Time was when slaves were exported like cattle from the British
Coast and exposed for sale in the Roman market. These men and women
who were thus sold were supposed to be guilty of witchcraft, debt,
blasphemy or theft. Or else they were prisoners taken in war--they
had forfeited their right to freedom, and we sold them. We said
they were incapable of self-government and so must be looked after.
Later we quit selling British slaves, but began to buy and trade in
African humanity. We silenced conscience by saying, "It's all
right--they are incapable of self-government." We were once as
obscure, as debased, as ignorant, as barbaric, as the African is
now. I trust that the time will come when we are willing to give to
Africa the opportunity, the hope, the right to attain to the same
blessings that we ourselves enjoy.
--_William Pitt, on "Abolition of Slavery in England"_
[Illustration: WILLIAM PITT]
The Law of Heredity has been described as that law of our nature which
provides that a man shall resemble his grandmother--or not, as the case
may be.
What traits are inherited and what acquired--who shall say? Married
folks who resort to the happy expedient of procuring their children at
orphan-asylums can testify to the many times they have been complimented
on the striking resemblance of father to daughter, or son to mother.
Possibly that is all there is of it--we resemble those with whom we
associate. Far be it from me to say the final word on this theme--I
would not, if I could, deprive men of a problem they can never solve.
When all questions are answered, it will be time to telephone the
undertaker.
That men of genius do not reproduce themselves after the flesh is an
axiom; but that William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, did, is brought forth as
an exception, incident, accident or circumstance, just according to
one's mood at the moment.
"Great men do have great sons!" we cry. "Just look at the Pitts, the
Adamses, the Walpoles, the Beechers, the Booths, the Bellinis, the
Disraelis!" and here we begin to falter. And then the opposition takes
it up and rattles off a list of great men whose sons were spendthrifts,
gamblers, ne'er-do-wells and jackanapes.
When Pitt the Younger made his first speech in the House of Commons, he
struck thirteen. The members of the House were amazed.
"He's a chip off the old block," they said.
"He's the block itself," said Burke.
Lord Rosebery, who had the felicity to own a Derby winner, once said of
Pitt, "He was bred for speed, but not for endurance."
* * * * *
Since the subject of heredity always seems to come up when the Pitts are
mentioned, it may be proper for us to go back and trace pedigree a bit,
to see if we have here the formula for producing a genius.
The grandfather of William Pitt the Elder was Thomas Pitt, a
sea-captain, trader and gentleman adventurer. In fact, he was a bold
buccaneer, but not too bold, for he gave large sums to church and
charity, and showed his zeal for virtue by once hanging three smugglers
in chains, high up on a gibbet overlooking the coast of Cornwall, and
there the bodies were left until the birds of prey and the elements had
bleached their bones.
Thomas Pitt was known as "Diamond Tom" through bringing from India and
selling to the Regent Orleans the largest diamond, I believe, ever owned
in England. For this diamond, Tom received one hundred thirty-five
thousand pounds--a sum equal to one million dollars. That Diamond Tom
received this money there is no doubt, but where and how he got the
diamond nobody seems to know, and in his own time it was deemed
indelicate to inquire.
Tom might have wasted that money right shortly--there are several ways
of dissipating a fortune--but he wisely decided to found a house. That
is to say, he bought a borough--the borough of Old Sarum, the locality
that was to become famous as the "rotten borough" of the Reform Bill.
He bought this borough and all the tenants outright from the Government,
just as we bought the Filipinos at two dollars a head. All the people
who lived in the borough had to pay tribute, taxes or rent to Tom, for
Tom owned the tenures. They had to pay, hike or have their heads cut
off. Most of them paid.
If the time were at our disposal, it might be worth while to let this
story extend itself into a picture of how all the land in England once
belonged to the Crown, and how this land was transferred at will to
Thomas, Richard and Henry for cash or as reward for services rendered.
It was much the same in America--the Government once owned all the land,
and then this land was sold, given out to soldiers, or to homesteaders
who would clear the land of trees; and later we reversed the proposition
and gave the land to those who would plant trees.
There was this similarity, too, between English and American land-laws:
the Indians on the land in America had to pay, move or be perforated.
For them to pay rent or work out a road-tax was quite out of the
question. Indians, like the Irish, will not pay rent, so we were
compelled to evict them.
