Pitt the Elder: Man of War by Edward Pearce
Bodley Head, £25
William Pitt the Elder, subject of this biography, was the grandson of Thomas Pitt, member of a sound Dorset family, who was an independent trader, merchant and chancer in Bengal at the close of the 17th century and who sank his profits into purchasing a large diamond, the size of an egg. After cutting and polishing, it was sold in 1717 to adorn the crown of Louis XV and fetched £135,000, yielding a profit of 450 per cent. He became known as Diamond Pitt, founder of the family’s fortunes. And so we come to William Pitt the Elder, the Great Commoner, Lord Chatham, immortal imperialist. I knew him well from my boyhood cigarette card collection, in a series of 50, with a stick-in album, called Builders of Empire.
The focus of Edward Pearce’s fine new book is clear. This is a revaluation and readjustment of Pitt’s reputation, originally lauded following Francis Thackeray’s biography of 1827 and 20th century historians such as OA Sherrard and Basil Williams. Pitt’s reputation was later considerably questioned by Marie Peters and Richard Middleton. Pearce focuses particularly on Pitt’s strategic and tactical control of the campaigns fought in Europe, North America and India during the Seven Years War of 1756-1763: “Since the centrepiece of Pitt’s life was the Seven Years War…I have gone out of my way to write a military history in parallel with the political one.”
In 1731, after Eton and Oxford, Pitt secured a modest commission in the Horse Guards (the required £1,000 rumoured to have been purchased by the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole to secure the parliamentary support of Pitt’s brother Thomas). Pitt entered Parliament in 1735, a Whig but a member of the Patriot Whigs, opposed to Walpole’s policy of neutrality in European wars.
When Walpole was, in effect, driven from office, after the declaration of the Spanish War, Pitt was made Paymaster General in the Broad-bottomed administration of 1746, but resigned in 1755. His patriotism was rewarded by a legacy of £10,000 by the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough and an estate annually worth £3,000.
By 1756 he was Secretary of State, to all intents and purposes Prime Minister, and he now vigorously pursued the war against France. He’d earned the enmity of George II for his support of the Prince of Wales and was briefly pushed out of office but then returned, apparently as a result of public acclamation. He was now, in effect, Prime Minister and masterminded British campaigns in India, Africa, Canada and on the Rhine, considerably haemorrhaging French strength by subsidizing Frederick II of Prussia against the forces of the King of France.
This is the most arresting part of Pearce’s book, as he traces the way Pitt manipulated the strings of the wide reaching British military and naval campaigns of the Seven Years War, laying the foundations of the British Empire. He was briefly absent through illness during the final negotiations of the Peace of Paris 1763, and criticized its terms.
As Pearce acknowledges, parliamentary reporting was restricted and we have little useful evidence to go on. But we have some. Britain’s victory was confirmed. Pitt, dressed in black and wrapped in flannel, was helped by servants into the Commons. Dalrymple gives us the scene in The Rodomondo:
The groundlings cry alas! Poor man!
How ill he is! How pale! How wan!
At length he tries to rise, a hum
Of approbation fills the room.
He bows and tries again; but no,
He finds that standing will not do,
And therefore to complete the farce,
The House cries, “Hear him on his arse!”
And hear him they did, for three-and-a-half hours.
The ascendancy of Lord Bute eclipsed Pitt’s career at this stage. Pearce rightly notes the support to Lord Bute in Smollett’s journal, The Briton, in 1762, (notoriously answered by John Wilkes) but makes no mention of Smollett’s several flattering dedications to Pitt nor refer to the satiric coverage of Pitt and the Seven Years War in Smollett’s contemporaneous novel Sir Launcelot Greaves.
In 1766 he was again running a ministry, as Viscount Pitt and Earl of Chatham, from the House of Lords. Ill health caused him to resign in 1768. He opposed British policy in America and attempted to return to speak his mind in the Lords in April 1778 after securing a vote against government policy. As he rose again to speak, he collapsed and was not to recover.
The Government voted £20,000 to pay his debts and a pension of £4,000 a year for his descendants. He had a public funeral, a statue in Westminster Abbey, and a major place in British history, as Pearce argues, somewhat constructed to Victorian requirements. Pittsburgh and numerous other places in the US and Canada were named after him.
Edward Pearce’s years as a parliamentary correspondent and sketchwriter serve him well here and his accounts of the political intrigue, backbiting and manipulations are fascinating. How times have changed, eh?
Pearce seems ready to accept the verdict of Macaulay (who obviously had never actually heard him speak) that Pitt was a boring orator. And, in support, he quotes Edmund Burke’s opinion. But it’s a bit thick for Burke to call Pitt “fustian”. Although reading Burke’s speeches suggests he was a master orator, in fact, though deeply schooled in Aristotle, Quintilian and Cicero, Burke was, notoriously, a bore with a tedious voice and soporific delivery.
Known as “The dinner bell of the Commons”, when he rose to speak Members of Parliament left in droves. Lord Erskine grew so tired of hearing Burke droning on during the debate about the India Bill that – hoping Burke wouldn’t notice – he crept out under the benches and went to the Isle of Wight. Apparently, Burke’s closing speech at Warren Hastings’ impeachment lasted nine days. But maybe it only seemed like nine days?
Robert Giddings
