He was sent to Eton, or, as William always spells it, 'Eaton,' at an early age; the exact period does not seem to be ascertainable. Here he had notable contemporaries: Henry Fox, George Lyttelton, Charles Pratt, Hanbury Williams, and Fielding.
'Thee,' said this last, addressing Learning, 'in the favourite fields, where the limpid gently rolling Thames washes thy Etonian banks, in early youth I have worshipped. To thee, at thy birchen altar, with true Spartan devotion I have sacrificed my blood.'[21] Pitt could have echoed his schoolfellow's apostrophe if the not improbable legend be true that he underwent an unusually severe flogging for having been caught out of bounds. But even without this, his experiences were no doubt poignant enough; for, though the son of a wealthy father, he was placed on the foundation, and the Eton of those days afforded to its King's Scholars no lap of luxury. The horrors and hardships of Long Chamber, the immense dormitory of these lads, have come down to us in a whisper of awful tradition, and it is therefore no matter for surprise, though it is for regret, that William did not share the passionate devotion of most Etonians for their illustrious college. He is credited indeed with saying that he had scarcely ever observed a boy who was not cowed for life at Eton[22]: a sweeping condemnation which sounds strange in these days, but which is easily explained by the misery that he, as a sickly boy, may well have undergone in that petty Lacedæmon. For his health deprived him of all the pleasures of his age, as he was already a martyr to gout. That hereditary malady which cut him off from the sports of the school impelled him to study, and so served his career. Mr. Thackeray, who wrote his biography in quarto and who may be discriminated without difficulty from the genius of that name, deposes vaguely that 'Dr. Bland, at that time the headmaster of Eton, is said to have highly valued the attainments of his pupil.' We rest more securely on a letter of his Eton tutor, Mr. Burchett, of which the last sentence need only be quoted here, as it is all that relates to William.
Mr. Burchett to Mr. Pitt.
Yr younger Son has made a great Progress since his coming hither, indeed I never was concern'd with a young Gentleman of so good Abilities, & at the same time of so good a disposition, and there is no question to be made but he will answer all yr Hopes.
I am, Sr,
Yr most Obedient & most Humble Servant,
Will. Burchett.[23]
This reference under the hand of an Eton tutor is exuberant enough. But no doubt rests on Pitt's school reputation. It survived even to the time of Shelburne, who speaks of him as distinguished at Eton. Lyttelton wrote of him while still there: 'This (good-humour) to Pitt's genius adds a brighter grace;'[24] a remarkable tribute from one Eton boy to another. More striking still is the tradition preserved by an unfriendly witness, William's nephew, Camelford. 'The surprising Genius of Lord Chatham,' he writes, 'distinguished him as early as at Eaton School, where he and his friend Lord Lyttelton in different ways were looked up to as prodigies.' School prodigies rarely mellow into remarkable men; though remarkable men are often credited, when their reputation is secure, with having been school prodigies. But the contemporary letter of Burchett and the reluctant testimony of Camelford admit of no doubts. Most significant, perhaps, of all is the preservation of the flotsam of school life, a couple of school bills, the tutor's letter, another from the boy himself. This last, which took eleven days in transmission, is here given. The bills have been already published by Sir Henry Lyte in his History of Eton.
William Pitt to his Father.
Eaton, Septembr ye 29th.
Honed Sr,—I write this to pay my duty to you, and to lett you know that I am well, I hope you and my mama have found a great benefit from the Bath, and it would be a very great satisfaction to me, to hear how you do, I was in hopes of an answer to my last letter, to have heard how you both did, and I should direct my letters, to you; for not knowing how to direct my letters, has hindered me writing to you. my time has been pretty much taken up for this three weeks, in my trying for to gett into the fiveth form, And I am now removed into it; pray my duty to my mama and service to my uncle and aunt Stuart if now att the Bath. I am with great respect,
Honed Sr, Your most dutiful Son,
W. Pitt.[25]
This is the whole record extant of William's Eton life; to so many lads the happiest period of their existence, but not to him. An invalid, and so disabled for games, a recluse, perhaps a victim, he had no pleasant memories of Eton. But there, in all probability, he laid the foundations of character and intellect on which his fame was to be reared. It is not usually profitable to imagine pictures of the past, but it may not be amiss to evoke, in passing, the shadow of the lean, saturnine boy as he limped by the Thames, shaping a career, or pondering on life and destiny, dreaming of greatness where so many have dreamed, while he watched, half enviously, half scornfully, the sports in which he might not join. He is not the first, and will not be the last, to find his school a salutary school of adversity. He looked back to it with no gratitude. But Eton claims him for her own; and long generations of reluctant students have whiled away the reputed hours of learning or examination by gazing at his bust in Upper School, and dreamily conjecturing why so great a glamour still hangs about his name.
With these few remnants and this vague surmise ends all that is, or will probably ever be, known of William's childhood. Little enough if we compare it to the copious details furnished by modern autobiographers. But self-revelation was not the fashion of the eighteenth century, and childhood then furnished less to record. Boys were in the background, repressing their emotions, and inured to a rugged discipline which, though odious to the sympathetic delicacy of modern civilisation, produced the men who made the Empire.
From Eton, Pitt proceeded to Oxford, where he was admitted a Gentleman Commoner at Trinity College on January 10th, 1726 (o.s.), guided thither, probably, by the fact that his uncle, Lord Stanhope, had been a member of that society. There are indications that at this time he was destined, like a great minister of a recent day, for the Church, but the gout attacked him with such violence as to compel him to leave the University without taking his degree. We have, however, an indirect proof of the reputation which he brought to Oxford in a letter from a Mr. Stockwell, who, although he had determined to give up tuition, consents to take William as his pupil, partly as a 'Salsbury man,' and so owing respect to the Pitt family; partly because of 'the character I hear of Mr. Pitt on all hands.'
William's only public achievement at Oxford was a copy of Latin verses which he published on the death of George I. They are artificial and uncandid, as is the nature of such compositions, and have been justly ridiculed by Lord Macaulay. But the performance is at least an early mark of ambition. If this be all, and it is all, that we know of this period of William's life, it seems worth while to print the two letters written by Mr. Stockwell to Robert Pitt, the more as they throw some light on bygone Oxford, a topic of evergreen interest.