And wealth and titles were in less esteem
Than talents, worth, and prosperous industry.
We do not know whether Pitt’s feelings at this time were akin to those of Wordsworth, who entered St. John’s in 1787. Pitt’s surroundings were not such as to favour the infiltration of new ideas. In his first two years he mixed scarcely at all with undergraduates, and even after 1776 his circle seems to have been limited, doubtless owing to his intense shyness, ill-health, and constant association with Dr. Pretyman. On 4th November 1776 he writes home that he had been spending a few days at the house of Lord Granby (the future Duke of Rutland), and had returned to the “sober hours and studies” of college; but he rarely refers to pastimes and relaxations.
His letters also contain few references to study; but one of these is worthy of notice. On 10th November 1776 he asked permission to attend a month’s course of lectures on Civil Law for the fee of five guineas; and later on he stated that they were “instructive and amusing,” besides requiring little extra work. In that term he took his degree in the manner aforesaid. Early in 1777 he moved to other rooms which were small but perfectly sheltered from wind and weather. About that time, too, he launched out more freely into social life, so we may judge from the not infrequent requests for increased supplies. On 30th June 1777 he writes that he has exceeded his allowance by £60, the first sign of that heedlessness in money matters which was to hamper him through life.
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The chief feature of interest in these early letters is the frequent references to the politics of the time, which show that he kept the service of his country steadily in view. Thus, on 23rd March 1775 during vacation time at Hayes, he writes to his brother, begging him, if he leaves his pillow before noon, to find out the fate of Mr. Burke’s motion on behalf of conciliation with America. He signs the letters on behalf of “the Society at Hayes,” possibly a reference to a family debating club.[65] It is noteworthy that the struggle of the American colonists with George III was the first political event to arouse his interest, which must have been heightened by the fervid speeches of Chatham on the subject. A little later a side eddy must have set in, for his elder brother, Lord Pitt, on receiving his commission in 1774, joined his regiment, which was quartered successively at Quebec and Montreal. On 31st May 1775 William writes from Cambridge that the papers are full of the bad news from Boston, doubtless the fight at Lexington. Ten days later he requests Lady Chatham to send, along with the “Ethics,” Davenant on “Peace, War, and Alliance,” as it is not in any library in Cambridge. Clearly, then, the youth was alive to the legal and international questions then at stake.
Probably these wider interests carried him more into society. His friendship with Lord Granby, then an undergraduate, is more than once referred to; and thus was formed that connection which furthered Pitt’s career, and led to the sending of Lord Granby (after succeeding to the Dukedom of Rutland) to the Viceregal Lodge at Dublin. The Duke, it may be mentioned, bequeathed to Pitt the sum of £3,000.[66] Friendships formed at the University counted for much in times when court and governmental influence made or marred a man’s career. We may therefore note that as Pitt’s health improved during the last years at Cambridge, he also became friendly with the following: Lord Westmorland, Lord Euston, Lowther (Lord Lonsdale), Pratt (Lord Camden), Pepper Arden, Eliot, Bankes, Long, and St. John.
The name of him who was perhaps Pitt’s dearest friend is here conspicuous by its absence. Wilberforce saw little of Pitt at Cambridge, partly, perhaps, because he did not enter at St. John’s College until 1776 and then became associated with a dissolute set; but he made Pitt’s acquaintance towards the end of their time there, and the youths were mutually attracted by their brilliant conversational gifts and intellectual powers, which were to be sharpened by delightful intercourse at London and Wimbledon. In a passage penned in 1821, Wilberforce contrasts the comparative ill fortune of Pitt with the good fortune of his rival, Charles James Fox, who at Oxford made the acquaintance of a number of brilliant young men, Sheridan, Windham, Erskine, Hare, General Fitzpatrick, and Lord John Townshend. Nearly all of these, it is true, won distinction in public life; but it is scarcely fair to say that Pitt’s Cambridge friends (to whose number Wilberforce adds Lords Abercorn and Spencer) were deficient in parts. Their gifts, if less brilliant, were more solid than those of Fox and Sheridan. Lords Camden and Westmorland were to prove themselves able administrators, and the future Duke of Rutland, though showy and dissolute, displayed much ability as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Bankes “the precise” (as the Rolliad terms him) was a hard-hitter in debate; while the gentler qualities of Eliot endeared him both to Pitt and to his sister Harriet, whom he married in 1785.
Viewing the question more widely, we may surmise that Pitt’s career at Cambridge would have been more fruitful had he gone up somewhat later and mixed more with undergraduates, especially with good talkers. In that case we can imagine that the Grenville stiffness in him would almost have vanished. A bon vivant like Fox or North he could never have been; but the austerity of his life at Cambridge, save in its closing months, did not tend to cure him of the awkward shyness which Wilberforce noted as so prominent a trait in his character;[67] and thus he went forth into the life of Westminster weighted with that serious defect, an incapacity for making a wide circle of friends or winning over enemies. In a sense it may be said that Pitt took political life too seriously. He prepared for it from boyhood so strenuously as partly to stunt his social faculties, and thereby handicap himself for life. For in that age the political arena was the close preserve of the nobles, gentry, and nabobs, with whom a statesman could scarcely succeed unless he had the manners of the clubs and the instincts of a sportsman. A compromise between Lord Chatham and Tony Lumpkin would have made the ideal leader. As it was, there entered on the scene a compromise between Chatham and Aristides.
Pitt’s chief relaxation from the “sober studies” at Pembroke Hall was found in visits to the great debates at Westminster. The first of these visits belongs to the month of January 1775, when his father was pleading passionately for conciliation with America. Benjamin Franklin, the champion of the colonists, was present; and the orator clearly aimed at persuading our kinsmen beyond the seas that they had the sympathy of very many British hearts. Those two orations echoed far and wide amid the dales of New England and the rocks of the Alleghanies. What, then, must have been the effect of the living voice and of that superb presence, which trebled the power of every word, on a sensitive youth whose being ever thrilled responsive to that of his father? Language failed him to express his feelings. “Nothing prevented his speech,” so he wrote to his mother, “from being the most forcible that can be imagined, and [the] Administration fully felt it. The manner and matter both were striking; far beyond what I can express. It was everything which was superior; ... his first speech lasted above an hour and the second half an hour—surely the two finest speeches that ever were made, unless by himself.”[68] He heard also Chatham’s great effort of 30th May 1777, and describes it as marked by “a flow of eloquence and beauty of expression, animated and striking beyond expression.”