CHAPTER XII
PITT AND HIS FRIENDS
(1783–94)
Keep thy friend Under thy own life’s key.
SHAKESPEARE, _All’s Well that Ends Well_.
A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymball where there is no love.--BACON.
Some statesmen merit notice solely from the magnitude of their achievements; others attract attention by the charm of their personality. Pitt claims homage on both accounts. Accordingly I propose to devote this chapter to his private life and friendships during the early part of his career, beginning with the time when he laid down the Chancellorship of the Exchequer and fled to the house of his friend Wilberforce at Wimbledon. In the Diary of the latter we read this brief but suggestive entry: “April 3 [1783]. To Wimbledon, where Pitt, etc., dined and slept. Evening walk--to bed a little past two. April 4. Delicious day: lounged the morning at Wimbledon with friends: foining at night, and run about the garden for an hour or two.”
We can picture the scene. Lauriston House, Wilberforce’s abode on the south side of Wimbledon Common, is a spacious villa, comfortable in its eighteenth-century solidity, and scarcely changed since those days. One of the front bedrooms is known as “Mr. Pitt’s room.” There he would look forth on the Common, which had for him a peculiar charm. At the back, the south windows look upon an extensive lawn, bordered not too thickly by trees, under one of which, a maple, tradition says that he was wont to lounge away his Sunday mornings, to the distress of his host. At other times the garden was the scene of half riotous mirth. Pitt, Dudley Ryder, Pepper Arden, Tom Steele, and Wilberforce there broke loose from the restraints of Westminster, and indulged in _foyning_. That old-English word, denoting thrusting or fencing, conjures up visions of quips and pranks such as Horace loved. Would that Pitt had had more time for these wholesome follies!
Imagine these youths, with the freshness of Cambridge still upon them, cheating the hours with fun. Pitt, the stately, austere leader of the House of Commons, who, on entering its precincts, fixed his eyes straight on his seat, and tilted his nose loftily in air during his State progress thither, with not so much as a nod to his supporters[367]--yet here, on the lawn of Lauriston House, is all fun and laughter, sharpening his wit against the edge of Wilberforce’s fancy, answering jest with jest, quotation with quotation, in a fresh mingling of jollity and culture. As yet all is joyous in the lives of the friends. Wilberforce has inherited from an uncle an ample fortune along with Lauriston House, and adds rooms to it so as fitly to entertain the friends who always cluster about him. The woes of the slaves have not yet struck a chill to his life, and he lives amidst a buzz of friends and admirers. He reminds us of that character in Disraeli’s “Lothair,” who proved an irresistible magnet at every party--no one quite knew why; but every one sought to be next him. The magnetism of Wilberforce is easily intelligible; it lay in his lovable and gifted nature, which welled forth freely in genial anecdote, friendly parody, sparkling retort.
For Pitt, too, there were as yet no oppressive cares. True, at that time, there loomed before him the toilsome career of an impecunious barrister, but that did not daunt his serene and self-reliant nature. Doubtless the troubles of England moved him more, now that the prospect of peace with America and the half of Europe was overclouded by the triumph of Fox and North. But Pitt had that protective faculty, inherent in all great natures, of laying aside personal and even national cares in the company of his dearest friends, and it set him free for life-restoring mirth. Then, too, his nature, shy and stiff to mere acquaintances, blossomed forth radiantly to a chosen circle, such as he found at Wimbledon. Here, then, was seen the real man. Away went the mask of official reserve, which prudence compelled him to wear at Westminster as a defence against his seniors. Here, among youths and friends, his pranks were startling. One of them must be told in the words of Wilberforce: “We found one morning the fruits of Pitt’s earlier rising in the careful sowing of the garden beds with the fragments of a dress-hat in which Dudley Ryder had overnight come down from the opera.”
Would that we knew more of those bright days! For Pitt the man, not Pitt the statesman, is seen at Wimbledon. The pillar of State, columnar in its Doric austerity, becomes a lithe facile form, twined about with social graces, gay with the flowers of friendship. The hours of recreation, rather than those spent in the office, reveal the inner life. Alas! the self-revealing episodes in the life of Pitt are hidden from us. None of his friends was a Boswell. Wilberforce, who might have been the enlightener, was troubled by defective eyesight, which curtailed his correspondence; and his Diary is a series of tantalizing jottings, a veritable Barmecide feast. As for Pitt’s relatives, they never drew him out of himself. Lord Chatham, though a good talker in general company, seems to have exerted on his younger brother a slightly chilling influence; and their letters were fraternally business-like. We therefore search in vain for those lighter traits of character, those sparkles of wit, which enlivened the joyous years 1783–5. This side of Pitt’s character is little more known to us than are the hidden regions of the moon. We wish to know it all the more because it is not the frozen but the sunny side of his being.
Failing to catch more than one sportive echo of those glad times, the chronicler falls back on mere externals, such as Pitt’s occasional reluctance to attend the parish church at Wimbledon, or his fondness for fishing in Lord Spencer’s lake on the lower land east of the Common. Clearly the neighbourhood must have attracted him; for in August 1784 he leased the house next to Lord Ashburton’s, on the north side of Putney Heath, scarcely two miles distant from the abode of Wilberforce. He resided there up to the autumn of 1785, when the opportunity of buying the house at Holwood drew him to the scenes of his boyhood, near Hayes, in Kent. Nevertheless the Surrey Common was to win him back. For, during his last term of office, he purchased Bowling Green House, on the old Portsmouth road, near the middle of that beautiful space.
There it was that he fought his duel with Tierney on Whitsunday 1798. There, too, he breathed his last, on 23rd January 1806. In the dark days that followed on the news of Austerlitz, his thoughts turned with one final flicker of hope towards the news which he expected from his special envoy to Berlin, the Earl of Harrowby, formerly Dudley Ryder. The news proved to be heart-breaking. But fancy persists in wondering whether, perchance, during the time of waiting, the dauntless spirit did not for a brief space fling off the thraldom of the present and flit across the open to dwell with fond remembrance on that spring sowing of the flower-beds of his friend Wilberforce.[368]
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After the severe disappointments of the session of 1785, the signs of friskiness vanish from the life of Pitt. Up to that time his hopefulness is of almost boyish intensity. Confidence in himself, and in the goodness of his cause, and determination to carry out a work of national revival, lead him to grapple with great enterprises in a way that astonishes friends and baffles opponents. The nation having given him a mandate in 1784, he hopes to solve the most urgent of existing problems. They are the restoration of public credit, the reduction of the National Debt, the reform of Parliament, the subordination of the East India Company to the control of Parliament, the opening up of freer trade not only with Ireland but also with France, and the preservation of peace, so that, as he phrased it--“Let peace continue for five years, and we shall again look any Power in Europe in the face.”[369]
Here was a programme which transcended anything previously seen. But to it were added the many unforeseen events and problems that provide a full stock in trade for an ordinary parliamentary leader. The Warren Hastings affair alone would have occupied a whole session under a quiescent Minister; and we may here note that Pitt’s conscientious treatment of it, as a matter on which Ministers and members must vote according to their convictions, tended to relax the bonds of party discipline to a dangerous extent.
