PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE,
4TH EARL OF CHESTERFIELD,
PC, KG
Is it any wonder that Henry Thoreau would decline to follow the
advices of Lord Chesterfield? –This gentleman’s own son, the
bastard, had likewise repudiated such advices.
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION,
THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
Philip Dormer Stanhope
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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4TH EARL OF CHESTERFIELD
1694
September 22, Saturday (Old Style): Philip Dormer Stanhope, who would become the 4th Earl of Chesterfield, was
born in London. Until the death of his father in 1726, he would be known as Lord Stanhope. He would be
educated at Cambridge and then go off for the standard Grand Tour of the continent.
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
Philip Dormer Stanhope
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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1714
The death of Queen Anne and accession of King George I enabled Lord Stanhope’s relative James Stanhope
to procure for him the place of gentleman of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales, and so Lord Stanhope
truncated his Grand Tour of the continent.
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
Philip Dormer Stanhope
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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1715
August 5, Friday (Old Style): The young Lord Stanhope of Shelford had entered the House of Commons as member
for St Germans. On this day he delivered his initial speech, in regard to the impeachment of the Duke of
Ormonde — and was then reminded that since he was still five weeks short of having attained to his majority,
his speaking had been improper and should be subject to a £500 fine. Departing from the chamber with a low
bow, he returned to the continent.
While in Paris, he would forward to the English government intelligence on the activities and agendas of the
Jacobites.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
Philip Dormer Stanhope
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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1716
Late in the year: Having arrived at his majority (the age of 21), Lord Stanhope returned from the continent to England
and resumed his seat in the House of Commons, representing St Germans. At the time the king and the Prince
of Wales were quarreling and he was avoiding fully committing himself to the cause of the prince, while he
also was engaging in a correspondence with the prince’s mistress — the net effect of this palace intrigue was
that the Princess of Wales came to detest him.
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD?
— NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES.
LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
Philip Dormer Stanhope
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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1723
In return for a vote for the government in the House of Commons, Lord Stanhope was rewarded with the post
of captain of the Gentlemen Pensioners.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
Philip Dormer Stanhope
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1725
January (1724, Old Style): Upon revival of the Order of Knights of the Bath by King George I, although the honor of
the order’s red ribbon was offered to Lord Stanhope, he declined. (My guess would be that he had been offered
only the 3d-class honor of “CB” Companion of the Bath, rather than the 2d-class honor of “KCB” Knight
Commander of the Bath or 1st-class honor of “KGC” Knights Grand Cross — and that he considered such a
3d-class honor to be beneath his standing in noble society.)
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND
YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
Philip Dormer Stanhope
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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1726
With the death of his father the 3d Earl of Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, who had been being referred
to as “Lord Stanhope,” would henceforth be referred to as “Lord Chesterfield” (it may seem a silly “musical
chairs” thingie, but it was the way things were done). Having both attained his majority and assumed his
hereditary title, he of course immediately abandoned his seat in the House of Commons representing the
citizenry of St Germans and took his seat in the House of Lords (movin’ on up, movin’ right along).
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
Philip Dormer Stanhope
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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1728
Lord Chesterfield was sent as British ambassador to the Hague. For this service he would be awarded the Order
of the Garter and the position of Lord Steward.
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1731
Lord Chesterfield took part in the negotiation of a 2d Treaty of Vienna opening the door for a grand AngloAustrian alliance.
A Magyar apostate named Ibrahim Muteferrika introduced printing presses into the Ottoman Empire (the texts
produced on these presses would consider military and political developments, rather than religion).
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The Reverend Richard Grey received the degree of DD from the University of Oxford.
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1732
Ill, and short of funds, Lord Chesterfield resigned his ambassadorship and made his way from the Hague back
to Britain. Mlle du Bouchet, a young lady of his acquaintance, bore him a son named Philip Stanhope (this is
the “natural son” to whom he would write the letters later collected as LETTERS TO HIS SON). After a few
months his health would improve to the point at which he would be able to resume his seat in the House of
Lords. There would be growing policy antagonism between him and Walpole.
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1733
Lord Chesterfield, who had already fathered an illegitimate son by a mistress, got married with Melusina von
der Schulenburg, Countess of Walsingham (she being the product of an affair that King George I had had with
Ehrengard Melusine von der Schulenburg, Duchess of Kendal and Munster). This noble couple would produce
no children.