But there was this difference in America: the owner of the land could
sell it; in England he could not. The law of entail has been much
modified, but as a general proposition the landowner in England has the
privilege of collecting the rent, and warning off poachers, but he can
not mortgage the land and eat it up. This keeps the big estates intact,
and is a very good scheme. Under a similar law in the United States,
Uncle Billy Bushnell or Ali Baba might live in Hot Springs, Arkansas,
and own every foot of East Aurora, and all of us would then vote as
Baron Bushnell or Sir Ali dictated, thus avoiding much personal animus
at Town-Meetin' time.
But no tenure can be made with death--he can neither be bought, bribed,
cajoled nor intimidated. Diamond Tom died and his eldest son Robert came
into possession of the estate.
Now, Robert was commonplace and beautifully mediocre. It is one of
Nature's little ironies at the expense of the Law of Entail that she
will occasionally send out of the spirit-realm, into a place of worldly
importance, a man who is a regular chibot, chitterling and chump. Robert
Pitt, son of Diamond Tom, escaped all censure and unkind criticism by
doing nothing, saying nothing and being nothing.
But he proved procreant and reared a goodly brood of sons and
daughters--all much like himself, save one, the youngest son.
This son, by name William Pitt, very much resembled Diamond Tom, his
illustrious grandfather--Nature bred back. William was strong in body,
firm in will, active, alert, intelligent. Times had changed or he might
have been a bold buccaneer, too. He was all his grandfather was, only
sandpapered, buffed and polished by civilization.
He was sent to Eton, and then to Trinity College, Oxford, where
buccaneer instincts broke out and he left without a degree. Two careers
were open to him, as to all aspiring sons of Noble Beef-eaters--he could
enter the Church or the Army.
He chose the Army, and became in due course the first cornet of his
company.
His elder brother Thomas was very naturally a member of the House of
Commons for Old Sarum, and later sat for Oakhampton. Another of Nature's
little ironies here outcrops: Thomas, who was named for his illustrious
grandfather--he of the crystallized carbon--didn't resemble his
grandfather nearly so much as did his younger brother William. So Thomas
with surprising good sense named his brother for a seat in the House of
Commons from Old Sarum.
William was but twenty-seven years of age when he began his official
career, but he seemed one who had leaped into life full-armed. He
absorbed knowledge on every hand. Demosthenes was his idol, and he, too,
declaimed by the seashore with his mouth full of pebbles. His splendid
command of language was acquired by the practise of translation and
retranslation. Whether Greek or Latin ever helped any man to become a
better thinker is a mooted question, but the practise of talking off in
your own tongue a page of a foreign language is a mighty good way to
lubricate your English.
William Pitt had all the graces of a great orator--he was deliberate,
self-possessed, positive. In form he was rather small, but he had a way
of carrying himself that gave an impression of size. He was one of the
world's big little men--the type of Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton,
Benjamin Harrison and John D. Long. In the House of Commons he lost no
time in making his presence felt. He was assertive, theatrical,
declamatory--still, he usually knew what he was talking about. His
criticisms of the Government so exasperated Sir Robert Walpole that
Walpole used to refer to him as "that terrible cornet of horse."
Finally, Walpole had him dismissed from the Army. This, instead of
silencing the young man, really made matters worse, and George the
Second, who patronized the Opposition when he could not down it, made
him groom of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales. This was an office
lined with adipose, with no work to speak of.
The feeling is that Pitt revealed his common clay by accepting the
favor. He was large enough to get along without such things.
In most of the good old "School Speakers" was an extract from a speech
supposed to have been delivered by Pitt on the occasion of his being
taunted by Horace Walpole on account of his youth. Pitt replied in
language something like this: "It is true that I am young, yet I'll get
over that; but the man who is a fool will probably remain one all his
days."
The speech was reported by a lout of a countryman, Samuel Johnson by
name, who had come up to London to make his fortune, and found his first
work in reporting speeches in the House of Commons. Pitt did not write
out his speeches for the press, weeks in advance, according to
latter-day methods; the man who reported them had to have a style of his
own--and certainly Johnson had. Pitt was much pleased with Johnson's
reports of his speeches, but on one occasion mildly said, "Ah, Mr.
Johnson--you know--I do not exactly remember using that expression!"
And Samuel Johnson said, "Sir, it is barely possible that you did not
use the language as I have written it out; but you should." Just how
much Johnson we get in Pitt's printed speeches, is still a topic for
debate.
Pitt could think on his feet, while Samuel Johnson never made but one
speech and broke down in that. But Johnson could write, and the best of
Pitt's speeches are those reported by Ursa Major in a style superbly
Johnsonese. The member from Old Sarum once sent Johnson two butts of
Canary and a barrel of whitebait, as a token of appreciation for his
skill in accurate reporting.
