The passage from Wilberforce’s Diary cited above also shows Pitt to have been well primed with Shakespearean lore, and to have had the mental agility and tact which could cull the right flower from that rich garner. Ill though we could spare any of Pitt’s oratorical efforts, I doubt whether we would not give up any one of his speeches if we could have in return a full record of some of the evenings spent by him and his friends at Goostree’s or the Boar’s Head.
Concerning his ordinary talk we only know that he delighted his family by his gaiety, even amidst the heaviest cares of state. In that terrible year 1793, when England and France had closed in the death grapple, Lady Chatham refers to his “ease and gay spirits”; and she speaks of him as not looking like a man on whom rested the destinies of kingdoms. A further sentence explains the source of this buoyancy of spirits: “The uprightness of his intentions and the strength of his mind saved him from feeling any oppression from the weight upon him.”[107]
Here we see the secret of that cheerfulness which charmed his friends. His high spirits were in part, no doubt, bequeathed to him by the ever confident Chatham; but their even flow was also the outcome of his own conscious rectitude. Hence also there came the brightness and sincerity which shone in Pitt’s conversation as also in his life. Another characteristic on which Wilberforce insisted was his strict truthfulness, which his friend attributed to his self-respect and to the moral purity of his nature. Yet there was no taint of priggishness about it. Wilberforce describes him as “remarkably cheerful and pleasant, full of wit and playfulness, neither, like Mr. Fox, fond of arguing a question, nor yet holding forth like some others [Windham is here hinted at]. He was always ready to hear others as well as to talk himself.”[108]
Obviously, then, Pitt’s conversation was free from some of the defects which mar the efforts of professional talkers. He never used the sledge-hammer methods by which Dr. Johnson too often won an unfair advantage; he scorned to make use of feigned incidents or grossly exaggerated accounts whereby many small wits gain a passing repute. His speech, in private as in public, seems to have resembled a limpid stream, the natural overflow of a mind richly stocked and a nature at once lively and affectionate.
Sometimes the stream raced and danced along, as appears from an entry in the diary of George Selwyn, in March 1782:
When I left the House, I left in one room a party of young men, who made me, from their life and spirits, wish for one night to be twenty. There was a tablefull of them drinking—young Pitt, Lord Euston, Berkley, North, etc., singing and laughing à gorge déployée: some of them sang very good catches; one Wilberforce, a M. of P., sang the best.
This is only one of many signs that nature had bestowed on Pitt social gifts and graces which under more favourable conditions would have made him the centre of a devoted circle of friends. True, he was too shy and modest to figure as a political Dr. Johnson; too natural to pose as did the literary lion of Strawberry Hill; too prudent to vie with Fox as the chief wit and gamester of a great club. But in his own way and in his own sphere he might have carried on those honourable traditions which have invested the life of St. Stephen’s with literary and social charm, had not Chatham’s premature forcing of his powers devitalized him before the start of a singularly early and exacting career. Here was the ill fortune of Pitt. Like all precocious natures he needed times of rest and recuperation before he reached his prime. He sought them in vain either at Hayes, Cambridge, or Westminster. As we shall see, the very unusual state of English politics down to 1789 would have made the accession of Fox, the unofficial representative of the Prince of Wales, a public misfortune; and soon afterwards there occurred in quick succession the disputes with Spain, Russia, and France, which, after two false alarms, ended in a tremendous war. In such a period how could a delicate man rise to the height of his faculties, either political or social? On both sides of his nature Pitt showed signs of the most brilliant promise; but the premature and incessant strain of public duty robbed him and his country of the full fruition.
CHAPTER V
THE PEACE WITH AMERICA
Since the accession of our most gracious sovereign to the throne, we have seen a system of government, which may well be called a reign of experiments.—Junius, Letter to the Duke of Grafton, 8th July 1769.
James I was contemptible, but he did not lose an America. His eldest grandson sold us, his younger lost us—but we kept ourselves. Now we have run to meet the ruin—and it is coming.—Horace Walpole, 27th November 1781.