics on the other.
Pyrrhonism: a belief in the relativity of all judgement, as advanced by the Greek philosopher Pyrrho of Elis (c. 365–275 BC).
Cardinal de Retz: Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz (1614–79), became Archbishop of Paris in 1653 and schemed without success for a post in Louis XIV’s ministry. His Mémoires (1717) are notable for their scathing portraits of court rivals. It was no accident that C should have recommended them so soon after his own fall from grace.
Dresden: home of the Court of Augustus III (1696–1763), Elector of Saxony (as Frederick Augustus II) and King of Poland from 1733. An ally of Austria against Prussia. Caravanne means a tourist’s visit.
Materiam superabat opus: the work excelled the material. From Ovid, Metamorphoses, 2. 5.
Sapere est principium et fans: knowledge is the foundation and source. From Horace, Ars Poetica, 309.
Hotspur … Matzel: Shakespeare, i Henry IV:
in his ear I’ll holler ‘Mortimer!’
Nay, I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak
Nothing but ‘Mortimer’. (1. iii. 222–4)
Matzel was the name of a pet bullfinch owned by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, British envoy at Dresden, and promised to Stanhope whenever Williams should leave. It was killed by a cat in Williams’s rooms at the beginning of June, prompting a letter of apology and a six-stanza elegy from its owner (see Dobrée, p. 1171).
Mr. Grevenkop: Caspar Grevenkop was a Dane in C’s service who occasionally accompanied Stanhope on his travels.
Landsassii and Amptsassii: Ambts-sassen were people who in legal matters had to apply in the first instance to a lower court (in Saxony ambts-sassen were also defined as those who had been granted estates in return for military assistance but still had to apply to a lower court); Land-sassen were wealthy landowners permitted to appeal directly to the authority of the Duke or Prince.
L’Abbé Mably: Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709–85) was a Jesuit-trained legal scholar who advised his cousin, Cardinal de Temeius, Minister of State. Chief among his works on jurisprudence was Le Droit de l’Europe, fondé sur les traités (1746), which attracted intense criticism for its liberal sentiments.
St. Thomas’s Day: i.e. 21 Dec.
La Rochefoucault … La Bruyère: for La Rochefoucauld, see note to p. 71. Jean de La Bruyère (1645–96) published the first version of his Caractères de Théophraste, tradults du grec, avec les caractères ou les mœurs de ce siècle in 1688. His pessimistic view of people and institutions exhibits, like the maxims of La Rochefoucauld, a contempt for hypocrisy which C found congenial at this time.
On trouve … déplaît pas: there is something in the distress of one’s best friend which is not displeasing. C misquotes slightly (see Maximes, ed. Truchet, p. 94), and sentimentalizes his author’s pessimism. La Rochefoucauld means that a friend’s distress assures us of our own relative happiness, irrespective of the responsible discharge of duty to which C refers.
chicance: OED records only chicane (cp. chicanery), to equivocate.
Women … growth: Cp. Dryden, All for Love—‘Men are but children of a larger growth’ (iv. 43).
Orpheus … the whole sex: in the most commonly accepted version of his story, Orpheus, preferring the rites of Apollo to those of Dionysus, was torn apart by the women of Thrace on the orders of the angry god.
Quum vero hostis … etc:: but when we are at war, dealing with an enemy who threatens us with all manner of terrible things, with slow or sudden destruction, it does not matter how we endeavour to defeat and kill him as long as he lingers in his all-consuming animosity. It is therefore right to make use even of poison.
ferociam exuere: [the enemy’s] animosity may at last burn itself out.
collected … by Escobar: Antonio Escobar Y Mendoza (1581–1669) was a Spanish Jesuit who wrote Liber theologiae moralis (1644), an account of truth and error, rectitude and crime. This was pilloried in Pascal’s Lettres provinciales (1656–7) for allegedly lax morality.
Quidlibet ex Quolibet: i.e. Thomas Aquinas, XII Quaestiones quodlibetales, records of free-for-all debates held between 1269 and 1272.
Doctor Berkeley … Matter: C is probably referring to Berkeley’s Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710).
Comte de Gabalis … Rosicrucians: Cabbalism (from c. 1200) perpetuates Jewish oral traditions of mystical interpretation and white magic; Rosicrucianism, established by the early seventeenth century, combines Cabbalism, Gnosticism, alchemy, and other occult practices. Le Comte de Gabalis (1670), by the Abbe de Montfauçon de Villars, is a study of Cabbalist beliefs referred to by Pope in the dedication of The Rape of the Lock (see note to p. 215).
Paracelsus … Alkahest: Paracelsus was the pseudonym of Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (c.1490–1541), the Swiss physician and alchemist. Alkahest is a sham Arab term for panacea, Paracelsus’ own search for which centred on hot mineral baths designed to restore the balance of elements in the body. A monument was erected to him in Salzburg four years after C’s letter.
nil admirari: wonder at nothing. Horace, Epistles, 1.6. 1, following Pythagoras, says this is the only way to make and sustain happiness.
Lord Pulteney: i.e. Viscount Pulteney (1731–63), only son of the Whig politician. After his Grand Tour, he became MP for Old Sarum in 1754, a Lt.-Col. in 1759, and MP for Westminster in 1761.
the Letters of Madame de Sevigné: Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné (1626–96), wrote celebrated accounts of Louis XIVs court to her daughter, who had married the Lt.-Governor of Provence.
Madame Valentin’s assembly: presumably Marie de St Simon, Comtesse de Valentinois (1728–74), a Parisian society hostess.
le ton … compagnie: the air of polite company.
les allures: motions, ways.
train-train: routine.
Waller … to be priced: Edmund Waller (1606–87), ‘Of Love’, writes:
Postures which render him despis’d,
Where most he wishes to be priz’d
volto sciolto … pensieri stretti: the passage of Machiavelli C had in mind is uncertain, but the advice resembles that of the Discourses, 3. 6 (‘On Conspiracies’). The phrasing derives from Sir Henry Wootton, letter to Milton, 13 Apr. 1638, in acknowledgement of Com us: ‘I pensieri stretti, & il viso sciolto will go safely over the whole World’.
Parum comis … Mercuriusque: youth, not pleasing without you [the Graces] and Mercury. From Horace, Odes, 1. 30. 7–8.
gardefous: balustrades.
in capite: C hopes that Stanhope, who had an exceptionally large head, would be at the head of whatever company he was in.
the German play: Stanhope appears to have seen an improvised harlequinade by the company of Karl Friedrich Reibehand, a travelling commedia actor specializing in pyrotechnic effects who gave several performances in Leipzig in October 1748, some of them advertised as tragedies.
Peream dum luceam: let me perish if I can but shine. C recalls the colours, but not the motto, of the Grenadiers de Cheval de la Maison du Roi. This ‘squib’ was a stylized grenade.
pic-nic: OED gives this as the first recorded use of the word in English. Here it means ‘a fashionable entertainment in which each person present contributed a share of the provisions’. Shaftesbury … of us: Shaftesbury, An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour: ‘We polish one another, and rub off our corners and rough sides by a sort of amicable collision.’ (I. ii)
Mr. Eliot: Edward, Lord Eliot (1727–1804), inherited his father’s huge Cornwall estates in Nov. 1748, so gaining control of three parliamentary constituencies. He accompanied Stanhope occasionally on his travels, sharing the tuition of Harte.
Carlo Maratti: Maratti (1625–1713) was a leading painter of the Roman school under the influence of the counter-reformation.
Locke … education: i.e. Some thoughts concerning Education (1693), the most widely read educational treatise of the eighteenth century.
the late King Victor Amédée: Victor Amadeus II (1666–1732), Duke of Savoy, Ist King of Sicily and then of Sardinia, greatly increased the influence of Savoy in Europe. In 1730 he abdicated in favour of his son, Charles Emmanuel III. C neglects to mention the unfilial proceedings which followed: Victor tried to revoke his abdication in 1731 and was thrown by his son into prison, where he died.
les plus déliés: the most refined.
entregent: tact.
Duke of Marlborough: John Churchill, Ist Duke of Marlborough (1650–1722), leader of the British and Dutch armies in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–13). C’s summary of his career is not completely accurate. After leaving St Paul’s School (c. 1665) he was page of honour to the Duke of York, later James II, who was having an affair with his sister, Arabella. His attachment to Barbara, Lady Castlemaine and Duchess of Cleveland, brought him a gift of £5,000, £4,500 of which he invested with C’s grandfather, George Savile, Marquis of Halifax (1633–95). He enjoyed diplomatic successes at Berlin and Hanover (1704), Leipzig (1707, at the camp of Charles XII of Sweden), and Frankfurt (1707).
Pensionary Heinsius … to this day: Antonius Heinsius (1641–1720) was appointed Grand Pensionary, or Secretary of State, by William III in 1689, and continued in office until death. Criticized for failing to secure Dutch interests at the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) and in the Barrier Treaty of 1715, the inadequate terms of which contributed to the French invasion in 1747 (see p. 53). C’s view of his negotiations with Marlborough (1701–7) is not wholly just in that Heinsius denied his ally the administration of the Belgic provinces in 1706. See The Correspondence of John Churchill and Anthonie Heinsius (The Hague, 1951), ed. B. van’t Hoff.
omnibus … rebus: endowed with all gifts, at all times to excel. Adapted from Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, 1. 27.
the insatiable man in Horace: a reminiscence of Horace, Odes, z. 18. 21–4.
Commensaux … absence: Stanhope’s late dining companions were people whose absence gave pleasure.
Mr. Eliot… father: Richard Eliot died within a few days, leaving his son Edward to inherit his Cornish estates.
my brother John: see note to p. 69.
Andrié … Algarotti: Andrie was a former Prussian envoy to London; Conte Francesco Algarotti (1712–64), an Italian author of books on optics, opera, and architecture, had been invited to the court of Frederick II in 1740. He corresponded with C, Hervey, and Gray, and three of his books were translated into English in C’s lifetime.
Spectacle de la Nature: published in 1732, by Abbé Noël-Antoine Pluché (1688–1761), author of books on linguistics and religion.
Rector magnificus: at this time the philosopher Johann Christophe Gottsched (1700–66).
Pluralité des Mondes: i.e. Entretiens sur la plutralité des mondes (1686), a dialogue stressing the insignificance of man and the Earth to the universe as a whole. Bernard le Bovier, Sieur de Fontenelle (1657–1757) was a philosopher and FRS, admired for his prodigious learning and sceptical intelligence. C had met him in 1741 at the salon of Madame de Tencin, a Parisian hostess and friend of Bolingbroke’s.
Comte Pertingue … Comte du Perron: Comte Pertingue was minister to Charles Emmanuel III, King of Sardinia, at the Court of Turin; Comte du Perron was its ambassador to Hanover.
an immense fortune: Viscount Pulteney died while returning to London from Portugal, months before his father, leaving his uncle to inherit the £40,000 and property which the Earl of Bath left behind.
Lady Chesterfield: C’s wife, Petronilla Melusina von der Schullenberg, Countess of Walsingham (1693–1778), natural daughter of George I by the Duchess of Kendal. C had met her in 1722 and married her for gain in 1733 (she had a fortune of £50,000 and claimed £3,000 from the Civil List). Their marital relations were accordingly frigid, if respectfully polite.
Descartes’s automatons: René Descartes (1596–1650) had argued in his Principia Philosophiae (1644) that animals were governed solely by laws of motion, without feeling or consciousness.
Mr. Mascow: John James Mascow (1689–1762), Professor of Civil Law at Leipzig University and author of The History of the Germans (1726). Stanhope had lodged with him during his stay in Leipzig.
Dii tibi … sumes: may the gods grant you a long life, for other advantages you must secure for yourself. From Ovid, Epistles from Pontus., 2. 1. 53.
portée: reach, compass.
quos ultra … rectum: beyond and short of which rectitude has no place. Slightly misquoted from Horace, Satires, 1. 1. 107.
blaze often: C believed that the devil would lose nothing by the supposed reconciliation between the two Secretaries of State, the Dukes (hence ‘Graces’) of Newcastle and of Bedford. Soon after the appointment of John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford (1710–71) as Secretary of State (S) in succession to C (12 Feb. 1748), the two had frequently quarrelled, and the government split into factions, Bedford being supported by Sandwich. Newcastle’s jealousy of his colleagues often caused friction, even when they were supposed, as here, to be ‘best friends’; in 1751 he forced Bedford’s resignation.
Prince of Wales … Court party: also associated with Bedford was George II’s third son, William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (1721–65), ‘Butcher Billy’ of Culloden and captain-general of the army; the Ist Lord of the Admiralty was Sandwich, to whom Newcastle had originally offered Bedford’s job. Newcastle’s influence in the church and in Parliament derived from his vast landed wealth, producing a rent-roll of £25,000 per year. Henry Pelham (1695–1754), Newcastle’s brother, had been Ist Lord of the Treasury and therefore first minister for the past five years. His position was weakened as much by quarrels with Newcastle as by factional disturbance, but he gained by exploiting George II’s anticipated death (65 at the time), giving undertakings to those expecting preferment after the accession of Frederick, Prince of Wales, who included William Pitt. In the event the Prince died in 1751.
