CHESTERFIELD, PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, 4th EARL OF (1694-1773), son of Philip Stanhope, 3rd earl (2673— 1726), and Elizabeth Savile, daughter of George Savile, marquess of Halifax, was born in London on Sept. 22, 1694. The care of the boy devolved upon his grandmother, the marchioness of Halifax. His education, began under a private tutor, was contin ued (1712) at Trinity Hall, Cambridge ; here he remained little more than a year, but seems to have acquired a considerable knowledge of ancient and modern languages. His university train ing was supplemented (1714) by a continental tour, untrammelled by a governor; at The Hague his ambition for the applause awarded to adventure made a gamester of him, and at Paris he began, from the same motive, that worship of the conventional Venus, the serious inculcation of which has earned for him the largest and most unenviable part of his reputation.
The accession of George I. brought him back to England. His relative, James Stanhope (afterwards 1st Earl Stanhope), the king's favourite minister, procured for him the place of gentle man of the bedchamber to the prince of Wales. In 1715 he en tered the House of Commons as Lord Stanhope of Shelf ord and member for St. Germans. In 1726 his father died, and Lord Stanhope became earl of Chesterfield. He took his seat in the Upper House, and his oratory, never effective in the Commons by reason of its want of force and excess of finish, at once be came a power. In 1728 Chesterfield was sent to The Hague as ambassador. In this place his tact and temper, his dexterity and discrimination, enabled him to do good service, and he was re warded with Walpole's friendship, a Garter and the place of lord high steward. In 5732 there was born to him, by a certain Mlle. du Bouchet, the son, Philip Stanhope, for whose advice and in struction were afterwards written the famous Letters. He ne gotiated the second treaty of Vienna in 1731 and in the next year, being somewhat broken in health and fortune, he resigned his embassy and returned to England. A few months' rest enabled him to resume his seat in the Lords, of which he was one of the acknowledged leaders. He supported the ministry, but his alle giance was not the blind fealty Walpole exacted of his followers. The Excise bill, the great premier's favourite measure, was ve hemently opposed by him in the Lords and by his three brothers in the Commons. Walpole bent before the storm and abandoned the measure ; but Chesterfield was summarily dismissed from his stewardship. For the next two years he led the opposition in the Upper House, leaving no stone unturned to effect Walpole's downfall. In 1741 he signed the protest for Walpole's dismissal and went abroad on account of his health. He visited Voltaire at Brussels and spent some time in Paris, where he associated with the younger Crebillon, Fontenelle and Montesquieu. In 1742 Walpole fell, and Carteret was his real, though not his nominal, successor. AIthough Walpole's administration had been over thrown largely by Chesterfield's efforts the new ministry did not count Chesterfield either in its ranks or among its supporters. He remained in opposition, distinguishing himself by the courtly bitterness of his attacks on George II., who learned to hate him violently. In 1743 a new journal, Old England; or, the Constitu tional Journal, appeared. For this paper Chesterfield wrote under the name of "Jeffrey Broadbottom." A number of pamphlets, in some of which Chesterfield had the help of Edmund Waller, fol lowed. His energetic campaign against George II. and his gov ernment won the gratitude of the dowager duchess of Marl borough, who left him £20,000 as a mark of her appreciation. In 1744 the king was compelled to abandon Carteret, and the coali tion or "Broad Bottom" party, led by Chesterfield and Pitt, came into office. In the troublous state of European politics the earl's conduct and experience were more useful abroad than at home, and he was sent to The Hague as ambassador a second time. The object of his mission was to persuade the Dutch to join in the War of the Austrian Succession and to arrange the details of their assistance. The success of his mission was com plete ; and on his return a few weeks afterwards he received the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland—a place he had long coveted.
