William Pitt and national revival

by J. Holland Rose

Hester Grenville, Countess of Chatham
from a painting in the possession of E. G. Pretyman Esq.

Doubtless, her pride in the triumphs of her second son explains the singular buoyancy of her nature almost up to the time of her death. She must have recognized him as pre-eminently her child. In appearance he certainly favoured her. A comparison of the two noble Gainsboroughs of mother and son preserved at Orwell Park shows William to have been more a Grenville than a Pitt. His nose—that feature on which caricaturists eagerly fastened, and on which he was said proudly to suspend the House of Commons—had nothing in common with Chatham’s aquiline and terrifying prow. So, too, the whole bearing of the son was less fiery and less formidable than that of the father. In Chatham there lay the potentialities of a great warrior; but in the son’s nature these powers were wholly subordinate to the faculties that make for supremacy in civil affairs, namely, patience, reasonableness, and aptitude for logic and finance. Above all, there shone in the younger Pitt a harmony of the faculties, in which the father was lacking.

There is ample proof of the devotion with which Pitt regarded his parents. His letters to them were long and loving; but while he addressed Chatham in the stilted terms which the Earl himself affected, he wrote to his mother in a simple and direct style that tells of complete sympathy. In one of his youthful letters to her he apologized humbly for some little act of inattention; and in later years the busy Prime Minister often begged her forgiveness for his long silence. In all 363 letters to his mother have survived, and prove the tenderness of his love. Clearly also he valued her advice; for at the crisis of the early part of 1783 he asked her opinion whether or no he should take office as Prime Minister.[42] For the most part the letters contain little more than references to private affairs, which prove the warmth of his family feelings; but sometimes, especially in the later years when the overworked Prime Minister could rarely visit his mother at her home, Burton Pynsent in Somerset, he gives reasons for hoping that the progress of measures through Parliament, or the state of the negotiations with France during the Revolutionary war, would permit him to pay her a visit. The letters bear touching witness to the hopefulness of spirit which buoyed him up; but sometimes they are overclouded by disappointments in the political sphere, which were all the keener because they held him to his post and prevented the longed-for stay at Burton Pynsent in August or at Christmas. In such cases Lady Chatham’s replies are restrained and dignified. I shall sometimes draw on this correspondence, especially where it reveals Pitt’s hopes for the work of the session or the conclusion of peace.

Ingenious pleaders from the time of Macaulay onwards have shown their skill in comparing the achievements of father and son. The futility of all such tight-rope performances must be obvious to those who remember the world-wide difference between the cataclysmic forces and novel problems of the revolutionary era and the comparatively simple tasks of the age of Chatham. We shall have cause, later on, to insist on the difference in efficiency between Frederick the Great and Frederick William II as an ally; and not even the most fervent panegyrists of Chatham will dare to assert that the ill-led and underfed armies of Louis XV were foes as redoubtable as the enthusiastic hosts called into being and marshalled by the French Revolution and Napoleon.

Nevertheless, there is one of these fallacious comparisons which deserves a brief notice. Lady Chatham, on being asked by one of her grandchildren which was the cleverer, the Earl of Chatham or Mr. Pitt, replied: “Your grandpapa without doubt.”[43] The answer is remarkable. No woman in modern times has been blessed with such prodigality of power and talent both in husband and son; and we, with a knowledge of the inner forces of the two periods which she could not possess, may perhaps be inclined to ascribe her verdict to the triumph of the early memories of the wife even over the promptings of maternal pride. Explain it as we may, her judgement is certainly a signal instance of self-effacement; for the gifts of tact, prudence, and consistency whereby Pitt restored England to her rightful place in the years 1783–93 were precisely those which he derived from her.

It has often been remarked that great men have owed more to the mother’s nature than to that of the father; and, while Chatham dowered his second son with the qualities that make for versatility, display, and domination, his mother certainly imparted to him forethought, steadiness of purpose, and the gentler gifts that endeared him to a select circle of friends. Here again, one might suggest a parallel between Pitt and his great opponent, Napoleon, who owed to his father characteristics not unlike those named above, but received from his mother the steel-like powers of mind and body which made him so terrible an opponent.

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Enough has been said to indicate some of the influences of heredity which helped to shape the career of Pitt. It is a topic on which only sciolists would venture to dogmatize. Even in his early youth William began to outshine his elder brother. In their boyhood, mostly spent at Hayes, the difference of temperament between John and William made itself felt to the disadvantage of the former. He was reserved, not to say heavy and indolent, where William was bright and attractive. “Eager” is the epithet applied to him by Lady Chatham in 1766. The eldest son, having none of the intellectual gifts and graces of Chatham, could not satisfy the imperious cravings of the father, with the result that William received an undue share of admiration. He was “the wonderful boy.” John was designed for the army, with results no less unfortunate for England than a similar choice proved ultimately to be for France in the case of Joseph Bonaparte. Well would it have been for the United Kingdom had John Pitt allowed the glorious name of Chatham to sink to comfortable mediocrity on the paternal estates of Hayes or Burton Pynsent, and never to be associated with the Isle of Walcheren. His colleagues in the Cabinet learnt to respect his judgement as that of a safe man; but, as the sequel will show, he was utterly lacking in energy and the power of inspiring others.

William, having alertness of mind and brightness of speech, was designed for Parliament. Or rather, this was his choice at the age of seven. In May 1766, on hearing that his father was raised to the Peerage, he told his tutor, the Rev. Edward Wilson, in all seriousness, that he was glad he was not the eldest son, but that he could serve his country in the House of Commons like his papa.[44] The words have often been misquoted, even by Earl Stanhope, the boy being reported as saying, “I want to speak in the House of Commons like papa.” The words, when correctly cited, are remarkable, not for childish conceit, but for a grave and premature sense of responsibility. They show the strength of that patriotic instinct which inspired every action of his career, spurring him on to his early studies, and to the complex and crushing duties of his youth and manhood. They sound the keynote of his character and enable us to form some notion of the strength of that life-long desire to serve his native land. This, his first recorded utterance, links itself in noble unison with that last tragic gasp of 23rd January 1806—“My country. How I leave my country!”

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