After Smith’s investigation many of these costs were brought down, but not sufficiently to create a surplus: the combined effect of generosity to friends, property purchases, feverish landscaping, and aid to his mother, meant that Pitt would continue to go more deeply into debt. For the subsequent fifteen years until he left office in 1801 there is no evidence that Pitt gave any greater attention to his finances than hitherto. Until then, matters would not come to a crunch, since it seems that traders and bankers owed money by the Prime Minister did not pursue the debt too aggressively. However great his personal financial problems, he would not change his nature. He would not seek or for some time accept any sinecure, even though his mother though it right ‘that he should in some proper way secure to himself such an Establishment as is necessary to him in these expensive times and fit for him according to the rank he holds in the world’.31 In 1789, when a group of merchants in the City of London offered him £100,000 to pay off his debts and have a good deal left over besides, he refused it point blank, saying ‘no consideration on earth could induce me to accept it’. Lack of interest in money was an integral part of his vision of integrity and incorruptibility, even if it meant that he always owed a good deal of it.
The happy and unchanging circle that surrounded Pitt socially could not last. In the autumn of 1785 William Wilberforce entered a deep depression, and emerged as a convert to evangelical Christianity. He began to consider that the way he had lived and the things he had fought for were relatively worthless, and wrote in his diary: ‘It was not so much the fear of punishment by which I was affected, as a sense of my great sinfulness in having so long neglected the unspeakable mercies of my God and Saviour; and such was the effect which this thought produced, that for months I was in a state of the deepest depression, from strong convictions of my guilt.’32 On 27 November he noted: ‘I must awake to my dangerous state, and never be at rest till I have made my peace with God. My heart is so hard, my blindness so great, that I cannot get a due hatred of sin, though I see I am all corrupt, and blinded to the perception of spiritual things.’33
Wilberforce wrote to his friends explaining his new beliefs and saying that he would now live in a stricter, less social and less partisan way. He told Pitt that ‘though I should ever feel a strong affection for him, and had every reason to believe that I should be in general able to support him, yet I could no more be so much a party man as I had been before’.34 Pitt may have neglected the letters of people who bored him, but his reply to Wilberforce is worth quoting in full for the rare insight it gives into his mind.
Downing St.,
December 2, 1785.
My Dear Wilberforce,
Bob Smith mentioned to me on Wednesday the letters he had received from you, which prepared me for that I received from you yesterday. I am indeed too deeply interested in whatever concerns you not to be very sensibly affected by what has the appearance of a new æra in your life, and so important in its consequences for yourself and your friends. As to any public conduct which your opinions may ever lead you to, I will not disguise to you that few things could go nearer my heart than to find myself differing from you essentially on any great principle.
I trust and believe that it is a circumstance which can hardly occur. But if it ever should, and even if I should experience as much pain in such an event, as I have found hitherto encouragement and pleasure in the reverse, believe me it is impossible that it should shake the sentiments of affection and friendship which I bear towards you, and which I must be forgetful and insensible indeed if I ever could part with. They are sentiments engraved in my heart, and will never be effaced or weakened. If I knew how to state all I feel, and could hope that you are open to consider it, I should say a great deal more on the subject of the resolution you seem to have formed. You will not suspect me of thinking lightly of any moral or religious motives which guide you. As little will you believe that I think your understanding or judgement easily misled. But 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 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 would 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 your happiness from his own. You do not explain either the degree or the duration of the retirement which you have prescribed to yourself; you do not tell me how the future course of your life is to be directed, when you think the same privacy no longer necessary: nor, in short, what idea you have formed of the duties which you are from this time to practise. I am sure you will not wonder if I am inquisitive on such a subject. The only way in which you can satisfy me is by conversation. There ought to be no awkwardness or embarrassment to either of us, tho’ there may be some anxiety: and if you will open to me fairly the whole state of your mind on these subjects, tho’ I shall venture to state to you fairly the points where I fear we may differ, and to desire you to re-examine your own ideas where I think you are mistaken, I will not importune you with fruitless discussion on any opinion which you have deliberately formed. You will, I am sure, do justice to the motives and feelings which induce me to urge this so strongly to you. I think you will not refuse it; if you do not, name any hour at which I can call upon you to-morrow. I am going into Kent, and can take Wimbledon in my way. Reflect, I beg of you, that no principles are the worse for being discussed, and believe me that at all events the full knowledge of the nature and extent of your opinions and intentions will be to me a lasting satisfaction.
Believe me, affectionately and unalterably yours,
W. Pitt.
They duly met, and Wilberforce recorded that ‘He tried to reason me out of my convictions, but soon found himself unable to combat their correctness, if Christianity were true. The fact is, he was so absorbed in politics, that he had never given himself time for due reflection on religion.’35 Perhaps this was another instance of how Pitt ceased to develop outside political matters. Wilberforce now became a different kind of Member of Parliament, more independently minded, mounting determined attempts to prevent any kind of official activity or entertainment on a Sunday. Pitt continued for many years to indulge his friend and happily to discuss his chosen subjects. In trying to ensure that Wilberforce’s strong religious beliefs would find practical outlets he encouraged him, as we shall see, to take up the cause which students of history will never separate from the name of Wilberforce: abolition of the slave trade. But the friendship between them would never be the same now that their social habits and philosophical outlook differed, and from now on when Pitt stayed at Wimbledon it was generally at Dundas’s villa rather than that of Wilberforce, which was in any case sold in late 1786.