Short as it was, Chesterfield's Irish administration was of great service to his country, and is unquestionably that part of his political life which does him most honour. To have conceived and carried out a policy, which, with certain reservations, Burke himself might have originated and owned, is no small title to regard. The earl showed himself finely capable in practice as in theory, vigorous and tolerant, a man to be feared and a leader to be followed ; he took the government entirely into his own hands, repressed the jobbery traditional to the office, established schools and manufactures, and at once conciliated and kept in check the Orange and Roman Catholic factions. In 1746, however, he had to exchange the lord-lieutenancy for the place of Secretary of State. With a curious respect for those theories which his familiarity with the secret social history of France had caused him to entertain, he hoped and attempted to retain a hold over the king through the influence of Lady Yarmouth. The influence of Newcastle and Sandwich, however, was too strong for him; he was thwarted and over-reached; and in 1748 he resigned the seals. He declined any knowledge of the Apology for a late Resig nation, in a Letter from an English Gentleman to his Friend at The Hague, which ran through four editions in 1748, but there is little doubt that he was, at least in part, the author.
The dukedom offered him by George II., whose ill-will his fine tact had overcome, was refused. He continued for some years to attend the Upper House and to take part in its proceedings. In 1751, seconded by Lord Macclesfield, president of the Royal Society, and Bradley, the eminent mathematician, he distinguished himself greatly in the debates on the calendar, and succeeded in making the new style a fact. Deafness, however, was gradually affecting him and he withdrew little by little from society and the practice of politics. In 1755 occurred the famous dispute with Johnson over the dedication to the English Dictionary. In Johnson sent Chesterfield, who was then Secretary of State, a prospectus of his Dictionary, which was acknowledged by a sub scription of £io. Chesterfield apparently took no further interest in the enterprise, and the book was about to appear when he wrote two papers in the World in praise of it. It was said that Johnson was kept waiting in the anteroom when he called while Cibber was admitted. In any case the doctor had expected more help from a professed patron of literature, and wrote the earl the famous letter in defence of men of letters. Chesterfield's "re spectable Hottentot," now identified with George, lord Lyttelton, was long supposed, though on slender grounds, to be a portrait of Johnson. During the 20 years of life that followed this episode, Chesterfield wrote and read a great deal, but went little into society.
In 1768 died Philip Stanhope, the child of so many hopes. His death was an overwhelming grief to Chesterfield, and the dis covery that he had long been married to a lady of humble origin must have been galling in the extreme to his father after his careful instruction in worldly wisdom. Chesterfield, who had no children by his wife, Melusina von Schulemberg, illegitimate daughter of George I., whom he married in 1733, adopted his godson, a distant cousin, named Philip Stanhope (1755-1815), as heir to the title and estates. His famous jest (which even Johnson allowed to have merit) "Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we don't choose to have it known"—is the best description possible of his humour and condition during the latter part of this period of decline. To the deafness was added blindness, but his memory and his fine manners only left him with life; his last words, "Give Dayrolles a chair," prove that he had neither forgotten his friend nor the way to receive him. He died on March As a politician and statesman, Chesterfield's fame rests on his short but brilliant administration of Ireland. As an author he was a clever essayist and epigrammatist. But he stands or falls by the Letters to his Son, first published by Stanhope's widow in and the Letters to his Godson (1890) . The Letters are brilliantly written—full of elegant wisdom, of keen wit, of ad mirable portrait-painting, of exquisite observation and deduction. Against the charge of an undue insistence on the external graces of manner Chesterfield has been adequately defended by Lord Stanhope (History, iii. 34). Against the often iterated accusation of immorality, it should be remembered that the Letters reflected the morality of the age, and that their author only systematized and reduced to writing the principles of conduct by which, de liberately or unconsciously, the best and the worst of his con temporaries were governed.
See Chesterfield's Miscellaneous Works (2 vols. ; Letters to his Son, etc. ed. by Lord Mahon (5 vols. 5845-53, re-issued by the Navarre Society in 1926) ; and Letters to his Godson (189o) (ed. by the earl of Carnarvon) . There are also eds. of the first series of letters by J. Bradshaw (3 vols. 1892) and Mr. C. Strachey (2 vols. 1901). In 1893 a biography, including numerous letters first pub. from the Newcastle Papers, was issued by Mr. W. Ernst; and in 1907 appeared an elaborate Life by W. H. Craig. See also The Letters of Lord Chesterfield to Lord Huntingdon, with intro. by A. F. Steuart (1923) ; R. Coxon, Chesterfield and His Critics, with selected essays and unpublished letters by Chesterfield (1925) .