Making Plans for Philip

Aug 6, 2026 · 8 min read

PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, remains the most renown member of his lineage. His father, 3rd Earl of Chesterfield, was also Philip Stanhope; so was his grandfather, 2nd Earl of Chesterfield, and his grandfather’s grandfather, 1st Earl. His successor, 5th Earl of Chesterfield, was his distant relative and godson, Philip Stanhope, with whom he kept certain correspondence. Yet the history remembers him for his letters of rearing addressed to his son, Philip Stanhope, published posthumously by his daughter-in-law, Eugenia Peters Stanhope.

Lord Chesterfield has an ambitious long-term project: he aims at raising his son to aut facere scribenda, aut legenda scribere.¹ To achieve this target, he hires capable tutors and funds his son’s trip across Europe, leveraging his powerful connections to secure access for his son to prestigious salons of beau monde. He keeps a strictly private correspondence with his son, which is bound to span about thirty-one years, and cease upon his son’s untimely demise in 1768, at the age of thirty-six, concluding this grand experiment.

Philip Dormer Stanhope became aware of the existence of his son’s wife and children only after his son passed away. He excluded Eugenia from his will when he died five years later, passing on most of his property and estates, as well as the Earldom, to his godson. His two grandsons, Charles and Philip, were part of the will, but not his heir.

We must refrain from judgment, and set aside the peculiarities of the fortune and the motives encouraging Eugenia to publish the private letters, which soon became a bestseller and brought her out of financial burden.

Philip Dormer Stanhope was a highly educated man with refined manners, and his political career is noted to be successful. His writing had a distinct prose, and the sharpness of his style is matched with the uniqueness of advice and slippery frankness of his letters. Oliver H. G. Leigh describes the psychology and outcome of the letters efficiently and with a mastery of language:

Teacher and preacher [Philip Chesterfield] assuredly is, and long will be, yet no thanks are his due from a posterity of the common people whom he so sublimely despised. His pious mission was not to raise the level of the multitude, but to lift a single individual upon a pedestal so high that his lowly origin should not betray itself. That individual was his, Lord Chesterfield’s, illegitimate son, whose inferior blood should be given the true blue hue by concentrating upon him all the externals of aristocratic education. Never had pupil so devoted, persistent, lavish, and brilliant a guide, philosopher, and friend, for the parental relation was shrewdly merged in these. Never were devotion and uphill struggle against doubts of success more bitterly repaid.

The full corpus of the correspondence addressed to his son sums up to 448, including mundane letters of no particular interest, thus being excluded from most of the editions. The “complete” letters in the Project Gutenberg is limited to 320, including short, unexiting narration of events, as well as a few brief and, occasionally, ironic letters addressed to his son’s widow. Mundane and unexiting these letters are, they provide glimpse into the character and circumstances of the Lord Chesterfield, whose health was detoriating in the concluding years of his life.

We know that the correspondence dictated to its author by his century and political position had no aim of publication. It is regarded immoral by some,² which is the price to be paid by private frankness. The driving force and the recurring motif of the letters is the emphasis on the so-called secondary virtues or graces, the lack of which can drastically hinder a man’s advancement in society. The father is so concentrated on bringing his son’s attention about developing diction, posture, appearance, manners, tact that, at times, it seems like the Lord Chesterfield even undermines the moral nurturing required for an individual’s rearing. In this regard, his letters can be compared to, say, that of Seneca the Younger’s letters to Lucilius.

The importance of social graces comes down to the following point. Most people are incapable of appreciating primary virtues such as honesty, justice, or benevolence, because such an appreciation requires a) posession of those virtues in the observer, and b) the willingness of the observer to deeply explore another person with utmost care. As people rarely fulfill these two, seemingly simple, requirements, the possession of primary virtues should be balanced with the secondary virtues, lest one wants to become likeable in society. Likeability being a major leverage of a successful public servant, the career which the Lord Chesterfield had, and sought for his son, leads to the conclusion that the secondary virtues – graces – need to be carefully nurtured. And to describe the effect of secondary virtues, Chesterfield compares Caesar to Cato. Cato, who is admired by many historians for his virtue and death, was overshadowed by Caesar due to those secondary traits that made Caesar more likeable to others: wit, warmth, and tact.