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1741
Lord Chesterfield signed an appeal for the dismissal of Walpole as Prime Minister and traveled abroad for
reasons of health. He would call upon Voltaire in Brussels and then associate himself with the younger
Crebillon, Fontenelle, and Montesquieu in Paris. Meanwhile, back in the House of Lords, when Walpole’s
administration would falter it would be replaced by an administration by Carteret, one which Lord Chesterfield
would also oppose. King George II was beginning to detest the influence of Lord Chesterfield over British
affairs.
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1743
For a new journal, Old England; or, the Constitutional Journal, Lord Chesterfield would write under the nom
de plume “Jeffrey Broadbottom.” He would squib so vigorously in opposition to King George II and his
government that the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough (who, it seems, concurred with such sentiments) would
bequeath to him the sum of £20,000.
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1744
Once King George II had been compelled to abandon Prime Minister Carteret, a coalition of the Pelhams with
the “Broad Bottom” party led by Lord Chesterfield and Pitt came into power. Lord Chesterfield went off to the
Hague a 2d time as ambassador, and was successful in obtaining help from the Dutch in the War of the Austrian
Succession. When he returned to Britain, he was rewarded by being designated as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.
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1746
Lord Chesterfield needed to step down as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and instead accepted the position of
Secretary of State.
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1748
Lord Chesterfield resigned as Secretary of State and turned in the official seals. King George II offered a
dukedom, which he declined. He continued his presence in the House of Lords.
Samuel Johnson dedicated his PLAN FOR A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE to Lord Chesterfield —
whereupon the beneficent lord posted to him the magnificent pittance of £10.
It was said that Johnson was kept cooling his heels in the anteroom when he called upon Lord Chesterfield,
while the actor Colley Cibber was admitted. In any case the doctor had expected more help than this, from a
professed patron of literature, and when his project was completed and the earl was grandly accepting credit
for it, he would write to the earl a now-famous letter in defence of men of letters.
The notice you have been pleased to take of my labors,
had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed
till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it,
till I am solitary and cannot impart it,
till I am known and do not want it.
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1751
Despite growing deafness, Lord Chesterfield, with the assistance of President of the Royal Society Lord
Macclesfield and mathematician James Bradley, brought into being the new style of calendar. In consequence
this legislation is sometimes referred to as “Chesterfield’s Act.”
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1752
Protestant England had until this year refused to accept Pope Gregory’s 1582 corrections to the calendar —
but during this year in accordance with the legislation known as “Chesterfield’s Act” they omitted 11 days in
order to bring themselves into synchronization with the rest of Europe. London property owners, hurt in the
pocketbook by the fact that their tenants’ leases were expiring 11 days early and their tenants were thus able
to skip out of leased premises without paying 11 days rent that had been hoped for, staged protests. In
Philadelphia, however, Benjamin Franklin calmly advised his readers to be grateful they could lie down in
peace on the 2nd of the month of September and not wake up until the morning of the 14th.
January 1, New Year’s Day: Since 1600, Scotland and much of Europe had been observing January 1st as its New
Year’s Day. At this point the stipulations of “Chesterfield’s Act” brought England and her colonies into line
with Scotland and Europe, as the Gregorian calendar replaced the Julian calendar:
“By act of Parliament, the year, which had begun on the 25th of March,
was ordered to commence January 1st, 1752, and to have eleven days added to it,
so as to make September 3d the 14th. Such an addition was made, that the Equinoxes
and Solstices might be calculated to fall on their proper dates.”
March 25, Saturday: There was nothing special about this day in the year 1752, for the year had officially begun
already as of January 1st in the dead of the winter per the stipulations of “Chesterfield’s Act” rather than
waiting as usual for the spring season to inaugurate the new year. In this manner the English had abandoned a
calendar system which had been gradually getting more and more out of whack with the solar system since the
12th Century, and brought themselves into line with observances in the rest of Europe.