Ranelagh Garden … fireworks: Ranelagh Gardens, Chelsea, opened as a pleasure-ground and place of assembly in 1742, offering vaudevilles, dancing, acrobats, and music, as well as the imitation of the Venice carnival and fireworks for the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle which took place on 26 and 27 Apr. Loges were boxes for spectators.
Lord Holderness: Robert D’Arcy, 4th Earl of Holderness (1718–78), was minister plenipotentiary at The Hague, 1749–51, and Secretary of State, moving between departments, from 1751 to 1761.
Madame de Berkenroodt: Catherine Windsor married Matthys Lestevenon van Berkenroodt, Dutch ambassador to Paris, and separated from him there. C had met her in The Hague in 1744 and admired her; Stanhope failed to win her favour in Paris, his friend Huntingdon (see p. 207 and note) receiving C’s encouragement instead.
portez vous … toujours: stay in good health, and love me always.
Tieffer: i.e. Tiefensee, NE of Stanhope’s last stopping-point, Berlin.
Comte d’Einsiedlen … Comte Lascaris: presumably the Comte Einsiedel, Minister to the Elector of Saxony, Augustus III, at the Court of Dresden, where Stanhope had stayed the previous year. Lascaris had been French ambassador to the same court.
Mr. Firmian: Karl Josef, Graf von Firmian (1716–82), was Austrian envoy at Milan and Parma.
Albani … Nivernois: Albani (1692–1779) was Pope Clement XI’s nephew and librarian of the Vatican, later papal nuncio to the Holy Roman Emperor; ‘the Purple’ refers to the official scarlet dress of a cardinal. Louis Charles, Due de Nivernois (1716–98), was French ambassador at Rome, 1748–52, and subsequently at Berlin and London.
Ligue de Cambray … Crown of Spain: in 1509 Pope Julius II joined the League of Cambrai, established the year before against Venice by France, Germany, Spain, and others, inflicting defeat at Agnadello and recovering control of church appointments and taxation rights. Alfonso de la Cueva, Marqués de Bedmar (c. 1572–1655) was appointed ambassador in 1607 at a time when Spain sought to increase its influence in other parts of Italy, a policy Venice opposed and Bedmar assisted. It is thought the conspiracy was concocted by the Venetian senate as an excuse for getting rid of Bedmar.
Pope … Sarpi: Pope Paul V, elected in 1605, regained supremacy in Naples, Savoy, and Genoa while Venice, engaged in trying two clerics in its own courts, retained control over the building of churches and the purchase of land by the clergy. Paul excommunicated the Venetian senate and placed the city under a papal interdict, which the senate declared invalid, expelling all who observed it. In 1607 a settlement was reached on terms humiliating to the Pope. The case of Venice was put by its state theologian, the Servite Fra Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623), a physician who, although excommunicated for a series of anti-papal pamphlets including Tractatus de Beneficiis, carried on his priestly functions until death.
the next will probably see: an accurate prediction. Much of N. Italy fell to Napoleon during his Italian campaign, which forced the deposition of the last Doge of Venice in 1797.
Cardinal de Retz … same pen: Fabio Chigi was elected Pope Alexander VII in 1655. Retz, Mémoires (1817 edn.), iv. 27, said that he had written for two years with the same pen.
Decorum: see note to p. 13.
faites comme … avoit: act as if you had [a consumptive tendency]; ‘pectorally’ here means ‘with concern for your chest’.
Politicians … hate: Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, 223.
Homer … mortals: Iliad, 8. 25–32.
volto … stretti: see note to p. 105.
ses mceurs … de lettres: for one so young, his manners conform to most strict and sensible standards; his application… to all that goes by the name of learning and polite literature, without the taint of ostentatious pedantry, makes him truly worthy of your tender regard; and I have the honour to assure you that everyone is proud to own his acquaintance and his friendship. I profited from it myself with great pleasure in Vienna, and count myself happy to have received his permission to continue it by correspondence.
senza … vana: see p. 114.
ruelles: receptions in the bedrooms of fashionable ladies.
spectacles: i.e. plays, entertainments, tableaux.
Ius Publicum Imperii … Sir Charles Williams: the laws of the imperial state. Stanhope was lodging and studying Roman law with Professor John Mascow (see p. 130 and note). Sir Charles Hanbury Williams (1708–59) was envoy to Saxony, 1746–50 and 1751–5; in 1750–1 he was envoy to Berlin, where Voltaire admired his wit and verses. He committed suicide in 1759 after an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate an alliance between Britain, Austria, and Russia.
flappers: Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, III. chap. 2.
Christian: Stanhope’s Swiss valet.
Monmouth Street… tenter-hooks: a tenter is a machine for stretching cloth so that it dries in shape; the hooks hold the articles on the frame. Monmouth Street in St Giles’s was famous for its second-hand clothes shops.
Lyttelton’s … awkwardness: George, 1st Baron Lyttelton (1709–73), chancellor from 1755 to 1756 (when Horace Walpole remarked that ‘he seemed strangely bewildered in the figures’), and patron of Pope, Thomson, Fielding, Shenstone, and others. Caricatured by Smollett as Gosling Scragg in Peregrine Pickle. In 1737 he and C had both written for the anti-Walpole journal, Common Sense.
question extraordinaire: torture on the rack.
il leur faut du brillant: they insist upon polish.
Lord Bacon … recommendation: Bacon, ‘Of Ceremonies and Respects’, writes, ‘it doth much add to a man’s reputation, and is (as queen Isabella said) like perpetual letters commendatory, to have good forms.’ In Works., ed. J. Spedding, R. L. Lewis, and D. D. Heath (14 vols., 1857–74), vi. 500.
tournure: appearance.
the Jubilee:: the Holy Year of the Catholic Church, from one Christmas Eve to the next. Since 1470 it had happened every 25 years, and to commemorate special events.
slipper or his b——h: probably ‘breech’, or backside, denoting sycophancy. The Pope in question was Benedict XIV.
Proverbial expressions … such a place: Wilson, Dictionary of Proverbs, 522, finds the first use of ‘one man’s meat’ in Lucretius, while ‘tit for tat’ appears in Heywood’s Dialogue of proverbs (1546). C himself was hardly averse to quoting proverbs in French, Italian, or Latin; another captivating hypocrisy for Dickens’s Sir John Chester. OED dates the first record of ‘smart’ in the sense of ‘affectation in wit, manners or clothing’ at 1712. ‘Vastly’ appeared after the Restoration and was a particular bugbear of C’s. In the first of his articles for the World on Johnson’s Dictionary (28 Nov. 1754) he execrated those who found a snuff-box ‘vastly pretty, because … vastly little’; the egregious Ann Steele in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is fond of the word. ‘Obleiged’ and ‘to wards’ survived until the present century.
les manières nobles … qui plait: noble and unforced manners, the appearance of a man of quality, the air of polite company, the Graces, the indefinable something which gives pleasure. Je ne sais quoi was already a cliché for the designation of politeness.
knick-knackically: a nonce word of C’s devising.
Virtuoso: a person of dilettante scientific or artistic interests.
Mendes … Stevens: Thomas Steavens (c. 1728–59) was a friend of Horace Walpole and Sir Charles Hanbury Williams who undertook the Grand Tour in 1749; the identity of Mendes, who had evidently helped Stanhope in Rome, is not known.
puffed: praised excessively. Common since the early seventeenth century for describing the interested promotion of plays and literary works.
brigues: intrigues.
Fra Paolo, de Beneficiis: see above, p. 139 and note.
their General: at this time the head of the Jesuits was a Bohemian, Francis Retz.
their settlement in Paraguay: Jesuit missions in SE Paraguay had governed what were in effect separate states since the early seventeenth century, promoting local industry and meeting military needs. A Spanish and Portuguese attack of 1767 forced their expulsion.
the Inquisition: the papal judicial institution for inquiring into cases of heresy and witchcraft. Physical punishment of heretics had been practised for more than a thousand years before Inquisitions were established in Rome (1542), Portugal (1547), and Spain, where the idea reached its bloodiest fruition under the first Spanish Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada (1420–98).
Sir James Gray and Mr. Smith: Sir James Gray (d. 1773) was HM Resident at Venice, 1744–53, envoy at Naples until 1761, and then at Madrid. Joseph Smith (1682–1770) was British Consul at Venice, 1740–60, and a noted collector of rare books and paintings. In 1765 he sold his books to the Crown for £10,000, and his art treasures for £20,000.
Lord Shaftesbury … were to see him: from An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour—‘Should one who had the countenance of a gentleman ask me “Why I would avoid being nasty, when nobody was present?”, in the first place I should be fully satisfied that he himself was a very nasty gentleman who could ask this question, and that it would be a hard matter for me to make him ever conceive what true cleanliness was.’ (III. iii)
that of Aristides: i.e. Aristides the Just, an Athenian general and statesman of the fifth century BC.
agrémens: pleasures.
alicui negotio … quaerit: occupied with work of some kind, seeks fame either by great deeds or distinguished ability. Source unknown.
Caesar … siletur: probably a reminiscence of Lucan, De Bello Civili, 5. 669–71, where Caesar, at sea in a skiff, says he can dispense with a grave as long as his appearance is dreaded in every land. Pliny… siletur: their life and death are much the same to me, and nothing needs to be said of either. I can find neither the Latin quotation nor the thought preceding it in Pliny (old or young). In his Letters Pliny the Younger says, ‘Since we are denied a long life, let us leave behind something to show that we have lived’ (3. 7. 15); C’s stricter version may derive from Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard (1738)—‘either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing’.
sapere … et fons: see note to p. 83.
les manières liantes: engaging manners.
ille optimus … urgetur: he is the best who is distressed by the smallest mistakes. Horace, Sermonum, 1. 3. 68.
Atterbury: Francis Atterbury (1663–1732), Bishop of Rochester, was a prominent Jacobite, polemical author, member of the Scriblerus Club, and friend of Pope, Swift, and Bolingbroke. His Sermons and Discourses on Several Subjects and Occasions were published after his exile in 1723.
Westminster: where Stanhope had studied before his time with Harte.
Academies and Dictionaries: in the sixteenth century there were nearly 700 literary and scientific academies in Italy. Most famous for the promotion of Italian was the Accademia della Crusca, founded in 1582 by Anton Francesco Grazzini. Its Vocabolario della Crusca (1612) sought to stabilize literary language using Tuscan as a model. The Académic francaise opened officially in 1637 under the aegis of Richelieu. The Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, excluding all vulgar and technical expressions, first appeared in 1694. C’s complaint that the improving and fixing of languages was less attended to in Britain may justify the claim that he had simply forgotten about Johnson’s plea for patronage, which had taken place more than two years before.
Cicero says … speech: Cicero, De Oratore, 1. 8. 33.
Quintilian … orator: i.e. Institutio oratoria (the Training of an Orator), published in AD 95.
Cato: i.e. Marcus Porcius Cato, called Censorinus (234–149 BC), Roman statesman and orator of famed strictness in matters of morals, manners, and rhetoric.
Selon vos ordres … fournir: as you instructed, I have examined young Stanhope carefully, and have, I believe, understood his character completely. What follows is his portrait, which I take to be a true likeness. He has a pleasant face, a sensible manner, and a discerning look. His figure is rather square at present, but if he grows taller, for which he has both time and build, it will be well proportioned. He certainly has a good fund of knowledge, and I am assured of his deep familiarity with the ancient languages. French I know he speaks perfectly well; his German is said to be just as good. He asks intelligent questions which show his eagerness to learn. I will not say that he is as eager to please; for he seems negligent of the proper attentions and graces. He is bad at introducing himself, and has anything but the unforced, noble manner, and appearance proper to him. It is true that he is still young and inexperienced, so there is occasion to hope that practice, which he has not had, and polite company, where he is yet a novice, will polish him, and give him all that he now lacks. An attachment to some lady of quality well-versed in the world, some Madame de l’Ursay, is just what he needs. To conclude, I venture to assure you that he has everything that My Lord Chesterfield could wish, except the manners, graces, and air of polite company which he will surely acquire given time and exposure to the fashionable world. It would be at the least a great pity if he did not acquire what he so deserves to have; you know how important these things are. My Lord his father knows too, being in full possession of them himself. In brief, if little Stanhope acquires the graces, he will, I assure you, go far; if not, he will be stopped short in what would otherwise have been a distinguished career.
Madame de l’Ursay: a middle-aged, worldly-wise coquette in Les Égaremerits du Cæur et de l’Esprit (1736) by C’s acquaintance Claude-Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon, usually called Crébillon fils.
Mazarin: chief minister of France from 1643 until his death in 1661, the Italian cardinal acquired a fortune of several million pounds.
Richelieu … Cid: see note to p. 59.
Agrippina … Messalina: i.e. the mother of Nero and the promiscuous wife of Claudius.
valeant quantum valere possunt: let them pass for what they are worth. Proverbial.
volto sciolto: see note to p. 105.
like Caesar’s wife: from Plutarch, Life of Caesar, 10 (also in the life of Cicero and in Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars: Julius, 74). The wife in question was his third, Pompeia.
Colonel Chartres: Colonel Francis Chartres, or Charteris (1675–1732) was a rapist, pimp, cheat, and usurer, expelled from the army and described in a footnote to 1. 20 of Pope’s Epistle to Bathurst as ‘a man infamous for all manner of vices’, and by Arbuthnot, in an epitaph appended to the same note, as ‘the most unworthy of all mortals’.
