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LORD CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS TO HIS SON.* LOOKING at these letters as a whole, and before making any detailed examination of their contents, one cannot but find in them a really pathetic interest. Was there ever a corre- spondence that showed more perseverance and fidelity P For more than thirty years this man of the world, mindful of an obligation which many of his fellows would have forgotten or neglected, continues his counsels and encouragements, the heartiest of praises, and the gentlest of censures. We pass from mythology, told to " mon cher enfant" in the simplest French, through a series of letters never intermitted except when the writer and his correspondent happened to be together, down to the latest of all with its hopeful words, obviously little believed by the writer, but such as might possibly comfort the dying man to whom they are addressed. It is impossible not to be convinced that the man who took all this trouble had a heart. But it is equally impossible, when one comes to study the letters themselves, not to feel that he had very grave defects,—we say " defects " rather than faults, because, to borrow a metaphor from science, there are certain lines in the spectrum of his character which are abso- lutely wanting.
It is not too much to say that Lord Chesterfield had no moral sense, so far as the relation between the sexes is con- cerned. It is needless to dwell on the advice which he gives to his son to cultivate irregular attachments to married women. Mr. Charles Strachey, who does his best for his hero, attempts no serious defence. He hints that too much atten- tion has been given to the matter, seeing that this pernicious counsel "is to be discovered in some seven or eight letters only out of a total number of four hundred and twenty-one?' Only seven or eight ! That is but a poor excuse, especially when one remembers that the time when counsel of such a kind was possible, even to the very loosest of mentors, was but short. This shuts out all the early letters, while the later are excluded for a cognate reason. In them the advice would be belated as in the others it would be pre- mature. In Letter CLXI., written when young Stanhope was eighteen, we find what we may call a formal depreciation of woman. Three years before we have a reproof of some sentiment of the kind on which the boy had ventured,— " Among women, as among men, there are good as well as bad." But now the time has come, thinks the mentor, for his enlightenment "Women are only children of a larger growth for solid reasoning, good sense, I never knew one in my life that had it A man of
sense only trifles with them, plays with them." Nothing could have a more disastrous effect on a young man's view of life than such language. It looks like the deliberate breaking down of the respect which is one of his best safeguards against vice. The first actual suggestion comes in CLXXXII., written a year or so later. But perhaps the most significant of Lord Chesterfield's utterances, or what may be described as the locus classicus on this subject, is CCXLE. It begins :— • The Letters of the Earl of Chestelfield to his Son. Edited, with an Intro- duction, by Charles Strachey, and with Notes by Annette Calthrop. 2 vols. London : Methuen and Co. [128.1 "I have seldom or never written to you upon the subject of religion and morality." As we go on we find the writer giving most admirable advice, and setting up the highest of standards. "Your moral character must be not only pure, but, like Caesar's wife, unsuspected. The least speck or blemish upon it is fatal I will recommend to you a most scrupulous tenderness for your moral character, and the utmost care not to say or do the least thing that may ever taint it." But it turns out that "moral character" really means veracity. "Be, and be reckoned, a man of pleasure, as well as a man of business." Nothing could prove more conclusively that in this matter the writer's mind was, so to speak, a blank. He positively could not see that moral purity—the use of the particular word is really very strange—was infringed by adultery. His views on this subject were pagan, and indeed not up to the best pagan level. The special advice which he tendered to his son would have seemed shocking to a thoughtful Roman, ruinous to the family, and so to the State. Of the yet higher ethical con- ception of the trir sanctus Lord Chesterfield seems to have been wholly incapable.
On religion he was less outspoken. "A collateral security to virtue" is one of his definitions, and probably that which most appealed to him. It was a safeguard of society ; for this reason it must not be lightly spoken of ; but the idea of its supplying a rule of life to men of sense was wholly alien to his habits of thought. It is significant of this point of view that he can see no motive in Luther but a jealousy on behalf of his own Augustinian Order that the lucrative sale of indulgence had been given to the Dominicans. As for Loyola, he has nothing to say of him but that he was a "madman." Probably the eighteenth-century contempt for enthusiasm never had a more complete representative than Lord Chester- field.
Mr. Charles Strachey has achieved a considerable success in rehabilitating Chesterfield as a statesman. He had the advan- tage of not being accessible to bribery. He had sufficient money, he had rank which office would not materially increase, and he bad mental resources which rendered him independent of the activities of public life. What he did in the region of politics he did well. He held for three years (1728-31) the post of Ambassador at the Hague, more important then than now, and acquitted himself in it with honour. In 1745 he went as Lord-Lieutenant to Ireland. He was there for less than two-thirds of a year, but he did some good. The work interested him; he always spoke afterwards of the Irish as his "countrymen." Returning to England, lie accepted the office of Secretary of State for the Northern De- partment. This he held for something less than two years, resigning it because he could not get on with the Duke of Newcastle. This was an incapacity which he shared with most men of sense and honour. In fact, Chesterfield's conduct in public life, whether he accepted office or refused it, was the conduct of a man of honour, who knew . the best interests of his country and was profoundly attached to it. To this, the strongest and best side of his character, Mr. Charles Strachey has done full justice. In 1757 Chesterfield Vras able to do good service by bringing together the elder Pitt and Newcastle (with both of whom he was on unfriendly terms). After this came his retirement. In 1768 his son died, leaving a widow and two children,—he had success- fully concealed his marriage. Chesterfield had probably ceased to hope much from him—he was hopelessly mediocre, though certainly not "meanly bad "—but he must have
been troubled by this waste of all his labour. He died five years afterwards, a lonely and unhappy old man. If it is needful to point the moral of his life, we may find it, as we may find most things, in Shakespeare :—
" The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us."
What Edmund was to Gloucester in Sing Lear, the dis- appointment of his life, that, though in the most diverse way, was William Stanhope to Lord Chesterfield.
Miss Calthrop's biographical and historical notes are helpful. If it had come within her, province to criticise or correct, she might have pointed out the strange taste by which Greek epigrams are recommended to young. Stanhope's "supreme contempt," the impossibility of the ideal that the lad "must absolutely speak all the , modern languages al purely and correctly as the natives of the respective countries "—who knows more people speaking even one foreign language perfectly than he can count on his fingers p —and the curious mistake of supposing that it was Regulus who intimidated King Porsenna.
We can only say, in conclusion, that though the teachings of the man whom George IL, with that instinct for rough but sound epigram which he often displayed, called "a little tea. table scoundrel," are, in regard to sexual morality, to our saint utterly base and detestable, we welcome Mr. Strachey's notable and scholarly edition of the letters as a real contribution to our literature. With all their faults, Lord Chesterfield's letters remain a classic which must be read and known by all students of our literature, and to Mr. Charles Strachey has fallen the not inconsiderable honour of supplying us with the editio princeps.
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