* The Royal Family were Hanoverians by descent. In this period the King of England was also the hereditary ruler (Elector) of Hanover.
* Henry Fox, father of Charles James Fox, is thought to have made £400,000 as Paymaster, a vast sum in those days.
‘He is of a tender Age, and of a health not yet firm enough to be indulged, to the full, in the strong desire he has to acquire useful knowledge. An ingenious mind and docility of temper will, I know, render him conformable to your Discipline, in all points. Too young for the irregularities of a man, I trust, he will not, on the other hand, prove troublesome by the Puerile sallies of a Boy.’
THE EARL OF CHATHAM TO JOSEPH TURNER OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE1
‘He was always the most lively person in company, abounding in playful wit and quick repartee; but never known to excite pain, or to give just ground of offence.’
BISHOP TOMLINE2
FOR A FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD to be admitted as an undergraduate to Cambridge University was highly unusual in the eighteenth century, just as it would be today. A sample of undergraduate admissions to Pembroke Hall in the twenty years preceding Pitt’s arrival there suggests that fewer than one in five of them were even under eighteen.3 Yet Chatham and the assiduous tutor Edward Wilson had evidently decided that William could cope with a college environment in spite of his youth and continued illnesses. Since Wilson was a graduate of Pembroke Hall (later Pembroke College), Cambridge, and his brother was presently a Fellow there, it was decided that this would be the most suitable place for William to go. His name was entered into the college admissions book on 26 April 1773. Wilson was highly confident of the new student’s prospects: ‘He will go to Pembroke not a weak boy to be made a property of, but to be admir’d as a prodigy; not to hear lectures, but to spread light.’4
Wilson and Pitt travelled from Somerset to Cambridge together in October 1773, a journey which took them five days. When they arrived, Pitt immediately wrote an excited letter to his father:
I have the pleasure of writing to my dear father, after having breakfasted upon College rolls, and made some acquaintance with my new quarters which seem, on the short examination I have given, neat and convenient …
To make out our five days, we took the road by Binfield, and called in upon Mr. Wilson’s curate there; who soon engaged with his rector in a most vehement controversy, and supported his opinions with Ciceronian action and flaming eyes … We slept last night at Barkway, where we learnt that Pembroke was a sober, staid college, and nothing but solid study there. I find, indeed, we are to be grave in apparel, as even a silver button is not allowed to sparkle along our quadrangles, &c.; so that my hat is soon to be stripped of its glories, in exchange for a plain loop and button.5
The ‘neat and convenient quarters’ were a set of rooms over the Senior Parlour where Thomas Gray had lived for many years. After that they had been occupied by Wilson’s brother, who was now vacating them to travel abroad. These rooms were spacious and well inside the college, away from any noise or bustle in the road.*
Much as the fourteen-year-old was already fascinated by events around the globe, he was still living in a small world. At that time there were about fifty undergraduates at Pembroke, and a good deal fewer than a thousand in the whole university, which could be traversed on foot in less than fifteen minutes. The main subjects of study were Classical Literature, Moral Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Natural History, Medicine, Theology and Mathematics. For his first three years, Pitt played no part in the life of the university outside the Pembroke walls. He was one of eight Fellow Commoners in the college, sons of noblemen who paid higher fees and ate at the Fellows’ table rather than with others of the same age. The relationship between a tutor and a student was often far closer than is usual today, frequently with long continuity and daily tutorials in a far smaller community. Once again Pitt was to spend most of his time conversing with adults rather than with other teenagers.
Within a week of his arrival Pitt was writing to his father to report that he was already studying Quintilian and that the Master of the College, Dr Brown, had taken a special interest in him. He was conscious, as always, of being his father’s son, expressing the hope ‘that I may be, on some future day, worthy to follow, in part, the glorious example always before my eyes’.6 Two weeks later he had fallen ill again and his father was urging him to work less hard: ‘You have time to spare: consider there is but the Encyclopaedia; and when you have mastered all that, what will remain? You will want, like Alexander, another world to conquer.’7 By then, however, the damage was already done, and his illness was sufficiently serious to cause alarm in the college and among his family, with the family nurse Mrs Sparry being sent to stay with him in his rooms. He was confined there for two months and then brought home until the summer of the following year. He was preceded home by a letter from the Master: ‘notwithstanding his illness, I have myself seen, and have heard enough from his tutors, to be convinced both of his extraordinary genius and most amiable disposition … I hope he will return safe to his parents, and that we shall receive him again in a better and more confirmed state of health.’8
Pitt was so ill that it is said to have taken four days to transport him from Cambridge to Hayes, a journey which ought to have been possible in one day. Back in the bosom of his family, he was referred to the attentions of his father’s physician, Dr Addington, the father of Henry Addington who was to become Pitt’s friend and, in 1801, his successor as Prime Minister. It was at this point that Pitt received the famous piece of medical advice that may have influenced his social habits throughout the rest of his life and quite possibly contributed, three decades later, to his early death. Dr Addington recommended going to bed early, and ending the habit of studying classical literature into the night. He also recommended a specific diet, and regular daily exercise on horseback. His final recommendation was to drink a daily quantity of port wine, variously recollected down the generations as ‘a bottle a day’ or ‘liberal potations’, but at any rate a good deal of it. While this sounds surprising today, medical opinion of the time was that a regular infusion of alcohol could drive other less welcome toxins to disperse in the body and hopefully disappear. Pitt, methodical as ever, took all of this advice and continued to adhere to most of it throughout his life, particularly the requirement to ride and to drink port. He can be forgiven for thinking that this combination was healthy for him, since it was from this point in his adolescence that he enjoyed a substantial improvement in his health and finally shook off the debilitating complaints that had plagued him as a child.
Nevertheless, it was not until July 1774 that he returned to Cambridge, the devoted Edward Wilson still at his side. For the next two years his life fell into a pattern in which he spent the summer in Cambridge, when of course many other members of the college would be absent, and the winters with his family so that his health could be more closely attended to. In those winter months he was again under the close tutelage of his father. A letter of January 1775 from Chatham to his wife begins, ‘William and I, being deep in work for the state’, suggesting that political discussion continued apace between father and son.9 In his Cambridge sojourns, Pitt now became more relaxed and at ease. He took trouble to assure his father that he was no longer working at night, and gave many accounts of riding, in accordance with the doctor’s instructions, in the vicinity of Cambridge. In July 1774, on his return, he wrote, ‘I have this morning, for the first time, mounted my horse, and was accompanied by Mr. Wilson, on his beautiful carthorse,’ and ‘Nutmeg performs admirably. Even the solid shoulders of Peacock are not without admirers; and they have jogged Mr. Wilson into tolerable health and spirits; though at first the salutary exercise had an effect that, for some time, prevented his pursuing it. The rides in the neighbourhood afford nothing striking, but, at the same time are not unpleasing, when