Lord Chatham, His Early Life and Connections

by Earl of Archibald Philip Primrose Rosebery

In the more moderate time with which we are dealing he was the chosen adviser of his friends, who may well have been guilty of the innocent flattery of seeking his advice with regard to his favourite hobby. His own home at this time was South Lodge in Enfield Chace, which is said to have been bequeathed to him together with 10,000l., 'on this bequest that he should spend the money on improvements, and then grow tired of the place in three or four years.'[221] This seems dubious. But we are on safe ground in inferring from a letter of Legge's that he established himself there in 1748. Legge writes to him from Berlin (July 10, 1748): 'I congratulate myself and the rest of my unsound brethren upon the acquisition we have made by your admission into the respectable corps of woodmen and sawyers. I consider your Lodge as an accession to the common Stock and Republick of Sportsmen, which from its situation will bring peculiar advantages along with it, and that the woodcocks and snipes of Enfield may be visited at seasons of the year when those of Hampshire will not be so accessible.... As to the joiners and bricklayers, possibly too the planters of trees and levellers of walks by whom you are surrounded, don't give yourself any concern about them. They are a sort of satellites which I beg leave to assure you attend a man gratis. Nay, I have been told by one whose opinion I rate highly, that these men's works all execute themselves with a certain overplus of profit to the person who is so happy as to employ them,'[222] and he adds in a postscript a list of shrubs or trees which he recommends. Legge's playful sarcasms as to expense did not deter his friend.

By 1752 Pitt had converted South Lodge, in the opinion of his friends or flatterers, into a delightful pleasance. He had, in the fashion of those days, constructed a Temple of Pan with appropriate surroundings, which excited the admiration of critics, and is mentioned with special admiration, we are told, 'by Mr. Whately, a forgotten expert, in his "Observations on Modern Gardening," as one of the happiest efforts of well-directed and appropriate decoration.' The famous blue-stocking, Mrs. Montagu, writes of the 'shady oaks and beautiful verdure of South Lodge.' 'There can,' she says in another letter, 'hardly be a finer entertainment not only to the eyes, but to the mind, than so sweet and peaceful a scene.' Yet Pitt assured her that he had never spent an entire week there. Gilbert West paid a visit there, when suffering presumably under an attack of the gout. 'He had provided for me a wheeling-chair, by the help of which I was enabled to visit every sequestered nook, dingle, and bosky bower from side to side in that little paradise opened in the wild.'[223] So that the garden would seem to have really been a success.

But Pitt was to prove fickle to all these charms. On leaving Tunbridge Wells after the completion of his course of waters, he intended, besides long visits to Stowe and Hagley, to pay a passing visit to Hayes, a place near Bromley, of which his friend, Mrs. Montagu, had a lease. Whether it was a case of love at first sight or not, we do not know, but Hayes was destined to be the home of his affections and the place most closely identified with himself. At the termination of Mrs. Montagu's lease in 1756, he bought it of the Harrison family, who owned it, and a letter from him is dated thence in May 1756. But in January 1765 he inherited the Burton Pynsent estate, and so, in the following October, he offered the Hayes property to his friend, the Hon. Thomas Walpole, at a fair valuation, indeed at cost price. He had wasted on it, we are told, prodigious sums, with little to show for it, for he had spent much in purchasing contiguous houses to free himself from neighbours. 'Much had gone in doing and undoing, and not a little portion in planting by torchlight, as his peremptory and imperious temper could brook no delay.' He had, moreover, Wallenstein's morbid horror of the slightest sound. Though he doted on his children, he could not bear them under the same roof; they were placed in a separate building communicating with the main structure by a winding passage. Vast sums were thus expended without adding to the value of the property. But now he was eager to leave the cherished home which had swallowed so much of his fortune, and to hurry to the new scene. His intention of retiring into Somersetshire seems to have caused some alarm among his friends, who feared that it betokened retirement from public life; but with little reason, for it was in June 1766 that the sale of Hayes to Mr. Walpole was completed, and in the succeeding month Pitt was First Minister. His accession to power was, however, accompanied by a combined attack of all his maladies, nervous and physical; and his morbid, violent cravings had, if possible, to be indulged. The most imperious of these was for Hayes, and he persuaded himself that its air was necessary to his recovery. He negotiated through Camden with Walpole, who unfortunately, in his year of residence, had become passionately attached to the place. But Pitt had become frantic. Hayes could not be mentioned before him for fear of causing immoderate excitement. 'Did he' (Pitt) 'mention Hayes?' Camden asked James Grenville, who had just visited his illustrious brother-in-law. 'Yes; and then his discourse grew very ferocious.' Lady Chatham wrote imploring and pathetic letters to Walpole, who was ready to lend indefinitely, but not to sell. It would save her husband and her children; her children's children would pray for him. Meanwhile, even if Walpole consented, they had no money to buy with. They determined to sell part of the Pynsent inheritance. But that would only suffice to pay other debts, and Hayes would have to be mortgaged as well. Nothing could better prove the insane violence of Pitt's desire. At last, in October 1767, Walpole yielded to Pitt's importunity, and in December the great man found himself once more at home. Camden declared of Walpole that 'the applause of the world and his own conscience will be his reward,' but it is not altogether pleasant to find that he did not disdain much more material compensations. Pitt had sold the house and grounds in June 1766 for 11,780l., and had to buy them back in November 1767 for 17,400l., a difference of 5628l.; so that he had to pay a smart fine for his caprices. The whole purchase came to 24,532l., but this includes other items, and lands which had been added by Walpole.[224] In 1772 he appears again to have contemplated selling Hayes,[225] but he was destined to die there. All this is anticipation, but follows naturally on the topic of Pitt's country life.