Another feature of the letters is their cold strictness and the rigidity of educational philosophy which the Lord Chesterfield has set his mind to when parenting his son. His approach is built on the reciprocity, a repetitive pattern in the letters, which can be summarized as follows: be a good boy, cocentrate on your education and the secondary virtues, don’t let your father, who loves you, and who is sure of your love towards him, be disappointed. In one of his early letters, to encourage his five-year old son to be attentive of his studies, the Lord Chesterfield cites now obscure epigram by Gombauld, so as to encourage his son to avoid the fate of a man in the poem:

Colas est mort de maladie,
Tu veux que j’en pleure le sort;
Que diable veux-tu que j’en die?
Colas vivait, Colas est mort³

Stanhope gives his son questionable advice on vanity, putting the psychology of competitiveness and ambition on pedestal. He then declares his disregard towards books and idols. He criticizes Homer⁴ and ancient Romans who were kept in high regard in academic and intellectual circles of his time, and blatantly declares that spending long hours on end behind a desk to comprehend difficult texts is a sign of stupidity; a capable man catches everything quickly and on the fly. But how does a man achieve this capacity? Through persistence and relentless attention to detail. With persistence and attention one can learn any skill, including social tact.⁵

An inattentive man is despised by society as well, no matter how exceptional are his primary virtues. Being clumsy when commiting a simple act (such as dropping a fork when having a meal), being distracted during a conversation into one’s internal world, and many other modest mischiefs of behavior must be tackled critically. These, at first glance, insignificant negligences accumulate and influence how a man is perceived by people. Inattention demonstrates disdain towards the esteem of others. In attention, sprouts the seeds of likeability and charisma.

Both awkwardness and timidness in front of kings and demonstration of your superiority to others is a sign of frivolous character. You will benefit more by realizing that your true virtues will be known to others sooner or later, without your proactive intervention. Moreover, one must become a social chameleon and be at equals with others: joke only when the mood of others welcomes humor, be silly when others talk silly, act passionately when others are passionate – don’t enforce your internal state to be accepted by your company if that does not align with the common disposition.⁶ Avoir du monde should not be mistaken for insincerity, as one conforms to the requriements of community and mutual interaction.⁷

In the letters, such advice on social acumen has a weak line separating it from manipulation. Stanhope briefly mentions how the deceptive tools he will arm his son with should be directed for common good, and then goes on to describe the tools in an extended detail. Which is akin to rather a frail effort to surround your dangerous recommendations to an inexperienced youth with a safety net consisting of a single thread. In defense of Stanhope, this weakness is balanaced with his highly progressive stances towards life which we stumble upon in modern democracies.

In the letters, there is advice on dancing, oratory, crowds, proper schedule, having system, finishing what you begin, choosing friends, consuming alcohol, controlling mood, dealing with enemies, enjoying life, cleaning teeth, avoiding musical instruments… The company a young man chooses to spend his time with should either charm his senses, multiply his knowledge, or refine his manners. The checklist making manieres nobles is fivefold: articulate speech, manners, courtesy, posture, and outfit.

It is difficult to conclude this essay without remembering. Lord Chesterfield wanted his son to become omnis homo, l’homme universel – a renaissance man. We might further be intrigued about the forever hidden psychology of Philip Stanhope, the son, and rationalize reasons why on earth he would have thought to hide his family from his father.⁸ He didn’t live up to the standards of his father, who had envisioned a grand diplomatic future for his son. But we must restrain our judgments. Colas vivait, Colas est mort. Colas might have been happy in his world.

My long and frequent letters, which I send you, in great doubt of their success, put me in mind of certain papers, which you have very lately, and I formerly, sent up to kites, along the string, which we called messengers; some of them the wind used to blow away, others were torn by the string, and but few of them got up and stuck to the kite. But I will content myself now, as I did then, if some of my present messengers do but stick to you. Adieu!

