Word: chesterfields
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Though his fabulous Mayfair manor, Chesterfield House, took three years in the building, the earl never properly had a home. At 38, his personal fortune depleted by staggering losses at cards, he advertised for a wife ("I want merit and I want money"). He got the money from a middle-aged and somewhat vulgar countess who brought him ?50,000 in dowry and ?3,000 in annual income. After the wedding, they were rarely seen together...
...Chesterfield took a dim view of women generally; he felt their proper function was "to suckle fools and chronicle small beer." But in an age of high manners and low morals, it was chic to have a mistress, even more chic to sire a bastard. The earl had both...
...French governess, discarded her after a year or so, left her in his will "five hundred pounds as some compensation of the injury." The illegitimate son she bore him turned out to be the sad apple of his eye. The sage of the minuet had sired a clodhopper. But Chesterfield was the last to admit...
What made the earl cringe was that Philip was such a slob. At a dressy dinner at Chesterfield House, he gobbled so earnestly at a plate of gooseberries topped with whipped cream that his face was soon lathered. Humiliated before his guests, Chesterfield quipped to Philip's servant: "John, why do you not fetch the strop and the razors? You see your master is going to shave himself." When Philip botched his maiden speech in the House of Commons, Chesterfield finally scrapped the dream that he would ever make a man, or even a manikin of distinction...
...lonely old age. His reason had withered his faith in God and realism had whittled his faith in man, but nothing ever weakened his faith in manners. On his deathbed, his valet announced that a friend, Solomon Dayrolles, had come to see him. "Give Dayrolles a chair," croaked Chesterfield, and died...