September 3-13: Nothing happened. No time passed. One instant it had been midnight of September 2d, a Wednesday,
or, maybe, midnight of September 12, a Wednesday, and the next instant per the stipulations of “Chesterfield’s
Act” it was September 13, a Thursday. Go figure. The British Isles had finally gone along with the rest of
Europe dropping eleven days down the ol’ Star-Trek timewarp and converting over to the Gregorian or “New
Style” calendar from the Julian, or “Old Style,” calendar. They did not, for instance, adjust the festival days on
which the Quarter Days fell, and thus, both in 1751 and in 1753, Lady Day was ostensibly celebrated on March
25th.1 Would this mean that workers would get paid by their employers for 11 days on which they had not
worked? –Maybe, maybe not. And would they have to pay rent on their accommodations to their landlords for
those 11 days that never were? –Maybe, maybe not. The English, never a people to let anybody get away with
anything, began to distinguish between Lady Day and Old Lady Day better to keep track of who owed what
to whom. (Thus it is that even as recently as TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES, we are told of a “Lady Day” holiday
that was followed shortly after by an “Old Lady Day” holiday — some of the English, obviously, were only
reluctantly being dragged into the new calendar system.)2
1. Quarter Days: In olden times the year was traditionally divided into four quarters, and one paid one’s rents, one worked on one’s
temporary employment, etc., quarter by quarter more or less as a “temp” nowadays works hour by hour. The quarter days were
March 25th, which was Lady Day, June 24th, which was Midsummers Day, September 29th, which was Michaelmas, and December
25th, which of course was Christmas Day. Lady Day was the celebration of the annunciation by the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin
Mary.
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Although there have been many popular reports of “Give Us Back Our Eleven Days” riots, this is an urban
legend. The populace had significant cause for concern, but this concern was based in no sense upon any timesuperstition. This calendar “reform” was in fact prejudicial to the poor, the marginal, in that it had shortened
the quarter-year without reducing the payment due from tenants paying rent by the quarter, while depriving
these tenants of eleven days’ earning power that they sorely needed in order to create the liquidity to pay that
quarter’s rent. The obvious inequity of this resulted in the UK commercial accounting periods which, since
medieval times, had conventionally ended on Lady Day (March 25), Midsummer, Michaelmas, and Christmas,
being made to last an additional eleven days. In the UK today, Lady Day is the record of this very necessary
adjustment, and is why the end of the fiscal/financial year in the UK continues to be April 5th each year,
exactly eleven days after March 25th.
Approximately one American in five had emigrated from some country that had shifted in 1582 to the
Gregorian calendar. For that reason we in the British colonies had been for some time utilizing both Julian and
Gregorian calendars, a remarkable inconvenience. Refer to Robert Poole’s article on calendar reform in Britain
(PAST AND PRESENT, 1996) for a dismissal of the urban legend that there were anti-Papist riots. For most
people, in particular for merchants, the simplification and standardization was a welcome relief. Even in
England there were no riots, and the urban legend that there were seems to stem from a misreading of a
Hogarth engraving in which an election cudgelman is holding up a sign demanding “Give Us Back
Our 11 Days.” Said Hogarth engraving was satiric.
2.CALENDAR REFORM:
Why do histories of events around 1582 for most of Europe, this year of 1752 for England and for British North America, and 1917
for Russia show pairs of conflicting dates? In 46BCE Julius Caesar instituted the Julian Calendar of 365 days to bring the Roman
calendar back into adjustment, with a “leap year” every four years to take care of the quarter-day left over as, from a Ptolemaic
perspective, the sun returned to its original coordinates in the sky. However, since a year actually is equal to 365.2422 days, this
adjustment lacked sufficient precision. What was needed, but was not instituted until much later, was some further refinement of
the Caesarian rule similar in effect to our present arrangement according to which every year whose number can be divided by four
evenly is a leap year, unless it is exactly divisible by 100, and according to which those years which are divisible by 100 are not
leap years unless they are exactly divisible by 400, when they become leap years again. (For similar reasons, societies such as China
which operate according to a lunar calendar rather than a solar calendar every 19th year indulge themselves in two of the month of
August, one following hard upon the other.) For lack of such precision tinkering, by 1582 enough of an error had been allowed to
accumulate that the new year was arriving a full ten days too early, which led Pope Gregory XIII (florut 1572CE-1585CE) to
arbitrarily add ten days to the calendar. Such a reform by a Catholic pontiff did not play well in Protestant England, so it was not
until 1752 that the English Parliament legislated an equivalent correction. This reform of the calendar as of 1752 made the
conventional year more or less match the solar year, so that New Year’s Day was no longer to be celebrated on March 25th. (It was
this calendar reform which made it unnecessary to use a double year notation such as “1751-52” for a date between January 1st and
March 25th. In Henry Thoreau’s writings we see these old dates identified as “o.s.” standing for “Old Style.”)
