“I saw my dear and valued friend (says Lady Huntingdon) a short time before his departure. The blackness of darkness, accompanied by every gloomy horror, thickened most awfully round his dying moments. Dear Lady Chesterfield could not be persuaded to leave his room for an instant. What unmitigated anguish has she endured.[253] But her confidential communications I am not at liberty to disclose. The curtain has fallen—his immortal part has passed to another state of existence. Oh! my soul, come not thou unto his end!”[254]
In his will he mentions his servants, “his unfortunate friends, his equals by nature,” and the mother of his natural son; but not one word is said of his excellent lady, who survived him only a few years; but how different was her death-bed.
“I was with her to the last (says Lady Huntingdon), and never saw a soul more humbled in the dust before God, on account of her own vileness and nothingness, but having a sure and steadfast hope in the love and mercy of God in Christ, constantly affirming that his blood cleanseth from all sin. The last audible expressions that fell from her, a few moments before the final struggle, were—‘Oh! my friend, I have hope—a strong hope—through grace!’ then taking my hand, and clasping it earnestly between hers, exclaimed with much energy—‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’”
Lady Chesterfield died September 16, 1778, without issue, whereby her titles became extinct.
Though Lord Chesterfield seldom exerted his poetical talents except in epigrams and ballads; the few that are known to be his are evidently by the hand of a master; witness his “Fanny, blooming fair,” written on Lady Fanny Shirley, a reigning beauty at Court; “Advice to a Lady in Autumn,” addressed to the same; his epigram on the Duchess of Richmond; and verses written in a lady’s “Sherlock on Death,” &c. No attack of an enemy could have degraded his character so much as the publication of his “Letters to his Son,” which, if they do not deserve the severe reprehension of Dr. Johnson, that they “inculcated the morals of a strumpet with the manners of a dancing-master,” certainly display a relaxation of principle for which no talents can make amends, and which prove him to have been a man in whose mind the applause of the world was the great, and almost the sole, governing principle.
At the same time with Lady Chesterfield, William Pulteney, Earl of Bath, the celebrated statesman, and a person of much notoriety in his day, was deeply impressed under Mr. Whitefield’s ministry. There had been for many years the most intimate friendship between him and Lady Huntingdon, in which Lady Fanny Shirley had no small share. Whatever, therefore, may be thought of his public character, he must have been rather more than moral, to have secured their esteem. He is said to have been extremely amiable in his private life, and much beloved by his friends. Lord Chesterfield’s malignity towards him was keen and inveterate. Like his political antagonist, Sir Robert Walpole, Lord Bath could, when
He attended Tottenham-court chapel regularly for some years, and was very liberal on several occasions, contributing munificently to the establishment of the Orphan-house, in Georgia, and the erection of the Tabernacle at Bristol. He died July 7th, 1764, without surviving issue.[255]