' She replied, 'Sir, I
will take care that you never shall;' and so they parted.
There was little probability of Lord Chesterfield's participating in
domestic felicity, when neither his heart nor his fancy were engaged in
the union which he had formed. The lady to whom he was really attached,
and by whom he had a son, resided in the Netherlands: she passed by the
name of Madame du Bouchet, and survived both Lord Chesterfield and her
son. A permanent provision was made for her, and a sum of five hundred
pounds bequeathed to her, with these words: 'as a small reparation for
the injury I did her.' 'Certainly,' adds Lord Mahon, in his Memoir of
his illustrious ancestor, 'a small one.'
For some time Lord Chesterfield remained in England, and his letters are
dated from Bath, from Tonbridge, from Blackheath. He had, in 1726, been
elevated to the House of Lords upon the death of his father. In that
assembly his great eloquence is thus well described by his
biographer:--[25]
'Lord Chesterfield's eloquence, the fruit of much study, was less
characterized by force and compass than by elegance and perspicuity, and
especially by good taste and urbanity, and a vein of delicate irony
which, while it sometimes inflicted severe strokes, never passed the
limits of decency and propriety.
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