AT CAMBRIDGE
A man that is young in yeares may be old in houres, if he have lost
no time. But that happeneth rarely.--BACON.
On 26th April 1773 Pitt’s name was entered at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge;
and he commenced residence there on 8th October 1772. His health
being ever a matter of grave concern, Wilson stayed with him in order
to prevent any boyish imprudences and accompany him in riding. But
all precautions were in vain. Despite the invigorating influences of
sea-air at Lyme Regis, where William and his brother had stayed from
June up to 21st September, he soon fell ill at Cambridge, and remained
in bed for several weeks. Thanks to the medical skill of Drs. Addington
and Glynn (the former an old friend of Chatham), he gradually got
the better of the hereditary foe, gout; but the letters which passed
between Lady Chatham and Wilson attest the severity of the seizure. The
boy seems to have won the love of his medical attendants, as appears
from this sentence in her letter of 22nd November. “What a gift William
has to conciliate the love of those who are once acquainted with him.”
There is a story told to Thomas Moore by the Bishop of Bath and Wells,
that Pitt brought his nurse with him in the carriage to Cambridge,
and that she stayed to look after him. This strange assertion is made
in the poet’s diary for 13th February 1826; and the distrust which
that late date inspires is increased when we find that the Bishop had
the anecdote from Paley, who “was very near being his [Pitt’s] tutor,
instead of Pretyman, but Paley did not like it.”[56] As Paley was at
Christ’s, and there never was any question of Pitt entering at that
college or receiving from the outset regular instruction outside the
walls of Pembroke, the story lacks every element of credibility.
The facts are as follows: Mrs. Sparry, who was attendant or housekeeper
at Burton Pynsent, went to Cambridge to nurse the boy through his long
and serious illness, and finally brought him home. At last the invalid
was strong enough to bear the journey. Four days were taken up in
reaching London; and we find him writing thence to his mother on 6th
December that he had not been fatigued and felt strong enough to walk
all the way home; but, he added, Mrs. Sparry urged him not to write
much.[57] He did not return to Cambridge (“the evacuated seat of the
Muses” as Chatham styled it) until 13th July 1774. Then he informed
Lady Chatham that Cambridge was empty, that Dr. Glynn had called on him
and had inquired after Mrs. Sparry, who would be glad to hear that the
bed at his rooms had been well aired. These trifles enable us to reduce
the oft quoted nurse story to its proper insignificance.
Wilson seems to have done his best to amuse his charge in the dreary
vacation time of July–September 1774; for on 24th August Pitt described
to his mother a ride in which Wilson and he had lost their way among
lanes and fields and regained the track with some damage to hedges,
and after a chase of one of the steeds, but far too late to share
in college dinner. Again, on 1st September, he wrote to the Earl of
Chatham: “The ardour for celebrating this day is as great at Cambridge
as anywhere; and Mr. Wilson himself, catching a spark of it, signalized
himself by killing a crow on the wing after a walk of six hours.”[58]
The natural vivacity of disposition, which charmed all his friends,
must have played no small part in the recovery of his health. The
medical authorities of to-day would also probably assign more
importance to regular hours, exercise, and careful diet than to
the use of port wine, adopted in compliance with his physicians’
recommendation, on which some contemporary writers dwell with much
gusto. Certain it is that from the year 1774 onwards “his health became
progressively confirmed.”
This phrase occurs in the biography of Pitt written by his college
tutor, Dr. Pretyman, whose style it aptly characterizes. The book is
indeed one of the most ponderous ever published. As tutor, friend, and
adviser, the Rev. Dr. Pretyman had unique opportunities for giving
to the world a complete and life-like portrait. Pitt was entrusted
to his care and to that of his colleague, Dr. Turner, in 1773–4,
and thereafter to Pretyman alone. The undergraduate soon conceived
for him an affection which was strong and lasting. Their intercourse
suffered little interruption, not even from the ecclesiastical honours
which the young Prime Minister so freely bestowed on his old tutor.
The bishop, who in 1803 took the name of Tomline, continued to be
the friend and adviser of the Statesman up to the dreary days which
succeeded the death-blow of Austerlitz. Pitt died in his arms, and he
was his literary executor. Yet, despite the mass of materials put into
his hands (or was it because of their mass?)[59] he wrote one of the
dullest biographies in the English language.
