William Pitt the Younger: A Biography. William Hague

them to a Monsieur Coustier, they headed for his house at Rheims, only to find that he was a grocer with a small shop and one room behind it. ‘For a few days we lived very comfortably together,’ wrote Wilberforce, ‘but no French was learned except from the grammar, we not having a single French acquaintance. At length we desired our friend the épicier to mention us to the Lieutenant of the Police.’⁵⁹ The policeman thought they were spies, seeing that they were in ‘wretched lodgings’ and had no attendants, but told the local Abbé that these three young men claimed to be ‘grands seigneurs’, and one of them the son of the great Earl of Chatham. Soon Pitt was writing to Harriot: ‘Tomorrow we are to dine at a magnificent Palace of the Archbishop’s … and as a French Abbé is not proverbial for silence, we have an opportunity of hearing something of the language.’⁶⁰ Pitt learned French quickly, his ear being ‘quick for every sound but music’. He enjoyed the political discussions, telling the Abbé that the first part of the British constitution to decline would be ‘the prerogative of the King and the authority of the House of Peers’. But in a week of staying with the Archbishop, politics was far from their sole concern. Wilberforce noted: ‘N.B. Archbishops in England are not like Archevêques in France; these last are jolly fellows of about forty years of age, who play at billiards, &c. like other people.’⁶¹

      With news of their presence in France now spreading before them, the three friends went on to Paris, and then on to the vicinity of the French court assembled in Fontainebleau. They were presented to Louis XVI, ‘a clumsy strange figure in immense boots’. Wilberforce describes being ‘every evening at the parties of one or other of the French Ministers, in whose apartments we also dined – the Queen being always among the company present in the evening, and mixing in conversation with the greatest affability’.⁶² Pitt had a lively time with the Queen, Marie Antoinette, who made fun of the manner of his arrival in France and repeatedly teased him about whether he had heard lately from the grocer. ‘Mr. Pitt,’ Wilberforce reported, ‘though his imperfect knowledge of French prevented his doing justice to his sentiments, was yet able to give some impression of his superior powers.’ Pitt’s ability to learn quickly and to charm people of every kind in private company was thoroughly on display on the visit to France. He behaved throughout with relaxed good humour, even when the French ‘crowded around Pitt in shoals … he behaved with great spirit although he was sometimes a little bored when they talked to him about the parliamentary reform’.

      A second Pitt trait visible on this visit was his lack of interest in proposals of marriage. He was offered the hand of the seventeen-year-old daughter of the fabulously wealthy Jacques Necker, a highly ambitious French politician who would play a significant role in the events of the Revolution. According to Wilberforce: ‘It was suggested to the late Lord Camden by Mr. Walpole, a particular friend of M. Necker’s, that if Mr. Pitt should be disposed to offer his hand to Mademoiselle N … such was the respect entertained for him by M. and Madame Necker, that he had no doubt the proposal would be accepted.’⁶³ It is said that Pitt responded, ‘I am already married to my country,’ but, perhaps fortunately, no definite record of this remains.^*

      Even on this journey Pitt was more interested in making alliances of another kind: it was another attribute of his that he was a shrewd political talent-spotter. George Rose, the highly able former Secretary to the Treasury, was also travelling in France at the time:

      I received a letter from Mr. Pitt at Rheims, desiring I would stay at Paris till he could get to me, which he said he would do as soon as possible. On our meeting, the conversation was quite confidential. In the course of it I found he was as little disposed to future connexion with Lord Shelburne as myself, and he manifested an earnest desire for a permanent and close intimacy with me … Having hesitated only from a consciousness of my own insignificance as to any essential service I could render him … I gave him my hand with a warm and consenting heart. From that moment I considered myself as inalienable from Mr. Pitt, and on that feeling I acted most sacredly to the last hour of his invaluable life.⁶⁴

      Pitt’s thoughts were on planning for a government. With Parliament due to resume on 11 November, he had intended to return to England in late October. On 22 October a special messenger arrived from London, asking him to return immediately. Who sent the messenger is not known, but between George III, Temple and Thurlow the cogs of a conspiracy against the government were turning once again. Pitt had enjoyed his summer of youthful play, from the garden at Wimbledon to the forest of Fontainebleau. He had experienced for six months a relatively carefree existence. On 22 October 1783, the clatter of hooves in a French courtyard brought it forever to an end.

      ^*This expression arose from the King’s use of a small room, ‘the closet’, for meetings with Ministers.

      ^*Fencing with a weapon designed for thrusting or lunging – but in this context meaning verbal fencing.

      ^*One of these rooms was known as ‘Pitt’s room’ until the demolition of the house in 1958.

      ^*Instead she married the Swedish Ambassador in Paris, becoming Madame de Staël. She became a powerful intellectual force in European politics, a friend of Goethe and an antagonist of Napoleon. If Pitt had married her it would have made a formidable combination.

8 From Plotter to Prime Minister

      ‘We are in the midst of a contest, and I think, approaching to a crisis.’

      WILLIAM PITT, NOVEMBER 1783

      ‘The deliberations of this evening must decide whether we are to be henceforward free men or slaves; whether this House is the palladium of liberty or the engine of despotism.’

      CHARLES JAMES FOX, 17 DECEMBER 1783

      PITT AND HIS COMPANIONS returned to Dover from their sojourn in France on 24 October 1783. Within weeks they would be embroiled in one of the great constitutional crises of British history, and within months Pitt himself would exercise a domination of British politics which would span more than two decades and end only with his death. Yet few observers could have charted the course which would bring the ungainly and no doubt weary-looking young man making his way across Kent to London to such pre-eminence in so short a time, for no one could foresee with confidence the results of a head of state mounting a political coup d’état against his own government.

      Pretyman tells us that Pitt returned to England ‘with an intention of resuming his profession of the law, if there should appear a fair probability of the administration being permanent’.¹ In fact, he was feverishly busy with political meetings immediately on his return to London, knowing that something dramatic could happen in the coming session. By 3 November he was writing to Lord Mahon that he had hoped to visit him at his country house, Chevening, ‘but I have had so much to do ever since I have been in town that I have found it impossible … Time is every day more precious … I trust you will be in town in a very few days, for there are several things in which I am quite at a loss without you.’² While Pitt prepared for the meeting of Parliament in London, Temple called other opponents of the government together at his own country residence, Stowe, mindful of the King’s request to be ready to rescue him from his ‘thraldom’. Nothing in the summer had changed George III’s attitude. Fox had hoped that ‘if we last the Summer, the Public will think that the King has made up his mind to bear us, and this opinion alone will destroy the only real cause of weakness that belongs to us’.³ But as Wraxall observed, George allowed his Ministers to ‘dictate measures; gave them audiences, signed papers, and complied with their advice; but he neither admitted them to his confidence nor ceased to consider them as objects of his individual aversion’.⁴

      George III opened the new session of Parliament on 11 November, dutifully reading from the throne the speech written for him by the Ministers he hated. Opposition spokesmen found little to criticise in this broad statement of government intention: in the Lords Temple criticised the state of government finances, and in the Commons Pitt pointed out that the definitive peace treaties were almost