STANHOPE, PHILIP, natural son of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield PC, and Elizabeth du Bouchet, The Hague, Netherlands; b.; adm. (aged 10) Apr 1743 (Morel's); left 1746; Grand Tour (Italy) 1746-51 (Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France); MP Liskeard 1754-61, St. Germans 1761 – May 1765; British Resident, Hamburg 1757-63; Envoy to Imperial Diet 1763; Envoy Extraordinary at Dresden from 1764; the recipient of the Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield to his Son; at “Mr Morel’s boarding house in Cowley Street” in Aug 1743 (Letter XCIX); “the boy was encumbered with flesh, and nature had so carelessly compacted his limbs as scarcely to leave them the poer of flexure. In a word, in infancy he was shapeless, and in youth a looby. Never did a she-bear with more anxious assiduity labour to lick her cub into shape than this fond parent did to correct the errors of nature in the formation of this his darling” (Hawkins, Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson, 1787, 181-2); “Mr. Stanhope’s character has been unjustly represented as diametrically opposite to what Lord Chesterfield wished him to be. He has been called dull, gross and awkward : but I knew him at Dresden, when he was Envoy to that Court; and though he could not boast of the graces, he was in truth a sensible, civil, well-behaved man” (Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, 1887, i, 266 note); m. c. 1759 (secretly) Eugenia Peters, natural dau. of Compton Domvile MP (I); d. at Avignon, France 16 Nov 1768.