Indeed, there is only one of his important actions during the first years of power that needs apology. This is the persistence with which he pressed against Fox the demand for a complete scrutiny of the Westminster election. Despite the fact that that wearisome and very expensive inquiry brought to light few bad votes, and did not exclude Fox from Parliament (for as we saw, he sat as Member for Orkney), the Prime Minister refused to put an end to “this cursed business,” as Pulteney termed it,[370] until his own supporters compelled him to desist. How are we to explain this conduct? It led to waste of time and temper in Parliament, besides annoying many of his friends, and straining to breaking-point the allegiance of his composite majority. There can be no doubt that he committed a blunder, and one which Englishmen detest; for his conduct seemed ungenerous to a beaten foe and a violation of the unwritten rules of fair-play.
Nevertheless, it is likely that he acted, not from rancour, not from a desire to ban his enemy, least of all under any dictation from Windsor (of this I have found no sign), but rather from the dictates of political morality. That there had been trumping up of false votes was notorious; for the votes polled exceeded the total number of voters; and Pitt, as the champion of purity at elections, may have deemed it his duty to probe the sore to the bottom. In these days an avowed champion of Reform would be praised for such conduct. In that age he was condemned; and it was certainly tactless to single out Fox from among the many candidates for whom corrupt practices had been used. Such an act appeared the outcome of personal pique, not of zeal for electoral purity. So at least men looked on it in the spring of 1785. Pulteney, Wraxall, and the ordinary ruck of members failed to see anything but personal motives in the whole affair.[371] Fox, who always gauged the temper of the House aright, carried it with him when he protested that he had little expected to find Pitt acting as the agent of the Crown in his persecution; that it was clearly the aim of the Ministry to ruin him, for he was a poor man. “Yet,” he added, “in such a cause I will lay down my last shilling. If ultimately I lose my election, it will be for want of money, not from want of a legal majority of votes, while Westminster will be deprived of its franchise because I am unable to prosecute a pecuniary contest with the Treasury.”
This is the most effective type of parliamentary speech. It avoided all reference to the abstract principles which were at stake, and it appealed with telling force to the sporting instincts of squires. Little wonder is it that Pitt’s followers went over to the side which seemed to stand for fair play to a poor man in his contest with a spiteful bureaucracy. A few days later Pitt could muster only a majority of nine (21st February 1785), and this clearly foreshadowed the end of the scrutiny, which came with a vote hostile to Ministers on 3rd March. On a subordinate motion, six days later, several malcontents returned to their allegiance, thus proving, in Wraxall’s words, that “they wished to control and restrain, but had no desire to overturn, the Administration.”[372]
This affair deserves mention here because it illustrates what was the chief weakness of Pitt. His secluded childhood, his education apart from other youths, even at Cambridge, his shyness in general company, and his decided preference for the society of a few friends, gave him very few opportunities for knowing ordinary men. He therefore was slow in understanding the temper of the House, and he never gained what we may call the Palmerston touch. Well would it have been for him if he had mixed more with men and shown towards members of the House the affability with which Fox and North charmed friends and foes alike. But, like Peel, Pitt had neither parliamentary graces nor small talk for the lobby. In truth he was too shy or too proud to unbend with ease. Or rather he did so only in a circle of friends or among his juniors. Then his sense of fun could go to surprising lengths, witness that historic romp when Lady Hester Stanhope, two of her younger brothers, and young William Napier (the future historian) managed to get him down and blacken his face. In the midst of their jubilant triumph there came a knock at the door. Two Ministers were announced as desirous of taking his commands on some question. For a few minutes State business stood still until the Prime Minister shook off his assailants and washed his face for the interview. Then the boys marvelled more at the change of manner than of colour. The Prime Minister threw up his chin, loftily inquired the cause of the visit, imparted his decision, stiffly dismissed the Ministers--and resumed the romp.[373] Clearly there were two Pitts.
His rather stilted manners at Westminster were doubtless a reflection--a lunar reflection--of the melodramatic splendours of his father. Never was a colleague or a subordinate introduced to Chatham’s presence until the effects of light were Rembrandtesque, and the telling phrase had been coined. But where the father triumphed by the force of his personality, the son only half succeeded. For he was more a Grenville than a Pitt, and he inherited from that family some of its congenital stiffness. Hence the efforts which the son put forth, as if with the aim of fulfilling the precept of St. Paul to Timothy--“Let no man despise thy youth”--were calculated, not to impress beholders, but rather to freeze them.
Far different was the easy good nature of Fox, which often salved the wounds inflicted in the course of debate. It is said that Lord North, after one of the debates on the American War, in which Fox had mercilessly belaboured one of the Ministers, good-humouredly remarked to the orator, “You were in fine feather to-night, Charles; I am glad that it was not my turn to be fallen upon.” Fox, we may add, reciprocated these sentiments. However he might threaten North with impeachment, he was ready in private to shake him by the hand; and shortly before the fall of that Minister he publicly asked his pardon for offending him by his tremendous indictment, adding that he meant it not. To us this sounds unreal. Either the indictment against the author of the nation’s ruin was not quite sincere, or the apology was hollow. Pitt, with his exceptionally high standard of truthfulness,[374] could not have tendered it. Fox did; and Wraxall praised his conduct, adding that Pitt was less placable, and was wanting in those frank, winning, open ways which made friends and retained them through adversity.[375]
This rather superficial verdict--for Wraxall knew Pitt only very slightly--summed up the views of the easy-going mass, which cares nothing for principles, little for measures, and very much for men, provided that they keep up the parliamentary game according to the old rules and in a sportsmanlike way. It must always be remembered that few members of Parliament took their duties seriously, and looked on the debates mainly as a change from the life of the other fashionable clubs. To such an assembly the political philosophy of Burke was foolishness, and the lofty principles of Pitt, mere Pharisaism. Its ideal would have been Esau, provided that he had held fast to the customs of primogeniture.