This latin phrase translates into: “either do things worth writing about, or write things worth reading”. The full quote belongs to the first letter of Pliny the Younger to Tacitus, referenced in an undated early letter of Stanhope to his son: Equidem beatos puto, quibus Deorum munere datum est, aut facere scribenda, aut legenda scribere; beatissimos vero quibus utrumque. “Blessed are they, in my opinion, who are given by the gods the gift either to do things worth writing about, or to write things worth reading; but most blessed of all are those who have both”. ↩
Samuel Johnson sought Lord Chesterfield’s patronage while preparing his famous Dictionary of the English Language, but Chesterfield gave him little support. When the dictionary was nearly complete after seven years, Chesterfield published flattering essays about the book (albeit anonymously), which Johnson interpreted as Stanhope claiming the role of patron. Johnson replied with his infamous 1755 letter. Even if they reconciled the dispute after some years, Johnson, upon the publication of Chesterfield’s letters, famously proclaimed that they teach “the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing-master”, which can be found in Boswell’s biography of Johnson. ↩
Colas died of an illness,
You want me to weep over his fate;
What the devil do you want me to say about it?
Colas was alive, Colas is dead. ↩
Stanhope even jokes that Achilles should have covered his heel with a horseshoe instead of his body with a heavy armor. In another letter, however, he praises Achiles’ precaution to wear armor despite the invincibility of his body. ↩
Dostoevsky states this idea in his The Adolescent as well. After bringing this statement, Stanhope half-jokingly, half-seriously writes that the rule holds for everything, except for becoming a good poet. ↩
Following these and similar heuristics blindly can lead to an opposite effect, and get one to be perceieved as teethless, with no individuality. Dictating your state of mind and telling the truth makes you both socially risky and magnetic. Finding the golden mean is a matter of experience. ↩
The same story narrated in the same style can initiate completely disparate reactions depending on the audience and timing. ↩
His upcoming biography by Richard Wendorf could shed a light upon the relationship of the father and the son. The author’s knowledge and access to archive materials has revealed the correspondence with Elizabeth du Bouchet, the mother of 4th Earl’s illegitimate son, where we learn about their son’s proneness to illness since childhood. ↩

Making Plans for Philip


Aug  6, 2026 · 8 min read


PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, remains the most renown member of his lineage. His father, 3rd Earl of Chesterfield, was also Philip Stanhope; so was his grandfather, 2nd Earl of Chesterfield, and his grandfather’s grandfather, 1st Earl. His successor, 5th Earl of Chesterfield, was his distant relative and godson, Philip Stanhope, with whom he kept certain correspondence. Yet the history remembers him for his letters of rearing addressed to his son, Philip Stanhope, published posthumously by his daughter-in-law, Eugenia Peters Stanhope.

Lord Chesterfield has an ambitious long-term project: he aims at raising his son to aut facere scribenda, aut legenda scribere.1 To achieve this target, he hires capable tutors and funds his son’s trip across Europe, leveraging his powerful connections to secure access for his son to prestigious salons of beau monde. He keeps a strictly private correspondence with his son, which is bound to span about thirty-one years, and cease upon his son’s untimely demise in 1768, at the age of thirty-six, concluding this grand experiment.

Philip Dormer Stanhope became aware of the existence of his son’s wife and children only after his son passed away. He excluded Eugenia from his will when he died five years later, passing on most of his property and estates, as well as the Earldom, to his godson. His two grandsons, Charles and Philip, were part of the will, but not his heir.

We must refrain from judgment, and set aside the peculiarities of the fortune and the motives encouraging Eugenia to publish the private letters, which soon became a bestseller and brought her out of financial burden.

Philip Dormer Stanhope was a highly educated man with refined manners, and his political career is noted to be successful. His writing had a distinct prose, and the sharpness of his style is matched with the uniqueness of advice and slippery frankness of his letters. Oliver H. G. Leigh describes the psychology and outcome of the letters efficiently and with a mastery of language:


  Teacher and preacher [Philip Chesterfield] assuredly is, and long will be, yet no thanks are his due from a posterity of the common people whom he so sublimely despised. His pious mission was not to raise the level of the multitude, but to lift a single individual upon a pedestal so high that his lowly origin should not betray itself. That individual was his, Lord Chesterfield’s, illegitimate son, whose inferior blood should be given the true blue hue by concentrating upon him all the externals of aristocratic education. Never had pupil so devoted, persistent, lavish, and brilliant a guide, philosopher, and friend, for the parental relation was shrewdly merged in these. Never were devotion and uphill struggle against doubts of success more bitterly repaid.


