Chapter IV (2)

Next comes a short letter from William, only notable from his anxiety about Squire Allworthy.

_St. James's Square. July 24th, 1759._

Dear Sister,--Your letter on the subject of Mr. Allen's Health gave
me, with the Pain of learning he had been ill, the Satisfaction of
understanding that the attack was, in some degree over; that to Lady
Hester giving an account of the terrible nature of his complaint,
having follow'd Her to Wotton, where she now is.

I trust that the next accounts from Prior Park will be favourable
and that the best of men, who feels and relieves the most the
sufferings of others, may not Himself suffer the severest of Pains.
I learn with great satisfaction the considerable amendment you
mention in your own Health, and the promising prospects of deriving
much benefit from Tunbridge. I hope You will not let too much of
this fine season for mineral waters pass, before you repair to Them,
and that their effects, when you try them, will fully answer your
own and your Friends expectation.

I am Dear Sister Your most affectionate Brother,
W. PITT.

if Lord Paulett be still at Bath, I beg my compliments to his
Lordship.

It is perhaps well, for the preservation of continuity, to print the following letter from Lady Hester to her sister-in-law:

_Tuesday. St. James's Square. Aug. 29th._

I am so much in Arrear to You, my Dear Madam, and upon so many
accounts, that I don't know where to begin first to acquit my Self
to You. I feel I want now most to justifie my self to you for not
having before exprest how sensible I am to the various Marks I have
received of your very obliging Attention upon all the Subjects that
you knew wou'd give me the greatest pleasure. The Fact is that an
unexpected Journey to Wotton, from which place I return'd but Last
night, interfered with my intention of writing to You, and of
returning you my sincerest thanks for the great Satisfaction your
Letter gave me. It included everything that cou'd make it pleasing
to Me, and renew'd all my own Joy for our Successes with Yours added
to it, which was a great improvement of all I felt before, and
particularly for Louisbourg, _Dear_, as you know so many ways. I am
charmed with my rings, which are after an English Taste that I hope
will be followed, and grow fashionable enough to encourage a Variety
of Patterns. Last night brought a Large Package from Bath directed
to Your Brother, and intended we guess for the Young Militia Man at
Hayes. It contained besides a present for Miss Hetty, both which
will be faithfully deliver'd this evening, and the sentiments they
inspire shall be in due time communicated. In the Interval I believe
I must apply to you my Dear Madam to assure the kind sender of my
share of pleasure in the present. Miss Mary's Letter received Last
night, gave a great deal of Satisfaction to both your Brother and Me
by the account of Your Health, and the Progress You have made in a
returning to a Diet of Solid Food, a sort of Sustenance so much more
likely to restore and confirm your Strength and Spirits than any
other. We are glad to find that Doctor Oliver has your approbation,
and that he seems to reason with great sense and probability upon
your case, and what it is likely to end in. the Gout is not a very
desirable Thing, but only comparatively, where the constitution is
not strong, for then there ar many Disorders to which people are
Liable that are much worse. I am vastly pleased that Our House has
the honour of being approved by you, and should be delighted if I
cou'd be so happy as to receive You in it, and wish extremely that
it was furnish'd and fit for Your reception, but I find Mr. Pitt
thinks that it is not proper to have hired furniture put into it, as
well as that you cou'd not be so conveniently accommodated in a
House so circumstanced, as you will be in the very commodious
Lodgings which Bath affords. We are meditating a journey to Hayes
the moment Mr. Pitt returns from Kensington, which makes it
impossible for me to say as much as I wish to You upon the different
Subjects in this Letter, being obliged to give an account of my
journey to the Friends I met at Wotton who are now disperst. May I
beg you to give my Love to Miss Mary, and to say I hope she will
admit what I have been saying as an excuse for my not acknowledging
by this Post in a letter to Her what I have in my sentiments
acknowledged ever since I heard from her, that I was indebted to her
for the Prettiest, as well as the most Obliging, Letter in the
World, besides her Bath Fairing which I value properly. I shall only
now repeat my request that You will believe me Always my Dear Madam

Your affectionate Sister and most Obedient Servant,
H. PITT.

Mr. Pitt will endeavour to serve the Chevalier de Chaila as you
desire.