CHAPTER XV.

We have seen that Pitt was to proceed to Hagley after leaving Tunbridge Wells in September 1753. From Hagley he sent a letter to Newcastle, which it must have cost him something to write. 'Some circumstances of my brother's transactions at Old Sarum render me uneasy at depending for my seat in next Parliament on that place. So I take the liberty to recur once more for your Grace's protection and friendship to provide for my election elsewhere.'[226] Newcastle seems at once to have offered his borough of Aldborough, and Pitt 'can never express himself sufficiently grateful for all your favours.'[227] From Hagley (October 1753) he proceeded to Bath for a fresh course, and seems to have remained there a helpless cripple for no less than seven months, though he was in London for a debate in November. Never was illness so untimely, as events of vital importance to him were about to take place. For on March 6, 1754, Pelham died, and all was confusion. 'Now I shall have no more peace,' said the shrewd old King. 'I never saw the King under such deep concern since the Queen's death,' wrote Hardwicke. And indeed the situation was full of alarming possibilities. For Pelham had become the unobtrusive but indispensable man, like the mediocre and forgotten Liverpool, who kept the balance between fierce rivalries and discordant opinions for fifteen years.

There seems no great complication in Pelham's character. He was a Whig politician, trained under Walpole, but also under an intolerable brother who exercised the utmost prerogative of his birthright. His portrait, by Hoare, indicates something catlike, and he had much of feline caution and timidity. But among the politicians of that day he seems to have been comparatively simple and direct; and no man of his day was so fit for the position of Prime Minister in view of his own qualifications, and the conditions of the office at that time. He was indeed an inferior Walpole. He seems moreover to have been almost devoid of personal ambition; the highest places were thrust on him without his seeking them. At the fall of Walpole, in spite of Walpole's urgent instances that he should accept the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, which besides the eminence of the office would have given him the succession to Lord Wilmington, he insisted on remaining Paymaster, a post which, as we have seen, even without the recognised perquisites, had great material attractions, and which with them was capable of enchaining so powerful a parliamentarian as Fox. On the death of Wilmington, by Walpole's influence, he obtained the highest place; though Walpole had not merely to inspire the King, but to overcome Pelham's reluctance. We may imagine that Walpole would urge on his Sovereign that Pelham was the only House of Commons man available, that he was eminently safe, that he represented Newcastle's parliamentary influence, and that Newcastle represented Hardwicke, who embodied the brains of the Cabinet; for those of Carteret were too dangerous to trust.

As First Minister Pelham had many difficulties to contend with, but not greater than those which always must encompass that position. There was the King, with violent prejudices and a Hanoverian policy, neither of which he shared. Then there was his brother, who regarded himself as at least his junior's equal, and whose petulance, jealousy, and suspicion had to be kept in a constant state of arduous appeasement. Thirdly, there was Pitt, whom the King could not do with and Pelham could not do without; an element of incalculable explosion which anything might ignite.

He seems to have steered his course somewhat passively through these complications; content so long as he could ward off domestic catastrophe, and prevent war with its consequent expenditure; though the fates in neither case were propitious. His only real conviction indeed was for peace and economy; for the heritage of Walpole's policy had devolved upon him, without Walpole's character and ability. Three years before the end, as we have seen, he had sickened of his task and of his helplessness amid the jarring elements of discord, but he had not been permitted to retire. He was indeed the necessary man; a good debater, a good administrator, a minister with a conscience for the public, a leader or a figurehead with Newcastle's parliamentary power behind him, a tactician who managed to keep Pitt at bay, dangerous but muzzled. Men of this stamp are kept in harness to the end.

He died on March 6, and the news found Pitt, on March 7, crippled and immovable at Bath. His feet were impotent with gout, but his brain and hands were evidently unaffected. He at once despatched a brief note of condolence to Newcastle, 'whose grief must be inconsolable as its cause is irreparable. You have a great occasion for all your strength of mind to exert itself. Exercise it for the sake of your master and your country, and may all good men support you. I have the gout in both feet and am totally unable to travel.'[228] To Lyttelton and the Grenvilles he wrote on the same day at length 'the breaking of first thoughts to be confined to you four,'[229] enclosed in a covering letter to Temple, saying that he was worn down with pain, and incapable of motion. But he was none the less vigilant with regard to the least ripple on the surface of politics, 'I heard some time since that the Princess of Wales inquired after my health: an honour which I received with much pleasure, as not void, perhaps of some meaning.'[230] Newcastle at once answered Pitt's note of condolence, for we find Pitt acknowledging the reply on March 11, and mentioning a letter written to him by Hardwicke, under Newcastle's authority, 'with regard to some things in deliberation for the settling the Government in the House of Commons and the direction of the affairs of the Treasury. My answer is in a letter to Sir George Lyttelton.'[231] This was practically giving powers to Lyttelton to negotiate with Newcastle as Pitt's representative; a strange choice, when we read in the covering letter to Temple: 'let me recommend to my dear Lord to preach prudence and reserve to our friend Sir George, and, if he can, inspire him with his own.' Lyttelton indeed was not destined ever to earn fame as a negotiator.