Pitt followed the usual course of successful reformers, and in due time
lined up on the side of the conservatives, and gradually succumbed to a
strictly aristocratic disease, gout. Whether genius is transmissible or
not is a question, but all authorities agree as to gout.
Pitt's opposition to the Walpoles was so very firmly rooted that it
continued for life, and for this he was rewarded by the Duchess of
Marlborough with a legacy of ten thousand pounds. Her Grace was the
mother of the lady who had the felicity to have her picture painted by
Gainsborough, which picture was brought to America and secreted here for
many years and finally was purchased for sixty-five thousand dollars by
Pierpont Morgan, through the kind offices of my friend Patricius Sheedy,
Philistine-at-Large.
The Duchess in her will said she gave the money to Pitt as "an
acknowledgment of the noble defense he had made for the support of the
laws of England." But the belief is that it was her hatred for Walpole
that prompted her admiration for Pitt. And her detestation of Walpole
was not so much political as sentimental--a woman's love-affairs being
much more to her than patriotism--but the Duchess being a woman deceived
herself as to reasons. Our acts are right, but our reasons seldom are. I
leave this Marlborough matter with those who are interested in the
psychology of the heart--merely calling attention to the fact that
although the Duchess was ninety when she passed out, the warm
experiences of her early womanhood were very vivid in her memory. If you
wish to know when love dies out of a woman's brain, you will have to ask
some one who is older than was the Duchess of Marlborough.
When George the Second died, and his grandson George the Third came into
power, Pitt resigned his office in the Cabinet and abandoned politics.
At last he found time to get married. He was then forty-six years of
age.
Men retire from active life, but seldom remain upon the shelf--either
life or death takes them down. In five years' time we find the King
offering Pitt anything in sight, and Mr. Pitt, the Great Commoner,
became Viscount Pitt, Earl of Chatham.
By this move Pitt lost in popularity more than he had gained in
dignity--there was a complete revulsion of feeling toward him by the
people, and he never again attained the influence and power he had once
known.
Burke once referred to a certain proposed bill as "insignificant,
irrelevant, pompous, creeping, explanatory and ambiguous--done in the
true Chathamic style."
But the disdain of Burke was really complimentary--it took a worthy foe
to draw his fire. Chatham's faults were mostly on the surface, and were
more a matter of manner than of head or heart. America has cause to
treasure the memory of Chatham. He opposed the Stamp Act with all the
vigor of his tremendous intellect, and in the last speech of his life he
prophesied that the Americans would never submit to taxation without
representation, and that all the power of England was not great enough
to subdue men who were fighting for their country. Yet his appeal to
George the Third and his minions was like bombarding a fog. But all he
said proved true.
On the occasion of this last great speech Chatham was attended by his
favorite son William, then nineteen years old. Proud as was this father
of his son, he did not guess that in four short years this boy would,
through his brilliancy, cast his own splendid efforts into the shadow;
and that Burke, the querulous, would give the son a measure of
approbation he never vouchsafed to the father.
William Pitt, the Younger, is known as the "Great Pitt," to distinguish
him from his father, who in his day was known as the greatest man in
England.
* * * * *
William Pitt, the second son of the Earl of Chatham, was born of poor
but honest parents, in the year Seventeen Hundred Fifty-nine. That was
the year that gave us Robert Burns--between whom and Pitt, in some
respects, averages were held good. The same year was born William
Wilberforce, philanthropist and emancipator, father of Canon
Wilberforce.
At this time the fortunes of William Pitt the Elder were at full flood.
England was in a fever of exultation--drunk with success. Just where the
thought got abroad that the average Englishman is moderate in success
and in defeat not cast down, I do not know. But this I have seen: all
London mad, howling, exultant, savage drunk, because of the report that
the Redcoats had subjugated this colony or that. To subdue, crush, slay
and defeat, has caused shrieking shouts of joy in London since London
began--unless the slain were Englishmen.
This is patriotism, concerning which Samuel Johnson, reporter in the
House of Commons, once made a remark slightly touched with acerbity.
In the years Seventeen Hundred Fifty-eight and Seventeen Hundred
Fifty-nine not a month passed but bonfires burned bright from Cornwall
to Scotland in honor of English victories on land and sea. In
Westphalia, British Infantry defeated the armies of Louis the Fifteenth;
Boscawen had sunk a French fleet; Hawke put to flight another; Amherst
took Ticonderoga; Clive destroyed a Dutch armament; Wolfe achieved
victory and a glorious death at Quebec. English arms had marched
triumphant through India and secured for the tight little island an
empire, while another had been gained on the shores of Ontario.