All so far had been harmonious enough. Unfortunately, there now occurred a second misunderstanding, to which the ensuing letters relate. It is best to give Lord Camelford's account, which, though mysterious enough, is all we have. 'Her Physicians advising her to discontinue the Waters for a short time to give trial to a course of med'cines, she determin'd to accompany me to London, to see some old friends after a long absence, and to transact certain business, and then to return to Bath. Fearing, however, that her unexpected arrival at her Lodgings in Leicester House might have objections, or that there might be difficulties in her lodging any where in London, she stop'd short at Sion at Ly. Holdernesse's, her particular friend, from whence she removed to Kensington to a house Mr. Cresset lent her. This Journey gave offence to her Brother, and occasion'd their second quarrel. Instead of managing a temper too like his own, instead of yielding to her repeated request of seeing him, when with gentleness he might have explained his wishes to her and have persuaded to whatever he thought best for her or for himself, he satisfied himself with dark hints, imperious messages, and ambiguous menaces convey'd thro' Ly. Hester and his Sister Mary, neither of whom were very happy in the arts of conciliation. Frightened, confounded, and at the same time exasperated by so strange a conduct, she tried to return to Bath, but her strength would not admit of her getting half way thro' the Journey. She return'd to Kensington--she got medical advice--she saw a few of her old friends, who soon disproved the falsities that were every day propagated of her State of Health--by degrees she saw all her fears vanish--the World return to her and nobody flie from her but the Person from whom she expected her chief countenance and support. She sounded the Princess, and found she was at full liberty to live where she pleased, except that the former intimacy was at an end. She met her Brother accidentally at Ly. Yarmouth's, he kiss'd her on both sides with the affectation of the warmest affection; whilst he refused to visit her and his whole family were hostile to her in the cruelest manner.'

The whole affair is obscure, and is not elucidated by the letters of Pitt and his wife which follow. Lady Hester is civil and kind enough, though evidently forbidden to visit or receive her sister-in-law. But what Pitt means by his allusion to 'desultory jaunts,' and 'hovering about London,' and conduct 'too imprudent and restless or as too mysterious' for him to be connected with it, we cannot now conjecture. What harm a spinster of forty-eight could do by staying with Lady Holdernesse at Sion, and thence moving to Kensington, and being undecided as to her plans, it is not easy to determine. It is possible, on considering the whole affair, Ann's own temperate reply, and all that followed, that Pitt knew that his sister was seeking a pension, for which purpose she had gone to Sion and to Kensington (for Lady Holdernesse was the wife of a Secretary of State, and Cresset was a man of influence), and desirous that his name should not be connected with the pension list at this moment of unrivalled popularity and power, he was anxious to have no communication with her. There is a still more probable explanation of Pitt's annoyance with his sister's behaviour. We have seen that Lord Camelford speaks of the 'falsities that were every day propagated about her state of health.' In a letter soon to follow she herself speaks of her stay in France 'before my spirits were so much disordered as they have been since.' Some years afterwards, Horace Walpole wrote of her that she had at times been out of her senses. It seems possible, then, that one of these attacks had taken place at Bath, and that she had broken loose from constraint and come up to London, which would revive the gossip about her condition, and so cause annoyance to her brother, who thought that peremptoriness was the only method of getting her back again to Bath. If this were so, he acted wisely, as she appears to have returned to Bath at once. This last conjecture seems the more probable explanation. In any case the circumstances of the people and the times were full of electricity. Pitt was busy, gouty and irritable; Bute was much above the horizon. Ann was eccentric, wilful, and wayward. Soon afterwards, she had a pension, which annoyed her brother. This is all that we can be said to know. We do not even know the date of this episode.

FROM LADY HESTER PITT.