We have little or nothing that directly shows the impression produced on Pitt by his discovery of the shallowness and fickleness of his supporters. Perhaps it intensified his natural shyness and awkwardness of manner, which Wilberforce assures us were very great. Certainly he did not mix more with men. “Pitt does not make friends” is a significant entry in Wilberforce’s Diary for March 1785.[376] This inability to make a wide circle of friends was not incompatible with those rarer gifts which link a man closely to those with whom he had real kinship of spirit. If we may read Shakespeare’s thoughts into the well-known words of Polonius to Laertes, the poet supremely admired a man who inspired the few with ardent affection and held the many at arm’s length. In regard to character, then, we may honour Pitt for the very characteristic which to men like Wraxall seemed a blemish.
Nevertheless, it was a serious failing in a parliamentary tactician. Onlookers, who saw only the cold and reserved exterior, described Pitt as the embodiment of egotism and pride. His friends knew full well that he was the soul of kindness. Dundas and Wilberforce testify to his affable behaviour to subordinates, his fund of good temper, which was proof even against contradiction and the advent of bad news. Wilberforce mentions a case in point. Pitt had long been ruminating on some revenue proposal, and at length mentioned it to the Attorney-General, only to learn that there would be grave legal objections to the scheme; far from showing annoyance, he received the announcement “with the most unruffled good-humour,” and, giving up his plan, “pursued his other business as cheerfully and pleasantly as usual.”[377]
It is not thus that a proud and egotistical nature sees his castle vanish into air. Anecdotes such as this have been known only since the year 1897. Now we know the real Pitt; the men of these times saw only the professional mask; and therefore we find exclamations like that of Sir Gilbert Elliot who, after hearing the almost inspired speech of Pitt on the abolition of the slave-trade, remarked: “One felt almost to like the man”;[378] or again Lady Anne Hamilton in her “Memoirs of the Court of George III,” asserted that Pitt was always cold and carried his frostiness even into his carouses.
This certainly was the general belief. In one particular Pitt’s behaviour often gave colour to the charge of pride or egotism. His letters were as stiff as his parliamentary attitudes. Worst of all, he very often left letters unanswered; and this applied not merely to begging letters, against which silence is a Prime Minister’s panoply, but even to important matters of State. We find Eden, in the midst of the commercial negotiations with France, writing from Paris in despairing terms about the Prime Minister’s silence, and finally suggesting that all his letters of the last fortnight must have sunk in the Channel. Sir James Harris, too, when fighting an unequal battle against the French party in Holland, begged Pitt to send a few lines to encourage the hard pressed friends of England. For four months not a line came; and at last Harris begged Carmarthen to cajole a letter out of his chief: “Is it impossible to move him, _who speaks_ so well, to write one poor line to these sound shillings and pence men?”[379] The excuse doubtless was, that Pitt was overworked in Parliament (as indeed he stated to Eden);[380] but, even with the then scanty facilities for dealing with a vast correspondence, he should certainly have handled it with more method and tact. Careless correspondents will readily conjecture how much a Prime Minister may harm his prospects by subjecting friends and foes alike to a peculiarly annoying slight.
Pitt, then, owed little or nothing to social graces; and Horace Walpole gave a very superficial judgement, when, in his companion sketches of Pitt and Fox, he stated that the former “cultivated friends to form a party.” On the contrary, he harmed his party by cooling his friends.
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The men who most helped Pitt to keep in touch with his following were Dundas, Grenville, and Jenkinson. They did not, as Wraxall avers, hold the first place in his confidence. That was still held by Wilberforce; and to their friendship we may apply the apt remark of Montaigne, that the amity which possesses and sways the soul cannot be double. For political reasons Pitt after the year 1784 came into closer contact with his subalterns, among whom Dundas and Grenville claim notice.
Henry Dundas (1742–1811), a younger son of the Right Honourable Robert Dundas, Lord President of the Scottish Court of Session, and of Anne Gordon of Invergordon, was born at Edinburgh, where he was educated first at school, then in the University. The atmosphere in which he grew up was strictly legal; and his ancestry, no less than his upbringing, seemed to fit him for success at the Bar, at which he appeared in 1763. His rise was rapid, and in 1774 he entered Parliament as member for Midlothian. At Westminster he attached himself to North’s party and became known as a hard worker and hard hitter. United as these powers were with a manly presence, genial gifts, and the full fund of Scottish shrewdness, he acquired favour and became Lord Advocate. Grace and persuasiveness of speech he lacked; a harsh voice, a still harsher accent, and awkward gestures told against him; but above these defects he rose triumphant, thanks to indomitable courage, which enabled him unabashed to bear the heaviest blows of debate. Napoleon once expressed his admiration of Blücher, because, however badly he was beaten, “the old devil” came up again as though nothing had happened. So it was with Dundas in his many encounters with Fox. He might be repulsed but never routed. His features were bold and handsome, and, if they were “tinged with convivial purple,” that perhaps enhanced their charm. For the House loved a _bon vivant_, who entertained with lairdly lavishness and had good store, not only of wine, but of broad stories.
Wraxall, while admitting Dundas’s appearance to be “manly and advantageous,” avers that his conviviality was part of a deep-laid scheme for managing men and tightening his grip on the Administration; for “never did any man conceal deeper views of every kind under the appearance of careless inattention to self-interest.” The same insinuation is wittily conveyed by the authors of “The Rolliad” in a skit on the Cabinet Meetings which Dundas was supposed to hold in his villa. “March 9th, 1787. Got Thurlow to dine with us at Wimbledon--gave him my best Burgundy and blasphemy to put him into good humour. After a brace of bottles ventured to drop a hint of business. Thurlow cursed me, and asked Pitt for a sentiment. Pitt looked foolish, Grenville wise. Mulgrave stared. Sydney’s chin lengthened. Tried the effect of another bottle. Pitt began a long speech on the subject of our meeting. Sydney fell asleep by the fire”--and so on.
In one respect Dundas was the great political agent of the age. He managed Scotland, so thoroughly, indeed, that he has been termed “the foremost Scotsman of the eighteenth century.”[381] No civilian since the time of John Knox has ever controlled the energies of that people so thoroughly as Henry Dundas. What the great Reformer achieved by an appeal to their highest aspirations, the party manipulator achieved by an appeal to the purse. Since the collapse of the Stuart cause material interests had been paramount; and their deadening effect on national character appears in the political torpor which lay upon Scotland until the strident call of the French Revolution awakened her. The men north of the Tweed had even more reason than Englishmen to desire Parliamentary Reform; for, as will be seen in a later chapter, in all Scotland there were only 1303 electors; and these returned 45 members as against 44 who misrepresented Cornwall. But so long as the Scots slumbered, it mattered not whether they had 45 members or 4; for the return of 45, and their course of conduct at Westminster were alike prescribed by Dundas. The soporific fruit which drugged the Scottish people and kept their representatives close to his heel was “patronage.” Dundas it was who dispensed all important prizes both in Church and State. Valuable livings at home, lucrative posts in India or speedy advancement in the navy, these and many other rewards were in his hands. His influence at the Admiralty and at the India Board of Control was immense; he worked hard for his men; and it may be admitted that his choice of officials, especially for India, was often sound. Certain it is that he opened up golden avenues to hundreds of poor Scottish families, so that he was often hailed as the benefactor of his people.