The solution of the riddle may perhaps be found in the cast of his
mind, which was that of a mathematician and divine, while it lacked
the gifts of interest in men and affairs, of insight into character,
of delicate and instinctive sympathy, and of historic imagination,
which enliven, reveal, interpret, and illuminate personalities and
situations. Talleyrand, with a flash of almost diabolical wit, once
described language as a means of _concealing_ thought. Tomline, with
laboured conscientiousness, seems to have looked on biography as a
means of concealing character. Certainly he portrayed only those
features which are easily discernible in the tomes of the Parliamentary
History. An almost finnikin scrupulousness clogged him in the exercise
of the scanty powers of portraiture with which Nature had endowed
him. The biographer was continually being reined in by the literary
executor, the result being a progress, which, while meant to be
stately, succeeds only in being shambling. Here and there we catch
glimpses of Pitt under the senatorial robes with which his friend
adorned and concealed him, but they are tantalizingly brief. The Bishop
was beset by so many qualms concerning the propriety of mentioning this
or that incident as to “suppress many circumstances and anecdotes of
a more private nature,” and to postpone the compilation of a volume
on this more frivolous subject. Death supervened while the Bishop was
still revolving the question of the proprieties; and we shall therefore
never fully know Pitt as he appeared to his life-long counsellor.[60]
There must have been sterling qualities in the man whom the statesman
thus signally honoured. Dr. Pretyman’s learning was vast. Senior
Wrangler and Fellow of his College, he also became a Fellow of the
Royal Society; and his attainments in the classics enabled him to
command the respect of his pupil in a sphere where, according to
Wilson, Pitt had the Platonic gift, not of learning, but of instinctive
remembrance (ἀνάμνησις). Nevertheless, nearly all contemporaries seem
to have found in the tutor and Bishop a primness and austerity which
were far from attractive. Perhaps he lacked the vitality which might
have energized that mass of learning. Or else the consciousness that
he was a Senior Wrangler, together with the added load of tutorial and
episcopal responsibility, may have been too much for him. To Pitt,
nurtured amidst the magniloquence of Hayes and Burton Pynsent, the
seriousness and pedantry of Pretyman doubtless appeared natural and
pleasing. To outsiders they were tedious; and the general impression
of half-amused, half-bored wonderment is cleverly, though spitefully,
expressed in the lines of the _Rolliad_:
Prim preacher, prince of priests and prince’s priest,[61]
Pembroke’s pale pride, in Pitt’s _praecordia_ placed,
Thy merits all shall future ages scan,
And prince be lost in parson Pretyman.
Among the most interesting parts of the bishop’s biography of Pitt
are those in which he describes his attainments, and his studies at
Pembroke Hall. The tutor found him, as Wilson expected, exceedingly
well versed in the classics, so that he seldom met with any
difficulties. Chatham had prescribed a careful study of Thucydides and
Polybius; and the young undergraduate was often able, with little or no
preparation, to translate six or seven pages of the former historian,
without making more than one or two mistakes. This is very remarkable
in a youth of fifteen; but his sense of the meaning and fitness of
words seems to have been not less instinctive than his choice of
language, which was soon to arouse the wonder and admiration of the
most experienced debaters at Westminster.
As regards his mathematical attainments, Tomline states that he had
already read the first six books of Euclid, and had mastered the
elementary parts of Algebra, Trigonometry, and Natural Philosophy.
The bent of his mind was towards the Humanities; but he had a good
hold on mathematics, and became expert at the solution of problems.
Newton’s _Principia_ aroused his deepest admiration. Various notes on
mathematical and astronomical subjects extant in the Pitt Papers (too
fragmentary for reproduction here) show that he retained his interest
in the exact sciences.[62]
At Cambridge, above all, he deepened his knowledge of the classics.
The ease with which he deciphered so obscure a work as Lycophron’s
“Cassandra” astonished even those who were familiar with his
exceptional powers. Everything therefore conduced to give him an
exceedingly wide and thorough knowledge of the literatures of Greece
and Rome; for, fortunately for him, he had neither the need nor the
inclination to bestow much time on the art of versifying in those
languages, which absorbed, and still absorbs, so much of the energy of
the dwellers by the Cam. Accordingly the life, thought, and statecraft
of Athens and Rome became thoroughly familiar to him. His love for
their masterpieces of art and imagination was profound; and the many
comments in his handwriting on the margin of the chief authors suffice
to refute the gibe of certain small-minded opponents, that he kept
up his acquaintance with the classics in order to find tags for his
speeches.[63] To some extent, it is true, his studies were directed
towards his future vocation. At the wish of the Earl of Chatham, he
bestowed great attention on the oratory of the ancients; and he seems
to have bettered the precept by making critical notes on the speeches
which he read, and remarking how the various arguments were, or might
be, answered. Add to this a close and loving perusal of Shakespeare
and Milton, and it will be seen that Pitt’s studies at Cambridge were
such as invigorated the mind, cultivated his oratorical gift, and
thoroughly equipped him for the parliamentary arena.
