Mary, the youngest, seems to have been a spinster of no striking qualities. We know little of her, except that she was born in 1725 and died in 1782.[41] There exists one letter from William to her of the year 1753, and he mentions her in a letter, dated April 9, 1755, as living with him. And indeed he was always kind to her, as she seems to have habitually resided with him. Mrs. Montagu writes in July 1754: 'Miss Mary Pitt, youngest sister of Mr. Pitt, is come to stay a few days with me. She is a very sensible, modest, pretty sort of young woman, and as Mr. Pitt seem'd to take every civility shown to her as a favour, I thought this mark of respect to her one manner of returning my obligations to him.'[42] But even she, though colourless, seems not to have been wholly devoid of the Pitt temperament, though she seems to have always been on intimate terms with her family. 'She had,' says Lord Camelford, 'neither the beauty of two of her sisters, nor the wit and talents of her sister Ann, nor the diabolical dispositions of her sister Betty. She meant always, I believe, to do right to the best of her judgement, but that judgement was liable to be warped by prejudice, and by a peculiar twist in her understanding which made it very dangerous to have transactions with her.' The 'peculiar twist,' which even Mary could not escape, was innate in most Pitts.
We have kept Ann to the last, though she was third of the sisterhood in point of age, being born in 1712, and so four years younger than William, whose peculiar pet and crony she was for the earlier part of their lives. She was in her way almost as notable as he, and she resembled him in genius and temper, as Horace Walpole wittily observed, 'comme deux gouttes de feu.' But drops of fire, did they exist, would probably not amalgamate for long, and one would guess that Ann and William were too much alike to remain in permanent harmony. Perhaps, too, their extreme intimacy made them too well acquainted with each other's tender points, a dangerous knowledge when coupled with great powers of sarcasm. One might surmise, too, that Pitt's wife, always apparently cold to Ann, might be disinclined to encourage the renewal of an intimacy which might once more attract William's closest confidence, though we have a letter[43] from Ann, dated 1757, in which she speaks with nothing less than rapture of Lady Hester's kindness to her. Lady Hester's immaculate caligraphy and frigid style give in our easier days an impression of distance and austerity.
Ann, when she was little more than twenty, may be said to have entered public life by becoming a maid of honour to Queen Caroline, the wife of George II. From this moment she became one of that group of distinguished women, not blue but brilliant, who adorned England in the eighteenth century by their idiosyncrasies as much as by their abilities. She was courted and beloved by characters so famous as Gay's Duchess of Queensberry and George the Second's Lady Suffolk, and by Mrs. Montagu, who was much more blue than brilliant; for her essay on Shakespeare, so much lauded by her contemporaries, has long been dead and buried. In her dear Mrs. Pitt's conversation, declared this paragon of pedants, she saw Minerva without the formal owl on her helmet.
Among men she corresponded with her neighbour, Horace Walpole (who felt for her an affection tempered with alarm), Lord Chesterfield, and Lord Mansfield. 'She had charms enough to kindle a passion in the celebrated Lord Lyttelton,' says Camelford; Dr. Ayscough, a coarse and crafty ecclesiastic, whose acquaintance Pitt and Lyttelton had made at Oxford, and who was a trusted adviser of Frederick, Prince of Wales, sought her in marriage;[44] but there seem no other traces of the tender passion in her life. For the whim, if it indeed were not a joke, which made her ask Lady Suffolk to assist her to secure the hand of Lord Bath (then about seventy, when she herself was forty-six), hardly comes under that description. Ann was, indeed, made rather for admiration than for love. Bolingbroke, who called William 'Sublimity Pitt,' called Ann 'Divinity Pitt.'[45] But she was, one may gather, destitute of beauty,[46] and her vigorous originality of character and conversation inspired, we suspect, more awe than affection. The delightful sprightliness of youth is apt with age or encouragement to sour into a blistering insolence, and Ann had all the sarcastic powers of her brother. For example, Chesterfield calling on her in his later life complained of decay. 'I fear,' he said, 'that I am growing an old woman.' 'I am glad of it,' briskly replied Ann, 'I was afraid you were growing an old man, which you know is a much worse thing.'[47] An attractive, even fascinating, member of society, she was something too formidable for the ordinary man to take to his bosom and his hearth. Reviewing her life, we think that the real and sole object of her love was her brother William, even when her love for the moment vented itself, as love sometimes does, in quarrel. Strife was necessary to the Pitts, and when they waged war with each other it was no battle of roses. The disputes of lovers and relatives, like amicable lawsuits, are apt to become serious affairs, and with this race they were conflicts of the tomahawk. Be that as it may, and whatever the cause, William and Ann adored each other, kept house together, and then quarrelled with prodigious violence and effect. At present we are not near that point. Ann is her brother's 'little Nan,' 'little Jug,' and he is writing her the delightful letters contained in this chapter, written, says Camelford, who preserved them, with the passion of a lover rather than that of a brother. To us they represent rather the special relation of a brother and sister, when affection and intimacy have grown with their growth, from the nursery and the schoolroom to riper years, not unfrequently the sweetest and tenderest of human connections. Our only regret must be that William did not cherish Ann's letters as she did his, for they may well have possessed her peculiar charm. 'She equalled her brother, Lord Chatham,' writes her nephew, who knew them both well, 'in quickness of parts, and exceeded him in wit and in all those nameless graces and attentions by which conversation is enlivened and endeared.' At the same time, one may reluctantly admit that such letters of hers as survive, give one little desire for more. The same, however, may be said of her great brother's habitual epistles (for they can be called nothing less); and their correspondence together was something apart, the gay and engaging eclogue of two young hearts; so that Ann, like William, must have been at her best in her early letters to him.