In one respect Dundas conferred a substantial boon. He persuaded Pitt to extinguish the embers of hatred to the reigning dynasty which still smouldered in the Highlands, by restoring the estates that were confiscated after the “Forty-five.” By this act of clemency Pitt and Dundas linked their names to the work of reconciliation so tactfully begun by Chatham, and helped to foster the sentiment of British nationality, which bore a rich harvest on the fields of Salamanca and Waterloo. It is not surprising, then, that Dundas had the small governing clique in Scotland entirely at his beck and call. One of his forty-five henchmen at Westminster, Ferguson of Pitfour, frankly stated that he had never heard a speech which had influenced his vote, and that there was only one defect in Dundas’s leadership, namely, that he was not quite tall enough to enable his followers readily to see into which lobby he was going at division-time.[382]
Even so, the magnetic influence of Dundas upon the obedient Caledonian squad was a political asset of no small worth. Not seldom could the laird of Melville decide the fate of Cabinets by throwing his forty-five votes into this or that scale. He himself was fully aware of his importance; for in a letter which he wrote to Grenville early in 1789, he declined another official post because in his present position (or positions) he was “a cement of political strength to the present Administration,” the dissolution of which might be ruinous. The words are instinct, not only with the Scottish canniness, but with Scottish loyalty. In truth, the staunchness of Dundas’s friendship to Pitt suffices to refute those critics, both of his own and later times, who speak of him as of a political Vicar of Bray. In his early days his trimming propensities were often disagreeably prominent; and the speech in which he hailed the rising sun of Pitt, and slighted the waning orb of North, was quite characteristic of the earlier half of his career.[383] But, for him as for some others, the splendour of Pitt’s genius, and the glow of his pure patriotism, inaugurated a brighter future; and he might well say of his tergiversation at that time what Talleyrand said of his still more numerous changes of front: “I have never deserted a party before it deserted itself.” While recognizing in this new ally great powers of work, and still greater powers of “influence,” Pitt did not at once give him his whole confidence; and we shall probably not be far wrong in inferring that only after the disillusionment of the spring of 1785, did “Henry VIIIth of Scotland” become his counsellor on matters of the highest moment. Thenceforth his influence over Pitt steadily increased, while that of Wilberforce somewhat waned; and we find the latter declaring at a later time that Pitt’s connection with Dundas was his “great misfortune,” a remark which applied mainly to the slavery question.[384] It is, however, still more applicable to Dundas’s conduct of the war, when, as we shall see, his absorption in other work, and his utter inexperience of military affairs, should have made him backward in giving advice. Far from that, he was for some time the guiding spirit; and from his seat at the Home Office or the India Board, or from his suburban villa, he dashed off orders of momentous import, which were to gladden the heart of Carnot.
Such, then, was the man at whose house, on the west side of Wimbledon Common, Pitt was a frequent visitor. There the conviviality was unrestrained by those scruples which more and more prevailed at Wilberforce’s abode hard by; and after the latter gave up that villa, in the autumn of 1786, the associations of Pitt with Wimbledon are somewhat vinous. Both Pitt and Dundas were hard drinkers. The former frequently tossed off several tumblers of port wine before a great speech in the House of Commons; and it would seem, if rumour spoke truly, that at Dundas’s the potations were long and deep. It must not, however, be supposed that Pitt performed no serious work there. The long and important despatches which he wrote at Wimbledon show the contrary; and their contents prove them to have been written before the Bacchic pleasures, which men of that age deemed the appropriate close of a busy day. Only once did the pleasures of dessert at Dundas’s cause Pitt and his host to compromise themselves in public. But on one occasion they came to the House of Commons obviously the worse for liquor. The occasion was equally remarkable. It was on the acceptance of the French Declaration of War, in February 1793. Fox generously forebore from taking advantage of his rival’s incapacity,[385] but the situation was hit off in the following lines:
I cannot see the Speaker, Hal, can you? What! Cannot see the Speaker, I see two.
A man so frank and intriguing, so subtle and pugnacious as Dundas, is fair game for the satirist; and it is not surprising that the Whig rhymsters who compiled the “Rolliad” scourged the factotum of Caledonia:
Whose exalted soul No bonds of vulgar prejudice control. Of shame unconscious in his bold career He spurns that honour which the weak revere; For, true to public Virtue’s patriot plan, He loves the _Minister_ and not the _Man_. Alike the advocate of North and Wit, The friend of Shelburne and the guide of Pitt, His ready tongue with sophistries at will Can say, unsay, and be consistent still.
This is, of course, the effusion of unscrupulous party hacks; but it shows the skill with which the enemies of Dundas seized on the weak points in his career. As a matter of fact, few men have worked harder than the future Viscount Melville, and on few men has fortune at the close pressed more unkindly.
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William Wyndham Grenville (1759–1834) is a less interesting man than Dundas. First cousin to Pitt, and born in the same year, he seemed destined to advance hand in hand with him, just as his father had signally helped Chatham in certain parts of that meteoric career. Nature, however, had clearly designed the Grenvilles, both father and son, not to be comets, scarcely planets, but rather satellites. The traditional pride of the Grenvilles (in which Pitt was by no means lacking) appeared in William Grenville, blended with a freezing manner, the effect of which was enhanced by his heavy features and stiff carriage. To counterbalance these defects, he was dowered with an upright and virtuous disposition, great industry, a choice store of classical learning, good sense, though not illuminated by imagination, and oratorical gifts, which, if neither majestic nor pleasing, partook of his native solidity. As Paymaster of the Forces (conjointly with Lord Mulgrave) he did useful work, the higher branches of which involved questions of foreign policy.