The full corpus of the correspondence addressed to his son sums up to 448, including mundane letters of no particular interest, thus being excluded from most of the editions. The “complete” letters in the Project Gutenberg is limited to 320, including short, unexiting narration of events, as well as a few brief and, occasionally, ironic letters addressed to his son’s widow. Mundane and unexiting these letters are, they provide glimpse into the character and circumstances of the Lord Chesterfield, whose health was detoriating in the concluding years of his life.

We know that the correspondence dictated to its author by his century and political position had no aim of publication. It is regarded immoral by some,2 which is the price to be paid by private frankness. The driving force and the recurring motif of the letters is the emphasis on the so-called secondary virtues or graces, the lack of which can drastically hinder a man’s advancement in society. The father is so concentrated on bringing his son’s attention about developing diction, posture, appearance, manners, tact that, at times, it seems like the Lord Chesterfield even undermines the moral nurturing required for an individual’s rearing. In this regard, his letters can be compared to, say, that of Seneca the Younger’s letters to Lucilius.

The importance of social graces comes down to the following point. Most people are incapable of appreciating primary virtues such as honesty, justice, or benevolence, because such an appreciation requires a) posession of those virtues in the observer, and b) the willingness of the observer to deeply explore another person with utmost care. As people rarely fulfill these two, seemingly simple, requirements, the possession of primary virtues should be balanced with the secondary virtues, lest one wants to become likeable in society. Likeability being a major leverage of a successful public servant, the career which the Lord Chesterfield had, and sought for his son, leads to the conclusion that the secondary virtues – graces – need to be carefully nurtured. And to describe the effect of secondary virtues, Chesterfield compares Caesar to Cato. Cato, who is admired by many historians for his virtue and death, was overshadowed by Caesar due to those secondary traits that made Caesar more likeable to others: wit, warmth, and tact.

Another feature of the letters is their cold strictness and the rigidity of educational philosophy which the Lord Chesterfield has set his mind to when parenting his son. His approach is built on the reciprocity, a repetitive pattern in the letters, which can be summarized as follows: be a good boy, cocentrate on your education and the secondary virtues, don’t let your father, who loves you, and who is sure of your love towards him, be disappointed.  In one of his early letters, to encourage his five-year old son to be attentive of his studies, the Lord Chesterfield cites now obscure epigram by Gombauld, so as to encourage his son to avoid the fate of a man in the poem:


  Colas est mort de maladie,
Tu veux que j’en pleure le sort;
Que diable veux-tu que j’en die?
Colas vivait, Colas est mort3


Stanhope gives his son questionable advice on vanity, putting the psychology of competitiveness and ambition on pedestal. He then declares his disregard towards books and idols. He criticizes Homer4 and ancient Romans who were kept in high regard in academic and intellectual circles of his time, and blatantly declares that spending long hours on end behind a desk to comprehend difficult texts is a sign of stupidity; a capable man catches everything quickly and on the fly. But how does a man achieve this capacity? Through persistence and relentless attention to detail. With persistence and attention one can learn any skill, including social tact.5

An inattentive man is despised by society as well, no matter how exceptional are his primary virtues. Being clumsy when commiting a simple act (such as dropping a fork when having a meal), being distracted during a conversation into one’s internal world, and many other modest mischiefs of behavior must be tackled critically. These, at first glance, insignificant negligences accumulate and influence how a man is perceived by people. Inattention demonstrates disdain towards the esteem of others. In attention, sprouts the seeds of likeability and charisma.

