William Pitt the Younger: A Biography

by William Hague

  On Monday the thirteenth, things seemed to be going sufficiently well for Pitt to take another drive in his carriage and for Farquhar to leave him for twenty-four hours. It turned out to be a great mistake. Whether through Pretyman’s weakness – he later wrote that Pitt ‘had felt himself so much better’21 – or the insistence of the Ministers concerned, both Hawkesbury and Castlereagh were admitted to see Pitt in order to discuss the situation of the British troops in Germany. Their anxiety to discuss matters with him was understandable, since the situation was critical and they did not like to decide on a complete withdrawal from the Continent without consulting him. It was not possible to be Prime Minister and be shielded from urgent business without appointing a deputy. Pitt’s mind had to focus on the fate of an expedition in which over six hundred lives had been lost at sea, and which would probably now have to come home with nothing to show for its efforts. The meeting of Parliament was eight days away. Treasury Ministers were also admitted to see him that Monday, as yet more business could not wait any longer for attention. Pitt was simply not up to it. Canning also saw him that night, and thought ‘the change since Bath dreadful! And his appearance such as I shall never forget.’22 He wrote to his wife that Pitt’s illness was ‘nothing specific but weakness, total exhaustion, inability to eat any thing, and an extinction of voice after a quarter of an hour’s attempt at conversation … Poor, poor P.’23

  That evening, it seems that Pitt could feel his condition deteriorating. He told Pretyman, ‘I feel something here’, putting his hands on his stomach, ‘that reminds me I never shall recover; not cold, but a general giving way.’24 Next day he confessed to an anxious Farquhar that he had disobeyed his injunctions and done too much: ‘When in conversation with persons upon important business, I felt suddenly as if I had been cut in two.’25 It was from this point on, 14 January 1806, that all who saw Pitt were appalled by his condition and believed he could not survive. Only two days earlier the doctors had thought that he might be back at work within a month. Now Farquhar summoned Reynolds and Baillie to join him in permanent residence at Putney Heath. Wellesley visited Pitt that day and later recalled, ‘notwithstanding Mr. Pitt’s kindness and cheerfulness, I saw that the hand of death was fixed upon him’.26 Farquhar considered Pitt’s symptoms now to be ‘truly & immediately alarming’.27 Rose was admitted to see him for a few minutes the following day, and found him ‘lying on a sofa, emaciated to a degree I could not have conceived … I felt it of importance not to touch on any topic that could agitate his mind … His countenance was changed extremely, his voice weak, and his body almost wasted, and so indeed were his limbs.’28

  Rose feared that the government faced defeat in Parliament if Pitt could not attend, and wanted to raise the possibility of a ‘dignified resignation’, given that there was little hope of Ministers being able to survive for several months without being able to consult Pitt at all. No one, however, wanted to put this forward while any hope of recovery could be entertained, and in any case it was impossible to discuss such a matter with Pitt himself. Ministers, with Hawkesbury in nominal command, decided to tough it out for the moment. They were in no doubt, as Canning put it, that ‘if he fails, all is up, to be sure’,29 but the traditional dinners were held at Downing Street for the Queen’s birthday and the eve of the opening of Parliament on 18 and 20 January. Parliament was duly opened on the twenty-first, with the opposition forbearing to press for an immediate division but announcing that it would commence doing so the following week.

  In the meantime, Pitt lay in his room at Putney, coughing and retching and unable to keep down even small cups of broth. Cabinet Ministers told Rose on Sunday the nineteenth that they had heard Pitt’s health was improving, but he had seen enough to know better. James and Hester Stanhope found Rose in tears in the road a few hundred yards from Pitt’s house in Putney, unable to say more than ‘I fear there is danger.’30 That night, Pitt managed to eat two eggs and keep them on his stomach, which gave the doctors a flicker of hope. It was the last such positive sign, since his condition was again worsening on the twentieth, exacerbated by a ‘low Fever’ which persuaded his doctors that ‘the case was beyond the reach of medical Skill’.31 By now Pitt was finding it painful to speak, and had fainted more than once. Although he again managed to eat two eggs on the twenty-first, the pessimism of his doctors was not relieved.