Certainly … invisible: from Bacon’s ‘Of Simulation and Dissimulation’, Works, ed. Spedding et al., vi. 387.
Cato … Clodius: i.e. Cato Censorinus (see note to p. 181) and Publius Clodius Pulcher (c.93–52 BC), an irresponsible and corrupt politician in late republican Rome who was once tried for entering the house of Julius Caesar during the all-female Bona Dea festival dressed as a woman harpist.
prodesse quam conspici: have progress than draw attention to myself.
décrotteuse: a lady to polish your manners.
Would you … Probatum est: it is proven. These, and the lines which follow, are C’s own.
Abbati … Monsignori: abbots and prelates of the Vatican Court.
entregent: see note to p. 117.
le ton léger … compagnie: the unforced and agreeable air of polite company.
Charles the Fifth … ettina: Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor from 1519 to 1556, is said to have remarked, ‘To God I speak Spanish, to women Italian, to men French, and to my horse German.’ His knowledge of German was suitably scanty. Etta and ina added to a name signify ‘dear sweet’; ettina enhances the effect.
il faut du brillant … fort poli: there must be sparkle, even a little swagger, but nothing coarse: a lively, unforced, and noble air. With men, a bearing at once respectful and worthy of respect; with women, a light, playful, waggish, chattering manner, but always strictly polite.
Monsieur Villettes … Madame Clerici: Arthur Villettes (c.1702–76) had been HM Resident at the Court of Savoy in Turin from 1741 to 1749, and had just moved as minister to the Helvetic Cantons. The first husband of the Milanese hostess Teresa di Castalbarco (d. 1765) was called Simonetta; her second was Francis III of Modena. Mme de Clerici is cited in Dutens, Mémoires d’un voyageur., i. 327, as one of the first women of fashion in Milan.
earthquakes’: for which some blamed Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749).
Mr. Osborne’s: Thomas Osborne jnr. (d. 1767) succeeded to the business in Gray’s Inn established by his father (d. 1743), whose most notable acquisition (1742) had been the Earl of Oxford’s library. See Pope, The Dunciad., 11. 167, for his piracy of Pope’s folio Homer.
Collana … Macchiaveh collana: means ‘collection’, in this case the c.130 Greek and Latin classics published by Aldo Manuzio (‘Aldus’) in Venice between 1495 and 1515, notable for their high editorial and typographical standards. The first of the so-called ‘Testina’ editions of Machiavelli’s works, in five parts, is dated 1550.
Neustadt and Abo: during the Great Northern War (1700–21), in which Sweden fought Russia, Saxony-Poland, and Denmark-Norway, Russia occupied Finland from 1713 to 1721, forcing Sweden to cede the SE part of the country under the 1721 Treaty of Nystad (Uusikaupunki). The Treaty of Abo concluded the Russo-Swedish war of 1741–3, allowing for the return of some Finnish territory to Sweden in exchange for installing Russia’s preferred candidate as Swedish Crown Prince.
the affairs of Italy: under the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), Naples, Milan, and Sardinia were ceded to Charles VI of Austria. Sicily went to Victor Amadeus II of Savoy. The 1718 Treaty of London, however, ordered the exchange of Sardinia for Sicily; this same treaty provided that the dukedoms of Parma and Piacenza in NW Italy should, in the event of the last Farnese, Duke Antonio, dying without issue, go to the first son of his niece, Isabella of Spain. Antonio duly died childless in 1731, leaving Don Carlos to inherit. During the War of the Polish Succession (1733–5), Spain sided with France against Austria and Savoy, and Don Carlos seized Naples and Sicily, declaring himself king; at the subsequent 1st Treaty of Vienna (1735) he was allowed to keep the twin crowns (Charles’s ‘Cession’) on condition that he renounce Parma and Piacenza to Austria, which he did. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), which ended the War of the Austrian Succession, returned the duchies to Spain, but to Don Carlos’s younger brother, Philip. The King of Spain in 1750 was Ferdinand VI, Carlos’s half-brother; when he died in 1759 and Carlos became King Carlos III, Naples and Sicily went to Carlos’s third son Ferdinand, it being agreed that no one could hold the crowns of Spain and Naples.
Xαριτ€ς, Xαριτ€ς: The Graces! The Graces!
Court of Vienna … barrier towns: during the war of the Austrian Succession (1740–8), Britain was subsidizing Austria to defend the Austrian Netherlands, regarded as a barrier against French attack on the Dutch provinces and so on British trading interests. Austria withdrew its troops when territory closer to home was threatened, and France broke through into the Dutch provinces. At the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) it was returned to Austria amid false expectations that it would then be adequately fortified.
Boden’s trumpery… ill filled’: Boden’s trumpery is obscure; C wrote a letter to a Capt. Charles Bodens, a wit and amateur scribbler, in June 1753. Philippe, Due d’Orleans (1674–1723), was regent during Louis XV’s minority, a leading patron of music and painting; and his son Louis (1703–52) an austerely pious and learned man who retired to an abbey to write Christian apologetics. Charles de Lorraine (1525–74), Archbishop of Rheims from 1538, was a Grand Inquisitor and member of the King’s Council under Henri II. He attended the Council of Trent, 1562–3.
Comte Obdam’s virtu: Unico Wilhelm, Count Wassanaer-Obdam (1692–1766) was a leader of the Dutch republican party, opposed to the installation of William IV as Stadholder. Virtu is used in the Machiavellian sense of a display of manly, civic virtues.
Hermes … Ant: a bust of Hermes as a young Roman with a breastplate and mantle, in marble … Bacchus, with an ivy garland … the head of a young Roman on a pedestal… a statue with anaglyphs, proclaiming a sacrifice in honour of Priapus. (Ant. is short for antiquarius., belonging to antiquity.)
Girardon: Francois Girardon (1628–1715) produced statues for Versailles, Vaux-le-Vicomte, and the Sorbonne (Richelieu’s tomb).
l’un portant l’autre: likewise.
un coup d’ceil vif et pénétrant: a quick and discerning glance.
Hop: Lt.-Gen. Hendrik Hop (1686–1761) was Dutch envoy to the Court of St James.
Madame du Boccage … Abbé Guasco: Marie Anne Le Page (1710–1802), wife of Piquet du Bocage, saw her Paradis terrestre, poème imité de Milton published in 1749. Les Amazones flopped at the Comédie franchise in the same year. C says she ‘did not show off her wit’. Hoping to secure her patronage of Stanhope during his 1751 stay in France, C had busts made of Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, and Dryden for the du Bocage house in Normandy, observing that Shakespeare ‘sometimes deserves the best [reception], and sometimes the worst’. Octavien de Guasco, Comte de Clavierès (1712–81), edited the letters of his friend Montesquieu and wrote historical works.
Il est très aimable … chère: he is most agreeable, most wellmannered, he is intimate with all that is best here, and he lives very well.
Madame de Mirepoix: Anne Margarite Beauveau, Duchesse de Mirepoix (1707–91), whose second husband, Gaston, Due de Mirepoix, was French ambassador to the Court of St James from 1749 to 1755.
Blackheath: i.e. the Christopher Wren house at Blackheath which C had inherited from his brother John in 1748. In the one-acre garden he grew fruit and vegetables from seeds sent by Dayrolles, keeping the house as a country residence.
Bentinck … Vienna: Hop’s position as Dutch envoy had often been undermined (like C’s during his period in office) by secret negotiations between the British government and Count Willem Bentinck (1704–68), confidential minister to the Prince of Orange.
The Prince of Wales’s last child… se délecte: i.e. Frederick William (1750–65), eighth of the nine children of Frederick, Prince of Wales, who died the following year. The two Secretaries of State were Newcastle and Bedford; the latter was often criticized for shunning business at Westminster in favour of his estate at Woburn, where in C’s words he ‘gambolled and delighted in himsel’.
Earl of Huntingdon: Francis Hastings, 10th Earl of Huntingdon (1729–89) had met Stanhope at Westminster School. Master of the Horse to the Prince of Wales, 1756–60, continuing for a year after his master’s accession as George III. Made guardian to C’s heir in 1772.
Lady Hervey: Mary Lepell (1700–68), maid of honour to the Princess of Wales in 1715, married John, Lord Hervey of Ickworth (Pope’s ‘Sporus’ in the Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, 305–33) in 1720. C met her at court in 1717, associated with her at Leicester House when Prince George broke from his father, George I, and was godfather to her son in 1732. Celebrated as a wit and beauty by Voltaire, Gay, and Pope.
puff: see note to p. 165.
pleasing abord: the man who prospered through his pleasing way of greeting people was Armand, Due de Richelieu (1696–1788), great-nephew of the cardinal and a distinguished soldier who took Minorca from the British in 1756. His court gallantries became infamous after his private papers were written up as memoirs by Soulavie.
Président Hénault: i.e. Nouvel Abrégé chronologique de l’histoire de France (1744) by Charles-Jean Henault (1685–1770), magistrate in the Paris parlement (hence ‘Président’, or presiding judge). His book evinces strong monarchic sympathies.
les Mémoires de Sully: i.e. the ‘London’ edition (1747), published in Paris, of Économies royales by Maximilien de Béthune, Due de Sully (1559–1641), minister to Henri IV.
quantum: amount.
Mr. Harte … will leave you there: Harte had been made Canon of Windsor in 1750 and acquired the valuable living of St Austell and St Blazey, in Cornwall, where he retired to write.
valet de place: a valet de chambre is a manservant, a valet de place a courier.
les spectacles: see note to p. 148.
les petits jeux de commerces: i.e. the card-game ‘commerce’, popular from the early eighteenth century.
id genus omne: see note to p. 74.
c——s and p——s: presumably ‘claps’ and ‘peppers’, common colloquialisms for venereal disease.
subsidies … during the last war: see note to p. 202.
a Sylph or a Gnome: C may derive these terms from Pope, The Rape of the Lock, or from Pope’s source, Le Comte de Gabalis (see note to p. 97). His use of them seems ironic: Pope says that gnomes are ‘Daemons of Earth [which] delight in Mischief; while sylphs are kindly and protective ‘upon a Condition very easie to all true Adepts, an inviolate preservation of Chastity’, which was hardly on Stanhope’s agenda.
Seneca says … God should know: adapted from Seneca, Epistles, 10. 5.
Lord Albemarle … Mr. Yorke: William Anne Keppel, 2nd Earl of Albemarle (1702–54) had become ambassador extraordinary at Paris in 1748 after a military career which embraced service at Dettingen and Culloden, where he commanded the first line. A high-spending envoy, he employed Stanhope in a minor clerical post from Mar. 1751. Also at Culloden was his secretary, Joseph Yorke, later Baron Dover (1724–92), son of the Lord Chancellor, Hardwicke. Later in 1751 Yorke succeeded Solomon Dayrolles as HM Resident at The Hague, where he was ambassador from 1761 to 1780.
J’ose vouspromettre … nous autres: I venture to promise you that he will soon be like one of us.
quae te … homme: whatever beautiful woman enchants you, you are not the slave of any demeaning passion. From Horace, Odes, 1. 27. 14. C adds that a civil attachment becomes a gentleman.
suaviter in modo: i.e. suaviter in modo, for titer in re—gentle in manner, strong in performance. Derived from a maxim of Claudio Aquaviva, Jesuit General, in Industrie ad Curandos Animae Morbos (1606).
en badinant, le galopin d’ici: jokingly, the errand-boy of the place. C recommends that he go on to say ‘this is my department; I take it upon myself; be assured that I will acquit myself superbly.’
liant: winning.
Lord Bolingbroke’s: either A Dissertation upon Parties (1735) or Remarks on the History of England (1743), collections of Bolingbroke’s articles for the Craftsman., an anti-Walpole journal begun in 1726.
Martial… non amo te: I do not love you, Sabidis, but I can’t say why. All that I can say is that I don’t love you. Martial, Epigrams, 1. 32.
respectable Hottentot: Bos well, Life of Johnson, says that this was meant to be Johnson himself, although Johnson thought it was George, Lord Lyttelton, for C’s similar description of whom see p. 157. For Boswell, ii. 159 (Everyman edn.).
Cambridge … contradiction: C had left Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1714 after a stay of just over a year.
a pleasing Falstaff… pleasing in others’: Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV: ‘I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men’ (1. ii. 9–10).
du bois dont on en fait: good material for Lady Hervey’s attentions.
St Paul … some: Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, 9: 22: ‘I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.’
The prostrate lover … kneels to rise: Cp. Dryden, Amphitryon:
Th’offending Lover, when he lowest lies,
Submits, to conquer; and but kneels, to rise. (III. i. 609–10).
qui vent … éduquer: who really wishes to assume the task of educating you. For Madame de Lursay see p. 184 and note.
qu’ellefaisoit… næuds: she will thereby create bonds between you.
de vos secrets … honnête: wishing to be the faithful keeper of his son’s secrets, C asks him if he is enjoying ‘the glamour of high society, plays, balls, operas, and court’; or ‘small assemblies, less clamorous but no less agreeable for that’. He wants to know where Stanhope is ‘established’ and whether he is still considering playing at some polite attachment to a society woman.