Both awkwardness and timidness in front of kings and demonstration of your superiority to others is a sign of frivolous character. You will benefit more by realizing that your true virtues will be known to others sooner or later, without your proactive intervention. Moreover, one must become a social chameleon and be at equals with others: joke only when the mood of others welcomes humor, be silly when others talk silly, act passionately when others are passionate – don’t enforce your internal state to be accepted by your company if that does not align with the common disposition.6 Avoir du monde should not be mistaken for insincerity, as one conforms to the requriements of community and mutual interaction.7

In the letters, such advice on social acumen has a weak line separating it from manipulation. Stanhope briefly mentions how the deceptive tools he will arm his son with should be directed for common good, and then goes on to describe the tools in an extended detail. Which is akin to rather a frail effort to surround your dangerous recommendations to an inexperienced youth with a safety net consisting of a single thread. In defense of Stanhope, this weakness is balanaced with his highly progressive stances towards life which we stumble upon in modern democracies.

In the letters, there is advice on dancing, oratory, crowds, proper schedule, having system, finishing what you begin, choosing friends, consuming alcohol, controlling mood, dealing with enemies, enjoying life, cleaning teeth, avoiding musical instruments… The company a young man chooses to spend his time with should either charm his senses, multiply his knowledge, or refine his manners. The checklist making manieres nobles is fivefold: articulate speech, manners, courtesy, posture, and outfit.

It is difficult to conclude this essay without remembering. Lord Chesterfield wanted his son to become omnis homo, l’homme universel – a renaissance man. We might further be intrigued about the forever hidden psychology of Philip Stanhope, the son, and rationalize reasons why on earth he would have thought to hide his family from his father.8 He didn’t live up to the standards of his father, who had envisioned a grand diplomatic future for his son. But we must restrain our judgments. Colas vivait, Colas est mort. Colas might have been happy in his world.


  My long and frequent letters, which I send you, in great doubt of their success, put me in mind of certain papers, which you have very lately, and I formerly, sent up to kites, along the string, which we called messengers; some of them the wind used to blow away, others were torn by the string, and but few of them got up and stuck to the kite. But I will content myself now, as I did then, if some of my present messengers do but stick to you. Adieu!






  
    
      This latin phrase translates into: “either do things worth writing about, or write things worth reading”. The full quote belongs to the first letter of Pliny the Younger to Tacitus, referenced in an undated early letter of Stanhope to his son: Equidem beatos puto, quibus Deorum munere datum est, aut facere scribenda, aut legenda scribere; beatissimos vero quibus utrumque. “Blessed are they, in my opinion, who are given by the gods the gift either to do things worth writing about, or to write things worth reading; but most blessed of all are those who have both”. ↩
    
    
      Samuel Johnson sought Lord Chesterfield’s patronage while preparing his famous Dictionary of the English Language, but Chesterfield gave him little support. When the dictionary was nearly complete after seven years, Chesterfield published flattering essays about the book (albeit anonymously), which Johnson interpreted as Stanhope claiming the role of patron. Johnson replied with his infamous 1755 letter. Even if they reconciled the dispute after some years, Johnson, upon the publication of Chesterfield’s letters, famously proclaimed that they teach “the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing-master”, which can be found in Boswell’s biography of Johnson. ↩
    
    
      Colas died of an illness,You want me to weep over his fate;What the devil do you want me to say about it?Colas was alive, Colas is dead. ↩
    
    
      Stanhope even jokes that Achilles should have covered his heel with a horseshoe instead of his body with a heavy armor. In another letter, however, he praises Achiles’ precaution to wear armor despite the invincibility of his body. ↩
    
    
      Dostoevsky states this idea in his The Adolescent as well. After bringing this statement, Stanhope half-jokingly, half-seriously writes that the rule holds for everything, except for becoming a good poet. ↩
    
    
      Following these and similar heuristics blindly can lead to an opposite effect, and get one to be perceieved as teethless, with no individuality. Dictating your state of mind and telling the truth makes you both socially risky and magnetic. Finding the golden mean is a matter of experience. ↩
    
    
      The same story narrated in the same style can initiate completely disparate reactions depending on the audience and timing. ↩
    
    
      His upcoming biography by Richard Wendorf could shed a light upon the relationship of the father and the son. The author’s knowledge and access to archive materials has revealed the correspondence with Elizabeth du Bouchet, the mother of 4th Earl’s illegitimate son, where we learn about their son’s proneness to illness since childhood. ↩

—
Ismayil Shahaliyev
https://shahaliyev.org/writings/stanhope

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