[Illustration:
_Emery Walker Ph. sc._
_William Wyndham, Lord Grenville from a painting by Hoppner_ ]
Pitt’s appreciation of his sound sense appeared in his choice of Grenville for very delicate diplomatic missions to The Hague and Paris in the crisis of 1787. The evenness of his judgement and temper procured him the Speakership of the House of Commons in 1789, after the death of Cornwall. From this honourable post he was soon transferred to more congenial duties, as Secretary of State, and entered the Upper House as Lord Grenville. In 1791 he became Secretary for Foreign Affairs, his conduct of which will engage our attention later on. Here we may note that in all his undertakings he gained a reputation for soundness; and if the neutral tints of his character procured for him neither the enthusiastic love of friends nor the hatred of foes, he won the respect of all. The envious railers who penned the “Rolliad” could fasten on nothing worse than his solidity--
A youth who boasts no common share of head. What plenteous stores of knowledge may contain The spacious tenement of Grenville’s brain! Nature, in all her dispensations wise, Who formed his head-piece of so vast a size, Hath not, ’tis true, neglected to bestow Its due proportion to the part below.
Unfortunately, though Grenville could manage business, he could not manage men; and at this point he failed to make good a defect in the political panoply of Pitt. On neither of the cousins had nature bestowed the social tact which might have smoothed the rubs of diplomatic discussion, say, in those with the French envoy, Chauvelin, in 1792. That fervid royalist, Hyde de Neuville, complained bitterly of the freezing powers of Downing Street. The enthusiastic young Canning found it impossible to work with Grenville, who was also on strained terms with Dundas. The “inner Cabinet,” composed of Pitt, Grenville, Dundas, must have been the scene of many triangular duels; and it needed all the mental and moral superiority of Pitt (as to which every one bears witness) to preserve even the appearance of harmony between seconds who were alike opinionated, obstinate, and covetous of patronage.[386] On the whole, the personality of Grenville must rank among the dullest of that age. I have found no striking phrase which glitters amidst the leaden mass of his speeches and correspondence. His life has never been written. He would be a very conscientious zealot who would undertake it.
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Turning to the central figure of the group, we have once more to mourn the lack of information about those smaller details which light up traits of character. Few of Pitt’s letters refer to his private affairs in the years 1784–86; and the knowledge which we have of them is largely inferential. Even the secondary sources fared badly; for it seems that Pitt’s housemaid made a holocaust of the many letters which Wilberforce wrote to him during his foreign tour in 1785.[387] In the Pitt Papers there is only one letter of Wilberforce of this period; and as it throws light on their friendship and the anxiety felt by Pitt’s friends at the time of the Irish Propositions, I print it here almost _in extenso_.[388]
Lausanne, 2nd Aug., 1785.
MY DEAR PITT,
... If I were to suffer myself to think on politics, I should be very unhappy at the accounts I hear from all quarters: nothing has come from any great authority; but all the reports, such as they are, are of one tendency. I repose myself with confidence on you, being sure that you have spirit enough not to be deterred by difficulties if you can carry your point thro’; and trusting that you will have that greater degree of spirit which is requisite to make a person give up at once when the bad consequences which would follow his going on are at a distance. Yet I cannot help being extremely anxious: your own character, as well as the welfare of the country are at stake; but we may congratulate ourselves that they are here inseparably connected. In the opinion of unprejudiced men I do not think you will suffer from adjourning the Irish propositions _ad calendas Graecas_, if the state of Ireland makes it dangerous to proceed and you can make it evident you had good reason to bring them on, which I think you can. At the worst, the consequences on this side are only that you suffer (the Country may suffer too, but I am taking for granted this is the lesser evil); but I tremble and look forward to what may happen if the Irish Parliament should pass the propositions, and the Irish nation refuse to accept them; nor would it be one struggle only; but as often as any Bill should come over from our House of Commons to be passed in theirs, which was obnoxious, there would be a fresh opportunity for reviving it, especially as you have an Opposition to deal with as unprincipled and mischievous as ever embroiled the affairs of any country. God bless you, my dear Pitt and carry you thro’ all your difficulties! You may reckon yourself most fortunate in that chearfulness of mind which enables you every now and then to throw off your load for a few hours and rest yourself. I fancy it must have been this which, when I am with you, prevents my considering you as an object of compassion, tho’ Prime Minister of England; for now, when I am at a distance, out of hearing of your foyning, and your (illegible) other proofs of a light heart, I cannot help representing you to myself as oppressed with cares and troubles, and what I feel for you is more, I believe, than even Pepper feels in the moments of his greatest anxiety; and what can I say more?...
Pepper Arden, to whom Wilberforce here refers, scarcely lived up to his name. His character and his countenance alike lacked distinction. The latter suffered from the want of a nose, or at least, of an effectively imposing feature. What must this have meant in a generation which remembered the effect produced by Chatham’s “terrifying beak,” and was dominated by the long and concave curve on which Pitt suspended the House of Commons! Further, Pepper lacked dignity. His manner was noisy and inelegant.[389] He pushed himself forward as a Cambridge friend of Pitt; and the House resented the painful efforts of this flippant young man to run in harness by the side of the genius. Members roared with laughter when Arden marched in, at Christmastide of 1783, to announce that Pitt, as Prime Minister of the Crown, would offer himself for re-election. The effrontery of the statement was heightened by the voice and bearing of the speaker. Nevertheless, Pitt, as we have seen, made him Attorney-General. No appointment called forth more criticism. He entered the peerage as Lord Alvanley.
It is the characteristic of genius to attract and inspire the young; and Pitt’s influence on them was second only to that of Chatham. As we shall see later on, Canning caught the first glow of political enthusiasm from the kindling gaze of the young Prime Minister. Patriotism so fervid, probity so spotless, eloquence so moving fired cooller natures than Canning’s; and among the most noteworthy of those who now came forward was Henry Addington. His father, Anthony Addington, had started life as a medical man in Reading, and afterwards in Bedford Row, London, where Henry was born in 1754. In days when that profession held a lower place than at present, this fact was to be thrown in the teeth of the son on becoming Prime Minister. Chatham, however, always treated his family physician (for such Addington became) with chivalrous courtesy. Largely by the care of the doctor William Pitt was coaxed into maturity after his “wan” youth.[390] It was natural, then, that the sons should become acquainted, especially as young Addington, after passing through Winchester School and Brasenose College, Oxford, entered at Lincoln’s Inn while Pitt was still keeping his terms there.