For all this the Great Commoner received most of the glory; and that
this tremendous popularity was too great to last is but a truism.
But in such a year it was that William Pitt was born. His father was
fifty years old, his mother about thirty. This mother was a woman of
rare grace, intellect and beauty, the only sister of two remarkable
brothers--George Grenville, the obstinate adviser of George the Third,
the man who did the most to make America free--unintentionally--and the
other brother was Richard Earl Temple, almost equally potent for right
or wrong.
That the child of a sensitive mother, born amid such a crash of
excitement, should be feeble was to be expected. No one at first
expected the baby to survive.
But tenderness and care brought him through, and he grew into a tall,
spindling boy whose intellect far outmatched his body. He was too weak
to be sent to take his place at a common school, and so his father and
mother taught him.
Between the father and the son there grew up a fine bond of affection.
Whenever the father made a public address the boy was there to admire
and applaud.
The father's declining fortunes drove him back to his family for repose,
and all of his own ambitions became centered in his son. With a younger
man this might not have been the case, but the baby boy of an old man
means much more to him than a brood coming early.
Daily, this boy of twelve or fourteen would go to his father's study to
recite. Oratory was his aim, and the intent was that he should become
the greatest parliamentarian of his time.
This little mutual-admiration society, composed of father and son,
speaks volumes for both. Boys reaching out toward manhood, when they are
neither men nor boys, often have little respect for their fathers--they
consider the pater to be both old-fashioned and tyrannical. And the
father, expecting too much of the son, often fails in faith and
patience. But there was no such failure here. Chatham personally
superintended the matter of offhand translation, and this practise was
kept up daily from the time the boy was eight years old until he was
nineteen, when his father died.
Then there was the tutor Pretyman who must not be left out. He was a
combination valet and teacher, and the most pedantic and idolatrous
person that ever moused through dusty tomes. With a trifle more adipose
and a little less intellect, he would have made a most successful and
awful butler. He seemed a type of the English waiter who by some chance
had acquired a college education, and never said a wrong thing, nor did
a right one, during his whole life.
Pretyman wrote a life of Pitt, and according to Macaulay it enjoys the
distinction of being the worst biography ever written. Lord Rosebery,
however, declares the book is not so bad as it might be. I believe there
are two other biographies equally stupid: Weems' "Life of Washington,"
and the book on Gainsborough, by Thicknesse. Weems' book was written to
elevate his man into a demigod; Thicknesse was intent on lowering his
subject and exalting himself; while Pretyman extols himself and his
subject equally, revealing how William Pitt could never have been
William Pitt were it not for his tutor. Pretyman emphasizes trifles,
slights important matters, and waxes learned concerning the irrelevant.
A legacy coming to Pretyman, he changed his name to Tomline, as women
change their names when they marry or enter a convent.
Religion to Pitt was quite a perfunctory affair, necessary, of course;
but a bishop in England was one who could do little good and,
fortunately, not much harm. With an irony too subtle to be seen by but
very few, Pitt when twenty-seven years of age made his old tutor Bishop
of Winchester. Tomline proved an excellent and praiseworthy bishop; and
his obsequious loyalty to Pitt led to the promise that if the Primacy
should become vacant, Tomline was to be made Archbishop of Canterbury.
This promise was told by the unthinking Tomline, and reached the ears of
George the Third, a man who at times was very much alert.
There came a day when the Primacy was vacant, and to head off the
nomination by Pitt, the King one morning at eight o'clock walked over to
the residence of Bishop Manners Somers and plied the knocker.
The servant who answered the summons explained that the Bishop was
taking his bath and could not be seen until he had had breakfast.
But the visitor was importunate.
The servant went back to his master and explained that the stout man at
the door would neither go away nor tell his name, but must see his
lordship at once.
When the Bishop appeared in his dressing-gown and saw the King, he
nearly had apoplexy. But the King quickly told his errand and made his
friend Primate on the doorstep, with the butler and the housemaid for
witnesses.
Later in the day when Pitt appeared at the palace he was told that a
Primate had been appointed--the King was very sorry, but the present
incumbent could not be removed unless charges were preferred. Pitt
smilingly congratulated the King on the wisdom of his choice, but
afterward referred to the transaction as "a rather scurvy trick."
At twenty-three years of age, William Pitt entered the House of Commons
from the same borough that his father had represented at twenty-seven.
