Hester developed a particular disdain for women like Harriet and Georgiana, so apparently decorous, artful and ‘modern’, yet bankrolled and ultimately controlled by their rich husbands, whose censure they feared beyond any passion they felt for their lovers. She had grown up in the era in which Mary Wollstonecraft had stated in print that society made a fatal mistake by allowing women only the role of domestic slave or ‘alluring mistress’ without recourse to any financial freedom, and by encouraging women to think only of their looks and charms. This was a viewpoint that Hester instinctively held and she expressed it by her actions. But she was no radical polemicist – her father had cured her of that. Hester would have thought feeble-minded Wollstonecraft’s urgings that society divest itself of the monarchy, the military and the church, and she certainly did not believe in the social equality that Wollstonecraft maintained was as necessary to happiness between a man and a woman. If anything, she was an aristocratic individualist, with more than a touch about her of Lord Stanhope’s Minority of One.
Hester was not the only one who felt her reputation was under attack. The winter of 1805 was particularly fraught for Pitt, who was coming under increasing fire from the Opposition. Despite his intensified efforts to create a broader-based administration, he was unable to lure the Fox and Grenville factions into the government, a rapprochement that could only be successful if an agreement could be reached between the King and the Prince of Wales. As long as their estrangement continued, so did their respective vetoes on Fox and Grenville. Pitt was forced to fall back on his last resort – to patch up his friendship with Addington, and the sixty MPs who took their lead from him, whose support he now desperately needed.
A window on these proceedings is provided in a letter written to ‘Dearest Lady H’ from an extremely agitated Canning, dated 1 January 1805, in which he expresses his shock at Pitt’s decision. He is replying to a letter Hester had sent him the day before in which she had obviously ‘leaked’ the information to him that Addington was to be made a Minister, and that he himself was not; the inference being that Canning had obviously expected to be made Foreign Secretary, and had now found that the position will be going to Pitt’s old loyalist, Lord Mulgrave. He wrote to her early that morning, after ‘as much sleep as I could get after such a letter’ and told her ‘… I am nothing, I cannot help it; I cannot face the House of Commons or walk the streets in the state of things as I am’.21 It is a lengthy, detailed and personal letter, in which he agonizes about his colleagues, written in the kind of shorthand that suggests he had long since let her into the inner workings of his mind. He asks her to intercede with ‘Mr P’ on his behalf:
Through you I come to him with more confidence in not being misunderstood … You stood instead of pages of preface and apology and are a vouchee for us to each other that we mean each other kindly and fairly.22
Canning clearly expected her to still be privy to the sort of confidences from Pitt that kept him writhing in anticipation. Many of Pitt’s ministers had pointedly suggested to Pitt that her influence on state matters would not be tolerated. Pitt laughed this off as an absurdity. Hester would later say:
There might be some apparent levity, both as regarded affairs of the Cabinet and my own, but I always knew what I was doing. When Mr Pitt was reproached for allowing me such unreserved liberty of action in State matters, and in affairs where his friends advised him to question me on the motives of my conduct, he always answered: I let her do as she pleases, for if she were resolved to cheat the devil, she could do it.
The mood towards Pitt had soured. The fact that Britain was at war – engaged on two fronts now, having committed the country to the Spanish conflict – enraged his countrymen further. Pitt’s popularity sank lower when, in February 1805, he presented his budget to the Commons requesting a loan of £20 million and further tax rises on salt, postal services, horses, property and legacies.
Meanwhile the Opposition was seeking out damning evidence wherever it could. Finally a chink in Pitt’s armour came in the form of the Tenth Report of the Commission of Naval Inquiry, which had been set up as a watchdog over the navy’s management practices. It was the perfect opportunity to point the finger of financial indiscretion at the otherwise incorruptible Pitt. The matter became one of grave moral laxity, on which the very integrity of the administration rested. Even Pitt’s dearest friends, such as Wilberforce, were moved to vote against him.
When the vote took place on 9 April 1805, the numbers were equal, so that the Speaker, whose face ‘turned white as ashes’, was forced to cast the deciding ballot. After a pause of ten minutes, the visibly uneasy Speaker announced his vote against the government. Pitt was seen leaning in his chair, pushing his little cocked hat down to obscure his face, so that only those near to him could see that tears coursed down his cheeks.
Hester knew him well enough to let him be, knowing that after the humiliation of such a defeat, and having so many among his former followers vote against him, he needed comfort more than righteous indignation. From that point on, she felt contempt for a great many of those men she had formerly entertained on Pitt’s behalf. The stirrings by those loyal to Pitt but now anxious for the formation of a new administration were increasing, but they did not dare to act while he was still in power.
Early in January 1806, the devastating news of Napoleon’s triumph at Austerlitz and the collapse of the Third Coalition proved to be Pitt’s death-blow. Hester rushed to his side and was deeply shocked to see his altered appearance when he was brought to Putney Heath. As he was helped out of his carriage, she knew he would not survive long. ‘I said to myself, “It is all over with him.” He was supported by the arms of two people, and had a stick, or two sticks, in his hands, and as he came up, panting for breath.’
Traditional dinners were held at Downing Street without Pitt. On 18 January, Pitt ordered Hester to attend the official celebration of Queen Charlotte’s birthday, insisting he did not want her social life to be curtailed. An issue of the Lady’s Magazine for the following month describes her appearance at the event:
Lady Hester Stanhope, was, as usual, dressed with much style and elegance, in black and green velvet ornamented with embossed gold, and studded with rubies, which had a most brilliant effect. Headdress: feathers and diamonds.23
Parliament opened on 21 January 1806. The mood was subdued; the Opposition agreed to defer their action to bring down the administration for a week, as they waited to see how long Pitt might last. On the morning of 23 January, Pitt agreed to pray, saying that he had ‘neglected prayer too much to allow him to hope that it could be very efficacious now’. He then asked to rewrite his will. Had he not managed this last act, Hester’s future might have been quite different. Pitt knew he had only debts to leave behind him, but he also knew that his request for specific bequests would receive serious consideration by the Crown and by Parliament.
James would recall that Hester was infuriated that Pitt’s doctor, Farquhar, would not let her in to see Pitt for a final farewell. But when the doctor had slipped out for dinner, she went into his room.
Though even then wandering a little, he immediately recollected her, and with his usual angelic mildness wished her future happiness, and gave her a most solemn blessing and affectionate farewell. On her leaving the room I entered it; and for some time afterwards Mr Pitt continued to speak of her, and several times repeated, ‘Dear soul! I know she loves me. Where is Hester? Is Hester gone?’24
Pitt died later that day, and Hester cut a lock of his grey hair before his body was removed. She would keep it all her days in a little pearl locket, as one of her most precious possessions.
Within a week of Pitt’s death, the House of Commons voted to put £40,000 towards Pitt’s personal debts – the present-day equivalent would be more than £2 million. In addition, the King personally granted Pitt’s dying wish to leave Hester