From Tomline we glean a few details which enable us to picture the
young undergraduate in his surroundings. He states that his manners
even at that early age were formed and his behaviour manly, that he
mixed in conversation with unaffected vivacity and perfect ease. His
habits were most regular; he never failed to attend morning and evening
chapel except when prevented by ill health. Owing to his father’s habit
of reading aloud a chapter of the Bible every day, his knowledge of
the Holy Scripture was unusually good. Tomline mentions a circumstance
which will serve also to illustrate Pitt’s powers of memory and fine
sense of sound. On hearing his former tutor read portions of Scripture
in support of his “Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles,” the
statesman (it was in that anxious year, 1797) stopped him at one text
with the remark--“I do not recollect that passage in the Bible, and it
does not sound like Scripture.” He was right: the passage came from the
Apocrypha, which he had not read.
The singular correctness of Pitt’s life while at Cambridge exposed
him to the risk of becoming a bookworm and a prig. From this he was
saved by his good sense and his ill-health. “The wonderful boy” was
begged by his parents not to court the Muses too assiduously. Chatham’s
fatherly anxiety and his love of classical allusions led him to run
this metaphor to death; but the strained classicisms had the wished for
effect. Pitt rode regularly and far. In the Pitt Papers (No. 221) I
have found proof that, while at Cambridge, he was trained in the then
essential art of fencing. At a later date his old fencing-master, Peter
Renaud, sent to him a petition stating that he had “had the honour of
teaching you when you was at Pembroke College,” and that in consequence
of the decline in the habit of fencing, he was now in poverty, and
therefore begged for help from his illustrious pupil.
We clutch at these trifles which show the drift of Pitt’s early habits;
for the worthy Tomline, who had stacks, where we have only sheaves,
does not condescend to notice them. From the Pitt Papers we can,
however, in part reconstruct his Cambridge life. In his first term,
Pitt described Pembroke as “a sober, staid college, and nothing but
solid study there.” Fortunately, too, no exceptional privileges were
accorded to Chatham’s favourite son. The father in his letter to
the tutor had not claimed any, except those required on the score of
health. Consequently though Pitt had the right to don the gorgeous gown
of a “gentleman-commoner” (afterwards called “fellow commoner”), he did
not do so. In his first letter to his father he stated that his cap
was “to be stripped of its glories, in exchange for a plain loop and
button.”[64] It is further pleasing to know that his father wished him
not to make use of that tattered mediaeval privilege which allowed sons
of noblemen to receive the degree without sitting for examination; and
that persistent ill-health alone led him to resort unwillingly to this
miserable expedient.
We are here reminded of Wordsworth’s reference to the sense of social
equality to be found at Cambridge, even at a time when titled arrogance
and old-world subservience ramped and cringed unchecked and unrelieved
in most parts of the land. The lines are worthy of quotation because
they show that the spirit prevalent at Cambridge, at least at St.
John’s College, prepared the poet to sympathize with the French
democracy. He speaks of Cambridge as
A Republic, where all stood thus far
Upon equal ground, that we were brothers all
In honour, as in one community,
Scholars and gentlemen; where, furthermore,
Distinction open lay to all that came,
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.
* * * * *
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.”
For Pitt, indeed, the chief delights of the vacations centred in St.
Stephens. Never has there been a more eager listener to the debates;
and here his method of studying the orators of Greece and Rome enabled
him quickly to marshal the arguments of a speaker, assess them at their
real worth, and fashion a retort. During one of his visits to the House
of Lords he was introduced to Charles James Fox, already famous as
the readiest debater in the Lower House. The Whig leader afterwards
described the rapt attention with which the youth at his side listened
to the speeches of the peers, and frequently turned to him with the
remark: “But surely, Mr. Fox, that might be met thus,” or “Yes; but he
lays himself open to this retort.” Little can Fox have imagined that
these gifts, when whetted by maturity, were frequently to dash the
hopes of the Whigs.[69]
The nice balancing of arguments, and the study of words, together
with the art of voice production, may make a clever and persuasive
speaker; but a great orator is he to whom such things are but trifling
adornments, needful, indeed, for a complete equipment, but lost amidst
the grander endowments of Nature, imagination and learning. Pitt
excelled in the greater gifts no less than in the smaller graces.