Abbé Nolét … l’Abbé Sallier: Jean Antoine Nollet (1700–70), a French philosopher noted for his writings on electricity; Marcel had been the leading Parisian dancing master for forty years, and is said to have remarked that while in other countries people jumped, only the French danced; Claude Sallier (1685–1761) was the author of Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions, of which he was a member.
a bill… Calendar: for C’s own explanation, see below, pp. 223–4. C brought the bill to the House of Lords on 20 Feb. 1751, ‘an astronomer in spite of [him]self’, and moved the second reading on 18 Mar. Newcastle, nervous of all change, tried to dissuade him, perhaps anticipating the protests which ensued calling for the ‘missing’ eleven days to be restored.
fin fin: last, most secret part.
Pope Gregory … this error: in 1582.
Lord Macclesfield: George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield (1697–1764), astronomer and colleague of William Jones, with whom he studied at his Shirburn Castle Observatory. In 1752 he was elected President of the Royal Society, to which his preliminary paper on the lunar and solar years had been submitted in 1750.
mob: OED has ‘Without the: Disorderly or lower-class people forming a crowd’. C’s dictum is a translation of Retz, Maxims, no. 36.
Prenez l’éclat … homme: assume the lustre and polish of a gentleman.
procureur. first Commis: respectively, attorneys and chief clerks.
an Iphigenia: daughter of Agamemnon, according to some versions of the story sacrificed to permit the passage of Greek ships to Troy; here, presumably, a type of the beautiful and willing victim.
Sir Charles Hotham: the 6th Baronet Hotham (d. 1767), son of C’s sister, Gertrude, who had married the 5th Baronet in 1724. He travelled in France in 1751 and became Groom of the Bedchamber to George III in 1761.
philosophers … in every part: probably a reference to Plato’s Timaeus, or Plotinus’s Enneads.
Il est étonnant … des phrases: it is astonishing that a man of such sense, such propriety and delicacy of taste, should express himself with so little elegance and refinement. He is quite negligent of his diction and turns of phrase.
dégourdir: to remove stiffness.
non est hie locus: this is not the place for these matters.
Desnoyers: dancing master to Frederick, Prince of Wales.
Madame Dupin: Louise de Fontaine Dupin (1707–99) held literary salons at Paris and Chenonceaux which were attended by Fontenelle, Marivaux, and Rousseau.
Blot … l’outre: Mme du Blot was the 17-year-old niece of C’s friend, Mme de Monconseil, maid of honour to the Duchess of Orleans and married to Gilbert de Chavigny, Baron de Blot-le-Chateau. C advises Stanhope that enjoyment of her does not prohibit enjoyment of Mme Dupin. It was at this time that Stanhope was in fact first taking an interest in his future wife.
Les bienseances: propriety, decency.
jamais parler … pendu: never talk of ropes in the house of a hanged man. Derived from Terence, Pbormio, 686.
badinage: bantering. Enjouement means ‘playfulness’.
Maréchale: the wife of a field-marshall.
badinage … polissonerie: bantering spiced even with a little smut.
pont-neuf … la Maréchale de Coigny: C hopes that Stanhope would not sing a ballad to the wife of François de Franquetot, Maréchal de Coigny (1670–1759), victor over the Austrians at Guastella (1734).
jeux de main: horseplay, practical jokes.
giuoco di mano … villano: horse-play is rogue’s play. Recorded in E. Jones, Dictionary of foreign Phrases and Comical Quotations (Edinburgh, 1910).
mens sana … sano: a sound mind in a healthy body. From Juvenal, Satires; 10. 356.
Nullum … prudentia: see note to p. 46.
mohairs: requested by Stanhope as presents for Mesdames du Blot, de Polignac, and Monconseil. Mme Morel may have been the wife of Stanhope’s former teacher at Westminster.
seeingyou here: Stanhope visited his father from Aug. to Nov. for a thorough inspection.
alteratives: medicines to alter bodily processes.
bags: a pouch, usually of silk, to contain the back part of a wig. Probably another reference to the lanky Lord Lyttelton (see p. 157).
avec onction … attendrissement: with unction and a kind of sorrow.
Major Irwine: John Irwine (1728–88) met C in Ireland in 1746; C gave him letters of introduction when he toured Europe two years later. He reputedly suggested to C the article ‘Good Breeding’ which appeared in the World, 30 Oct. 1755. Later served under Ferdinand of Brunswick in 1760 and became both MP for East Grinstead and a Major-General in 1762. He corresponded with C between 1746 and 1766.
Sackville … out upon: Lord George Sackville Germain (1716–85) was secretary to the Ld.-Lt. of Ireland, who was his father, the Earl of Dorset. Irwine attained the rank of Lt.-Col. in 1752, and in his father’s regiment, the 5th Irish foot; whether by bribing commissioner Pearce is not known.
les absens … tort: the absent are always in the wrong. See also Wilson, English Proverbs, 1. C had just been reading the letters of Anne, ‘Ninon’ de Lenclos (1620–1705), who claimed to have quoted this proverb every time she was unfaithful to her husband. The general to whom C applies this proverb has not been identified; it is not likely to have been Irwine’s father, Lt.-Gen. in the 5th Irish Foot.
Lieutenant Heathcote: William Heathcote was described by C in a letter of Dec. 1750 to Dorset, Ld.-Lt. of Ireland, as his ‘third page’; a younger brother and on half-pay after his company was disbanded.
the Primate … Clements: i.e. the Primate of Ireland—at this time George Stone (c.1708–64), Archbishop of Armagh—and the bishops.
Bishop of Waterford: i.e. Richard Chenevix (see note to p. 27). C’s reproach regarding his health may have been carried by Dr Noah Thomas (1720–92), later physician to George III, although there were at this time also three bishops called Dr John Thomas.
promotions … Tuam: the health of Bishop Josiah Hort (c.1674–1751), who had lost his voice and travelled to the Riviera to recover it, had been a matter of controversy since his appointment in 1742. He was succeeded in 1752 not by Henry Maule, of Meath, but John Ryder.
the copper mine: small deposits of copper were mined in Wicklow.
Ireland improves daily: increased textile and agricultural production caused a 47 per cent rise in exports during the 1740s, compared with 26 per cent in the previous decade.
caducity: premature loss of faculties.
scene of business: a reference to Stanhope’s post at the British embassy in Paris, obtained in March 1751.
€υϕωνια: euphony.
d’Ossat … D’Avaux … Temple: Cardinal Arnauld d’Ossat (1537–1604), political adviser and author of letters to Henri IV and his minister the Marquis de Villeroy (pub. 1624); Jean Antoine, Comte d’Avaux, French ambassador to The Hague until 1688, where his Lettres et Négotiations were published in 1710; Sir William Temple (1628–99), English ambassador at The Hague and patron of Swift, who published his Letters in 1700.
Par negotiis … supra: equal to business and not too grand for it. Tacitus, Annals, 6. 39, recounts the death of Poppaeus Sabinus, a man of humble extraction who rose by friendship with emperors and succeeded not through great abilities but by efficiency—perhaps a reminder of Stanhope’s ambiguous position vis-à-vis the family name of which he was given to boasting.
volto sciolto: see note to p. 105.
tragedy of Varon: by Jean-Hyacinthe, Vicomte de Grave, presented at the Comédie française on 20 Dec. 1751.
Cato the Stoic … blank verse: Marcus Porcius Cato, called Uticensis (95–46 BC), committed suicide at Utica after learning of Pompey’s defeat by Caesar. By 1752, five French translations of Addison’s Cato (1713) had appeared, and one original Caton, by François Deschamps (1715). C’s tepid compromise between French and English tragedy relies heavily on Addison, Spectator; nos. 39, 40, 42, and 44 (all Apr. 1711), as do his comments on p. 254, on Eugenia.
gros Jean: a common, vulgar person.
half-guinea: i.e. the cost of a pit or box seat. C made further disparaging remarks about opera in the World, 14 Nov. 1754, and Common Sense, 15 Jan. 1738, resembling, as here, Johnson’s definition, in his life of John Hughes, of Italian opera: ‘an exotick and irrational entertainment’.
Sir John Lambert … Spencer: Sir John Lambert (1690–1772) was a British banker serving expatriates, travellers, and embassy staff in Paris; he was anxious for the account of the wealthy John Spencer, youngest son of the 5th Earl of Sunderland.
Princes Borghese: i.e. the sons of Agnese Colonna, Principessa Borghese (1702–80), a Roman society hostess who often entertained English visitors, though not in the way C’s ‘relations’ suggests.
King and the Parliament … Archbishop: the dispute began in 1749, when the Archbishop of Paris, Christophe de Beaumont, instructed clergy not to give the last rites to those without a certificate proving they had confessed to a priest who had accepted the anti-Jansenist papal bull of 1713, Unigenitus. Louis XV supported de Beaumont, but the Paris parlement, after protests from Jansenists, moved to arrest any priest who refused them the last rites. Beaumont had tried to install his own candidate as head of the Salpetrière, a home for old women, while a royal declaration of Mar. 1751 had given him control over ecclesiastical appointments at the Hôpital général, formerly a haven for Jansenists. Marc-Pierre de Paulmy, Comte d’Argenson (1696–1764), was Secretary of State for War, founder of the École militaire, and a close ally of the king.
Le Donne … io canto: of ladies and knights, of arms and love, of chivalry, of courageous deeds, I sing—the opening lines of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1516).
Alcina’s person … Orlando’s lost wits: Orlando Furioso, Canto vi. 35–60, and Canto xxxiv. 68–92 (refs. to the final version, of 1532).
French Grammar … Synonimes François: i.e. the Grammaire générale (1660) by Antoine Arnauld and Claude Lancelot, Jansenist scholars who worked in the former Cistercian convent of Port-Royal; Claude Buffier’s Grammaire (1709); and Synonymes françois (1736) by Abbe Gabriel Girard.
Francis’s Eugenia: the Revd Philip Francis’s translation of Cénie by Françoise de Grafigny opened on 17 Feb. 1752 at Drury Lane with Garrick in the leading role, and closed after six showings on the 25th. C had read the play in manuscript and approved. Francis (1708–73) also translated Horace and taught Gibbon. He dedicated his play Constantine to C in 1754. The author of Have at you All (20 Feb. 1752) agreed with C’s opinion of the play, declaring it ‘a true tragedy, tho’ nobody dies in it’.
Horace’s rule: in Ars Poetica, 185–6—‘don’t let Medea murder the children in front of the audience’.
Monsieur D’Aillon: mentioned in a letter of May 1751 as ‘an old friend’ of C’s, entrusted to report back on Stanhope’s progress.
The representation … principles: for suaviter in modo, see note to p. 218. By Revolution principles C means those of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, permitting resistance to a monarch acting outside the law. The parlement issued a series of representations against the King’s religious policy (culminating in the Grandes Remonstrances of Apr. 1753) which stated its right to resist the King in defending the laws of the realm. See also note to p. 251.
Duclos … en France: there is a germ of reason beginning to unfold in France. Adapted from Considerations sur les mceurs de ce siecle (1751), chap. 10, by Charles Pineau Duclos (1704–72), historian, moralist, and friend of Voltaire.
Voltaire … Bolingbroke: C had just read Bolingbroke’s Letters on the Study and Use of History (written 1735–8, pub. 1752), which criticizes antiquarian approaches to history in favour of finding examples of conduct useful to readers. Voltaire’s Le Siècle de Louis XIV (1751), based on unprecedented reading of memoirs and interviews with survivors, was published in Berlin. Its praise of Louis XIV was widely taken as criticism of the present king; in 1751 Voltaire’s French home had been raided by officials looking for satirical material concerning Louis XV and Mme de Pompadour.
Monsieur Stanhope … réussira: Mr Stanhope has thrown himself into politics, and I believe he will be successful.
Duke of Marlborough … Allies: i.e. in Nov. 1705, when Marlborough visited Berlin to soothe the nerves of Frederick I (1657–1713), styled King in Prussia from 1701, in deference to Polish interests. Prussia was allied with Britain, Austria, the Dutch provinces, and Savoy against France and Spain in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–13).
qu’il étoit … publique: that he was the most distinguished and pleasant man in the kingdom, and although the minister’s son-in-law, was very popular. From Le Siècle de Louis XIV, chap. 20. François d’Aubusson, Due de la Feuillade (1625–91) was a Maréchal de France.
oderint modo timeant: ‘let them hate as long as they fear’, from Atreus, 203, by the Roman dramatist Accius (170–90 BC), was a favourite remark of Caligula’s; according to C it would have been wiser to say, ‘as long as they love me I have nothing to fear’.
Lord and Lady Blessington: William Stewart (1709–69), Viscount Mountjoy, was granted his earldom in 1745 on C’s recommendation. His wife was Eleanor (d. 1774); their spoiled and only son died living it up in Paris.
Sir Isaac Newton’s prism: developed in the late 1660s, it dispersed sunlight passed through a slit into its main constituent colours.
Galigai Maréchale d’Ancre: Leonora Dori, known as ‘Galigai’ because her mother pretended to come from a family of that name, was Lady of the Bedchamber to Henri IV’s wife, Marie de Medici. Her husband, Concino Concini, Maréchal d’Ancre, was assassinated in 1617; she was executed in the same year.
John Trott: a bumpkin. See Wilson, English Proverbs, 413.
rusticus expectat: Horace, Epistles ‘, 1. 2. 42, says that the man who puts off the hour of correct living is like ‘the bumpkin who sat waiting’ for the river to run out.
volto sciolto: see note to p. 105.
plus … souvenir: most tender and respectful remembrance.
si vis me flere: if you want me to weep [you must first feel grief yourself]. Horace, Ars Poetica, 102.
bridon: a snaffle.
saut de mouton: bucked.
