How did he pass these three years? It is not easy to say, for we have so
little light on his private life. No prescient Boswell marked his words
and habits, or indeed had much opportunity of doing so. Few men of the
same eminence have lived in such retirement as he did; we only catch
glimpses. In the first place, it may be said without extravagance that
his principal occupation was the gout. His gout became part of the
history of England. To him it was a cruel fact. It kept him constantly
disabled, and constantly away from London, ever trying new waters,
principally the historical springs of Bath. Bath, indeed, was his second
home. He seems to be almost always there till his marriage, and very
frequently afterwards. Half his letters seem to be dated thence. At last
he definitely recognised it as a home by building a house there in the
Circus, which cost him 1200_l._[212] This was in 1753. But in 1763 he
disposed of this particular house, probably under some financial
stress.[213] Whether he thus established himself from love of the place
or from love of his friend Ralph Allen, who was Fielding's Squire
Allworthy and Bath's Man of Ross, or whether he had already an ambition
to represent the City in Parliament, we cannot tell. His cousin, Lord
Stanhope soon joined him and bought the houses next to his.[214] As time
went on, and Pitt's fame and seclusion increased, it became more and
more a political centre. There men collected who were anxious to get a
word with the statesman, or at least obtain news of his health, which at
times became the problem and mystery of a crisis.
But his own uneasy quest of health made him seek a variety of other
resorts, Astrop Wells, at the spring of St. Rumbald, Tunbridge Wells,
Sunninghill, and what not. He thus became a constant participator in the
tepid diversions of these sickly haunts. Gilbert West, a minor poet,
whose mother was Cobham's sister, and who was one of Pitt's dearest and
most intimate friends, accompanied him to Tunbridge Wells in May 1753,
and writes accounts thence of his life and condition.[215] They lived
together at the Stone House, which perhaps may still be identified, and
which was chosen as their residence for its absolute quiet. Actual gout
he seems to have welcomed as a relief from other disorders. He was at
one time unable to sleep without opiates. Insomnia produced its usual
effects, deep dejection, nay, complete prostration. Like all sufferers
under that supreme disability, he was ready to try any remedies; musk
was one of these. When the open appearance of gout relieved the sufferer
of its more insidious effects, he began a course of mild dissipation. We
find him giving a dinner at the New Vauxhall, enriched perhaps by the
bounty of Newcastle, who was sending him choice dainties at this time;
then a rural entertainment of tea in a tent, where he bade 'his French
horn breathe music like the unseen genius of the wood;'[216] a diversion
which seems all the more pastoral, when we remember that at the same
moment Fox and Hardwicke, the Chancellor, were at each other's throats
in St. Stephen's over the Marriage Act. He made excursions to view the
fine parks and seats of the neighbourhood, to Penshurst, Buckhurst, and,
we may presume, Eridge; we are told that he considered these expeditions
as good for the mind as well as the body. Then when he got stronger he
went further afield. 'I have made a tour,' he writes, 'of four or five
days in Sussex, as far as Hastings; Battel Abbey is very fine, as to
situation and lying of ground, together with a great command of water on
one side, within an airing; Ashburnham Park most beautiful; Hurtmonceux
(_sic_) very fine, curiously and dismally ugly. On the other side of
Battel: Crowhurst, Colonel Pelham's, the sweetest thing in the world;
more taste than anywhere, land and sea views exquisite. Beach of four or
five miles to Hastings, enchanting Hastings, unique; Fairly Farm, Sir
Whistler Webster's, just above it; perfect in its kind, _cum multis
aliis_, &c. I long to be with you' (he is writing to John Pitt, his
Dorsetshire kinsman), 'kicking my heels upon your cliffs and looking
like a shepherd in Theocritus.'[217] For the sake of his mind, too, he
attended 'Mr. King's lectures on philosophy, &c.,' when 'Mr. Pitt, who
is desirous of attaining some knowledge in this way, makes him explain
things very precisely.' In August, we must note in passing, he begged
Newcastle to give him an opportunity of an interview as the duke passed
near Tunbridge on the way to Sussex. Even in this amiable note he allows
his pique to be visible for a moment. He entirely agrees with the policy
of the brothers, but 'What I think concerning publick affairs can import
nothing to any one but myself.'[218] On his recovery he went off on a
round of country visits to Stowe, Hagley and Hayes; Hayes, then occupied
by Mrs. Montagu, which was destined to be the shrine of his passionate
affection. Stowe was a second home to him; there we have seen him play
cricket, there he entered with zest into the sumptuous plans of
landscape gardening, and even advised on architecture. His delight in
Hagley, the seat of his friend Lyttelton, was scarcely less keen. 'My
dear Billy,' he writes to William Lyttelton, then travelling in Germany,
'I am going in a few days to follow your brother to Hagley, and with all
the respect due to the oaks of Germany, I would not quit the Dryads of
your father's woods for all the charms of Westphalia. Io gia coi campi
Elisi fortunato giardin dei Semidei, la vostra ombra gentil non
cangerei. You see, the idea of the Germanick body and the heroes and
demigods who compose it have made me very poetical.'[219] He had, we may
note, when this letter was written (August 1748), just returned from
Tunbridge, and had greatly benefited by his stay there. What, we may ask
in passing, has become of the efficacious nymphs of all these wells?