Considering the community of their studies and tastes, it is singular that few, if any, of their letters of this period survive. Such as have come down to us are the veriest scraps. Here, then, as elsewhere, some evil destiny (was it Bishop Tomline?) must have intervened to blot out the glimpses of the social side of the statesman’s life. It is clear, however, that Pitt must have begun to turn Addington’s thoughts away from Chancery Lane to Westminster; for the latter in 1783 writes eagerly against “the offensive Coalition of Fox and North.” At Christmas, when Pitt leaped to office as Prime Minister, he sought to bring Addington into the political arena, and held out the prospect of some subordinate post. Addington accordingly stood for Devizes, and was chosen by a unanimous vote at the hustings in April 1784. Nevertheless, his cool and circumspect nature rose slowly to the height of the situation at Westminster. Externals were all in his favour. His figure was tall and well proportioned; his features, faultlessly regular, were lit up by a benevolent smile; and his deferential manners gave token of success either as family physician or family attorney. In fine, a man who needed only the spur of ambition, or the stroke of calamity, to achieve a respectable success. It is said that Pitt early bade him fix his gaze on the Speaker’s chair, to which, in fact, he helped him in 1789, after Grenville’s retirement. But, for the present, nothing stirred Addington’s nature from its exasperating calm. As worldly inducements failed, Pitt finally made trial of poetry. During a ride together to Pitt’s seat at Holwood, the statesman sought in vain to appeal to his ambition; but Addington--five years his senior, be it remembered--pleaded the disqualifying effects of early habits and disposition. Thereupon Pitt burst out with the following passage from Waller’s poem on Henrietta Maria:
The lark that shuns on lofty boughs to build Her humble nest, lies silent in the field; But should the promise of a brighter day, Aurora smiling, bid her rise and play, Quickly she’ll show ’twas not for want of voice, Or power to climb, she made so low a choice; Singing she mounts; her airy notes are stretch’d Towards heaven, as if from heaven alone her notes she fetch’d.
Then the statesman set spurs to his horse and left Addington far behind.[391] It is curious that when Addington’s ambition was fully aroused, it proved to be an obstacle to Pitt and a danger to the country in the crisis of 1803–4.
Adverting now to certain details of Pitt’s private life, we notice that he varied the time of his first residence on Putney Heath (August 1784–November 1785) by several visits to Brighthelmstone, perhaps in order to shake off the fatigue and disappointment attendant on his Irish and Reform policy. At that seaside resort he spent some weeks in the early autumn of 1785, enjoying the society of his old Cambridge friends, “Bob” Smith (afterwards Lord Carrington), Pratt (afterwards Lord Camden), and Steele. We can imagine them riding along the quaint little front, or on the downs, their interchange of thought and sallies of wit probably helping in no small degree the invigorating influences of sea air and exercise. If we may trust the sprightly but spiteful lines in one of the “Political Eclogues,” it was at Brighton that Pitt at these times especially enjoyed the society of “Tom” Steele, whom he had made Secretary of the Treasury conjointly with George Rose. Unlike his colleague, whose visage always bore signs of the care and toil of his office, Steele was remarkable for the rotundity and joviality of his face and an inexhaustible fund of animal spirits.[392] Perhaps it was this which attracted Pitt to him in times of recreation. The lines above referred to occur in an effusion styled--“Rose, or the Complaint,”--where the hard working colleague is shown as bemoaning Pitt’s preference for Steele:
But vain his hope to shine in Billy’s eyes, Vain all his votes, his speeches, and his lies. Steele’s happier claims the boy’s regard engage, Alike their studies, nor unlike their age: With Steele, companion of his vacant hours, Oft would he seek Brighthelmstone’s sea-girt towers; For Steele relinquish Beauty’s trifling talk, With Steele each morning ride, each evening walk; Or in full tea-cups drowning cares of state On gentler topics urge the mock debate.
However much Pitt enjoyed Steele’s company on occasions like these, he did not allow his feelings to influence him when a question of promotion arose. Steele’s talents being only moderate, his rise was slow, but he finally became one of the Paymasters of the Forces. In that station his conduct was not wholly satisfactory; and Pitt’s friendship towards him cooled, though it was renewed not long before the Prime Minister’s death.
For George Rose, on the other hand, despite his lack of joviality, Pitt cherished an ever deepening regard proportioned to the thoroughness and tactfulness of his services at the Treasury. In view of the vast number of applications for places and pensions, of which, moreover, Burke’s Economy Bill had lessened the supply, the need of firm control at the Treasury is obvious; and Pitt and the country owed much to the man who for sixteen years held the purse-strings tight.[393] On his part Rose felt unwavering enthusiasm for his chief from the time of their first interview in Paris in 1783 until the dark days that followed Austerlitz. Only on two subjects did he refuse to follow Pitt, namely, on Parliamentary Reform, from which he augured “the most direful consequences,” and the Slavery Question. That he ventured twice to differ decidedly from Pitt (in spite of earnest private appeals) proves his independence of mind as well as the narrowness of his outlook. He even offered to resign his post at the Treasury owing to their difference on Reform, but Pitt negatived this proposal. We need not accept his complacent statement that Pitt later on came over decidedly to his opinion on that topic.[394]
The tastes of the two friends were very similar, especially in their love of the country; and it was in the same month (September 1785) that each bought a small estate. We find Pitt writing at that time to Wilberforce respecting his purchase of “Holwood Hill,” near Bromley, Kent, and stating that Rose had just bought an estate in the New Forest, which he vowed was “just breakfasting distance from town.” “We are all turning country gentlemen very fast,” added the statesman. A harassing session like that of 1785 is certain to set up a centrifugal tendency; and we may be sure that the nearness of Holwood to Hayes was a further attraction. Not that Pitt was as yet fond of agriculture. He had neither the time nor the money to spare for the high farming which was then yearly adding to the wealth of the nation. But he inherited Chatham’s love of arranging an estate, and he was now to find the delight of laying out grounds, planting trees and shrubs and watching their growth. Holwood had many charms--“a most beautiful spot, wanting nothing but a house fit to live in”--so he described it to Wilberforce.[395] He moved into his new abode on 5th November 1785, and during the rest of the vacation spent most of his time there, residing at Downing Street only on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Many affairs of State were decided at parties at Holwood, or, later on, at Dundas’s villa at Wimbledon.
Pitt admitted to Wilberforce that the purchase of Holwood was a piece of folly; and this was soon apparent to all Pitt’s friends who had old-fashioned notions of making both ends meet. That desirable result had rarely, if ever, been attained by the son of the magnificent Chatham. Sparing for the nation’s exchequer, Pitt was prodigal of his own. The aristocratic _hauteur_, of which all but his friends complained, led him to disregard the peccadilloes of servants and the overcharges of tradesmen. A bachelor Prime Minister, whose nose is high in air, is good sport for parasites; and even before the purchase of Holwood, Pitt was in difficulties. During one of the visits to Brighthelmstone, “Bob” Smith undertook to overhaul his affairs, and found old and forgotten bills amounting to £7,914. The discovery came as a shock; for Pitt, with his usual hopefulness, had told his Mentor that, as three-quarters of his official salary were due, he would have enough for his current liabilities. A further scrutiny showed that tradesmen, in default of any present return, took care to ensure an abundant harvest in the future. The butcher usually sent, or charged for, three or four hundredweight of meat on a Saturday, probably because Pitt was often away for the week-end. The meat bill for January 1785, when Pitt generally dined out, was £96, which, reckoning the price at sixpence a pound, implied a delivery of 34 hundredweight. Other bills for provisions (wrote Smith to Wilberforce) “exceed anything I could have imagined.” Apparently they rose in proportion to Pitt’s absence from home. His accounts were kept by a man named Wood, whose book-keeping seems to have been correct; but Smith begged Wilberforce to urge on Pitt the need of an immediate reform of his household affairs.[396] Whether it took place, we cannot tell; for this is one of the private subjects over which Bishop Tomline chose to draw the veil of propriety.