Madame Dayrolles: Dayrolles had married Christabella Peterson in 1751; their first child, Thomas, was born in July 1752.
Mitchell: i.e. Andrew Mitchell (1708–71), Dayrolles’s commissary at Brussels, later knighted and made ambassador to Prussia.
King of the Romans: the title of Holy Roman Emperor had been with one exception de facto hereditary in the Austrian royal family for over 300 years, although the Electors of the German States still gathered to vote in Frankfurt. Both Newcastle and George II believed that Anglo-Austrian relations could be cemented by supporting Maria Theresa’s son, Joseph, as the successor to the title, to which end hefty ‘subsidies’ were distributed to the Electors to persuade them to vote for Joseph. The absurdity of this scheme was to be the subject of C’s last parliamentary speech, in 1755. Eventually Austria declined to co-operate without France’s agreement, and Britain and Austria were at war four years later. Joseph did eventually succeed his father, Francis I, in 1765.
Maïence: i.e. Mainz, whose archbishop presided over the electoral college of the Holy Roman Empire. Mayence is the French spelling.
to blame it: the bishop’s wife had died at the beginning of the month.
Brunswick, Casset … Berlin: the Duchy of Brunswick was bound by treaty and family ties to Prussia; Prince Ferdinand was knighted for services in the defence of Hanover during the Seven Years War. Kassel was a principal seat of the house of Hesse-Kassel; Landgrave Frederick I was married to George II’s daughter Mary. Both Hesse-Kassel and Brunswick rejected Austria’s call for a ‘war of the Empire’ against Prussia in 1756. The Berlin Carnival took place in mid-February, on the weekend before Ash Wednesday.
Ratisbon … the Hague: Ratisbon, now Regensburg, in Bavaria, home of the Imperial Diet, at which Stanhope was to be British representative in 1763—‘in good time’ indeed. Dayrolles had become HM Resident at Brussels (Court of Charles of Lorraine, Maria Theresa’s brother-in-law, who administered the Austrian Netherlands) in 1751. Joseph Yorke (Stanhope’s former colleague from the embassy in Paris), was Resident at The Hague.
Ella è anche Padrone: you too are the master.
mores … urbes: the ways of many men and cities. A rendering of Homer, Odyssey, 1.3.
powers of the States … Hartz: Bremen, a river port, was the second largest Hanoverian port after Hamburg (of which Harburg is now a suburb), specializing in ship-building and the processing of goods from the colonies. Stade, annexed to Hanover in 1715, was also a river port with ship-building and timber industries. The coal and potash fields of the Harz mountains were SE of the city of Hanover.
ex abundanti: from an excess [of precaution],
Comte Cobentzel: Comte Johann Karl Cobenzl (1712–70) was first minister of the Austrian Netherlands.
German Mrs. Fitzgerald: Stanhope had met Lady Mary Fitzgerald (1725–1815) in Leipzig, where she was travelling with her mother. C later became acquainted with the family (see p. 282), pronouncing Mr Fitzgerald, no doubt partly to encourage Stanhope, ‘excessively awkward and vulgar’ (letter to Stanhope dated 6 Jan. 1752).
There are … man and wife: Pope, An Essay on Criticism, writes,
Some, to whom Heav’n in Wit has been profuse,
Want as much more, to turn it to its use;
For Wit and Judgement often are at strife,
Tho’ meant each other’s Aid, like Man and Wife. (80–3)
offendit solido: strikes something solid. From Horace, Sermonum, 2. 1.78.
my godson: i.e. Dayrolles’s son Thomas.
Visage de bois. formes: this was a private meeting, not an official audience (visage de bois means ‘no one at home’); it was therefore ‘according to form’ for the king to meet the illegitimate Stanhope.
Venice, as Resident: this request was curtly refused by the King because of Stanhope’s illegitimacy, even though other English Residents abroad had been born out of wedlock.
trin-tran: a version of train-train, meaning ‘routine’.
next May: Christabella Dayrolles gave birth to a girl, also called Christabella, the following spring.
abord: way of greeting people.
Faites un pen valoir cela: make the most of it discreetly.
the two brothers: i.e. Pelham, first minister, and his brother, Secretary of State Newcastle.
faufilé: insinuated into favour.
Kreuningen: C had met P. A. de Huybert, Baron van Kreuningen (1693–1780), during his first embassy to The Hague. Kreuningen was then Sheriff of Muiden and an authority on the Dutch constitution.
Holland … Sovereign: every town in the seven provinces had a senate council which sent deputies to a provincial senate; in turn, each provincial senate sent deputies to The Hague, capital of the United Provinces. It was the deputies of the provincial senates who held sovereign power, not those at The Hague, although the latter were, as here, commonly called ‘the States General’.
Lord Coventry … bavard: deafness makes me garrulous. ‘Lady Caroline’ is Lady Caroline Petersham (d. 1784), sister of Grafton, the future Secretary of State, and married to C’s relation William Stanhope, later 2nd Earl of Harrington (1719–79), an eccentric and untidy man whom on this as on many other occasions she ‘so thoroughly took to task’ that he could only imitate the proverbial passivity of a French husband in turning a blind eye to her extramarital exploits. Lady Coventry was the celebrated beauty Maria Gunning (1733–60), married to the 6th Earl, whose abuse of her led to her seeking refuge in an affair with Frederick, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke.
as at the Court of Augustus … by laws’: Stanhope was in Berlin at the Court of Frederick the Great. C refers to Horace, Odes, 4. 15. 13–20.
qui nil molitur inepté: who attempts nothing foolishly. Horace, Ars Poetica, 140. The ‘other poet’ is Homer, the opening of whose Odyssey Horace commends for its purposefulness.
Henriade: first published in 1723 as La Ligue, ou Henri le Grand, Voltaire’s 10-canto epic of the life of Henri IV appeared in its final form in 1728, dedicated to Caroline, George II’s consort. The author was in England at the time, collecting subscribers; C bought ten copies. The poem embodies the hatred of extremism and unrest which Voltaire shared with C.
Epopée: epic poem.
Homer … I sleep: Horace, Ars Poetica, 360–1—‘sometimes even the excellent Homer slumbers [i.e. has lapses]’.
Turnus: in Virgil’s Aeneid, 7–12, Turnus is the champion of Latians who oppose Aeneas’s divinely ordained mission to rebuild Troy in Italy.
darkness visible: Milton, Paradise Lost, 1. 63. C’s subsequent judgement resembles that of Johnson, who in his Life of Milton wrote, ‘the want of human interest is always felt’.
Tasso … coglioneriè: in his Gerusalemme liberata (1581), Torquato Tasso compares Tancredi’s vain attempt to escape from prison to a fish trying to avoid a whirlpool (VII. 46), while in the garden of the palace where Rinaldo is captive a parti-coloured bird speaks of the brevity of life (xvi. 13–15). Concetti means conceits, or more specifically here, epic similes; le coglioneriè the art of seizing an unexpected image.
Camoens: i.e. Os Lusiadas (The Portuguese) by Luis Vaz de Camoë’s (1524–80), published in 1572. It charts the victories of the Portuguese over the enemies of Christianity. C had probably read the French prose translation by Duperron de Castera (1735), since there was no English version between those of Richard Fanshawe (1655, in verse) and William Mickle (1776, in prose).
great and long action: Aristotle, Poetics, 4. i, says that epic, like tragedy, should consist of ‘one whole or complete action’.
the Massacre … as it is: Voltaire has Henri narrate the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre to Elizabeth I, like Aeneas to Dido, in u. 175–358. The siege and famine at Paris appear in x. 179–332. Henri’s amorous encounter with the fair d’Estrées is depicted in ix. 181–238 and 289–304; it is at the instigation of Discord and Henri must, like Aeneas, be reminded of his higher calling—this, and the attendance of the Graces, may explain C’s interest. Morbidezza means delicacy of tint, while St Louis (Louis IX of France) appears to Henri in a dream throughout Canto VII, conducting him to heaven and hell and showing him his destiny. (All references are to the Geneva edition of 1970 by O. R. Taylor.)
the King of Sweden: Voltaire’s Histoire de Charles XII appeared in 1731. Charles was a ruthless soldier who cherished private passions for eastern art, philosophy, and mathematics. Cp. his bellicose appearance in Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes (191–222).
Julius Caesar … King of Prussia: Julius Caesar (100–44 BC) wrote incomparable descriptions of warfare in De Bello Gallico and De Eello Civili, and lavished alms upon the citizens of Rome. Titus Vespasianus (AD 39–81) captured Jerusalem in AD 70, completed the Colosseum and the Baths of Titus, and gave emergency assistance after the eruption of Vesuvius. Trajan (AD 53–117) won the Dacian and Parthian Wars and constructed the Trajan forum. As well as the military successes C reports, Frederick II encouraged industry, gave refuge to artists, philosophers, and writers including Voltaire, and wrote a good deal of music beside his Histoire de mon temps and Antimachiavell, the handbook of enlightened despotism.
dramatic pieces… philosophical letters: 23 of Voltaire’s 54 plays had by this time been performed. His Lettres philosophiques (1733 in England, 1734 in France), reflect upon English empiricism to the disadvantage of Pascal’s penitential philosophy and were denounced by the Paris parlement, causing him to seek refuge. C goes on to say that to verify his estimation of Voltaire was ‘within the compass’ of Stanhope, since Voltaire was then at Berlin.
portée: see note to p. 133.
Monsieur de Maupertuis: Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698–1759), director of the Berlin Academy of Science in 1740, after travelling to Lapland to prove that the world was shaped as calculated by Newton. Satirized by Voltaire in Diatribe du Docteur Akakia (1752). For Algarotti and Fontenelle, see notes to pp. 121–2.
Mrs. Fitzgerald … Non sum qualis eram: I am not the man I was. From Horace, Odes., 4. 1. 3. For Mrs Fitzgerald, see p. 271 and note.
Madame Maintenon’s letters: Françoise d’Aubignac, Marquise de Maintenon (1635–1719), was secretly married to Louis XIV, probably in 1684.
Abbé de Fénelon … 185th letter: François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fenelon (1651–1715) was a theologian whose belief in ‘Quietism’ brought him into conflict with Louis XIV and the militantly Catholic Mme de Maintenon. C’s account is wide of the mark: Fénelon almost certainly did know of her secret marriage to the King when this letter was written, in 1690. See Lettres et opuscules de Fenelon (Paris, 1850), 229–30.
Sarah… owing: Abraham and Sarah were the parents of Isaac. See Genesis 16 and 21. Fénelon advised Mme de Maintenon to have the same submission to the King as Abraham had to God.
Sir William Stanhope: C’s younger brother William (1702–72) was at this time MP for Buckingham.
Comte de Schullemburg: possibly the grandson of Matthias John, elder brother of C’s mother-in-law Melusina von der Schullenberg, Duchess of Kendal. He, too, sang Stanhope’s praises.
virtù: in the Machiavellian sense—a display of splendour.
Richelieu … d’Olonne: of those not mentioned elsewhere: Henri, Vicomte de Turenne (1611–75), Louis XIV’s Marshal General from 1660; Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé (1621–86), general celebrated for victories over the Spanish, and a close ally of Turenne; Françoise, Marquise de Montespan (1640–1707), mistress of Louis XIV; Marie, Duchesse de Fontanges (1661–81), another mistress; Marie de Bretagne, Duchesse de Montbazon (1612–57), exiled by Louis XIII, returned to play a minor role in the rebellion, or Fronde, of 1648; Marie de Rohan-Montbazon, Duchesse de Chevreuse (1600–79), another opponent of Richelieu and Mazarin. Mogueville is presumably Françoise de Motteville (1621–89), lady-in-waiting to Louis XIII’s queen and a friend of Charles I’s, and author of celebrated memoirs; by d’tonne C may mean the author and diarist, Marie Catherine d’Aulnoy (c.1650–1705).
Majesty: this complaint was written for C’s own satisfaction and was never sent. It expresses some of the polished resentment he felt towards George II.
otium cum dignitate: leisure with honour. Cicero, Pro Sestio, 45. 98, says this is what is most desirable for all healthy, good, and prosperous people.
Pretender … Derby: Prince Charles Edward reached Derby on 4 Dec. 1745 and retreated two days later. C raised troops from Ireland.
Honour … than life: among many possible sources, this most closely resembles Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, v. iii. 27: ‘the brave man | Holds honour far more precious-dear than life’.
a ghastly smile: Paradise Lost, II. 845–6, where Death ‘Grinned horrible a ghastly smile’.
blasemeer-op: C confuses two German expressions. Blasemeer-op was an obscenity similar to ‘kiss my arse’; but aufblasen means to signal an order with a blow on a bugle or trumpet—here, to puff oneself up self-importantly (a common caricature of a German corporal).
Miss Hamilton, ‘Lady Murray’s niece: Sir Patrick Murray, 4th Baronet of Ochtertyre, had married Helen Hamilton (d. 1773) in 1741; it was her brother’s daughter Elizabeth who liked Stanhope’s countenance.
John Trott: see note to p. 261.
à pure perte: utterly lost.
dispersion by Titus: Titus, emperor from AD 79, was sent by his father Vespasian to quell the Jewish revolt. Jerusalem fell in AD 70 and was ransacked, the Temple of Herod the Great being destroyed.