It is my Dear Madam extremely unfortunate that from different
circumstances which have interpos'd themselves, I have not had it in
my power to have the pleasure of seeing you since your arrival in
the neighbourhood of London, and I am quite concern'd that by Your
Brother's business I am so circumstanced today, as to make it
impossible for me to receive that Satisfaction. There is to be a
meeting of the Cabinet here this Evening, which Always engrosses my
Apartment and banishes me to other quarters. We are but just arrived
from the Country, which I think has done your Brother good. He
desires I wou'd assure you of his affectionate Compliments, and Let
you know that his present Pressure of business is so great that it
does not leave him the Command of a quarter of an hour of his time,
so as to be able to assure himself beforehand of the pleasure of
seeing any friend. therefore under that uncertainty, and fearing he
may miss of the Satisfaction of meeting You, he desires thro' me to
wish you a safe return to Bath, so much the best place, He is
perfectly convinced, for Your Health. We are both very glad to hear
you have had a confirmation from Doctor Pitt of the efficacy you may
expect to find in those waters for your Complaints. I must not end
my Note without expressing how much I was flattered by your
remembrance of Little Hetty, tho' I trust Miss Mary did not forget
me upon that subject, no more than on that of my real Concern for
its being impossible for me to wait upon You, and say for myself
how much I feel obliged to You for your kind Letter and message. The
Compliments of the season attend You my Dear Madam with many good
wishes.

_St. James's Square. Tuesday._

_St. James's Square. Monday. Jan. 15th._

Dear Madam,--Mr. Pitt is this moment come to Town, and so
overwhelm'd with business, that it is quite impossible for Him to
write a word to You Himself, in answer to your Note which he has
just received. He is very sorry to find you are ill, and wishes me
to tell you that you have mistaken Him in thinking he meant to
express any desire of His as to your Going, or Staying, which he
always meant to Leave to your own Decision, but only to offer you
his opinion, and never proposes to take upon Him to give you any
further Advice with regard to the place of Your residence, which you
have all right independent of any thing with respect to Him to
determine as You please for Yourself. I am extremely concern'd to
hear your disorder is increased so much as to have made your return
to Kensington necessary, as I fear your Situation There must be very
uncomfortable and Disagreeable, without Servants, or any of those
Conveniences, which are so particularly of Consequence when any body
is ill. I hope most sincerely to have the pleasure of hearing you
are better, and Able to prosecute what ever May be thought best for
Your Health, being very truly Dear Madam

Your Most Affectionate and Most Obedt
H. PITT.

_Friday Morning._

Dear Sister,--I desire to assure you that all Idea of _Quarrel_ or
_unkindness_, (words I am griev'd to find you cou'd employ) was
never farther from my mind than during your stay in this
neighbourhood. on the Contrary, my Dear Sister, nothing but kindness
and regard to your Good, on the whole, has made me judge it
necessary that we should not meet during the Continuance you think
fit to give to an excursion so unexpected, and so hurtfull to you. I
beg my Dear Sister not to mistake my wishes to see Her set down,
for a time, quiet and collected within her own Resources of Patience
and fortitude, (merely as being best and the only fit thing for
Herself) so very widely as to suppose, that my Situation as a
Publick Person, is any way concern'd in her residing in one Place or
another. all I mean is, that, _for your own sake_, you shou'd
abstain from all desultory jaunts, such as the present. the hearing
of you all at once, at Sion; next at Kensington, then every day
going, and now not yet gone, certainly carries an appearance
disadvantageous to you in this view; I have refused myself the
pleasure of seeing You; as considering your journey and hovering
about London, as too imprudent and restless, or as too mysterious,
for me not to discourage such a conduct, by remaining unmixt with
it. this is the only cause of my not seeing you, nor can I give you
a more real proof of my affectionate regard for your welfare than by
thus refusing myself a great pleasure, and, I fear, giving you a
Pain. I offer you no Advice, as to the choice of your residence. I
am persuaded you want none; you have a right and are well able to
judge for yourself on this point. but if you will not fix somewhere
You are undone. I am sorry to be forc'd to say this much; but saying
less I should cease to be with truest affection Dear Sister

Ever Yrs
W. PITT.

ANN PITT TO HER BROTHER.

Dear Brother,--I am going to set out to return to Bath, but as the
letter I received from you yesterday leaves me in great anxiety and
perplexity of mind, I can not set out without assuring you, as I do
with the most exact truth, that there was no mistery in my journey
here, nor no purpose but the relief I proposed to my mind. If I had
known before I left the Bath that you disapproved of my leaving that
place at this time, or of my coming to Town, I wou'd not have done
as I have done, and wou'd not even have come near it, tho' the
advice given me at Oxford with regard to my health, made me desire
to make use of the interval in which I was order'd not to try the
waters again, to have the pleasure and satisfaction of seeing You
and some of my friends and as I hoped that satisfaction from You in
the first place, I will not dissemble that I am very much
disappointed and mortified in not having seen you, but as the hurry
of important business you are in, and the relief necessary to make
you go through it, made it possible for me not to interpret your not
seeing me as a mark of unkindness, I never used the word (the word)
but to guard against other people using it, upon a circumstance
which I thought they had nothing to do with.