Have they lost their virtue, or is it only the necessary faith which has
disappeared?
From Hagley, Pitt would visit Shenstone at his petty paradise of the
Leasowes, and the grateful poet would apostrophise him:
'Ev'n Pitt, whose fervent periods roll
Resistless o'er the kindling soul
Of Senates, Councils, Kings;
Tho' formed for Courts, vouchsafed to move
Inglorious thro' the shepherd's grove,
And ope his bashful springs.'
But Pitt, debarred from the sports of the field, had always taken a
lively interest in the laying out of land, in planting, in landscape
gardening. He had, to use his own felicitous expression, 'the prophetic
eye of taste.' At the Leasowes, at Hagley, at Radway, the Warwickshire
seat of Mr. Saunderson Miller,[220] at Wickham, the home of Gilbert
West, and at Chevening, the delightful residence of his friend and
cousin Lord Stanhope, he freely exercised his gift. He utilised it still
more freely and indeed extravagantly at his own homes, for in the
pursuit of this hobby he disdained all limitations. Once, when Secretary
of State, he was staying with a friend near London whose grounds he had
undertaken to adorn and in the evening was summoned suddenly to London.
He at once collected all the servants with lanterns, and sallied forth
to plant stakes in the different places that he wished to mark for
plantations. In later life he ran to still greater extremes. At Burton
Pynsent a bleak hill bounded his views and offended his eye. He ordered
it to be instantly planted with cedars and cypresses. 'Bless me, my
Lord,' said the gardener, 'all the nurseries in the county would not
furnish the hundredth part required.' 'No matter; send for them from
London. And from London they were sent down by land carriage, at a vast
expense. These two familiar anecdotes cannot well be omitted.
In the more moderate time with which we are dealing he was the chosen
adviser of his friends, who may well have been guilty of the innocent
flattery of seeking his advice with regard to his favourite hobby. His
own home at this time was South Lodge in Enfield Chace, which is said to
have been bequeathed to him together with 10,000_l._, 'on this bequest
that he should spend the money on improvements, and then grow tired of
the place in three or four years.'[221] This seems dubious. But we are
on safe ground in inferring from a letter of Legge's that he established
himself there in 1748. Legge writes to him from Berlin (July 10, 1748):
'I congratulate myself and the rest of my unsound brethren upon the
acquisition we have made by your admission into the respectable corps of
woodmen and sawyers. I consider your Lodge as an accession to the common
Stock and Republick of Sportsmen, which from its situation will bring
peculiar advantages along with it, and that the woodcocks and snipes of
Enfield may be visited at seasons of the year when those of Hampshire
will not be so accessible.... As to the joiners and bricklayers,
possibly too the planters of trees and levellers of walks by whom you
are surrounded, don't give yourself any concern about them. They are a
sort of _satellites_ which I beg leave to assure you attend a man
_gratis_. Nay, I have been told by one whose opinion I rate highly, that
these men's works all execute themselves with a certain overplus of
profit to the person who is so happy as to employ them,'[222] and he
adds in a postscript a list of shrubs or trees which he recommends.
Legge's playful sarcasms as to expense did not deter his friend.
