Pitt controlled himself. We have seen his reply[258] to Newcastle's shuffling apologies. He continued to write to Lyttelton, but with less cordiality. To George Grenville he wrote a tepid note of congratulation. To Temple, who had been omitted from the arrangements, he addressed himself more cordially, and sent the portrait for which he had been sitting to Hoare. It represents no formidable orator, but a simpering man of the world; yet, after the fashion of mankind, who secretly cherish the portraits least like themselves, Pitt commended the resemblance. But he took occasion to add a phrase which reveals the full bitterness of his heart. 'In this portrait,' he writes, 'I shall have had the honour to present myself before you in my very person; not only from the great likeness of the portrait, but, moreover, that I have no right to pretend to any other existence than that of a man en peinture.' The wrath pierces through the confused sentence like a sudden sting: it is not often indulged, but it cannot be wholly suppressed.
Soon afterwards (May 1754) Temple and his brother George paid Pitt a flying visit at Bath, where no doubt explanations were exchanged and plans concerted. For, putting Pitt on one side, the Minister knew little of human nature who could think that he would conciliate Temple by promoting his brother George.
In June 1754, Pitt at length left Bath and arrived in London. He had now been fourteen months absent from the metropolis. In the meantime he had been chosen for Newcastle's borough of Aldborough at the General Election in the previous April, a somewhat embarrassing connection under existing circumstances; though embarrassments of this kind are apt to be less irksome in politics than they may appear. And Pitt wrote to thank the Duke in terms of Oriental submission. 'I thank you for writing to tell me of the great honour you have done me at Aldborough, for which seat I declined the offer of many others, being anxious to be known as your servant.' With whatever grimace Pitt may have written this, it strikes one as carrying the joke too far.[259]
But when he returned to London in June, he no longer affected to conceal his discontent. His complaints were obvious and well founded enough. He had not been consulted, but had only been informed. Nor was the information calculated to gratify him. He had been told at first that Fox, whom Bubb at this time calls Pitt's 'inveterate enemy,' had been offered the seals; then by the next post that Fox had refused them and that they had been accepted by Robinson. The excuse had then been tendered that Pitt's health would not allow him to accept an office of so much business and fatigue; to which he had replied that he himself should be the best judge of that. He ought at least to have been offered the Exchequer, which had been given to the underling Legge.[260] The King in any case should have been reconciled to him. When he saw the new minister Newcastle asked him his opinion of the arrangements. This Pitt at first refused to give, but on being pressed declared that 'your Grace may be surprised, but I think Mr. Fox should have been at the head of the House of Commons.' He met Fox. They had mutual explanations, and no doubt assurances of common vengeance to exchange. For Fox was as loud in complaint as Pitt. 'Nothing,' he wrote, 'can be more contemptuous than the usage I receive.'[261]
Parliament had risen, so Pitt, after settling the arrears in his office, went back to the country. Early in September we find him at Astrop Wells. On October 2 he called on Newcastle with reference to some business in his office. Bubb's account of this interview is well known. When they had settled the business which had brought Pitt, the Duke wished to enter on affairs in North America, where things were looking black, and Washington, then a major, had been compelled to surrender to the French at Fort Necessity. 'Your Grace,' said Pitt, 'knows I have no capacity for such things,' and declined to discuss them.[262] Newcastle, who, the same day, wrote an account of the interview to Hardwicke, makes no mention of this incident. And yet it is too good, too Pitt-like, not to be true. We can reconcile the two statements by presuming that it was what an opening is to a game of chess, and that Pitt, having enjoyed his sarcasm, could not resist the appeal of military plans. 'I then acquainted him with what was designed for North America, and also with my Lord Granville's notions, which had not been followed. He talked up the affair of North America very highly—that it must be supported in all events and at all risks—that the Duke's scheme was a very good one as far as it went—that it might do something: that it did not go near far enough—that he could not help agreeing with my Lord Granville—that he was for doing both, sending the regiments and raising some thousand men in America—that we should do it once for all—that it was not to be done by troops from Europe—that mere France would be too strong for us—that we should have soon to countenance the Americans, &c.—that the Duke's proposals for artillery, &c., were infinitely too short. This discourse, joined with Lord Anson's opinion, has made me suspend at least the stopping the orders for the raising two regiments, &c., and for providing all the artillery promised by the Duke.'[263]
What a scene of confusion! Here are three stages revealed: the orders, the stopping the orders, the suspending the stopping the orders! Pitt, it is evident, though beginning with a refusal, ended by speaking with authority.
Hardwicke, however, who had made a merit to Pitt of having sustained his claim to be Secretary, waxed suspicious on receiving Newcastle's letter. 'I am glad,' he replies, 'your Grace has talked to Mr. Pitt upon these measures. As he expressed himself so zealously and sanguinely for them, I hope he will support them in Parliament, and I dare say your Grace did not omit the opportunity of pressing that upon him. There is something remarkable in that gentleman's taking a measure of the Duke's so strongly to heart, and arguing even to carry it further. I think that sett used to be against warlike measures.'[264]
Suspicion tainted every political breeze. The vigilant celibates in Cranford did not keep a closer watch on their neighbours' proceedings than did the public men of those days on each other. The mere fact of Pitt's commending a project of Cumberland, his former enemy, at once implied to Hardwicke that he was in harmony and understanding with Fox, Cumberland's right-hand man. And indeed Bubb assures us that this was the case. Fox and Pitt were agreed as to the division of the spoils, when spoils there should be. Fox was to be head of the Treasury and Pitt Secretary of State; 'but neither will assist the other.'
All this came to nothing, and therefore need not detain us now; for Pitt was occupied with something far more vital to him than Fox, or Newcastle, or the distant echoes of American warfare. He had come up from Wotton, the residence of George Grenville, where in the last days of September he had plighted his troth to Lady Hester Grenville, the sister of the Grenvilles, and he was now hurrying back to join her at Stowe. The engagement was in some respects remarkable. Pitt was now forty-six and Lady Hester was thirty-three. When Pitt first went to Stowe in 1735 she was fourteen, and in the nineteen years that had elapsed they must have seen each other constantly. How was it then that the cripple of forty-six suddenly flung away his crutches to throw himself at the feet of this mature young lady? It seems inexplicable, but love affairs are often inexplicable. And we know little or nothing of Pitt's loves. Except the childish passage at Besançon, there is only the statement of Horace Walpole, a spiteful gossip if ever there was one, that Lady Archibald Hamilton had lost the affections of Frederick Prince of Wales by giving him Pitt as a rival.[265] This lacks confirmation and even probability. Were it true, it might be a clue to phases of Pitt's connection with Leicester House. He seems, too, as we have seen in a letter of Lyttelton's, to have had a tenderness for Lyttelton's sister Molly. Then there was another Molly, Molly West, with whom, it is said, he had been in love, the sister of his friend Gilbert, who afterwards married Admiral Hood, Lord Bridport. Want of means, we are told, prevented their union. But the authority for this is unknown to us.[266]