When I writ you word from the Bath that I had thoughts of coming to
Town for Christmas, I desir'd nothing so much as to do what was most
proper according to my situation, and consequently to have your
advice, which I told you, very sincerely I wished to be guided by
preferably to every other consideration, You best know how I am to
attain the end I have steadily desired for Years, as you know I writ
you word from France (before my spirits were so much disorder'd as
they have been since) that I desired nothing as much as a safe and
honourable retreat, that wou'd leave me the enjoyment of my Friends,
without which help and suport I find by a painfull experience that
it is impossible for me to suport myself. I beg leave to trouble you
with my compliments to Lady Hester, and my wishes for the happiness
of you both, and of all the little family that belong to you.

I am D Br &c.

This undated note appears to belong to the same time as the preceding ones, and tends to confirm the hypothesis that it was Ann's mental condition that gave rise to anxiety.

FROM LADY HESTER PITT.

Dear Madam,--Having informed Mr. Pitt, who is this moment come home,
that you intend going to the Lodgings in Lisle Street, He wou'd not
set down to dinner without desiring me to let you know from Him that
this intention of Yours gives him the greatest surprise and not Less
concern for _Your sake_, being unalterably persuaded that Retreat is
the only right Thing for your Health, Welfare, and Happiness, and
that Bath in Your present state seems to be the fittest Place.

_St. James's Square Wednesday past four o'clock._

We now come to the famous affair of the pension. Ann has evidently written to ask her brother's interest for a pension. He replies that on such a subject he would rather not speak, much less write to her, and gives her plainly to understand that he washes his hands of the whole business. She now turned to Bute. 'Having lost, therefore,' writes Camelford, 'all the hopes she had founded on her brother's friendship, which now turned to open enmity, she tried the generosity of Ld Bute upon the King's succession, who, not unwilling to give Mr Pitt a sensible mortification in the shape of a civility, procured for her a pension that was no small comfort in addition to her slender income, which was afterwards again augmented to L1000 p.a., at the instance of her friend M. de Nivernois, upon the peace.'

Dear Sister,--I hoped long before now to have been able to call on
you, and in that hope have delayed answering a letter on a subject
so very nice and particular, that I cou'd, with difficulty and but
imperfectly, enter into it even in conversation. I am sure I need
not say to one of your knowledge of the world, that explaining of
Situations is not a small Affair, at any time, and in the present
moment I dare say You are too reasonable to wish me to do it. In
this state I have only to assure you of my sincerest wishes for your
advantage and happiness, and that I shall consider any good that
arrives to you as done to myself, which I shall be ready to
acknowledge as such: but having never been a Sollicitor of favours,
upon any occasion, how can I become so now without contradicting the
whole tenour of my Life? I think there is no foundation for your
apprehensions of anything distressfull being intended, and I hope
you will not attribute, what I have said to any motive that may give
you uneasiness, being very truely

Dear Sister Your affectionate Brother
_Nov. 24: 1760._ W. PITT.

After the letter in which Pitt sheers off from the pension, there was evidently an announcement from Ann that it had been granted to her on the recommendation of Lord Bute. This is lost. But we have Pitt's unpleasing congratulation. This was the note which Ann was with difficulty restrained from returning to Pitt, having altered it to suit the circumstances of the case, when Pitt's wife was granted a much larger pension.

Dear Sister,--Accept sincere felicitations from Lady Hester and me
on the Event you have just communicated. on your account, I rejoice
at an addition of income so agreeable to your turn of life, whatever
repugnancy I find, at the same time, to see my Name placed on the
Pensions of Ireland. unmixt as I am in this whole transaction, I
will not doubt that you will take care to have it thoroughly
understood. long may you live in health to enjoy the comforts and
happiness which you tell me you owe to the King, singly through the
intercession of Lord Bute, and to feel the pleasing sentiments of
such an obligation.