Thalmud … Targums: the Talmud (‘learning’) is an encyclopaedia of Jewish myths and customs, regarded as a sacred book until the eighteenth century; the Mishna (‘repetition’) is the part of it which deals with Jewish law. Targums are Aramaic translations of the Old Testament, made for Jews of the first century BC who no longer spoke Hebrew.
Abas Saul … receive: apparently from the Talmud Nidda 24b—‘Abba Sha’ul says: I was a burier of the dead. Once I opened a grave and stood up to my neck in the eyesocket of a corpse. Then a voice said, “That was the eye of Absalom”.’ Absalom was also said to be a giant.
Platina … Busbequius: the History of the Growth and Decay of the Ottoman Empire by Dmitri Cantemir, Prince of Moldavia (1673–1723), appeared in English in 1734–5, translated from the original Latin (1716). Augier de Busbecq (1522–92), a Flemish diplomat, represented the brother of Emperor Charles V at Constantinople and wrote much admired letters in Latin which described the court of Suleiman the Magnificent. Sir Paul Rycaut published the first version of The History of the Turkish Empire in 1680 (this was a continuation of the history published in 1603 by Richard Knolles), and in 1685 translated as The Lives of the Popes the masterpiece of Bartolomeo Sacchi de Platina which was first published in 1479 and contained remarks on the history of Turkey.
Janissaries … Vizar: Janissaries were the personal bodyguards of the monarch, or Sultan; the chief minister was usually called the Grand Vizier.
like Sultan: Stanhope’s black pointer Sultan was a present from Dayrolles; Loyola greeted his master’s son on his next visit with a vicious attack to the chest, perhaps objecting to his posture.
Fitz-Adam… the World’: ‘Fitz-Adam’ was the pseudonym of Edward Moore (1712–57), a poet and dramatist, for whose journal the World C. wrote anonymous articles between May 1753 and Oct. 1756, including two on Johnson’s Dictionary (28 Nov. and 5 Dec. 1754). C’s satirical pieces, in the style of the Spectator articles which he had admired in his youth, covered such items as opera, social climbers, excessive drinking, and, surprisingly, francophilia.
Parliament … Cornwall’: Stanhope was elected MP for Liskeard, without opposition, the following April. Seven years later Edward Eliot also made sure of Stanhope’s seat at St Germans (which C himself had occupied in 1715) on receipt of £2,000; in 1765, however, he paid his friend to vacate it.
pedarii senatores … sententiam: senators of inferior rank who could only follow the decisions of others.
receipt… quantum suffictt’: as much as suffices. Receipt means recipe.
Solicitor-General, Murray: William Murray, Ist Earl of Mansfield (1705–93), was about to become Attorney-General after Pelham’s death, when Newcastle came to rely on his oratory to defend the government in the Commons against Pitt and Fox. His Oxford training consisted of the method C himself used and recommended: study of Cicero through translation into and from English.
oraisons funèbres: funeral orations, often written by distinguished members of the French academies.
Mr. Pelham died: First Minister Pelham died on 6 Mar. 1754 of erysipelas, a disease brought on by over-eating. C’s estimate of his abilities was and is widely shared.
His successor … Newcastle: Pelham was succeeded by his brother, Newcastle, formerly Secretary of State. Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke (1690–1764), who was Lord Chancellor, agreed with George II to keep out Henry Fox, later Baron Holland (1705–74), then Secretary for War and a close ally of the Duke of Cumberland. Newcastle offered Fox a Secretaryship of State, but with unacceptable conditions attached. After the brief, disastrous appointment of Sir Thomas Robinson (see p. 305), Fox agreed to Newcastle’s renewed offer in Nov. 1755, only to resign eleven months later after the Minorca débâcle (p. 311). Henry Bilson Legge (1708–64) became the new chancellor in spite of his enmity with George II, who refused him admission to the royal presence; the next seven years saw him dismissed from office three times and recalled twice. George Lee, DCL (1700–58), had been a favourite of the late Prince of Wales, and remained Treasurer of the Household to his widow after Pelham’s death.
Nihil dictum … dictum: nothing is said which has not been said before. One of many adaptations of Terence, Eunuchus, prologue, l. 41.
this moment informed’: all of C’s information was wrong.
tant mieux: so much the better.
Lord ——… you: the nature of this quarrel and the name of Stanhope’s antagonist are not known.
pour faire … jeu: to smile in the face of adversity.
un honnête homme … point’: a well-bred man is a stranger to them.
“Les Annales de l’Empire’: i.e. Les Annales de l’empire depuis Charlemagne, generally considered one of Voltaire’s least successful books, published in Basel (1753) and, revised, in Geneva (1754). For Nil molitur, see note to p. 279.
le style leger et fleuri: the light and florid style.
Place-Bill: a ‘placeman’ was a member of parliament appointed by the Court or the government. Place bills were introduced by the Opposition to regulate their number. In 1733 C had spoken in support of Walpole’s bill to maintain a standing army of c. 18,000, only to lose favour by opposing the Excise Bill in the same year.
Sir Thomas Robinson: a career diplomat who had been ambassador at Vienna for 18 years before negotiating the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle jointly with Lord Sandwich, Robinson (1695–1770), later Baron Grantham, was chosen by Newcastle as a pliant spokesman in the Commons, where for 18 months he was mauled by Pitt and Fox before being granted the less boisterous post of Keeper of the King’s Wardrobe. Lord Holderness (see p. 13 5 and note) had been moved from the southern secretaryship.
Magnis tamen ,.. ausis: he fell aiming at great things. From Ovid, Metamorphoses, 2. 328, or Seneca, De Vita Beata, 20. 5. 13.
Leti caca libri: the romantic, inexact histories of Gregorio Leti (1630–1701) earned him the nickname ‘book-shitter’. His life of Sixtus V (1669), the ‘iron pope’ of the Counter-Reformation, was translated into English in 1704 and 1754.
Namely … to wit: OED cites the first uses of these at 1450 and 1577. lus et norma loquendi means ‘the laws and customs of speech’.
Treves and Cologne: Trier, in the Rhineland Palatinate, and Cologne were the seats of two of the archbishop Electors.
olim juvabit: the memory of this sorrow will one day bring us joy. From Virgil, Aeneid, 1. 203.
Maupertuis … les faire valoir: to know how to make the most of them. The Maupertuis quotation means ‘[acquainted with] all countries as the learned are with all times’. Source uncertain; possibly adapted from his Discours académiques (Œuvres, iii. 265) or Réflexions philosophiqms (Œtwres, ii. 275).
La Bruyère … veut valoir: one values nothing in this world except what one wants to value. Not by La Bruyère, but a reminiscence of Molière, Les Précieuses Ridicules, ix. 278: ‘Les choses ne valent que ce qu’on les fait valoir.’
Montesquieu: C had met Montesquieu (1689–1755) in The Hague in 1729, and they had travelled together to London, where C introduced him at court. His most famous work is De L’esprit des lois (1748), a libertarian analysis of government which saw in the British parliamentary system an ideal separation of legislative, judicial, and executive powers. Like C, he knew and admired Bolingbroke. His presidency for life of the Bourdeaux parliament was granted in recognition of his writings rather than of his regular attendance.
maidenhead … debate: Stanhope’s maiden parliamentary speech was given on 13 Nov. 1755 during the debate on the King’s speech about French encroachments in America and the protection of Hanover. He lost his thread and could not find it readily in his notes; Horace Walpole (to H. Conway, 15 Nov. 1755) said that he and most of the other speakers were ‘very bad’. This maiden speech was his last.
Pelotez … partie: trifle while awaiting your chance.
Mrs——: unidentified, but C’s faith in Stanhope’s chances with the opposite sex was as misplaced as his political ambitions for him.
Minorca … Admiral Byng: Admiral John Byng was dispatched in 1755 to save the British naval base at Minorca from French attack and arrived in 1756 to find the fortress already under siege. The supporting French fleet was allowed to escape, while Byng judged that his forces were too small to attack the fortress. He retreated to Gibraltar, abandoning one guarantor of Britain’s trading routes but protecting another, and returned home to public outrage. Sentenced to death in Jan. 1757, he was finally executed in March. He was widely believed to have been a scapegoat for administrative incompetence. In 1757 Pitt, attempting to break the Franco-Spanish alliance, offered Gibraltar to Spain, but he was refused.
The French … very ill terms: in the past year, expeditions against French positions at Niagara, Crown Point, and Fort Duquesne had failed. C was correct in predicting further losses: in August 1756 Oswego fell to the new French commander, Montcalm, as did Fort William Henry in 1757. Maria Theresa of Austria-Hungary, formerly Britain’s ally, approved the Treaty of Versailles with France, which envisaged a cession of the Austrian Netherlands in return for French help in recovering Silesia. This so-called ‘Diplomatic Revolution’ was one cause of the Seven Years War, which broke out in 1756. Sweden was subsidized by France to enter the Seven Years War against Prussia, with whom it made a separate peace in 1762. The Duke of Cumberland, George II’s second son, was an autocratic captain-general of the army to whom fears of invasion meant job security and enhanced political power, while the cost of fighting the ensuing war averaged £13.7 million per year. Relations between the courts of the King and the Prince of Wales were soured by the latter’s coming of age and choosing his own ‘first minister’, Lord Bute, promptly backed by Pitt, whom the King disliked for his anti-Hanover views.
Administration … Council’: Newcastle’s administration had been in disarray for a month, following the loss of its chief spokesman in the Commons (William Murray, elevated by his own wish to the Lords as Lord Chief Justice Mansfield); the losses of Oswego, Minorca, and Calcutta in the summer forced the resignations of Fox and Newcastle.
ce n’est pas là leur fait: polite people, who are not for them.
tutti quanti: as many as [can receive them].
Mademoiselle’: Dayrolles’s first daughter, Christabella.
specie: coined money.
Fox … influence: Newcastle and Fox gave way to William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire (c. 1720–64), 1st Lord of the Treasury, and William Pitt (1708–78) as Secretary of State (S), who lasted until Apr. 1757. Pitt had been Fox’s ally against Newcastle. The King negotiated with Fox in Mar. 1757 but was dissuaded from reappointing him. The Lord Chancellor, Hardwicke, brought together the subsequent Pitt–Newcastle administration in June, with C’s assistance.
Duke of Cumberland … arrive there: the Army of Observation was meant to protect Hanover. Cumberland allegedly went to lead it on condition that Pitt be sacked, which he was (see note above). On 26 July he was defeated at Hastenback by a French army of 80,000 commanded by Louis, Due d’Estrées (1695–1771), Maréchal de France, who afterwards compelled him to agree to the humiliating Convention of Kloster-Zeven, which neutralized Hanoverian forces and cost him his job and his reputation.
Mr Van-haren … individuals: presumably Onno Zwier van Haren (1713–79), President of the State Council and noted for his anti-French views. Cumberland’s army was attacked by d’Estrées in retaliation for Prussia’s occupation of Saxony in 1756. In the autumn of 1756 Frederick II had already marched on Bohemia to pre-empt Austrian support for Saxony; in May 1757 he defeated the Austrians at Prague and laid siege to the city, during which over 40,000 people died. The ‘quarrel of two individuals’ refers to the 1748 cession of Silesia from Austria to Prussia in return for Prussian recognition of Francis I as Holy Roman Emperor—what triggered the Seven Years War was Frederick II’s failure to gain Maria Theresa’s assurance of her good intentions towards him.
French … irregulars: during the last year of the War of the Austrian Succession, French resources had been inadequate to support full-scale offensives; they often made use of pirates to harass ships.
Je souffre d’être: Fontenelle had died six weeks before at the age of 100. According to Maty, he said not ‘I suffer from existing’, but ‘I feel nothing but a difficulty in existing’. He is also reported to have said that his was the first death he had seen.
wound … bottoms: concluded, drunk up. See Wilson, English Proverbs, 894.
visible or invisible: Christabella Dayrolles was expecting a third child.
The installation … I can: the new Knight of the Garter was the 1st Lord of the Treasury, Devonshire. Mrs Irwine was the second of three, Anne Barry.
Miinchausen: Stanhope had from Sept. 1756 been HM Resident at Hamburg. Monsieur Münchausen is probably Philip Adolph Münchausen, Hanoverian minister in London; his brother Gerlach Adolph was minister in Hanover.
Casserolles: OED lists the first use in English as 1725.
Brest … expedition: this fortified Brittany port housed a large proportion of the French navy, but it was to the arsenal at Rochefort that the ‘great expedition’ was sent. Another disaster ensued. General Sir John Mordaunt and Admiral Hawke disagreed over naval support for an attack, the latter being unable to guarantee that his ships could enter the harbour quickly enough to pre-empt French reinforcement. The mission was abandoned and Mordaunt was court-martialled (see p. 319) but cleared.
Magnis … ausis: see note to p. 305.
Nullum numen … prudentia: see note to p. 46.
