Pitt and the pendulum
John Brewer The Elder Pitt Stanley Ayling (Collins, £6.50)
The Pitt family was an eccentric lot. 'Governor' Pitt, the earl of Chatham's grandfather, was an irascible, crotchety man who hawked throughout Europe a diamond which, if not as big as the Ritz, was sufficiently large to be beyond the pockets of most of Europe's princes and potentates. Four of his many grandchildren suffered bouts of serious mental illness. Ann Pitt finished her days in one of Dr Duffell's houses for the disturbed; Elizabeth, her sister, enjoyed a more comfortable and prosperous decline, but not before winning an international reputation as a virago and accomplished nymphomaniac; and the elder Pitt was the victim of prolonged bouts of deep depression and melancholia which left him with a total paralysis of will. Oddity persisted in the family well into the nineteenth century: contemporaries looked askance at the younger Pitt, whose only true intimate was his daily bottle of port, and Chatham's transvestite granddaughter, Lady Hester Stanhope, kept up the family reputation for eccentricity by walling her self up in a Lebanese monastery.
Yet the dominant impression conveyed by the family—and this is especially true of both the elder and younger Pitt—is not that of madness nor caprice, but of inaccessibility. The public acts of the Pitts are not difficult to comprehend, but their personality, motives and deepest feelings seem almost impossible to recover. Stanley Ayling, already the author of a highly acclaimed biography of George III, has therefore set himself a formidable task in turning his attentions to the elder Pitt. But, as readers of his earlier work will have come to expect, Mr Ayling has written an exciting and occasionally witty book that seeks to depict Pitt in both his public and private capacities. This is no hagiography but an attempt to portray Pitt as accurately as possible.
Originally attached to 'Cobhams Cubs', whose focus was the Grenville family and the magnificent house of Stowe, Pitt rapidly won a considerable reputation as one of the most effective parliamentary opponents of Sir Robert Walpole. His oratory in the House of Commons was held to be too haughty and too sarcastic, but even his strongest critics agreed that it could be used to devastating effect. After Walpole's fall Pitt could reasonably have expected the high office that he so obviously desired, but it was not until 1756, some fourteen years later, that he finally became Secretary of State. Before this he had been obstructed by the implacable opposition of George II, who hated Pitt for his attacks on the king's 'beloved Hanover', and by Henry Pelham, the dominant parliamentary figure of his generation. Yet, such were his skills and so great his popularity that, despite opposition in the royal closet and in parliament, Pitt had to be taken into power. His administration during the Seven Years War was an overwhelming success: vast sums of money were raised, the French were trounced in North America and the West Indies, and the British Empire became the most extensive since the fall of Rome. Pitt had shown himself to be a great war leader, cast in the true heroic mould. But his triumph was short. After 1761 he suffered a diminution in popularity, was frequently very ill, and only returned to power briefly and disastrously in 1766. The Pitt of George III's reign was a figure much reduced in stature.
Stanley Ayling's account of these aspects of Pitt's career is excellent. It is well paced and full of judicious comment; its only weakness is a partiality for the overelaborate metaphor. His discussion of the strategy and tactics of the Seven Years War is especially to be recommended for the way in which it captures the tension and the drama of those years.
Mr Ayling's touch only falters when he considers the private Mr Pitt. As he says (with a note of resignation) on his final page: 'A tangled picture, still puzzling and mystifying'. Pitt was an enigma. How was he able to maintain a posture of absolute
moral rectitude, yet pursue policies that he had so vehemently and so recently denounced? How does one square his obvious interest in honours, rewards and money with his frequent professions that he never cared for such things ?
A number of his contemporaries, including Burke (admittedly not one of Pitt's great admirers) and, on occasion, Horace Walpole, thought him a fraud: an hypocrite who, even if he had been a great war leader, was chiefly remarkable for his ability to bamboozle the public into believing that a politician with averagely self-interested ambition was, in fact, a patriot and political saint. There is some truth in this view, though it would be more revealing to remember that the man who Pitt deceived most successfully was himself.
Pitt's chief characteristic was the lofty conception that he entertained of himself. He saw himself, he self-consciously cast himself in the role of 'grand man', a cut above others, and he made little or no attempt to conceal his feelings of obvious superiority. This made him an isolated as well as an exalted figure. It also explains his ambiguous attitude towards the business of politics. Because he thought of himself as being more than other men, Pitt loathed such activities as place-seeking and politicking that he was forced to practise but which put him on a par with other politicians. Desiring fame and fortune—the just deserts of every great man—he did not wish to be seen to seek them, since great men do noi dirty their hands. This fastidiousness was matched by his stiff, affected manner and theatrical gestures; all of these were an intrinsic part of his portrayal of the hero. Fortunately for Pitt there was a brief period in his career—during the Seven Years War—when his own exalted ambitions and the needs of the nation were harmoniously united. As far as Pitt was concerned there could have been no more appropriate backdrop than a global war and no better supporting actors than the navies and armies of Europe. But peace pricked the bubble, and Pitt was never able to obtain a peacetime reconciliation between his aspirations and those of the nation. It may have been this that led him to total collapse in the 1760s. For heroes, the line between brilliant success and abject failure is a very thin one indeed.
It is this personal though highly histrionic side of Pitt which Mr Ayling is reluctant to comment upon. Though his description of Pitt's moods and modes of action is complete, the author refuses to capture his subject's persona. Perhaps he wants the reader to reach his own conclusions, but it is a pity that he is not more incisive here. Overall this is a well presented arid engaging book. One of its many bonuses Is the inclusion of mug-shots of almost ever contemporary of Pitt who was of political consequence. It is a biography that will be read by serious students of the period but is also strongly to be recommended as an entertaining bath-tub companion.
Previous page