I am Dear Sister Your most affectionate Brother
_Tuesday Dec. 30th 1760._ W. PITT.

Then follows Ann's reply, which may be judged not unconciliatory when her fierce temperament is taken into consideration. She elaborately and almost humbly vindicates her pension against her brother's sarcastic strictures.

Dear Brother,--I must trouble you again, not only to return my
thanks to Lady Hester and yourself, for your obliging
felicitations, But as I have the mortification of finding, that for
some reasons which I can not judge of, You feel a repugnancy to the
mark of favour I have had the honour to receive, and desire--it may
be throughly understood that you had no share in the transaction--I
ought to make you easy, by assuring you, as I do, that so far as I
think proper to communicate an event, which will not naturally be
very publick, I will take care to explain the truth, by which it
will appear that you are no way concern'd in it, and that it has no
sort of relation to your Situation as Minister, since my request was
first made to the Princess many years ago, as Her Royal Highnesess
Servant, as I am pretty sure I explained to you in a letter from
France, and repeated to you at my return, as the foundation of my
hopes of obtaining the Princesses approbation for any establishment
you might have procured for me. And tho' the Provision I have been
so happy to obtain from His Majesty's Bounty is of the utmost
importance to me and answers every wish I cou'd form with regard to
my income, yet when I was allow'd to say how much wou'd make me
easy, I fix'd it at a sum, which I flatter myself will not be
thought exorbitant, or appear as if I had wanted to avail myself of
the weight of your credit, or the merit of your services to obtain
it.

As to your objection to your Names (_sic_) being upon the Irish
Pensions, I do not believe that any mistake can be made, from mine
being there. And as to myself, I very sincerely think it an honour
that is very flattering to me, to have received so precious a mark
of the Royal favour, and to have my Name upon the same List not only
with some of the highest and the most deserving persons in England,
but even with some of the greatest and most glorious names in
Europe. If I have tired you with a longer letter than I intended, I
have been lead (_sic_) into it, by the sincere desire I have, that
an advantage so very essential to the ease and comfort of the
remainder of a Life, which has not hitherto been very happy, shou'd
not be a cause of uneasiness to You. I am

Alas for the freakful fate which plays with poor humanity and its concerns! The next letter announces another pension, not to Ann, but to Pitt's wife. So soon after the other correspondence, not ten months! No wonder that Ann was tempted to the vengeance that has been described. Even though she refrained we may imagine her unrestrained scoffs and her bitter laughter.

Dear Madam,--I was out of Town Yesterday, or otherwise I shou'd have
had the pleasure of informing You that His Majesty has been
Graciously pleas'd to confer the Dignity of Peerage on Your
Brother's Family, by creating Me Baroness of Chatham with Limitation
to our Sons. The King has been farther pleas'd to make a Grant of
Three Thousand Pounds a Year to Mr. Pitt for his own Life, Mine, and
our Eldest Son's in consideration of Mr. Pitt's Services, We do not
doubt of the Share You will take in these Gracious Marks of his
Majesties Royal Approbation and Goodness.

I am Dear Madam Your most Obedient Servant
HES: PITT.
_Sunday Morning_

Some four years afterwards Ann received this short note, which shows that there was no rupture of relations; and the tone indeed is cordial for the period, when the expression of the warmest affection was far from gushing.

_Burton-Pynsent Aug. ye 1st 1765._

I am extremely obliged to you, Dear Sister, for the trouble you are
so good to take of writing to enquire after my health, which I found
mend on the journey and by change of air. I still continue lame, but
have left off one Crutch, which is no small advance; tho' with only
one Wing my flights, you will imagine, are as yet very short: the
Country of Somersetshire is beautifull and tempts much to extend
them. I hope your health is much better and that you have found the
way to subdue all your complaints, or at least to reduce them
within such bounds, as leave your life comfortable and agreeable.
Lady Chatham desires to present her compliments to you.

I am Dear Sister Your affectionate Brother
WILLIAM PITT.

And now there come the last sad words, the last sign of life that William gives to Ann. It is not without significance that even at this period of prostration he bids his wife tell Ann that his official life is ended. It does not appear that there had ever been or was ever to be any formal reconciliation between them. But through all the gusts and squalls and storms that had troubled their intercourse an underlying tenderness had survived.