His elder brother made way, just as had the elder brother of his father.
The first speech he made in Parliament fixed his place in that body. His
fame had preceded him, and when he arose every seat was taken to hear
the favorite son of the Earl of Chatham, the greatest orator England had
ever seen.
The subject was simply a plan of finance, and lacked all excuse for fine
phrasing or flavor of sentiment. And what should a boy of twenty-three
know about a nation's financial policy?
Yet this boy knew all about it. Figures, statistics, results,
conclusions, were shown in a steady, flowing, accurate, lucid manner.
The young man knew his theme--every byway, highway and tracing of it. By
that speech he proved his mathematical genius, and blazed the way
straight to the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Not only did he know his theme, but he had the ability to explain it. He
spoke without hesitation or embarrassment, and revealed the same
splendid dignity that his father had shown, all flavored by the same
dash of indifference for the auditor. But the discerning ones saw that
he surpassed his father, in that he carried more reserve and showed a
suavity that was not the habit of Chatham.
And the man was there--mighty and self-reliant.
The voice is the index of the soul. The voice of the two Pitts was the
same voice, we have been told--a deep, rich, cultivated lyric-barytone.
It was a trained voice, a voice that came from a full column of air,
that never broke into a screech, rasping the throat of the speaker and
the ear of the listener. It was the natural voice carefully developed by
right use. The power of Pitt lay in his cold, calculating intellect, but
the instrument that made manifest this intellect was his deep, resonant,
perfectly controlled voice.
Pitt never married, and according to the biting phrase of Fox, all he
knew of love was a description of it he got from the Iliad. That is to
say, he was separated from it about three thousand years. This is a
trifle too severe, for when twenty-one years of age he met the daughter
of Necker at Paris--she who was to give the world of society a thrill as
Madame de Stael. And if the gossips are right it was not the fault of
Pitt that a love-match did not follow. But the woman gauged the man, and
she saw that love to him would be merely an incident, not a consuming
passion, and she was not the woman to write a book on Farthest North.
She dallied with the young man a day, and then sent him about his
business, exasperated and perplexed. He could strike fire with men as
flint strikes on steel, but women were outside his realm.
Yet he followed the career of Madame de Stael, and never managed to
quite get her out of his life. Once, in his later years, he referred to
her as that "cold and trifling daughter of France's greatest financier."
He admired the father more than he loved the daughter.
For twenty-four years Pitt piloted England's Ship of State. There were
constant head-winds, and now and again shifting gales of fierce
opposition, and all the time a fat captain to pacify and appease. This
captain was stupid, sly, obstinate and insane by turns, and to run the
ship and still allow the captain to believe that he was in command was
the problem that confronted Pitt. And that he succeeded as well as any
living man could, there is no doubt.
During the reign of Pitt, England lost the American Colonies. This was
not a defeat for England: it was Destiny. England preserved her
independence by cutting the cable that bound her to us.
The life of Pitt was a search for power--to love, wealth and fame he was
indifferent.
He was able to manage successfully the finances of a nation, but his own
were left in a sorry muddle: at his death it took forty thousand pounds
to cause him to be worth nothing. His debts were paid by the nation. And
this indifference to his own affairs was put forth at the time as proof
of his probity and excellence. We think now that it marked his
limitations. His income for twenty years preceding his death was about
fifty thousand dollars a year. One hour a day in auditing accounts with
his butler would have made all secure. He had neither wife, child nor
dependent kinsmen, yet it was found that his household consumed nine
hundred pounds of meat a week and enough beer to float a ship. For a man
to waste his own funds in riotous living is only a trifle worse than to
allow others to do the same.
Literature, music and art owe little to Pitt: only lovers care for
beauty--the sensuous was not for him. He knew the Classics, spoke French
like a Parisian, reveled in history, had no confidants, and loved one
friend--Wilberforce.
Pictures of Pitt by Reynolds and Gainsborough reveal a face commonplace
in feature save for the eye--"the most brilliant eye ever seen in a
human face." In describing the man, one word always seems to creep in,
the word "haughty." That the man was gentle, kind and even playful among
the few who knew him best, there is no doubt. The austerity of his
manner was the inevitable result of an ambition the sole aim of which
was to dictate the policy of a great nation. All save honor was
sacrificed to this end, and that the man was successful in his ambition,
there is no dispute.
When he died, aged forty-seven, he was by popular acclaim the greatest
Englishman of his time, and the passing years have not shaken that proud
position.