King of Prussia’s late victory: at Rossbach, 5 Nov. 1757, with the Prussians outnumbered two to one. It was as inconclusive as C observed, although followed by a greater success at Lutynia on 5 Dec.
the three General Officers: appointed to make recommendations on Mordaunt’s conduct (see note to p. 317) were Charles Spencer, 5th Earl of Sunderland and 3rd Duke of Marlborough (1706–58), a Lt.-Gen. who had become Lord Privy Seal in 1755; Lord George Sackville Germain (1716–85), former secretary to the Ld.-Lt. of Ireland (see note to p. 241), Maj.-Gen. in 1755, courtmartialled for his conduct at the Battle of Minden in 1759, and Secretary of State (C) from 1779; and John, 3rd Earl Waldegrave (d. 1784), Lt.-Gen. who served at Minden and was in active opposition during the 1760s.
Hanover neutrality: the Treaty of Kloster-Zeven, signed by Cumberland but subsequently repudiated by the British government, immobilized Hanoverian troops who had shielded Prussia’s western borders. Frederick II was compensated with an annual subsidy of £670,000, extra troops for the Army of Observation (to be placed under Ferdinand of Brunswick), and an agreement that no separate peace would be made with France or Austria.
The birthday … plate: George II was born on 10 Nov. 1683 (NS). The disgrace of the Duke of Cumberland had eased relations between the King and his grandson’s court, the mother of the future George III having been a bitter opponent of Cumberland’s designs on the Regency in 1751.
Earl Stanhope: Philip, 2nd Earl (1717–86), son of the politician who had been Walpole’s colleague until his sudden death in 1721. C’s cousin was a gifted mathematician, Fellow of the Royal Society, and a fluent speaker in the Lords.
Habeas Corpus Bill: a bill to make Habeas Corpus ad subjudiciendum non-discretionary was passed in the Commons but rejected in the Lords, upon Newcastle’s advice and George II’s wishes. The act was designed to reduce the exploitation of legal vacations as a way of evading the law and to reduce judicial discretion in permitting inquiries into the legality of detention and impressment for the armed forces.
ex abundante: from largesse.
ship-money Judges … King in Israel: ship money became controversial when revived by Charles I, who in 1635 obtained the opinion of ten judges that it could be levied on all parts of the country in emergencies, as defined by the monarch alone. A similar abuse of monarchic power was James II’s revival of the Court of High Commission in 1686, headed by Judge Jeffreys and investing responsibility for ecclesiastical and university appointments in the Crown, so dispensing with existing laws—a leading issue in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. C uses ‘Patriot’ in the common eighteenth-century sense of ‘defender of freedoms’, so suggesting that judges, never patriotic, always serve the interests of the king. Moves to strengthen the independence of the judiciary by granting judges unlimited tenure had, like the Habeas Corpus Bill, failed in 1758. The biblical reference is to Judges 21: 25 (‘In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes’), showing C’s customary distaste for absolute power.
Major Macculough … Mr. Russel: possibly Francis Russell, MP for Armagh borough. Major Macculough remains unidentified.
Swift… history: The History of the Last Four Years of the Queen was begun in 1713 and not published until 1758, when the Dublin bookseller George Faulkner (1699–1775) added it to his existing 8-vol. collection of Swift’s works in response to a pirate edition. Swift claimed that Col. George Maccartney, second to Lord Mohun, had stabbed the Duke of Hamilton, envoy to Paris, after a duel in which Hamilton was wounded; also, ‘with the best faith in the world’ but on the slender evidence of Plunket’s Memoirs of Torcy (1711), that Prince Eugene of Savoy’s commitment to the War of the Spanish Succession induced him to plot the death of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, who opposed it. For references, see vol. vii of the Blackwell Swift, ed. Davis, pp. 155 and 26–7. The Examiner was a Tory periodical started by Bolingbroke in 1710 and edited by Swift during October of that year. Mohocks was the name given to men who banded together to commit acts of violence (see Spectator no. 324, 12 Mar. 1712)—Swift mentions only ‘obscure ruffians’.
Your friend’s letter … of the whole: the Irish Parliament had been divided into three factions led by the Earl of Kildare, Archbishop George Stone of Armagh, and John Ponsonby, Speaker of the Commons. Stone and Ponsonby joined forces in 1757 to compel the autocratic Ld.-Lt. Bedford to convey Irish grievances to London.
otium cum dignitate: see note to p. 286.
Princess of Cassel … Princess Amelia: Mary (1723–72), 4th daughter of George II, was married to Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel; her elder sister Amelia (1711–86) resided with her father.
conduct of the Russians … Austria’: in 1755 Britain had agreed to pay Russia to defend Hanover in the event of war, but was also negotiating with Russia’s enemy, Prussia, to resist any attack on the German states. Russia joined the Seven Years War on the side of France and Austria, defeating the Prussian army at Gross-Jagerndorf in Aug. 1757 and suddenly retreating, perhaps because of disagreements between Empress Elizabeth and her Prussophile heir, Peter. In Jan. 1758 the Russians took Königsberg in East Prussia but again retreated, apparently because of bad weather, to be crushed by Frederick II at Zorndorf in Aug. On the accession of Peter III in 1762, Russia made peace and entered the war against Austria, a policy revoked following Peter’s murder six months later.
King of Prussia … of the year: neither the next two months nor the rest of the war were so decisive. Frederick II had advanced into Moravia to lay siege to Olomouc but was forced to abandon the operation when the Austrians threatened his supply lines. Austria’s position was to return more or less to that of 1748, with some loss of prestige: under the Treaty of Hubertusburg (1763), Silesia and Glatz reverted to Prussia and Saxony to its own elector; Prussia consented to the election of Joseph as Holy Roman Emperor. The port of Louisburg on Cape Breton Island, off Nova Scotia, had been captured by Britain in 1745, returned to France in 1748, and was recaptured in 1758 by Amherst, opening the way for the fall of Quebec in Sept. 1759. Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick (1721–92) defeated a French force almost twice the size of his own at Krefeld, 23 June 1758, securing NW Germany. France was paying 7 per cent on National Debt repayments to the fermiers générates, syndicate financiers who lent money to the government, at the same time as paying huge insurance premiums on merchant shipping; it was also committed to subsidizing Austria, while seeing its empire in America and India eroded by British successes.
Comte Bothmar … Michel: Hans Caspar von Bothmer (1727–87) was Danish ambassador to the Court of St James (C may have confused his name with that of a former Hanoverian envoy, Bothmar); Dodo Heinrich, Freiherr von Knyphausen (1729–89), was Prussian ambassador; his deputy, Andreas (or Abraham) Ludwig Michel (c.1712–82), was constantly suspected of consorting with parliamentary opposition groups throughout his 17-year posting, being recalled a number of times before his final return home in 1764.
foudre: a large tun for storing wine.
Dixi: I have said.
Molti e felice: many and happy [days].
that thy days may be long in the land: see Exodus 20: 12. Stanhope had inherited his father’s susceptibility to asthma, gout, and sudden fevers, adding to them dropsy.
the riband … Knights: three Knighthoods of the Garter were vacant at the time, one of them that of Sir Clement Cotterel (d. 1758), Master of Ceremonies and Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries. The Lord Privy Seal, Richard Grenville, 2nd Earl Temple, threatened to resign if he did not get one; eventually they were bestowed in Feb. 1760 on Temple, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, and the Marquis of Rockingham.
three thousand … Europe: Stanhope had referred to a solution for detaining prisoners of the Seven Years War.
étrennée: about to receive a present, in this case for the New Year.
Parliament … millions sterling: recent successes had made some members more enthusiastic about the cost of the war, which was to run to about £80 million by 1763.
Cardinal Bernis: FranÇois Joachim de Bernis (1715–94), protege of Mme de Pompadour. As confidential intermediary he negotiated the treaties with Austria which led to the Seven Years War, and became foreign minister in 1757. Soon after his creation as a cardinal in 1758 he received a curt dismissal from the King, impatient with French reverses in the war. His flowery verses also earned the scorn of Voltaire. C’s ‘head-piece’ and comment presumably allude to the cardinal’s hat, recently acquired, and the oath of fidelity which Bernis made to get it.
chalybeate: impregnated with iron salts.
Venus rarius colatur: Venus should be honoured rarely. Hermann Boerhaave (1668–1738) was Professor of Medicine, Botany, and Chemistry at the University of Leiden, and the most celebrated teacher of medical science in Europe. He had treated C in 1728.
Pyrmont: i.e. Bad Pyrmont, a spa town SW of the city of Hanover.
Harte … Gustavus Adolphus: Harte’s The History of the Life of Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, 2 vols. (1759), was dedicated to C with the words, ‘It is moreover an addition to my good fortune, that these imperfect labours have been perused, protected, and encouraged by One, whose single approbation is a sort of universal passport throughout all Europe.’
Vertumnus … Priapus: Vertumnus, an Etruscan god associated with profitable trading; Pomona, Roman goddess of fruit; and Priapus, the fertility god noted for his enormous phallus, hence C’s nostalgic remark. Statues of Priapus were often used as scarecrows.
Levius … nefas: what cannot be set right becomes easier to bear through patience. Horace, Odes, 1. 24. 19.
Prince Ferdinand… the latter: dementi means failure, summa summarum the total of totals (from Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, iii. 817). C was wrong to be pessimistic: although Ferdinand had been defeated by the French at Bergen, near Frankfurt-On-Main, on 13 Apr., he was to gain revenge at Minden, against great odds, on i Aug., when the war began to go the way of Britain and her allies. The Elector of Brandenburg was Frederick II of Prussia.
an History … perhaps Livy: C had just read A. history of Scotland during the Reigns of Queen Mary and James VI until his Accession to the Crown of England, 2 vols. (1759), by William Robertson (1721–93), whose lofty style was also admired by Hume and Gibbon. His peers, in C’s view, were Enrico Caterino Davila (1576–1631), author of Historia delle guerre civili di Francia (1630); Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540), who wrote Storia d’Italia (1561); and Titus Livius (c.59 BC-AD 17), whose Ab Urbe Condita is a history of Rome in 142 books.
Lübeck, Altona: Lübeck is a Baltic port in Schleswig-Holstein; Altona a small resort outside Hamburg, now a suburb.
aequam … mentem: when things become difficult, remember to keep your cool. Horace, Odes, 2. 3. 1.
the bark: i.e. quinine, extracted from the bark of Cinchona trees, powdered, and often used to control fever.
The French … believe and tremble: the threat was more real than C supposed. Bernis’s successor, Choiseul, planned to restore French losses by attacking England from Ostend, the Clyde from Brest and Toulon, and Ireland with the help of a privateer, Thurot. Newcastle in particular believed and trembled (see James 2: 19), while Pitt trusted coolly to the British Navy, which destroyed a large number of ships sailing from Brest, so thwarting the plan.
While somebody … political faith: a reference to the disgraced Duke of Cumberland, former captain-general of the army and ally of Fox in manœuvrings for political power. See also p. 311 and note.
Arthur Charles Stanhope: C’s cousin, d. 1770, and father of his heir, whose mother was A. Stanhope’s second wife. The Edwyn Stanhope referred to in the letter was Arthur’s first cousin (b. 1729) and, like C, a great-great-grandson of the 1st Earl of Chesterfield.
My boy … manna: C gave his godson and heir a sweet juice often used as a laxative. Philip Stanhope, later 5 th Earl of Chesterfield (1755–1815), had been under C’s direction since the age of 4; his sister, favourably cited at the end of the letter, was called Margaret. Neither his career nor his manner proved much more distinguished than C’s son’s: Fanny Burney, Diary, v. 92, said he had ‘as little good breeding as any man I ever met with’; and while he was friendly with George III, he never exceeded his good fortune in gaining the nominal post of ambassador extraordinary to Madrid in 1784, spending the rest of his working days in a series of minor government positions.
Dr. Plumptre: probably Dr Robert Plumptre (1723–88), like Arthur Stanhope a native of Nottinghamshire. In 1764 he was President of Queen’s College, Cambridge, having been Vice-Chancellor in 1760, and had the dubious honour in 1769 of being appointed Professor of Casuistry.
jour third marriage: his second wife, Margaret Headlam, had died in 1763; in Dec. 1765 he married Frances Broade, his proposal to marry C’s niece, Gertrude Hotham (see p. 338), having been rejected.
My brother … my boy: C’s younger brother, Sir William Stanhope, had in 1762 married Ann Delaval, who was forty years his junior. They separated a year later, C proclaiming this in a letter of 1 Sept. 1763 as ‘the best office that can be done, to most married people’. His fear was that any offspring would disinherit his appointed heir; that his brother was turned 60 boded ill for a legitimate alternative. This was a familiar double standard among those who, like C, liberally defended the interests of any illegitimate offspring of the male line.
To suckle fools … beer: Othello, II. i. 159. C is unconcerned that the speaker is lago; Desdemona had asked him what a woman ‘ever fair and never proud’ was good for.
Mr. Dodd: Dr William Dodd (1729–77) was the godson’s tutor from 1765, on the recommendation of Bishop Samuel Squire of St David’s, whose chaplain he then was. C had thought him of ‘unexceptionable character and very great learning’ and called him ‘the best preacher in England’. Only a year after C’s death he was found guilty of simony and in 1777 was hanged for forging his former pupil’s signature on a bond for £4,200.
paulo major a canamus: we sing in celebration of a small coming-of-age.
do as … done by: see Matthew 7: 12.
haec olim … juvabit: see note to p. 307.
the Sphynx’s riddle: i.e. ‘What is it that has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?’ The answer, supplied by Oedipus, is man, who crawls, walks, and leans on a staff at different times of life.