  From this point on the large number of Ministers and others who called at the house were not admitted to see him. Even his brother, who the previous week had apparently breezed in and addressed him as if they were in a Cabinet meeting, was not allowed into Pitt’s room. Only Pretyman, the doctors and the Stanhope siblings kept watch over him and tried to ease his pain. James Stanhope’s account records that on the Wednesday morning, 22 January, Pitt’s pulse was reaching 130: ‘He was very faint, and could not retain any nourishment he took. It was then considered necessary to acquaint Mr. Pitt with his danger, which the Bishop of Lincoln did at about eight on Wednesday morning.’32

  It cannot have been a surprise to Pitt to hear that he was thought to be dying. He apparently ‘received the intelligence of his own danger with an unexampled firmness’,33 and simply asked Farquhar ‘how long he thought he might hold out?’34 Farquhar’s assertion in response that it was still possible to recover he greeted with a ‘half smile’ which ‘showed that he entertained no such hope’.35 Farquhar’s hopes in any case sat uneasily with Pretyman preparing to administer the Sacrament. Pitt, never a religious man, refused this on grounds of his weakness, but agreed to pray with Pretyman, nevertheless saying that he had ‘neglected prayer too much to allow him to hope it could be very efficacious now’.36 After that he attempted to write a will, but was unable to do so. Dictating it instead to Pretyman, he managed a signature. Accepting that he had few assets, he expressed the hope that ‘the Public may be kind enough to think of me. I have not earned it – I do not mean that – but perhaps in their generosity they may do something.’37 He asked for Sir Walter Farquhar to be paid a thousand guineas in payment of his fees, for £12,000 to be given to the friends who had provided him with money in 1801 (although Rose was appalled that Pitt accidentally omitted him from the list of those who had raised the money), asked for pensions to be granted to his nieces and nephews, and assigned his papers to his brother and Pretyman.

  Farquhar’s surviving note of that day is very clear: ‘Not a ray of hope left.’38 He later told Malmesbury that Pitt ‘preserved his faculties till within twelve or fourteen hours of his death, which came on rapidly, and that Pitt died of old age at forty-six as much as if he had been ninety’.39 Certainly Pitt was exhausted through work and worry, and had refused to rest for some years while his health was clearly deteriorating. On top of this, he had drunk far too much for far too long, and was undoubtedly an alcoholic for whom ‘the early habit of the too free use of Wine operated unquestionably to weaken the Powers of the Stomach’.40 In addition, he had for many years suffered recurring attacks of gout, vulnerability to which he had presumably inherited from his father. Over time, the medicines he was given may also have weakened him, since he continued to take regular prescriptions which were intended only for immediate relief; as Farquhar put it, ‘debility was perpetually calling for new aids & new props, which gave only temporary relief, & at last lost their efficacy’.

  Any or all of these factors may have weakened Pitt, but it seems unlikely that they would have killed him. Most historians have assumed that his death was related in some way to gout, which may have ‘crystallised in the kidneys, leading to renal failure’.41 The modern term for this is hyperuricaemia, in which uric acid accumulates in the blood, crystallises in the joints, causing gout, and then in the kidneys, producing exquisite pain, obstruction and ultimately failure. Yet this explanation is unconvincing: renal pain is so intense that Pitt would not have been able to work at all when he was ill; he would not have had the periods of remission between illnesses; and it would have caused pain in a different area of his body to
that which was reported. Alternative explanations have included cancer, which is unlikely on grounds of age and which, like hyperuricaemia, would not have come and gone at intervals over the years, or even cirrhosis of the liver.