An economical householder would have found relief from the addition of £3,000 a year to his income. That was the net sum which accrued to him after August 1792, from the Lord Wardenship of the Cinque Ports.[397] That Pitt felt more easy in his mind is clear from his letter to Lady Chatham, dated Downing Street, 11th November 1793. She had been in temporary embarrassment. He therefore sent £300, and gently chid her for concealing her need so long. He continued as follows: “My accession of income has hitherto found so much employment in the discharge of former arrears as to leave no very large fund which I can with propriety dispose of. This, however, will mend every day, and at all events I trust you will never scruple to tell me when you have the slightest occasion for any aid that I can supply.”[398]
Unfortunately, Pitt soon fell into difficulties, and partly from his own generosity as Colonel of the Walmer Volunteers. As we shall also see, he gave £2,000 to the Patriotic Fund started in January 1798. But carelessness continued to be his chief curse. In truth his lordly nature and his early training in the household of Chatham unfitted him for the practice of that bourgeois virtue, frugality. That he sought to practise it for the Commonwealth is a signal proof of his patriotism. We shall see that his embarrassments probably hindered him from a marriage, which might have crowned with joy his somewhat solitary life.
In the career of Pitt we find few incidents of the lighter kind, which diversify the lives of most statesmen of that age. Two such, however, connect him with the jovial society of Dundas. It was their custom to outline over their cups the course of the forthcoming debates; and on one occasion, when a motion was to be brought forward by Mr. (afterwards Earl) Grey, Dundas amused the company by making a burlesque oration on the Whig side. Pitt was so charmed by the performance that he declared that Dundas must make the official reply. The joke sounded well over wine; but great was the Scotsman’s astonishment to find himself saddled with the task in the House. Members were equally taken aback; and the lobbies soon rustled with eager conjectures as to the reason why Pitt had surrendered his dearly cherished prerogative. It then transpired that the Prime Minister had acted partly on a whim, and partly on the conviction that a speaker who had so cleverly pleaded a case must be able to answer it with equal effect.[399]
The other incident is likewise Bacchic, and is also uncertain as to date. Pitt, Dundas, and Thurlow had been dining with Jenkinson at Croydon; and during their rollicking career back towards Wimbledon, they found a toll-bar gate between Streatham and Tooting carelessly left open. Wine, darkness, and the frolicsome spirit of youth prompted them to ride through and cheat the keeper. He ran out, called to them in vain, and, taking them for highwaymen, fired his blunderbuss at their retreating forms.[400] The discharge was of course as harmless as that of firearms usually was except at point-blank range; but the writers of the “Rolliad” got wind of the affair, and satirised Pitt’s lawlessness in the following lines:
Ah, think what danger on debauch attends! Let Pitt o’er wine preach temperance to his friends, How, as he wandered darkling o’er the plain, His reason drowned in Jenkinson’s champagne, A rustic’s hand, but righteous fate withstood, Had shed a premier’s for a robber’s blood.
Gaiety and grief often tread close on one another’s heels; and Pitt had his full share of the latter. The sudden death of his sister Harriet, on 25th September 1786, was a severe blow. She had married his Cambridge friend, Eliot, and expired shortly after childbirth. She was his favourite sister, having entered closely and fondly into his early life. He was prostrated with grief, and for some time could not attend even to the public business which was his second nature. Eliot, now destined to be more than ever a friend and brother, came to his house and for some time lived with him. It will be of interest to print here a new letter of George III to a Mr. Frazer who had informed him of the sad event.
WINDSOR, _Sept. 25, 1786._ 9.15 p.m.[401]
I am excessively hurt, as indeed all my family are, at the death of the amiable Lady Harriot Elliot (_sic_); but I do not the less approve Mr. Frazer’s attention in acquainting me of this very melancholy event. I owne I dread the effect it may have on Mr. Pitt’s health: I think it best not at this early period to trouble him with my very sincere condolence; but I know I can trust to the prudence of Mr. Frazer, and therefore desire he will take the most proper method of letting Mr. Pitt know what I feel for him, and that I think it kindest at present to be silent.
G. R.
The King further evinced his tactful sympathy by suggesting that Pitt should for a time visit his mother at Burton Pynsent. In other respects his private life was uneventfully happy. The conclusion of the commercial treaty with France, the buoyancy of the national revenue, and the satisfactory issue of the Dutch troubles must have eased his anxieties in the years 1786–87; and after the serious crisis last named, his position was truly enviable, until the acute situation arising from the mental malady of George III overclouded his prospects at the close of the year 1788.
Certainly Pitt was little troubled by his constituents. Almost the only proof of his parliamentary connection with the University of Cambridge (apart from warnings from friends at election times how so and so is to “be got at”) is in a letter which I have discovered in the Hardwicke Papers. It refers to a Cambridge Debt Bill about to be introduced by Charles Yorke in April 1787, to which the University had requested Pitt to move certain amendments in its interest. It will be seen that Pitt proposed to treat the request rather lightly:
DEAR YORKE,
I am rather inclined to wish the Cambridge [Debt] Bill should pass without any alteration, unless you think there are material reasons for it.--The impanelling the jury does not seem to be a point of much consequence, but seems most naturally to be the province of the mayor.--With regard to the appeal, I think we agreed to strike it out entirely.--As the Commission are a mixed body from the town, the county, and the University, there seems to be an impropriety in appealing either to the town sessions or the County Sessions, either of which may be considered as only one out of three parties interested. The decision of the Commission appears therefore the most satisfactory, and if I recollect right, it is final as the bill now stands.
