Produced by David Widger
LETTERS TO HIS SON 1756-58
By the EARL OF CHESTERFIELD
on the Fine Art of becoming a
and a
BATH, November 15, 1756
MY DEAR FRIEND: I received yours yesterday morning together with thePrussian, papers, which I have read with great attention. If courts couldblush, those of Vienna and Dresden ought, to have their falsehoods sopublicly, and so undeniably exposed. The former will, I presume, nextyear, employ an hundred thousand men, to answer the accusation; and ifthe Empress of the two Russias is pleased to argue in the same cogentmanner, their logic will be too strong for all the King of Prussia'srhetoric. I well remember the treaty so often referred to in thosepieces, between the two Empresses, in 1746. The King was strongly pressedby the Empress Queen to accede to it. Wassenaer communicated it to me forthat purpose. I asked him if there were no secret articles; suspectingthat there were some, because the ostensible treaty was a mere harmless,defensive one. He assured me that there were none. Upon which I told him,that as the King had already defensive alliances with those twoEmpresses, I did not see of what use his accession to this treaty, ifmerely a defensive one, could be, either to himself or the othercontracting parties; but that, however, if it was only desired as anindication of the King's good will, I would give him an act by which hisMajesty should accede to that treaty, as far, but no further, as atpresent he stood engaged to the respective Empresses by the defensivealliances subsisting with each. This offer by no means satisfied him;which was a plain proof of the secret articles now brought to light, andinto which the court of Vienna hoped to draw us. I told Wassenaer so, andafter that I heard no more of his invitation.
I am still bewildered in the changes at Court, of which I find that allthe particulars are not yet fixed. Who would have thought, a year ago,that Mr. Fox, the Chancellor, and the Duke of Newcastle, should all threehave quitted together? Nor can I yet account for it; explain it to me ifyou can. I cannot see, neither, what the Duke of Devonshire and Fox, whomI looked upon as intimately united, can have quarreled about, withrelation to the Treasury; inform me, if you know. I never doubted of theprudent versatility of your Vicar of Bray: But I am surprised at O'BrienWindham's going out of the Treasury, where I should have thought that theinterest of his brother-in-law, George Grenville, would have kept him.
Having found myself rather worse, these two or three last days, I wasobliged to take some ipecacuanha last night; and, what you will thinkodd, for a vomit, I brought it all up again in about an hour, to my greatsatisfaction and emolument, which is seldom the case in restitutions.
You did well to go to the Duke of Newcastle, who, I suppose, will have nomore levees; however, go from time to time, and leave your name at hisdoor, for you have obligations to him. Adieu.
BATH, December 14, 1756.
MY DEAR FRIEND: What can I say to you from this place, where EVERY DAY ISSTILL BUT AS THE FIRST, though by no means so agreeably passed, asAnthony describes his to have been? The same nothings succeed one anotherevery day with me, as, regularly and uniformly as the hours of the day.You wil