  It is, of course, impossible to know for sure what killed Pitt. Much the most likely explanation, however, is that he suffered from peptic ulceration of his stomach or duodenum. The advanced complications of such ulceration are virtually unknown two hundred years later, but they fit reasonably well with the symptoms reported by Farquhar for the last eleven years of Pitt’s life. Periodicity is a classic sign of such an illness, and Pitt’s reported symptoms of morning sickness, retching at the sight of dinner, and inability to eat without vomiting are all consistent with it. Repeated vomiting would also produce dehydration, which in turn would cause the headaches and weak pulse which are clearly documented. The lack of adequate nutrition would also lead to the evident impairment of bowel function, and a feeling that some sustenance could be obtained through alcohol – since alcohol is partly absorbed through the lining of the stomach itself. The fact that Pitt reported pain in and around the upper abdomen provides further support for this theory. While an outside possibility is chronic pancreatitis, in all probability Pitt was dying of gastric or duodenal ulceration. Two hundred years later he would have been cured in a few days by therapy with antibiotic and acid-reducing drugs. In 1806, there was nothing that could be done for him.

  As night came on Wednesday, 22 January 1806, Pitt’s mind began to wander. He said an affectionate goodbye to Hester Stanhope, but was anxious when she left, repeating, ‘Where is Hester? Is Hester gone?’42 Farquhar then gave him some champagne and asked him not to ‘take it unkind’ when it turned out he had pain from swallowing it. Pitt replied, ‘I never take anything unkind that is meant for my good.’ He became incoherent as the night wore on, his comments focused exclusively on international events and the condition of England. The boy who had wanted to ‘serve his country in the House of Commons’ was still thinking about it in the final hours of his life. He occasionally cried out ‘Hear Hear!’ as if sitting in the Commons, and at other times seemed to speak to a messenger. Still somehow conscious of the need for good news from the Continent, he asked about a letter from Harrowby, and ‘frequently inquired the direction of the wind’; then said, answering himself, ‘East; ah; that will do; that will bring him quick.’43 In the early hours a wellwisher arrived with a phial of ‘hartshorn oil’, which he claimed had previously rescued people from imminent death. Farquhar duly poured it down Pitt’s throat, but the response was only ‘a little convulsive cough’.44

  At about half past two, Pitt’s moaning and verbal wanderings ceased. Then, according to James Stanhope, ‘in a tone I never shall forget, he exclaimed, “Oh, my country! how I leave my country!” From that time he never spoke or moved, and at half-past four expired without a groan or struggle. His strength being quite exhausted, his life departed like a candle burning out.’45

  For the second time in the memory of many of those watching, the doors of Westminster Hall opened to the funeral procession of a national leader named William Pitt. Once again, it was led by the High Constable of Westminster dressed in a black silk scarf, hatband and gloves with his silver staff in hand, but this time leading a far longer and grander procession than in 1778, with drums, fifes and trumpets preceding the seemingly endless ranks of Members of Parliament and peers, along with three Royal Dukes. Chatham, who had missed the funeral of his father, walked behind the coffin of his younger brother as the slow-moving procession took fully half an hour to cover the few hundred yards from Westminster Hall to the Abbey. The procession of 1778 had tramped through the mud, but this one crunched on the huge quantity of gravel which workmen had been busy spreading since four o’clock that February morning.

  It was Saturday, 22 February 1806. Pitt’s body had lain in state in the Painted Chamber of the Palace of Westminster for the previous two days, during which time tens of thousands of mourners paid their respects to the body. They passed through the chamber, draped in black and hung with 132 banners of the Chatham arms, at the rate of up to seventy-five a minute. The funeral itself brought out the distress of Pitt’s friends: Wilberforce was said to be in tears throughout the ceremony; Mulgrave so affected ‘as scarcely to be able to support himself’;46 Canning felt ‘a feeling of loneliness & dismay which I have never felt half so strongly before’;47 and Rose was ‘in danger of being completely overcome’ from the loss of ‘one of the purest-minded and best men to whom God … ever gave existence’.48 After Pitt’s body had been lowered into the vault already containing his father, mother and sister Harriot, Wellesley speculated as to ‘what sepulchre embosoms the remains of so much human excellence and glory?’49