And so we set forth these delightful letters of a lad of twenty-two to his favourite sister. They need no comment; of the allusions no explanation can now be given or would be worth giving; but the letters speak for themselves.[48]
Boconnock, Jany 3, 1730.
Dear Nanny,—As you have degraded my sheets From ye rank and Quality of a Letter, merely for Containing a few Innocent Questions, I am determin'd to avoid such rigour for the future by Confining myself to bare narration: first, Then we are to have a ball this week at Mr. Hawky's Child-feast, (a Heathenish Name for the Christian Institution of Baptism), where the Ladies intend to shine most irresistably, and like enfants perdus, thrust themselves in the very front of ye Battle, break some stubborn Tramontanne Hearts, or Die of the spleen upon the spot. The next thing I have to say, (Don't be afraid of a Question) Is, that we set out ye end of the same week, and propose seeing you about a week after our departure. I'l say no more, least I should forget ye restrictions I have Laid myself under and launch out into some Impious enquiries that don't suit my sex. Adieu, Dearest Nanny, till I have the pleasure of seeing you at Bath.[49]
The next letter is from Swallowfield, one of the Pitt houses. Ayscough has proposed to Ann. He is a favourite butt of William's, who seems to rejoice in his discomfiture.
Swallowfeild, Sep. ye 29th, 1730.
I am quite tired of waiting for a letter from my Dear Nanny, and am determin'd by way of revenge to fatigue you as much by obliging you to read a very long letter from myself, as you have me with the eager expectation of receiving one from you. The excuse you assign'd for not doing it sooner fills me with apprehensions for your health; Is it that you still converse only with Doctor Bave,[50] or that you have already changed the old Physician for the young Galant? Is it the want of conversation That denies you matter, or the entire engagement to it that won't allow you time for a letter? Be it as it will, I flatter myself into a beleif of the Latter, chusing rather to be very angry with you for your neglect of me, than sincerely afflicted for your want of health. I desire I may know from yourself what advances you make towards your recovery; you never can want a subject to write to me upon, while you have it in your power to entertain me with a prospect of seeing you perfectly restored to health, and in consequence of that to the sprightly exertion of your understanding and full display (as my Lady Lynn elegantly has it) of your Primitive Beauties. Why shou'd I mention Ayscough's overthrow! That is a conquest perhaps of a nature not so brilliant as to touch your heart with much exultation; But lett me tell you, a man of his wit in one's suite has no Ill air; You may hear enough of eyes and flames and such gentle flows of tender nonsense from every Fop that can remember, but I can assure you Child, a man can think that declares his Passion by saying Tis not a sett of Features I admire, &c. Such a Lover is the Ridiculous Skew,[51] who Instead of whispering his soft Tale to the woods and lonely Rocks, proclaims to all the world he loves Miss Nanny—Fâth (sic)—with the same confidence He wou'd pronounce an Heretical Sermon at St. Mary's. I must quit your admirer to enquire after the condition of the Colonel and his Lady,[52] and to assure' em of my most hearty wishes for Their health and happiness. I beg leave to repeat the same to Miss Lenard, who I hope will recruit her spirits after so much affliction with ye holsome Application of a Fiddle. I shall communicate to you next Post a Translation of an Elegy of Tibullus By Lyttelton, who orders me to say it was done for you:[53] I shall then be able to say whether I go to Cornwall or no, so that you may know how to direct to me.
I need not say what you are to do with the hair enclosed to you from Mrs. Pitt. Adieu dear Nanny.
The next letter is from Blandford, where the writer is stopping on his way to Boconnoc, which he gives as his address at the end of the letter. He is still occupied with his sister's career as a flirt.
Blanford: Oct. ye 13th. 1730.
As we mutually complain'd of the silence of Each other, so I conclude we mutually have Forgiven it: But had I continued it, my Dear, Till I had something more entertaining to talk of Than an execrable journey to Cornwall, perhaps You might not have had much reason to complain of me. I have not had a minute's pleasure from my own thoughts since I left Swallowfeild, till now I give them up entirely to you, and Paint you to myself in the hands of some agreeable Partner, as happy as the new way of wooing can make you. I can not help suggesting To you here a little grave advice, which is, not to lett your glorious Thirst of Conquest transport You so far, as to lose your health in acquiring Hearts: I know I am a bold man to dissuade One from dansing a great deal that danses very gracefully; but once more I repeat, beware of shining too much; content yourself to be healthy first, even tho you suspend your triumphs a week or ten days. I beg I may not be misconstrued To insinuate anything here in favour of my own sex, or to serve the sinister ends of an envious Sister or two; no; I scorn such mean artifices. In God's Name, when the waters have had their Effect, give no Quarter, faites main basse upon all you meet, à coup d'eventelle, à coup d'Oeil: spare neither age nor condition: but like an Unskilfull Generall don't begin to take the Feild till your military stores are provided and your magazines well furnish'd. Thus Have I acquitted myself not only as an able but honest Counsellour, and ventured to represent to you your true Interest, tho' never so distastefull. Adieu, my Dear Nanny, till you renew our Conversation by a speedy letter. My sincere respects to the Col. and family.
Boconnock Near Bodmin.