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1754
Samuel Johnson’s project for an English dictionary being now almost complete, Lord Chesterfield began to
take public credit. He began taking considerably more public credit than should have been due to a man who
had merely posted to the struggling Dr. Johnson the magnificent pittance of £10 some years before. It was
almost like our Richard “I am your President” Nixon posturing at a moon landing! Dr. Johnson’s response
would be a public letter which has become famous, which commented in part:
The notice you have been pleased to take of my labors,
had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed
till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it,
till I am solitary and cannot impart it,
till I am known and do not want it.
A Concord author would, for humorous effect, have recourse to this famous Brit-putdown idiom:
“An old maid, that’s what I’m to be. A literary spinster, with a pen
for a spouse, a family of stories for children, and twenty years hence a morsel
of fame, perhaps, when, like poor Johnson, I’m old and can’t enjoy it,
solitary, and can’t share it, independent, and don’t need it. Well, I needn’t
be a sour saint nor a selfish sinner, and, I dare say, old maids are very
comfortable when they get used to it, but—” And there Jo sighed, as if
the prospect was not inviting.
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1755
Samuel Johnson received an honorary degree, a MA, from Oxford University. His new degree would appear
on the title page of his A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, published during this year.
He posted his famous letter to Lord Chesterfield.
The notice you have been pleased to take of my labors,
had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed
till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it,
till I am solitary and cannot impart it,
till I am known and do not want it.
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Dr. Johnson defined a cod as “any case or husk in which seeds are lodged” on the basis of the Middle English
etymology in which a cod is a sack or pouch.
cod
Pronunciation: ’k‰d
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural cod also cods
Etymology: Middle English
Date: 14th century
1 : any of various bottom-dwelling fishes (family Gadidae,
the cod family) that usually occur in cold marine waters
and often have barbels and three dorsal fins: as
a : one (Gadus morhua) of the No. Atlantic that is
an important food fish
b : one (Gadus macrocephalus) of the Pacific Ocean
2 : any of various bony fishes resembling the true cods
Words are the daughters of earth, and things are the
sons of heaven.
— Samuel Johnson (paraphrasing Samuel Madden),
A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, 1755,
as quoted on page 8 of
William Least Heat-Moon’s
PrairyErth (a deep map)
[Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1991].
Henry Thoreau would hypothesize on the basis of such etymology (perhaps in Johnson’s dictionary if not in
his shelf edition of Nathan Bailey’s AN UNIVERSAL ETYMOLOGICAL ENGLISH DICTIONARY) that the cod might
have received its name on account of the female containing such a large quantity of eggs:
CAPE COD: I suppose that the word Cape is from the French cap; which
is from the Latin caput, a head; which is, perhaps, from the verb
capere, to take, –that being the part by which we take hold of a
thing:–Take Time by the forelock. It is also the safest part to
take a serpent by. And as for Cod, that was derived directly from
that “great store of codfish” which Captain Bartholomew Gosnold
caught there in 1602; which fish appears to have been so called
from the Saxon word codde, “a case in which seeds are lodged,”
either from the form of the fish, or the quantity of spawn it
contains; whence also, perhaps, codling (“pomum coctile”?) and
coddle, –to cook green like peas. (V. Dic.)
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1765
When Grenville’s parliament passed a Stamp Act and Quartering Act in an effort to pay for the war with France
and to subsidize the administrative costs of the colonies, Lord Chesterfield wrote to his friend Lord Newcastle
about the “absurdity” of such a piece of legislation. It could not be properly enforced, he pointed out — and
even if it somehow could be make to be effective such a tax could not possibly produce revenues of more than
£80,000 per year while the cost in reduced trade from the American colonies would be at least £1,000,000 per
year (his estimate would turn out to have been on the low side, for the loss in trade volume would nearly double
this).
The attempts by Benjamin Franklin to prevent the enactment of a Stamp Act by the British parliament now
seem so utterly ineffective, that historians wonder what had actually been going on in Ben’s mind.3
The legislation would be so greatly resented in the colonies that it would lead to a Stamp Act Congress in NewYork, and a declaration of colonial grievances delivered to Parliament.