  There was undoubtedly a sense of national loss. The invitations to the funeral and the medallions struck at the time showed Britannia weeping and carried the inscription ‘NON SIBI SED PATRIAE VIXIT’: ‘He lived not for himself but for his country’. Newspapers printed long obituaries reminding their readers that ‘every faculty of his mind was devoted to the Public Service’.50 Their tributes rested in particular on Pitt’s maintenance of British independence and security in the preceding years, extending the legend of ‘the pilot who weathered the storm’: ‘By his unabating zeal and provident counsels we have been guarded from the baneful contagion of revolutionary doctrines, and though ruin and misery have fallen on many States, and seems to impend over others, this Country is free, formidable, and we trust, secure … in him we have lost the great prop of our security …’51 Less supportive newspapers described him as a ‘great man, for such he has been considered even by the parties who opposed him’, but pointed out that ‘his second administration was attended with circumstances which lessened the splendour of his distinguished name; and the nation has to regret that his sun should have set amid clouds and storms, instead of descending temperately to a serene and brilliant horizon’.52 Opposition politicians joined in the avalanche of tributes. Fox said he was ‘very sorry, very, very sorry’, and went on to add that ‘one feels as if there was something missing in the world – a chasm, a blank that cannot be supplied’.53 Grenville had received the news of his cousin’s impending death with ‘an agony of tears’.54 Sidmouth referred to an ‘affection that has never been extinguished’.55

  Yet the death of a Prime Minister at a time of political and international crisis cannot be without controversy and difficulty. When, on 27 January, the Yorkshire MP Henry Lascelles brought forward a motion for a public funeral for an ‘excellent statesman’, and ‘an inscription expressive of the public sense of so great and irreparable a loss’,56 some of those who had opposed Pitt in his final years felt obliged to argue against it. Windham incensed Pitt’s friends by opposing the motion even though he had been a member of his earlier administration. He argued that the cause of defeating the French Revolution ‘had not been well conducted in his hands’, the war had not been won and ‘we should never have heard of honours and titles given to Lord Nelson for the glory of a defeat’.57 More predictably, Fox argued that he could not agree to a motion describing Pitt as an ‘excellent statesman’: ‘It cannot be expected that I should so far forget the principles I have uniformly professed, as to subscribe to the condemnation of those principles by agreeing to the motion now before the House.’

  The majority view was generous and overwhelming, and the motion was carried by 258 votes to eighty-nine. When it came to the subject of Pitt’s debts, the generosity became unanimous. Even Fox declared he had never given a vote with more satisfaction as the House of Commons voted £40,000 ‘towards’ Pitt’s debts – the present-day equivalent would be over £2 million. In addition, his dying wishes were respected, with a pension of £1,200 a year being granted to Lady Hester Stanhope, and a further £600 a year to each of her two sisters.

  It was not at all clear that the great sum of £40,000 would be sufficient to clear debts that had piled up at an even greater rate than usual towa
rds the end of Pitt’s life. Attempts to calculate the addition to his debts in the last year alone reached a figure of £24,000. Pitt had simply never mustered the time and energy to master his own finances: ‘How could a man so circumstanced, find time to look into his affairs?’ protested Lady Hester Stanhope. In his later years she had ‘fixed on some glaring overcharge’ now and again ‘just to put a check upon them’, but ‘what with great dinners, and one thing and another, it was impossible to do any good. As for your talking about English servants being more honest than those of other countries, I don’t know what to say about it.’58 Spendthrift and defrauded to the end of his life, Pitt left to his executors a morass of obligations which took fifteen years to sort out before probate was granted in 1821. His dying wish for the repayment of the friends who had assisted him with almost £12,000 was disregarded, partly on the insistence of Wilberforce, who had envisaged that all of Pitt’s debts would be paid by private subscription, and did not wish to see the taxpayer pay even more. With that set aside, the parliamentary grant used to the full and his assets sold (almost £5,000 for his furniture and over £2,600 for his stocks of wine), there was a sufficient surplus for his surviving servants to be paid as he had wished and for a small amount to be divided between Chatham and Pitt’s nieces. It was perhaps surprising that any such inheritance became available at all.