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XII: The Publication of Chesterfield's Letters to his Son
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Practically no attention has hitherto been paid to the incidents of the publication of Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, perhaps on the assumption that once this publication was mentioned, everything pertinent had been said. Mrs. Stanhope, in her preface to the first edition, asserted that the letters were genuine, and that she had in her possession all of the originals. So much she told the public; how it was that she came to arrange for the publication of these letters and under what circumstances they were presented to the world were not told, and have been only imperfectly understood. References to the subject have been not only scattered and incomplete, but even at times inaccurate. Yet it is still possible to present most of the story.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1936
References
1 See Lord Mahon, Letters and Works of Chesterfield (London, 1845), i, xxv, also xviii; Lord Carnarvon, Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Godson (Oxford, 1890), p. li; and W.H. Craig, Life of Lord Chesterfield (London, 1907), pp. 288, 354, 355. William Ernst (i.e., Ernst-Browning), Memoirs of the Life of Chesterfield (London, 1893), and Roger Coxon, Chesterfield and his Critics (London, 1925), do not mention the subject. Bonamy Dobrée, Letters of Chesterfield (London and New York, 1932), i, 224, refers to one aspect only, the injunction.
2 Of Mrs. Eugenia Stanhope, aside from what the letters reveal and the circumstances attendant upon their publication, the principal information is to be found in Lord Charlemont's letter to Lord Bruce (July? 1774), Historical MSS. Commission, Twelfth Report Appendix, part x. The Manuscripts of James, first Earl of Charlemont, edited by J. T. Gilbert (London, 1891), i, 328–330; and in Mrs. Delany's letter to her brother Bernard Granville (4 September, 1774), Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany, edited by Lady Llanover (London, 1861–62), v, 28. The Gentleman's Magazine (September 1783), p. 806, gives in its “obituaries of considerable persons,” under date of 6 September, “At Limp-field, Surrey, Mrs. Eugenia Stanhope, relict of Phil. S. esq; natural son to the late E. of Chesterfield; and the mediate publisher of his lordship's letters.”
3 Memoirs of Lord Chesterfield, by Matthew Maty, M.D., 2d edition (London, 1779), Vol. i of the Miscellaneous Works, 352.
4 Charlemont, op. cit., i, 329.
5 Gibbon, Miscellaneous Works (London, 1837), p. 259; Georges Deyverdun, Gibbon's lifelong friend, had been engaged by Chesterfield as his godson's tutor and still served in that capacity.
6 Historical MSS. Commission, Manuscripts of Earl Bathurst (London, 1923), pp. 696–698. Also in Walpole, Supplement, iii, 18 ff.
7 The Letters of Horace Walpole, edited by Mrs. Paget Toynbee (Oxford, 1902–1905), viii, 440.
8 Boswell's Life of Johnson, edited by G. B. Hill (Oxford, 1887), i, 264 f.
9 Printed by the kindness of Mr. Arthur Zinkin, of Indianapolis; it is among themanuscript letters to the godson which the Earl of Carnarvon published, as are the other MSS printed below.
10 A search of the records was most kindly made for me by Mr. C. T. Flower, Secretary.
11 In November and again in February.
12 Not to mention the widow's loss of 1500 guineas.
13 St. James's Magazine, i, 81 (the March number, published 1 April).—I am indebted for a copy of the Strictures to Miss A. A. Nunns, of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, at Madison, where there is a copy of this magazine.
14 Charles Ambler, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the High Court of Chancery. 2d edition (1828), by John E. Blunt, pp. 737–740. Reprinted in the English Reports, xxvii (Chancery vii), p. 476 f., from which I have taken it.—This citation was obtained from a remark and note in the Benenden Letters, edited by C. F. Hardy (London, 1901), p. 121. Augustine Birrell, in his essay on Lord Chesterfield, In the Name of the Bodleian (New York, 1905), p. 118, mentions Ambler.
15 For the curious history of these Characters—which were not burnt—see below.
16 Law Records.
17 Printed by the kindess of Mr. Zinkin. Now first published. The letter is apparently in Hotham's autograph.
18 5 January, 1775; p. 12.
