the young man's behalf, a post as secretary of legation, even without salary. The duke was 'excessively kind and friendly,' and promised the residency at Venice. But when, in October 1752, Philip was Dayrolles's guest at Brussels, and it was arranged that he should be presented at court to Prince Charles of Lorraine, a difficulty was urged on the score of his illegitimacy. To Chesterfield's chagrin, this for a time proved a genuine bar. In the spring of 1753 Philip came to London to attend the levées, and Chesterfield's reminder to Newcastle of the promise of the post at Venice was met with the rebuff that the king objected on the ground of his birth (30 June). Some compensation was found in his election to parliament for Liskeard by the influence of his friends the Eliots in April 1754. Next year, under his father's careful coaching, he made his maiden speech on the address to the throne, but he was too shy to repeat the experience. In September 1756 he was appointed resident at Hamburg. He performed the duties of his office adequately. In February 1761 he was re-elected M.P. for St. Germans, but resigned the seat in 1765 at the earnest request of the patron, Edward Eliot, who compensated him with a money payment. Meanwhile, in June 1763, he was sent as envoy to the diet at Ratisbon, and early in 1764 he resigned his post at Hamburg to become resident minister at Dresden. He still maintained his close relations both epistolary and personal with his father, whose anxiety for his success was as keen as ever. But at the end of 1768 the long intercourse was closed by death. Philip had for some years suffered in health. In November 1768 he obtained leave of absence from Dresden to visit Avignon. On 16 Nov. he died there. Severely as Chesterfield must in any case have felt the blow, his sufferings were aggravated by the circumstance that the communication which brought the sad tidings revealed the fact that young Stanhope had been long secretly married, and had left on his father's hands a widow (Eugenia) and two sons. For nearly twenty years had Chesterfield plied his son with all the sagacious worldly wisdom that his own experience suggested respecting the affairs of gallantry and the dubious relations with the opposite sex which became a man of fashion. Very galling was the irony of the revelation that Philip had furtively taken refuge from the perils of polite intrigue in matrimony of no brilliant type. Chesterfield bore the shock with exemplary coolness. Despite the secret marriage with an unattractive woman of undistinguished position, the memory of his dead son remained dear to him, and he gave proofs of the strength of his parental affection by sending his grandchildren to a good school and corresponding on amiable terms with the widow.
Happily for Chesterfield's peace of mind, he had already made himself responsible for the education of another young kinsman, also named Philip Stanhope—his godson, distant cousin, and the presumptive heir to the earldom (see ad fin.) In 1759, when this boy was four, Chesterfield told the father that he intended to treat him as a grandson. Between 28 July 1761 and 19 June 1770, while the youth was passing from his sixth to his fifteenth year, Chesterfield addressed to him a series of affectionate letters—236 are extant—in which he offered him, in much the same manner as he had written to his natural son, all the counsels likely, in his opinion, to insure his fitness for the dignities that awaited him.
Ill-health occasionally disturbed Chesterfield's equanimity during his last ten years, when, in his own words, 'he was hobbling on to his journey's end.' But his native gaiety of temperament was only at times overcast. When asked in his dying days how his friend and contemporary Lord Tyrawley did, he remarked, 'Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we do not choose to have it known.' In the autumn of 1772 he completely broke down. At the end of September he left Blackheath for London so as to be near his favourite physician, Dr. Warren. During the next six months life gradually left him, and he died at Chesterfield House on 24 March 1773 in his seventy-ninth year. Within half an hour of the end his friend Dayrolles visited the sick chamber, and the earl's dying words were 'Give Dayrolles a chair.' His good breeding, remarked the physician in attendance, only quitted him with his life. His remains were removed to Audley Street chapel, and thence to Shelford for burial. His widow, with whom he had long been on merely formal terms, died on 16 Sept. 1778.
In Chesterfield's will, dated 4 June 1772, and proved April 1773, he admitted that he had had an uncommon share of the pompous follies of this life, and deprecated a pompous funeral. The expenses were not to exceed 100l., and he was to be buried in the next burying-place to where he died. He devised practically all his property to his godson Philip, and offered him characteristic warnings. He was by 'no means [to] go into Italy ... the foul sink of illiberal manners and vices.' He was to forfeit 5l. to the dean and chapter of Westminster if he ever was