3. Would Franklin actually be spying for the British? He had an unusually strong sentimental attachment to Britain up to 1775, had
a record going back to Stamp Act days of being out of touch with American Patriot positions, and gave indication of double or even
triple dealings during his period in Paris up to the signing of the Treaty of Paris on August 8, 1763. (References: Cecil B. Currey,
CODE NUMBER 72: BEN FRANKLIN: PATRIOT OR SPY? (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972) and Richard B. Morris, THE
PEACEMAKERS; THE GREAT POWERS AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE (NY: Harper & Row, 1965).
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1768
Philip Stanhope died. Despite his illegitimacy, he had been helped in every possible way by his biological
father, the important personage Lord Chesterfield. Despite all this help, his career trajectory had been not that
very distinguished. After young Stanhope’s death the father would learn to his great surprise that his bastard
had secretly married and produced offspring, but with a woman of unspeakably humble origins. This betrayal,
after all his careful fatherly instruction in worldly wisdom!
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1773
March 24, Wednesday: Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield died. Extracts of his will would appear in The
Gentleman’s Magazine. To each of his two natural grandsons Charles Stanhope (1761-1845) and Philip
Stanhope (1763-1801) –products of the covert marriage of his illegitimate son Philip Stanhope with a
commoner– he had bequeathed £5,000 plus an annuity of £100. Having adopted a distant relative as his
godson, this godson had fallen heir to the title and estates.
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1774
When Lord Chesterfield’s letters of advice to his illegitimate son were published by his son’s widow, it became
possible to understand why it was that the young man had needed to resist them. As Dr. Samuel Johnson would
comment:
[T]hey teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancingmaster.
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1778
MISCELLANIES FOR SENTIMENTALISTS: CONTAINING,
I. LIFE OF DAVID HUME, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.
II. TRAVELS OF A PHILOSOPHER, BY LE POIVRE.
III. PRINCIPLES OF POLITENESS, AND OF KNOWING THE WORLD, BY LORD CHESTERFIELD.
IV. MAXIMS AND MORAL REFLECTIONS, BY THE DUKE DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
V. TRAVELS OF THE IMAGINATION; A TRUE JOURNEY FROM NEWCASTLE TO LONDON, BY J. MURRAY.
VI. AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, AN EVERLASTING DELIVERANCE FROM BRITISH TYRANNY, BY PHILIP F—U.
VII. THE HUMBLE CONFESSION, DECLARATION, RECANTATION, AND APOLOGY OF BENJAMIN TOWNE, PRINTER
IN PHILADELPHIA.
Philadelphia: Printed and sold by Robert Bell, in Third-Street, M.DCC.LXXVIII.
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1828
THE BEAUTIES OF CHESTERFIELD, CONSISTING OF SELECTIONS FROM HIS WORKS.
BY ALFRED HOWARD, ESQ. Stereotyped at the Boston Type and Stereotype Foundry, published by
Charles Ewer of No. 141 Washington Street, Boston. This little volume would be in the personal library of
Henry Thoreau and we may wonder what benefit he derived from reading the advice of a lord whose advice
was that one should never be guilty of so undignified a thing as laughing in public.
BEAUTIES OF CHESTERFIELD
James Boswell had recorded a remark Dr. Samuel Johnson made about Lord Chesterfield:
This man (said he) I thought had been a Lord among wits;
but I find he is only a wit among Lords!
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“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
Philip Dormer Stanhope
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,
such as extensive quotations and reproductions of
images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great
deal of special work product of Austin Meredith,
copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will
eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some
of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button
invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap
through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—
allows for an utter alteration of the context within
which one is experiencing a specific content already
being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin
Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by
all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any
material from such files, must be obtained in advance
in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”
Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please
contact the project at <[email protected]>.
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until
tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”
– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”
in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: June 18, 2014
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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a
human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that
we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the
shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these
chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by
ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the
Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a
request for information we merely push a button.
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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious
deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in
the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we
need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology —
but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary
“writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this
originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves,
and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever
has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire
operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished
need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect
to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic
research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge.
Place requests with <[email protected]>. Arrgh.