By 1752 Pitt had converted South Lodge, in the opinion of his friends or
flatterers, into a delightful pleasance. He had, in the fashion of those
days, constructed a Temple of Pan with appropriate surroundings, which
excited the admiration of critics, and is mentioned with special
admiration, we are told, 'by Mr. Whately, a forgotten expert, in his
"Observations on Modern Gardening," as one of the happiest efforts of
well-directed and appropriate decoration.' The famous blue-stocking,
Mrs. Montagu, writes of the 'shady oaks and beautiful verdure of South
Lodge.' 'There can,' she says in another letter, 'hardly be a finer
entertainment not only to the eyes, but to the mind, than so sweet and
peaceful a scene.' Yet Pitt assured her that he had never spent an
entire week there. Gilbert West paid a visit there, when suffering
presumably under an attack of the gout. 'He had provided for me a
wheeling-chair, by the help of which I was enabled to visit every
sequestered nook, dingle, and bosky bower from side to side in that
little paradise opened in the wild.'[223] So that the garden would seem
to have really been a success.
But Pitt was to prove fickle to all these charms. On leaving Tunbridge
Wells after the completion of his course of waters, he intended, besides
long visits to Stowe and Hagley, to pay a passing visit to Hayes, a
place near Bromley, of which his friend, Mrs. Montagu, had a lease.
Whether it was a case of love at first sight or not, we do not know, but
Hayes was destined to be the home of his affections and the place most
closely identified with himself. At the termination of Mrs. Montagu's
lease in 1756, he bought it of the Harrison family, who owned it, and a
letter from him is dated thence in May 1756. But in January 1765 he
inherited the Burton Pynsent estate, and so, in the following October,
he offered the Hayes property to his friend, the Hon. Thomas Walpole, at
a fair valuation, indeed at cost price. He had wasted on it, we are
told, prodigious sums, with little to show for it, for he had spent much
in purchasing contiguous houses to free himself from neighbours. 'Much
had gone in doing and undoing, and not a little portion in planting by
torchlight, as his peremptory and imperious temper could brook no
delay.' He had, moreover, Wallenstein's morbid horror of the slightest
sound. Though he doted on his children, he could not bear them under the
same roof; they were placed in a separate building communicating with
the main structure by a winding passage. Vast sums were thus expended
without adding to the value of the property. But now he was eager to
leave the cherished home which had swallowed so much of his fortune, and
to hurry to the new scene. His intention of retiring into Somersetshire
seems to have caused some alarm among his friends, who feared that it
betokened retirement from public life; but with little reason, for it
was in June 1766 that the sale of Hayes to Mr. Walpole was completed,
and in the succeeding month Pitt was First Minister. His accession to
power was, however, accompanied by a combined attack of all his
maladies, nervous and physical; and his morbid, violent cravings had, if
possible, to be indulged. The most imperious of these was for Hayes, and
he persuaded himself that its air was necessary to his recovery. He
negotiated through Camden with Walpole, who unfortunately, in his year
of residence, had become passionately attached to the place. But Pitt
had become frantic. Hayes could not be mentioned before him for fear of
causing immoderate excitement. 'Did he' (Pitt) 'mention Hayes?' Camden
asked James Grenville, who had just visited his illustrious
brother-in-law. 'Yes; and then his discourse grew very ferocious.' Lady
Chatham wrote imploring and pathetic letters to Walpole, who was ready
to lend indefinitely, but not to sell. It would save her husband and her
children; her children's children would pray for him. Meanwhile, even if
Walpole consented, they had no money to buy with. They determined to
sell part of the Pynsent inheritance. But that would only suffice to pay
other debts, and Hayes would have to be mortgaged as well. Nothing could
better prove the insane violence of Pitt's desire. At last, in October
1767, Walpole yielded to Pitt's importunity, and in December the great
man found himself once more at home. Camden declared of Walpole that
'the applause of the world and his own conscience will be his reward,'
but it is not altogether pleasant to find that he did not disdain much
more material compensations. Pitt had sold the house and grounds in June
1766 for 11,780_l._, and had to buy them back in November 1767 for
17,400_l._, a difference of 5628_l._; so that he had to pay a smart fine
for his caprices. The whole purchase came to 24,532_l._, but this
includes other items, and lands which had been added by Walpole.[224] In
1772 he appears again to have contemplated selling Hayes,[225] but he
was destined to die there. All this is anticipation, but follows
naturally on the topic of Pitt's country life.