He had the advantage of a distinguished presence, a kindling eye, a
sonorous voice; and to these excellences were added those of the mind,
which outshone all adventitious aids. And these intellectual powers,
which give weight to attack and cover a retreat, were cultivated with
a wholeheartedness and persistence unparalleled in our annals. The
pompous greetings of the Earl of Chatham to “the civilians and law of
nations tribe” at Pembroke Hall show the thoroughness of his son’s
application to law. It also seems probable that during the latter part
of his stay at Cambridge he widened his outlook on public affairs by
a study of Adam Smith’s great work, “The Wealth of Nations,” which
appeared in 1776. He afterwards avowed himself a disciple of Adam
Smith; and it is questionable whether he would have had time after
leaving Cambridge thoroughly to master that work.
Books which bore upon the rise and fall of States seem to have engaged
his attention, as was also the case with the young Napoleon--witness
his copious notes on changes of dynasty and revolutions. In truth,
those questions were then “in the air.” In 1748 Montesquieu had
published his “Spirit of Laws”; Rousseau had brought out in 1762 his
“Social Contract,” which Quinet has described as the seed of the French
Revolution. Whether Pitt perused these works is doubtful; but it is
clear that in his reading he had an eye for the causes that make or
mar the fortunes of nations. Witness the remark in his letter of 19th
March 1778, that nowhere in history could he find “any instance of a
Nation so miserably sacrificed as this has been.”[70] He shared the
general conviction that none but Chatham could steer the ship of State
into safe waters; and deep must have been his concern when the King
refused to hear of Chatham forming a new Ministry for the purpose of
conciliation. No consideration, not even the loss of his Crown (so he
wrote to Lord North) would induce him to “stoop to the Opposition.”[71]
Such conduct bordered on the insane now that France had made common
cause with the United States; but there was no means of forcing the
King’s hand. The majority in Parliament supported his Minister, Lord
North; and little could be expected from the Earl of Chatham in view of
his growing infirmities of mind and body. His haughty and exacting ways
no less than his inconsistencies of aim had scattered his following;
and it was but a shadow of a name that appeared in the House of Lords
on 7th April 1778. Encased in flannel, looking deadly pale, but with
something of the old gleam in his eyes, he entered, staying his
tottering frame on his sons, William and James. He spoke twice, urging
the House not to debase the monarchy by conceding full independence
to America, still less by giving way before France. “Shall this great
kingdom now fall prostrate before the House of Bourbon? If we must
fall, let us fall like men.” Much of the speech was inconsistent with
his former opinions; but the peers recked not of inconsistency; they
listened with bated breath to words which recalled the glorious days
of 1759--words which were to be prophetic both for himself and for his
son. A second oratorical effort was too much for his overwrought frame.
He pressed his hand to his heart and fell. The peers hard by caught him
in their arms; his sons hurried up and helped to bear him to a house in
Downing Street. Thence he was removed to Hayes, and there on 11th May
1778, in the midst of his family, he passed away.
For the greatest statesman and orator of his age there could be but one
place of sepulture. The House of Commons unanimously voted an address
for a public funeral and a monument in Westminster; and probably of
all Englishmen there was only one who regretted the decision. George
III had revealed the pettiness of his nature when, in a letter to Lord
North, he referred to Chatham’s breakdown in the House of Lords as his
“political exit.” He now stated that, unless the inscription on the
monument dwelt only on Chatham’s influence in “rouzing the nation at
the beginning of the last war,” the compliment paid to the deceased
statesman would be “rather an offensive measure” to him personally.[72]
“The Court do everything with an ill grace,” is William’s description
of the preparations for the funeral.[73] No one represented the
King at the funeral on 9th June, a fact which gave to the ceremony
the appearance of a great popular demonstration. It was the last of
Chatham’s triumphs.
Owing to the absence of the eldest son with his regiment, William
was the chief mourner. Few of the beholders had any knowledge of his
manifold gifts; and the crowds which gazed at the stately procession,
as at the burial of England’s glories and hopes, could not surmise
that the slim figure following the hearse was destined to retrieve the
disasters of the present and to link once more the name of Pitt with a
great work of national revival.