Pitt had rejoiced at the marriage of Harriot to his great friend Edward Eliot. Soon she was pregnant, and on 20 September 1786 the baby was born in Downing Street. Pitt wrote to his mother: ‘I have infinite joy in being able to tell you that my sister has just made us a present of a girl, and that both she and our new guest are as well as possible.’36 Harriot was not well for long. Within two days she had a fever, and within five days she was dying. Hours before she died Pitt wrote anxiously to his mother’s assistant and companion Mrs Stapleton: ‘I cannot help very much fearing the worst … In this distressful situation I scarce know what is best for my mother – wh
ether to rely for the present on the faint chance there is of amendment, or to break the circumstances to her now, to diminish if possible the shock which we apprehend.’37
On 25 September Harriot died. Pretyman recorded: ‘It was my melancholy office to attend this very superior and truly excellent woman in her last moments; and afterwards to soothe, as far as I was able, the sufferings of her afflicted husband and brother – sufferings which I shall not attempt to describe. It was long before Mr. Pitt could see any one but myself, or transact any business except through me … From this moment Mr. Eliot took up his residence in Mr. Pitt’s house, and they continued to live like brothers. But Mr. Eliot never recovered his former cheerfulness and spirits, nor could he bring himself again to mix in general society.’38 Pitt told his distraught mother that he would have come straight to her, ‘but I am sure you will approve of my not leaving poor Eliot at this time’. The baby girl, christened Harriot, was brought up at Burton Pynsent, and Hester Chatham thought her ‘the most enchanting little thing’. But Pitt’s mother had now lost three of her five children; only Pitt and his elder brother remained. Pitt had lost not only his sister, but the motivator and organiser of any hospitality for people beyond his immediate circle. The burdens of office were mounting on him; and now, along with Harriot, his happy private household had died.
The rupturing of the old circle brought new friendships and habits. Dundas had already become Pitt’s right-hand man in many ways, an able and loyal deputy in House of Commons debates and an efficient political fixer who increasingly had Scottish and Indian affairs well under his control. He worked hard and drank hard, two attributes which endeared him to Pitt. Already there were ‘hints of jealousy respecting Dundas, who is said to take possession of the Minister and to conduct him as he pleases’.39 With Dundas, Pitt could sit after dinner ranging over every issue and even taking executive decisions, consuming a fair quantity of claret or port in the process. Pitt would become known as a ‘three bottle man’, a reference to his heavy consumption of port wine. The possibility that he drank up to three bottles of port at a single sitting on a fairly regular basis has always seemed to modern observers to be either rather unlikely or highly eccentric.
Several facts must be borne in mind. First, attitudes to alcohol were far more liberal than today. Indeed, the difficulty of obtaining clean drinking water meant that alcohol, often watered down, was often considered safer and healthier. Secondly, port represented a very large part of British consumption of wine. One surviving cellar book of the 1760s shows the stock of port to be twice that of all other wines combined. It was at least as common to drink port as claret, and more so at times of war with France. Third, a typical bottle contained only three quarters of a pint of liquid, little more than half the amount of a standard seventy-five-centilitre bottle of today. While the shapes of the bottles had changed during the eighteenth century to resemble those we would recognise now, they were hand-blown, with a larger punt (the indentation at the base of the bottle) and thicker glass. The space inside was therefore substantially smaller. Fourth, port wine in this period was fortified with brandy, but not as heavily as in later periods, and was therefore somewhat weaker than its namesake today – around 14 to 15 per cent alcohol by volume. Taken together, these facts imply that three bottles of port in Pitt’s day would be roughly equivalent to one and two thirds of a bottle of strong wine today. This is still a large amount of alcohol to consume, but not an unimaginable one.
Pitt and Dundas evidently enjoyed outlining their future speeches and those of the opposition once the wine had been flowing. On one occasion Dundas made such a good effort as an opposition Whig that Pitt stood aside from the debate the following day and made him make the actual speech in response, to the mystification of the Commons. It was also alleged that when Pitt and Dundas had been dining and drinking liberally with Charles Jenkinson in Croydon, they drunkenly rode through an open toll-bar gate between Streatham and Tooting, and were fired at by the toll keeper. The writers of the ‘Rolliad’ enjoyed this story to the full:
Ah, think what danger on debauch attends!
Let Pitt o’er wine preach temperance to his friends,
How, as he wandered darkly o’er the plain,
His reason drowned in Jenkinson’s Champagne,
Rustic’s hand, but righteous fate withstood,
Had shed a premier’s for a robber’s blood.