19 Apparently Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice. But the case was heard by Lord Apsley.
20 Walpole, op. cit., viii, 440–441; 7 April, 1774.
21 On 28 March he addressed a letter to Sir Horace Mann from Arlington Street, London (ibid., viii, 435).
22 They still exist, in the possession of Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach of New York, through whose courtesy I examined them in June, 1931.
23 Dr. Maty died before the work was completed (2 July, 1776) and was succeeded by his son-in-law, Dr. J. O. Justamond.
24 Maty, op. cit., 12, n. 3.
25 This was probably John Lyon, 9th Earl of Strathmore (d. 1776). It was his father who was first cousin to Lord Chesterfield, through Elizabeth Stanhope, the 9th Earl of Strathmore's grandmother and half-sister of Chesterfield's father. See Burke's Peerage. Strathmore is apparently the only lord S— of the time who was closely related.
26 One example will establish this plagiarism.
CHESTERFIELD
[Lord Scarborough] was a strong, but not an eloquent or florid speaker in parliament. He spoke so unaffectedly the honest dictates of his heart, that truth and virtue, which never want, and seldom wear, ornaments, seemed only to borrow his voice. This gave such an astonishing weight to all he said, that he more than once carried an unwilling majority after him.
MATY
Lord Scarborough was a strong, though not an eloquent or florid speaker in parliament; his discourses were the honest dictates of his heart. Truth and virtue seemed to borrow his voice, and gave such weight to all he said, that he more than once carried an unwilling majority after him. (op. cit., 73)
The Character of Scarborough appeared both in the original edition of the Miscellaneous Works and in the Characters. Other examples of plagiarism are to be found on pp. 68 (Pulteney), 72–73 (Granville), 51 n. 12 (Walpole), and 52 n. 14 (George I); the last two are inserted with quotation marks but no indication of source. Possibly Dr. Maty was responsible for those in the text and Dr. Justamond for those in the notes.
27 Walpole, op. cit., x, 27.
28 Ibid., x. 39.
29 Mrs. Montagu “Queen of the Blues,” edited by Reginald Blunt (London, 1923), i, 344–345.
30 The names now being (new Characters marked by *): George I, *George II, Queen Caroline, *Lord Townshend, *Mr. Pope, *Lord Bolingbroke, Mr. Pulteney, Sir Robert Walpole, *Lord Granville, *Mr. Pelham, *Rvichard, Earl of Scarborough (first published at the end of Vol. i of the Miscellaneous Works, 1777; not included by Flexney, but appearing twice in the octavo edition of the Miscellaneous Works and of course twice when the appendix was bound with the quarto edition), Lord Hardwicke, *the Duke of Newcastle, *the Duke of Bedford, Mr. Fox, and Mr. Pitt.
31 The four Characters added by Lord Mahon were: The Mistresses of George I, Lady Suffolk, Dr. Arbuthnot, and Lord Bute, with a sketch of his administration. In the manuscript, the first two of these form one Character, entitled The Mistresses of George I and II. In publishing them, Lord Mahon made considerable omissions and did not indicate bowdlerizations. Prudence would not have required so considerable excisions as were made.—Not the least remarkable of the manuscript Characters are those of Bolingbroke and Pitt, both of which exist in duplicate, showing revision; in the collection are also three versions of Chesterfield's thoughts for the future education of his godson (the third and most detailed, while not holograph, is signed and dated 25 December, 1770) and two versions of the letter to the godson to be delivered after the earl's death. It may be noted that Lord Mahon's text of this letter (ii, 424–432) is a composite of the two manuscripts, with a number of omissions. Neither is signed. Although Chesterfield averred that he never rewrote a letter in familiar correspondence (to Prior, 23 September, 1746; Dobrée, iii, 771), he is thus shown to have worked with great care in some of his compositions. Two of the Characters, furthermore, were written on only the right half of the page, leaving the left half for corrections and insertions.
32 In the possession of Mr. Zinkin. Unpublished.
33 Printed by the kindness of Mr. Zinkin. Now first published.
34 Curiously enough, Lord Mahon seems to have been unaware of this supplement, and the thirty-nine letters are found neither in his edition, nor in Bradshaw's, which is based upon his (John Bradshaw, Letters of Chesterfield [London, 1892], 3 vols.). The best recent edition of the Letters to his Son, edited by Sir Charles Strachey (London, 1901), contains these additional letters, as does Dobrée's new standard collection of all of the earl's letters.