Letters to His Son 1756-58 | Page 4

meal of them. D.W.]

LETTERS TO HIS SON 1756-58
By the EARL OF CHESTERFIELD
on the Fine Art of becoming a
MAN OF THE WORLD
and a

GENTLEMAN

LETTER CCIII
BATH, November 15, 1756
MY DEAR FRIEND: I received yours yesterday morning together with
the Prussian, papers, which I have read with great attention. If courts
could blush, those of Vienna and Dresden ought, to have their false
hoods so publicly, and so undeniably exposed. The former will, I
presume, next year, employ an hundred thousand men, to answer the
accusation; and if the Empress of the two Russias is pleased to argue in
the same cogent manner, their logic will be too strong for all the King
of Prussia's rhetoric. I well remember the treaty so often referred to in
those pieces, between the two Empresses, in 1746. The King was
strongly pressed by the Empress Queen to accede to it. Wassenaer
communicated it to me for that purpose. I asked him if there were no
secret articles; suspecting that 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 two Empresses, I did not see of what use
his accession to this treaty, if merely a defensive one, could be, either
to himself or the other contracting parties; but that, however, if it was
only desired as an indication of the King's good will, I would give him
an act by which his Majesty should accede to that treaty, as far, but no
further, as at present he stood engaged to the respective Empresses by
the defensive alliances subsisting with each. This offer by no means
satisfied him; which was a plain proof of the secret articles now
brought to light, and into which the court of Vienna hoped to draw us. I
told Wassenaer so, and after that I heard no more of his invitation.
I am still bewildered in the changes at Court, of which I find that all the
particulars are not yet fixed. Who would have thought, a year ago, that
Mr. Fox, the Chancellor, and the Duke of Newcastle, should all three
have quitted together? Nor can I yet account for it; explain it to me if
you can. I cannot see, neither, what the Duke of Devonshire and Fox,
whom I looked upon as intimately united, can have quarreled about,
with relation to the Treasury; inform me, if you know. I never doubted
of the prudent versatility of your Vicar of Bray: But I am surprised at
O'Brien Windham's going out of the Treasury, where I should have

thought that the interest of his brother-in-law, George Grenville, would
have kept him.
Having found myself rather worse, these two or three last days, I was
obliged to take some ipecacuanha last night; and, what you will think
odd, for a vomit, I brought it all up again in about an hour, to my great
satisfaction and emolument, which is seldom the case in restitutions.
You did well to go to the Duke of Newcastle, who, I suppose, will have
no more levees; however, go from time to time, and leave your name at
his door, for you have obligations to him. Adieu.

LETTER CCIV
BATH, December 14, 1756.
MY DEAR FRIEND: What can I say to you from this place, where
EVERY DAY IS STILL BUT AS THE FIRST, though by no means so
agreeably passed, as Anthony describes his to have been? The same
nothings succeed one another every day with me, as, regularly and
uniformly as the hours of the day. You will think this tiresome, and so
it is; but how can I help it? Cut off from society by my deafness, and
dispirited by my ill health, where could I be better? You will say,
perhaps, where could you be worse? Only in prison, or the galleys, I
confess. However, I see a period to my stay here; and I have fixed, in
my own mind, a time for my return to London; not invited there by
either politics or pleasures, to both which I am equally a stranger, but
merely to be at home; which, after all, according to the vulgar saying, is
home, be it ever so homely.
The political settlement, as it is called, is, I find, by no means settled;
Mr. Fox, who took this place in his way to his brother's, where he
intended to pass a month, was stopped short by an express, which he
received from his connection, to come to town immediately; and
accordingly he set out from hence very early, two days ago. I had a
very long conversation with him, in which he