Word: earls
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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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...
...Training of a Slob. From the age of six, putty-brained little Philip was trained on Greek, Latin and the great books. At 14, he was sent Grand Touring for five years. In a chain of letters, the earl alternately lashed the boy into study and lectured him on the art of being worldlywise. "For God's sake, my dear boy, do not squander away one moment of your time ... I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time, that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature...
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...
Increasingly deaf and forever ailing, the earl took to shuttling stoically between Bath and London, in one city drinking the waters, in the other, the bitter tea of a 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...