Sttabia: i.e. Schwaben, in SW Bavaria.
suos quisque … manes: each of us suffers his own punishment. From Virgil, Aeneid, 6. 743: during Aeneas’s visit to hell, his dead father Anchises explains that all who live there pay the penalty for their former sins.
ex Ministres: the Marquis of Rockingham’s administration of July 1765 had no place for allies of George Grenville (1712–70), who had been Ist Lord of the Treasury since Apr. 1763. These included Bedford, Grenville’s President of the Council; Sandwich, his Secretary of State (N); Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Gower (1721–1803), former Lord Chamberlain of the Household; and George Montagu Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax (1716–71), who had been Secretary of State (S). The chief bone of contention was the Stamp Act (see p. 347), which Grenville had passed and Rockingham wanted repealed. Neither Grenville nor Bedford returned to office, even after Rockingham’s fall in Aug. 1766.
Signa canant: the signal is given [to fight]. From Virgil, Aeneid, 10. 310. D’ailleurs means besides.
better poet than philosopher: in the 17305 Harte’s poetry had attracted the favourable notice of Pope; during the illness to which C refers he wrote a collection of poems, The Amaranth (1767).
Mr. Larpent: John Larpent (1710–97) was chief clerk at the Foreign Office, overseeing the income and expenditure of Britain’s embassies and residencies.
les Antipodes des Graces: in Moliere’s Les Précieuses Ridicules., ix. 34–6, Magdelon declares that anyone who does not believe Paris to be the centre of all that is polite and cultured must be ‘at the Antipodes of reason’.
Maussades: surly, sullen.
rule of the Gospel… find: see Matthew 7:7.
les rieurs … quartier: the laughers of their own circle.
Stamp-duty … les dragonades: dragonades: after Louis XIV’s harrying of Protestants with dragoons, means persecution with the aid of troops. This measure was being considered to enforce Grenville’s Stamp Act (Mar. 1765), which introduced a tax payable on newspapers and legal and other documents, and was to bring in c.£60,000 p.a. for the up-keep of British troops in America.
Prince of Brunswick’s riband: granted to Charles William Ferdinand (1735–1806), nephew of Prince Ferdinand; he too had fought with distinction during the Seven Years War. In 1764 he married George Ill’s sister, Augusta. His uncle’s garter had been bestowed in 1760.
Will Finch … Lord Bolingbroke: William Finch (1691–1766), C’s successor at The Hague in 1732 and then Vice-Chamberlain of the Household, had married Lady Charlotte Fermor in 1746; Francis Greville, 1st Earl Brooke and Warwick (1719–73) married Elizabeth Hamilton in 1742. Frederick St John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke (1734–87), nephew of the politician, was an unlucky gambler who in 1767 decided to replace his wife, Lady Diana Spencer, with ‘a rich monster’. A divorce was obtained in 1768 and Lady Diana married Sir Topham Beauclerk; her former husband went mad in his vain, ten-year search for a replacement.
pour le peu … chagrin: for the few good days left to us, nothing is so baleful as a deep disappointment.
Aristides: see note to p. 171.
Lacedaemonians … drunk: Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus (28. 4), says that the Spartans made their Helot slaves drunk to be displayed at public eating-places (not only for children).
Garde-fou: a balustrade or rail.
Ne quid Nimis: nothing in excess. From Ausonius, Septem Sapientum Sententiae, 49.
bien narrer … narrer trop: to relate information well, or with excessive refinement.
Mr. Pitt … Earl of Chatham: Pitt returned to power in Aug. 1766. His peerage, partly dictated by his being too ill to manage the Commons, and partly by his wife’s having been made Baroness Chatham at the end of his previous term of office (1761), was widely seen as a betrayal comparable to Pulteney’s self-elevation after Walpole’s fall in 1742. He lasted until Oct. 1768.
Lord Bute and a great lady: a reference to the liaison of John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute (1713–92), first minister from 1761 to 1763, with George III’s mother, the Dowager Princess Augusta; this had begun with Bute’s protection of the future king following the death of the Prince of Wales in 1751. That Bute was the éminence grise behind recent events was a popular Whig fiction in 1766.
Stanley … to decide: Hans Stanley (c. 1720–80), former Lord of the Admiralty, was chosen to negotiate a secret alliance between Britain, Prussia, and Russia, which foundered before he even left London; Welbore Ellis, Ist Baron Mendip (1713–1802), married to Elizabeth Stanhope (daughter of C’s brother William), former Secretary at War, was made a Knight of the Bath in 1766 and went to Spain for talks concerning the Falkland Islands dispute of that year; William Petty, Lord Shelburne (1737–1805), went on to become first minister in 1782; Charles Townshend (1725–67) had survived under Grenville and Rockingham and was Chatham’s chancellor, seeing his first budget voted out.
otium cum dignitate: see note to p. 286.
Miss Chudkigh… Leicester-fields: Elizabeth Chudleigh (1720–88) was a sensation from the moment she made her society début, topless, at a ball attended by George II. She kept secret her marriage to Augustus Hervey, from 1775 Lord Bristol, in order to remain a Maid of Honour; all was (again) revealed when she married the Duke of Kingston in 1769, only to be tried for bigamy. Her London parties, attended by foreign dignitaries as well as the Prince of Wales (hence the disapproval of the Dowager Princess, of Leicester House), equipped her for her Continental tour of 1765–6; before Dresden she had been in Berlin, downing two bottles of wine and falling over while attempting to dance at a royal wedding reception.
The Countess of Suffolk. Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk: (1681–1767) had been George II’s mistress but was displaced from influence soon after his coronation in 1727 by that of his wife, who disliked C partly because of his association with her, which dated back to 1716. She retired from court in 1734 and corresponded often with C, Pope, Swift, Bolingbroke, and Horace Walpole.
Mrs. Wagstaff: the Countess, unable to match C’s jew d’esprit, had asked Horace Walpole to reply in the name of her housemaid, Elizabeth Wagstaff.
Miss Hotham: Henrietta Gertrude Hotham (1753–1816), daughter of C’s sister Gertrude, became intimate with the Countess of Suffolk and was heir to her fortune.
réfugiés … Temple: Temple was the usual slang word for a Protestant church in France.
Conway … Lord President: Fd. Marshall Henry Seymour Conway (1721–95) had been Secretary of State (S) under Rockingham and changed to the northern department under Chatham, whose factiousness and colonial policies he soon found disagreeable. On 30 May 1767 he expressed his wish to resign, but was compelled to continue until the following January, when he was succeeded by Thomas Thynne, 3rd Viscount Weymouth (1734–96). The Lord President of the Council, Robert Henley, 1st Earl Northington (c.1708–72), had to wait only until December to give way to Earl Gower (see note to p. 341). Chatham suffered a mental breakdown in the spring of 1767, and from May of that year until Oct. of the next, when he at last resigned, he was virtually housebound, refusing to see anyone except his doctor.
what Lord Bute pleases: see note to p. 355.
Comte F lemming: former Saxon minister to Turin and England. See p. 69 and note.
Dr. Addington: Dr Anthony Addington (1713–90) was as notorious for his mediation between his reclusive patient and other ministers as for his often unlikely prescriptions. George III tried to persuade Chatham to find him an assistant; he was finally vindicated by his appointment in 1788 as Surgeon to the King.
new Parliament… five thousand: the election of 1768 was to see the return of nineteen ‘nabob’ MPs, men who had made their fortunes in the Indies and raised the price of a parliamentary seat.
your request: Stanhope had requested leave from his Residency at Dresden in order to recover from sickness. It was granted with a reduction of salary. Lord Weymouth was Secretary of State (N).
Dr. Maty: Matthew Maty (1718–76) became both MD and Ph.D. at Leiden in 1740; he attended Stanhope in 1763. Secretary of the Royal Society in 1765, he became principal librarian at the British Museum in 1772. He defended C against Johnson over the dictionary episode in his Journal britannique ‘, for which Johnson described him as ‘that black dog’. His Memoirs of the Earl of Chesterfield were completed by his son-in-law and added to C’s Miscellaneous Works (1777).
the Duke of Graf ton: Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd Duke of Grafton (1735–1811), was 1st Lord of the Treasury from 1766 to 1770.
Locus … myself: there is room for several uninvited guests. From Horace, Epistles., 1. 5. 28. Chatham’s illness and the premature death in Sept. 1767 of his chancellor, Townshend, set off a slow decline in the Ministry: an unstable coalition was formed with the Bedford faction in Dec. 1767, while Grafton assumed more of the power which Chatham was becoming incapable of wielding, continuing in office for 18 months after Chatham’s resignation in Oct. 1768.
the Faculty: i.e. of Medicine, at the University of Leiden. See note to p. 328.
Duchess of Somerset: probably Anna Maria Bonnell, wife of Webb Seymour, the 10th Duke.
a speedy recovery: Stanhope died on 16 Nov. A few days later C found that he had been married for nine years.
Mrs. Eugenia Stanhope: Stanhope’s wife since 1760, born c.1720 the natural daughter of a wealthy Irishman, Domville. Under the name of Peters, she had met Stanhope in Paris in 1750, at the lodgings of Lord Charlemont, an Irish peer on tour; after marriage she lived in secret lodgings both in London and Germany. There were two children, Charles and Philip.
the manner … complied with: Stanhope was buried by a Catholic priest at Vaucluse. His mother, Madelena Elizabeth du Bouchet (b. 1702), was a Huguenot and complained to his widow, who wrote to C for support. C had met du Bouchet in July 1731 during his embassy to The Hague; she was then governess in an influential family, the Wassanaer-Twickells, whom C was cultivating for political reasons. She followed C to London in 1732 to give birth to Stanhope, and became a British citizen. C left her £500 in his will ‘as a small reparation for the injury I did her’.
Alderman Faulkner: the Dublin bookseller had been elected Alderman earlier in the year. See also note to p. 322.
Dublin Society … well-wisher: a bust of C had been placed in the gallery of the Dublin Society. For Madden, Swift, and Prior, see notes to pp. 38, 11, and 36 respectively.
Monsieur Perny: master of Loughborough House, a Marylebone boarding school formerly under the direction of Mr and Mrs Robert, when C’s godson and heir had attended.
Sphynx’s riddle: see note to p. 340.
five righteous …found: Genesis 18: 28. God said that if He found fifty righteous in Sodom he would spare it; Abraham thought there might ‘lack five of the fifty righteous’.
Mr. Hawkins: possibly Caesar Hawkins (1711–86), sergeant surgeon to George III, or his brother Pennell (d. 1791), also a surgeon.
water-drinkers … good: see Horace, Epistle’s, 1. 19. 2.
clothing the naked: see Matthew 25: 36.
Pandora’s box: Pandora, according to Hesiod the first woman, found a jar containing all the evils of the world (Works and Days, 70–95). C had used the same expression when describing the ‘poor crazy deformed body’ of his friend Pope.
Lord Bristol: George William Hervey, 2nd Earl of Bristol (1721–75), had been Ld.-Lt. of Ireland from 1766 to 1770 without once setting foot there. In 1771 he was Groom of the Stole to George III.
Mr——’s conversion: sometimes thought to refer to Stanhope’s conversion to Catholicism, but a reference to an unknown convert to Methodism seems more likely given C’s subsequent ironic remarks.
et cantare … parati: ready to sing as well as to reply. Virgil, Eclogues., 7. 5.
the boy … d’Eyverdun: Georges d’Eyverdun was a Swiss critic and friend of Gibbon, whom he followed to England in 1765. He and Gibbon dedicated to C a collection of their essays, Mémoires littéraires de la Grande Bretagne (1769). C asked him in 1771 to act as his godson’s ‘Governor’ during a continental tour on which they embarked the following year.
élève: breeding.
Doctor Warren: Richard Warren (1731–97) had been physician to George III since 1762, succeeding his father-in-law. The wealthiest doctor in England, he attended C from 1772 and was present at his death.
To his Godson and Heir: written in 1768.
Middlesex … Westminster: a grand jury decides whether there is a ‘probable cause’ of wrong-doing, and if there is, the defendant is tried before a petty (petit) jury. C seems to be referring to his godson’s likely chances of success in Parliament if his entrance into London society and the Court does not go well.
Martin … Peter or Jack: in Swift’s A Tale of a Tub (1704), Martin, who represents the Anglican Church, shuns extravagance in dress but finds that he cannot strip too much away ‘without damaging the cloth’; his compromise contrasts with the high fashion of Peter (the Catholic Church) and the zealous plainness of Jack (Calvinism).
tell me … what you are: see note to p. 55.
Pedarii Senatores: see note to p. 296.
Verba … sequentur: the words will come of their own accord. Horace, Ars Poetica, 311.
exordium … peroratio: the introduction and conclusion in a seven-part classical oration.
servare … tueri: stay within bounds and watch them carefully. Adapted from Virgil, Aeneid, 10. 502.
Volto sciolto: see note to p. 105.
ridicule … perhaps for ever: C is dissenting from Shaftesbury’s belief that ridicule is one means of recognizing the truth. See his An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour (1709), 1. i.
censor morum: censor of morals.
Repandez … ingrats: lavish your gifts on others royally, do not refuse them even to the least virtuous, pay no heed to whether they are acknowledged: it is noble and fine to make people ungrateful. From Voltaire’s Précis de l’ecclésiaste, 199–202.