In addition to the greater prominence of Dundas and drink, a further addition to Pitt’s circle in the late 1780s was Jane, Duchess of Gordon. She stepped in as a hostess for the bachelor Prime Minister, entertaining government supporters at her house in Pall Mall in competition to the Whig gatherings on Piccadilly hosted by the Duchess of Devonshire. In her late thirties at the time she became associated with Pitt, she seems to have been a rather dominating character who was intelligent but also coarse and unconventional. She may have intended Pitt for her eldest daughter Charlotte, but in any event after a few years of generous hospitality at Pall Mall and at Downing Street (which she called ‘Bachelor Hall’), the friendship between them withered. Years later she is meant to have said to him: ‘Well, Mr. Pitt, do you talk as much nonsense now as you used to when you lived with me?’, to which he immediately replied, ‘I do not know, madam, whether I talk so much nonsense, I certainly do not hear so much.’40
The Duchess of Gordon brought herself fairly briefly into Pitt’s life. It was not his style to go out and seek such company. He had been happy with the friends he already had, and if they fell away he became closer to those indispensable to his work and power. This is not surprising. Friendships most often prosper when they start on fairly equal terms, and no one in the nation was now on equal terms with Pitt. He needed relaxation and convivial company, which he clearly enjoyed immensely, but he did not sit thinking about how to find it. As he put the defeats of 1785 behind him, his thoughts were once again on the nation’s finances, and increasingly on international affairs. The period of his great ascendancy was about to begin.
* * *
*The longest-serving was Sir Robert Walpole, First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer 1721–42.
*Pitt’s house has not survived, but his pond and walled garden are intact. The view over the Vale of Keston is still splendid, although some pylons have intruded on it. ‘Pitt’s Oak’, a tree under which he apparently sat to read, lives on.
12
Spreading His Wings
‘Eloquence, transcendent eloquence, formed the foundation and the key-stone of Pitt’s Ministerial greatness. Every other quality in him was accessory.’
SIR NATHANIEL WRAXALL1
‘You know that I am not partial to Pitt, and yet I must own that he is infinitely superior to anything I ever saw in that House, and I declare that Fox and Sheridan and all of them put together, are nothing to him; he, without support or assistance, answers them all with ease to himself, and they are just chaff before the wind to him.’
RICHARD RIGBY2
THE RESTORATION to health of the nation’s finances was at the heart of Pitt’s approach to government, and his success would be fundamental to his growing reputation. A country too weakened by war to make useful alliances among its neighbours could at least conclude, in the words of one envoy writing to Pitt, ‘a permanent Alliance with that most formidable of all Powers, the Power of Surplus’.3 For Pitt, management of the budget had the great advantage of being within his direct control as First Lord of the Treasury, and was a matter to which he was perfectly suited in temperament and intellect. As the parliamentary session opened in January 1786 he prepared to crown his previous measures with a new plan for the repayment of the national debt. In both economic and foreign affairs, his natural skill would now combine with a good deal of luck to bring him great renown.
Both skill and luck still seemed in short supply in the first weeks of the session of 1786. At the opening of Parliament, Fox had dwelt on the possibility of a renewed attempt by Pitt to carry through his Iri
sh policy, a measure, he said, ‘detestable in the eyes of the manufacturers of Great Britain and Ireland’.4 Pitt had no such intentions, but was in any case in immediate trouble over his intention to fortify Plymouth and Portsmouth against attack from the sea at a cost of £760,000. The argument over these fortifications was a classic of eighteenth-century politics: it involved open disagreement between two members of the Cabinet, the Duke of Richmond as Master General of the Ordnance in favour of them, and Admiral Lord Howe as First Lord of the Admiralty against them; and it pitched the desire for strong defences into direct conflict with a deep-seated British suspicion of fortresses which might one day buttress the abuse of royal power. Mistrust of permanent forts was a hangover from the Civil War of the 1640s (following which every defensible castle had been deliberately ruined), but 140 years later it still packed a potent political punch.
Pitt in his later years would not have allowed two senior Ministers to oppose each other so obviously. At this stage, however, his political control of the Cabinet was incomplete; Richmond was a grand old man of politics and Howe was a non-partisan Admiral, and Pitt was grateful to both of them for joining his government. But Richmond was widely regarded among MPs as high-handed, and Howe actively canvassed the support of some of them, leaving Pitt to try in vain to overcome the gut instinct of opposition among the most independently-minded members. He reached back in history to demonstrate that this was no dangerous innovation: ‘During the reign of Queen Anne, at the time when the victories of the British arms were forming an era in the history of Europe, at which England looked back with pride, and other nations with amazement, did our ancestors think it incompatible with their fame, with their liberty or their constitution, to fortify the most vulnerable parts of their coasts, as it was now proposed to do?’5 He found himself up against one of Sheridan’s most brilliant speeches, in which the proposals were comprehensively denounced as ‘fallacious, dangerous, expensive, and unconstitutional’,6 and as dawn broke on 28 February 1786 the Commons divided exactly equally: 169 votes for the fortresses and 169 against them. When the Speaker cast his vote against the proposal, Pitt was yet again defeated.
William Pitt the Younger: A Biography Page 26