But before we leave him let us try and realise his appearance. When we read about any one we naturally wish to know what manner of man he was in the flesh. In this case we seem but scantily provided with portraits. We have glanced at the one by Hoare, to the accuracy of which Pitt himself bears emphatic testimony. Of this one Hoare painted several replicas, one of the worst of which, very bilious in colouring, is in the National Portrait Gallery. There is another at Orwell which seems to have more force in it; it could not have less. The original represents a comely, graceful and elegant being without a symptom of anything but comeliness, grace and elegance, and might be the portrait of any man of fashion of the time. Great men have sometimes piqued themselves on being dandies, and it may have been this air which recommended the picture to its subject. This portrait, of which the large engraving, containing only the head, is infinitely better than the original, duly arrived at Stowe. Thence at the dispersal of that great collection it passed to Drayton, having been purchased by Sir Robert Peel, and has lately found a final home at Pittsburg.
There is another portrait by Hoare, at full length, in the coronation robes which Pitt never can have worn, which was painted for the Corporation of Bath ten years after that for Temple. It leaves no special impression. There was a portrait by Reynolds at Belvoir. But that, alas! disappeared with so much else in the great fire which ravaged that noble structure. Towards the end of his life (in 1772) he was painted in peer's robes by Brompton. The engraving of this is at full length, but the picture itself is a kitcat, so that it was probably cut down. This picture is at Chevening, and Lord Sidmouth, if we are not mistaken, owns a replica or another version of this picture. Pitt's grand-daughter, Lady Hester Stanhope, who was brought up with it, says that it is the best portrait of him. As she was only two years old when he died, her testimony, though given with confidence, has no personal value; but she had relations who may have told her. She piqued herself on her resemblance to him. But no value is to be attached to the utterances of this vain and crazy woman, unless one can believe, which is difficult, that she repeated faithfully what more trustworthy people had told her. However, this portrait may well be the best, where the other is so poor. It is in itself impressive, representing a solemn, noble, melancholy figure, such as Chatham must have been in his last cheerless decade.
There are more busts. There is one of him in youth, perhaps at five-and-twenty, handsome, bright, alert, with a smile that is almost saucy. The original of this was, it is believed, also at Stowe; also, perhaps, purchased by Sir Robert Peel. There is more than one by Wilton. One, dated 1759, grim and masterful, with a touch of scorn, the man himself at his time of power. There are others of him in old age, with less expression, ponderous and saturnine; they are posthumous, and dated 1781. One of these is at Dropmore, another at Belvoir, another at Lowther.
There are probably other portraits or busts, but these are all that are known to the present writer.
His appearance at his best must have been extremely attractive. Tall and slender, 'his figure genteel and commanding,' he had cultivated all the arts of grace, gesture and dramatic action. 'Graceful in motion,' says his reluctant nephew, 'his eye and countenance would have conveyed his feelings to the deaf.'[391] All authorities dwell on the magic of his eye. His eyes, said his grand-daughter, presumably on family tradition, were grey, but by candlelight seemed black from the intensity of their expression. When he was angry or earnest no one could look him in the face. No one indeed seems to have been able to abide the terrors of his glance.
Of his manners and conversation in private life we know singularly little. Chesterfield gives us perhaps the best glimpse. 'He had manners and address; but one might discern through them too great a consciousness of his own superior talents. He was a most agreeable and lively companion in social life, and had such a versatility of wit that he could adapt it to all sorts of conversation.' Of his early powers of fascination we have an authentic instance. He was seen walking with the Prince of Wales in the gardens at Stowe, and Cobham, watching them with anxiety, expressed some apprehension of Pitt's persuading the Prince to adopt some measures of which Cobham disapproved. A Mr. Belson said that the interview could not be long. 'You don't know Mr. Pitt's power of insinuation,' said Cobham. 'In a very short quarter of an hour he can persuade anyone of anything.'
Butler, 'the Reminiscent,' who had this anecdote from Belson himself, goes on to say that 'as a companion in festive moments, Mr. Pitt was enchanting.' He also quotes Wilkes, who was a good judge of social qualifications. 'Mr. Pitt, by the most manly sense and the fine sallies of a warm and sportive imagination, can charm the whole day, and, as the Greek said, his entertainments please even the day after they are given.' But, after all, these must have been rare occasions, as Pitt does not seem to have seen much of society, for his health kept him a recluse; and as years went on he seems to have found it both irksome and impolitic to see much of mankind. We fancy that he was a man, like his son, of small and intimate companies; partly from a haughty aloofness, partly because he could not partake of the pleasures of the table.
'As a private man,' says Lord Camelford, 'he had especially in his youth every talent to please when he thought it worth while to exert his talents, which was always for a purpose, for he was never natural. His good breeding never deserted him unless when his insolence intended to offend. He was, however, soon spoilt by flattery, which gave him the humours of a child. He was selfish even to trifles in his own family and amongst his intimates to the forgetting the preferences due to the other sex, of which I have heard many ridiculous instances; but this was much owing to a state of health which made him fretful, at the same time that it called his attention to his own person. When I first saw him he was intemperate towards his servants full as much as my own father, but it is to his honour that when he owed a better example to his children he got the better of that habit. His first and only friendships were with Lord Lyttelton and his sister Ann.' In a later passage he adds: 'He lived and died without a friend.'
Camelford, it will be observed, speaks with confidence about Pitt's youth, of which he can have known nothing except from tradition, and Pitt's family traditions were not likely to err on the side of benignity. What he says about early friendships is obviously inaccurate; he is quoting Pitt's impulsive note of Oct. 24, 1734.[392] The Grenvilles, the other Lytteltons, and Gilbert West at once occur to one as friends to whom Pitt in youth was tenderly attached. We may indeed take it for granted that this curious piece refers to Pitt's middle life, which Camelford knew personally; but it is too interesting to be omitted here.
His great and singular power lay in his eloquence, and yet even there we are left largely to the recollection and testimony of his contemporaries, for there was in those days no reporting as we understand it, and therefore no reports. There are, of course, professed reports, but to these little credence can be attached. Dr. Johnson and a Scottish clergyman named Gordon wrote a great number of them, based on very inadequate materials, if any materials at all. Men carried away some noble outburst or some striking metaphor tingling in their ears, and repeated it. Others would be able to recall the line of argument, if indeed there was an argument to follow. But the result is scarcely authentic. Pitt the younger must have known, and he declared that no specimens of his father's eloquence remained. Butler says that the person to whom he made this remark (no doubt Butler himself) begged him to read slowly his father's speeches on the Stamp Act, and endeavour as he did so to recall the figure, look and voice with which his father would have delivered them. Pitt did so, and admitted the probable effect of the speech thus delivered. But it is to be observed that he did not admit the accuracy. Almon, who knew something of this matter, says that none of the reports of Pitt's speeches before 1760 can be depended upon. In 1766 Almon began reporting the debates himself, and so would claim greater exactness, and may easily have attained it.