Yours most sincerely, W. PITT.[402]
In the whole of Pitt’s correspondence I have found only one episode which lights up the recesses of his mind. As a rule, his letters are disappointingly business-like and formal. He wrote as a Prime Minister to supporters, rarely as a friend to a friend. And those who search the hundreds of packets of the Pitt Papers in order to find the real man will be tempted to liken him to that elusive creature which, when pursued, shoots away among the rocks under a protective cloud of ink. At one point, however, we catch a glimpse of his inmost beliefs. Wilberforce, having come under deep religious convictions in the autumn of 1785, resolved to retire for a time from all kinds of activity in order to take his bearings anew. Then he wrote to Pitt a full description of his changed views of life, stating also his conviction that he must give up some forms of work and amusement, and that he could never be so much of a party man as he had hitherto been. Pitt’s reply, of 2nd December 1785, has recently seen the light. After stating that any essential opposition between them would cause him grief but must leave his affection quite untouched, he continued as follows:
Forgive me if I cannot help expressing my fear that you are nevertheless deluding yourself into principles which have but too much tendency to counteract your own object and to render your virtues and your talents useless both to yourself and to mankind. I am not, however, without hopes that my anxiety paints this too strongly. For you confess that the character of religion is not a gloomy one, and that it is not that of an enthusiast. But why then this preparation of solitude, which can hardly avoid tincturing the mind either with melancholy or superstition? If a Christian may act in the several relations of life, must he seclude himself from them all to become so? Surely the principles as well as the practice of Christianity are simple, and lead not to meditation only but to action. I will not, however, enlarge upon these subjects now. What I ask of you, as a mark both of your friendship and of the candour which belongs to your mind, is to open yourself fully and without reserve to one, who, believe me, does not know how to separate his happiness from your own.[403]
On the morrow, a Saturday, he called on Wilberforce at Wimbledon, and the friends for two hours unburdened their hearts to one another. We know little of that moving converse. The two men had ideals so different that unison was out of the question. The statesman, so we learn, had never reflected much on religion, that is, in the keenly introspective sense in which Wilberforce now used the word. To Pitt, as to most Englishmen, religion meant the acceptance of certain doctrines laid down by the State Church, and we may describe it as largely political and conventional, buttressing the existing order, but by no means transforming life or character. One glance alone we gain into the sanctuary of his thoughts; he told Wilberforce that Bishop Butler’s “Analogy” raised in his mind more doubts than it answered--a proof (perhaps the only proof that survives) of his cherishing under that correct exterior a critical and questioning spirit.
To Wilberforce, thenceforth, all doubts were visitations of the devil. Indeed, the microscopic watch which he kept on his thoughts and moods seemed likely to stunt his activities. From this he was perhaps saved by his friendship with Pitt. True, they could no longer tread the same path. Pitt obeyed that call to action on behalf of his country which from his boyhood had deadened all other sounds. Wilberforce for a long time held aloof from politics as debateable ground beset with snares to the soul. And yet, though the two men diverged, the promptings of affection kept them ever within hail. No gulf ever opened out such as Coleridge finely pictured as yawning between two parted friends:
They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; A dreary sea now flows between.
Indeed, Wilberforce found with some surprise that on most questions they agreed as before[404]--a proof that there was no desertion of principle on Pitt’s part after the session of 1785. We may go further, and assert that in their changed relations the two friends exerted upon each other a mutually beneficent influence. The new convictions of Wilberforce tended to refine the activities of his friend; and Pitt’s practical good sense helped to launch the philanthropist on that career of usefulness in which he could both glorify God and uplift myriads of negroes.
A sharp difference of opinion respecting the war with France overclouded their lives in the year 1793. Wilberforce fully recognized the sincerity of the Cabinet’s efforts to avoid a rupture, and admitted that Ministers had not pursued a “war system.” But shortly before the outbreak of hostilities, when he was about to speak in favour of conciliation, Pitt took the strange step of sending Bankes to him, earnestly begging him not to speak, as it might do irreparable mischief, and promising him an opportunity for the statement of his views. That opportunity did not come; and Wilberforce evidently resented this attempt to make political capital out of their friendship.[405] The breach between them did not widen until late in the year 1794, when Wilberforce deemed it his duty to move an amendment in favour of peace. Bankes and Duncombe supported it; but it was easily defeated. In the following year the relations between Pitt and Wilberforce on this question became so strained as to cause both of them deep distress. Indeed Pitt, who generally enjoyed profound slumbers, for a time suffered from insomnia. The only other occasions when sleep fled from him were the sudden resignation of Earl Temple late in 1783, the mutiny at the Nore, and the arrival of the news of Trafalgar.
The old feelings began to reassert themselves, when Pitt spoke strongly in favour of the Abolition of the Slave Trade (26th February 1795); but the friends did not meet for nearly a month, and then with some little embarrassment on both sides. All shadows, however, vanished in a few months’ time, when Wilberforce came to see that his friend longed for peace so soon as it was compatible with security. Thereafter their old friendship revived, though tinged with the sadness attending disappointed hopes.
Pitt did not so readily forget the independence now and again displayed by Bankes, for instance, in opposing Parliamentary Reform, the Westminster Scrutiny, and the continuance of the war. Though they were friendly at Cambridge, and afterwards at Goostree’s Club and in the House, Pitt never warmed to Bankes, whose nature indeed was too precise, cold, and prudent ever to call forth affection. Respected by all for his sound but stolid speeches, he for forty years sat at Westminster as member for Corfe Castle. No one seems ever to have thought of making Bankes either a Minister or a peer. At a later time the circle of Pitt’s friends included Canning and Wellesley, who will receive notice in later chapters.
On the whole, Pitt seems to have been somewhat exacting in his friendships. One of his early comrades complained that all suggestions to the Prime Minister must, under pain of his resentment, go forth to the world as emanations of his wisdom. This is to sacrifice friendliness and candour to egotism and parliamentary punctilio. True, no statesman can afford to neglect prudential considerations; and we may freely grant that the cautious calculations of Pitt rarely obsessed his whole being, as that of Napoleon was dominated by his egotism. We do not find Pitt acting, still less speaking, in the sense which prompted the remark of Napoleon about an over scrupulous servant: “He is not devoted to me; he does not want to get on.”
It must be confessed that there is something wanting about Pitt. He lacked geniality and glow alike in his treatment of men, and in his attitude towards the aspirations of the age then dawning. Probably this defect sprang from a physical basis. It must be remembered that Chatham was nearly all his life a martyr to gout. He bequeathed this weakness to his second son, a fact which may account for the coldness of Pitt’s nature. Just as creatures with a torpid circulation love to bask in the sun, so his chilliness may have prompted the cravings for the Bacchic society of Dundas and Steele. In this respect he suffers by comparison with Fox, the full-blooded man, the impetuous foe, the open-handed, forgiving friend, whose character somewhat resembles that of Antony, deified by Cleopatra:
For his bounty, There was no winter in ’t; an autumn ’twas That grew the more by reaping; his delights Were dolphin-like; they showed his back above The element they lived in.[406]