_Hayes. Oct. 21st. 1768._

Madam,--The very weak and broken state of my Lord's health having
reduced him to the necessity of supplicating the King to grant him
the permission to resign the Privy Seal, he has desir'd I wou'd
communicate this Step to You.

I am Madam, Your most Obedient Humble Servant
H. CHATHAM.

About this time (1768) she took up her abode at Kensington Gravel Pits, in the region of Notting Hill, 'where out of a very ugly odd house and a flat piece of ground with a little dirty pond in the middle of it, she has made a very pretty place; she says she has "hurt her understanding" in trying to make it so.'[86] Before that time she seems to have lived for a while at Twickenham; at least Horace Walpole speaks of her as a close neighbour. Being fairly launched as a pensioner, she throve on the system, and eventually accumulated a treble allowance; this Bute pension, another procured by M. de Nivernois, and another, mentioned by Horace Walpole in a letter of Nov. 25, 1764, which must have raised her whole income from this source to some 1500_l._ a year. On this she entertained, and frolicked, and danced. We hear of her choice but miniature balls, and her band of French horns, which Horace Walpole enjoyed and described. But her intercourse with William, once so bright and genial, was ended, and that is all with which we are here concerned. A frigid letter or two counted as nothing in a connection which had once been as intimate as it was delightful.

Ann went on living at Kensington a somewhat frivolous life so far as we know anything about it, in intimate relations with Horace Walpole and his society. But in 1774 she went abroad, under the auspices of the Butes, to Italy, to Pisa and elsewhere. Then came her brother's sudden death. Though she had been so long aloof from him, the shock finally shattered her reason, which, it would appear, had already given cause for apprehension. Chatham died May 11, 1778. She soon returned to England, and in the October of that year Horace Walpole writes that she is 'in a very wild way, and they think must be confined.'[87] In the following May he announces that she is actually under restraint.[88] There is a letter at Chevening from her to her niece, Lady Mahon, dated 'Burnham, May 9, 1779,' which betrays her distraught condition. Burnham was probably that 'one of Dr. Duffell's houses' to which she had been removed. On Feb. 9, 1781, she dies, still in confinement. Lady Bute, it should be noted, was kind and attentive to the end.[89]

'She was in Italy at the time of his (Chatham's) death,' writes Lord Camelford, who was probably there too. 'I can bear witness that the grief she felt at the reflection of his having died without a reconciliation with her made such an impression of tenderness on her mind that not only obliterated all remembrance of his unkindness, but recoiled upon herself, as if she had been the offending party, and doubtless contributed greatly to the melancholy state in which she died.'

Horace Walpole, who had come to hate all Pitts, confirms this in his sardonic way. 'Did I tell you that Mrs Ann Pitt is returned and acts great grief for her brother?' and he goes on to say that Camelford himself 'gave a little into that mummery, even to me; forgetting how much I must remember of his aversion to his uncle.'

There were perhaps few genuine tears save those of wife and children shed over the grave of the grim, disconcerting old statesman, for men of his type are beyond friendship: they inspire awe, not affection; they deal with masses, not with individuals; they have followers, admirers, and an envious host of enemies, rarely a friend. But Ann had no reason to feign grief or self-reproach. She had lost her first love, her only love, the love of her life. It is probable that the brother and sister had understood each other throughout in their quick-kindling, petulant way. 'My brother, who has always seemed to guess and understand all I felt of every kind,' she wrote in 1757;[90] a sentence which is a clue to all. The memory of childhood, the glad sympathies of youth, the impressions received when their characters were plastic and fresh, the habit of close intimacy for the score of years during which intimacy was possible for him, all these contributed to form a bond which survived the skirmishes and collisions of their later lives. Two persons of highly charged temperament, and of natures too much akin, who understood each other, respected each other, and perhaps secretly enjoyed each other's ebullitions, such were Ann and William after they separated in 1746. Their long affection is interesting if only that it seemed impossible that two such characters should agree even for a time. And therefore, though the narrative of this episode has swollen beyond all limit and proportion, the space is not lost, for it is invaluable to the student of Pitt's career. It lights up the only expressed tenderness in his life, it is the one relief to his sombre nature, it is the sole record that we have of the unbending of that grim and stately figure.