The Wildest of Streaks 

Article by Antony Lowe. Edited by Duncan Robinson. Additional Research by Michelle Brien. 

‘Oh My country, How I love my country’ 

Imagine a scenario, Prime Minister Gordon Brown is poised on Putney heath, his heart beating like a drum against his ribcage, in his hand he wields a beautifully crafted pistol and he stares at a man across the grass. This man has disgraced Brown’s honour in the House of Commons, this man is about to face a duel with the formidable Prime Minister. Or perhaps an image of Brown and Cameron squaring up to each other, the benches in the Commons are conveniently two swords length apart, perfect to make ones self a swashbuckler. 

It is a hard scenario to grasp, and to my knowledge Gordon Brown has never had a duel at dawn on Putney Heath. However one Prime Minister who has is William Pitt the Younger, immortalised in BBC’s Blackadder the Third as a spotty, whiny teenager more worried about his chest hairs than running the country, asking the House to hurry their speeches as he has to revise for his Latin exam before turning in. This of course is not the case, but at age twenty-four William Pitt the Younger (ascending to the top job in 1783) is the youngest Prime Minister in history. We must remember Pitt for matriculating at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge University (befriending one evangelist William Wilberforce) when only 14, rebuilding Britain after the American War of Independence and for being an articulate and highly charismatic man. But the obvious daring and wildness of Pitt is striking, he had a streak that in today’s political scene would condemn him to a ribbing on have I got news for you and a stark dressing down from Ian Hislop in Private Eye. 

Pitt’s famous duel against George Tierney in 1798 portrays him more as the immature Blackadder caricature than a serious statesman, fought on Putney Heath a day before his 39th birthday; Pitt had accepted Tierney’s proposal for a duel after the former had accused Tierney of being unpatriotic in debates about the French. Perhaps we can forgive Pitt slightly, having now recovered from the image of a Brown-Cameron duel, for he lived in a time that might be considered a little more charged in relation to the testosterone than modern day Westminster, comments about the Ladish’ nature of the current Labour cabinet aside.

One can also call upon Pitt’s alcoholism, Pitt’s drinking started at the age of fourteen, a startling age that today would not be alien to the binge drinking culture and perhaps we would have termed Pitt a ‘troubled child’, but before we judge him, the Port was purely medicinal. Dr Anthony Garrington had prescribed the young Pitt a whole bottle of Port a day to help him overcome an attack of Gout, one has to ask just how this would have helped an illness that has been termed ‘the rich man’s disease’ due to its roots in fatty lifestyles. One can scarcely picture Alistair Darling alone at Number 11 Downing Street drinking glass after glass of Port and coming out with a questionably rosy complexion. I’m sure MPs would not get away with claiming Port as a medicinal cure on the NHS today, especially when they cannot even claim for something as simple as a duck house. 

Despite his obvious failings, alcohol (medicinal but strangely lingering after the end of his Gout), Debt (he ran up a debt of £45,000 by 1801) and the slightly amusing sight of a duel involving the Prime Minister, Pitt the Younger was still a remarkably gifted, intellectually advanced and sharp witted man. He would no doubt be able to talk his way around a modern day dressing down. One particular admirer writes a short biography of Pitt’s life in the Manchester Guardian in 1906. He refers to Pitt as ‘the pilot who weathered the storm’. Reference perhaps to Pitt’s towering strength against domestic and international pressures, namely Napoleons Europe and the debate over the abolition of the Slave Trade in Great Britain. 

Pitt’s first administration lasted for eighteen years (1783-1801, his second when he was asked to form a government once again by the King occurred 1804-06), one of the longest tenures in British political history. Remarkable considering he took the job at aged 24, many expected him to fall at the first hurdle and some lamented the fact that they had entrusted the country to a ‘schoolboy’. 

On the surface Pitt’s policies were both effective and firm. Despite his own drastic economic failings, he managed to reduce the national debt, in part due to his opposition to war with the Americans which had run up a huge deficit. He imposed several taxation plans, cut corruption and smuggling by reducing high duties, and revolutionised the system of auditing with the United Kingdom. Furthermore his 1784 India Act checked corruption within the British East India Company and extended the executive power of the Minister by placing him in a board of trade that oversaw the actions of the company. He established a coalition and an alliance with Prussia and Holland, entitled the Triple Alliance, to curtail and block the French advance through Europe. He was hailed as a hero after the Battle of Trafalgar. He weathered the crisis that arose in 1788 during the illness of George III (His apparent madness), and Parliament could only settle on young Prince George (an image of Hugh Laurie in makeup, a wig and with sparkly trousers making Baldric a lord comes to mind) that could have seen him fall from power. 

However Pitt’s administration was less successful than first we might think. His bill to rationalize rotten boroughs was defeated, and his attempt to curtail the rebellions in Ireland through an Act of the Union faced fierce opposition from his cabinet, causing him to resign his first ministry. Even the Triple alliance eventually failed. He was forced to introduce Britain’s first income tax, and passed restrictive acts such as the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus to cope with European pressures. In this way he was an extremely pragmatic figure, perhaps reacting to pressures that he felt not ideal. 

Yet one can argue that Pitt’s brilliance was not fully recognised in his long tenure. If we look at his childhood we see the remarkable Pitt shining through. The Pitt, who could easily translate complex Latin and Greek verse, and would pretend to address the House of Commons at age seven. His genius epitomised in a letter from the Earl of Chatham (his father) to Joseph Turner of Pembroke College, ‘he is of tender age…but he has an ingenious mind and docility of temper’ or the words of Bishop Tomline ‘he was always the liveliest person in company, abounding in playful wit and quick repartee’. At Cambridge he indulged in classic literature well into the night (with which his doctor recommended he discontinue alongside his prescription of Port, not a great substitution), and could eloquently and with such clarity recite passages and political thought that his family would refer to him as ‘the philosopher’, or ‘the young senator’. The man who could read passage after passage of the complex Greek historian Thucydides. So perhaps we must remember Pitt for his quiet genius, and despite the several failings of his office, he truly was the pilot who weathered the storm, surviving political crises, a war in Europe and aspersions on his age with solemnity, dignity and grace. 

In this study I hoped to not regurgitate a narrative of Pitt’s life, because that would take more than a few hundred pages. His remarkable political career does deserve praise and dedication, but I wanted to show the two most striking sides to his character. One the one hand an alcoholic, debt ridden dueller, but on the other a sharp witted, reserved man whose brain was honed and tuned to political greatness by his father (Pitt the elder) throughout his life. A man whose personal fortunes ran into debt at the same time that he was rebuilding British finances after a devastating war with America. A man who sought to root out corruption in the East India Company, whilst drinking himself to death. Master of wit, charm and wordplay, yet a man who never married or had any long term relationship with women. 

I believe then that we can forgive Pitt for his shortcomings; he is certainly a more entertaining fellow than most modern politicians. Yet we must pursue a line of thinking reminiscent of the Rankean historical thought, whereby we must consider Pitt within his own time. Pitt was caught up in a highly strung Europe, egocentric, masculine and aggressive. We can compare him To President Kennedy, worried that his age would let him down in an era dominated by Cold War tension, so JFK punched his mark on history (none more so than his expert handling of the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962). Pitt, I believe, punched his mark through his eloquence, poise and wit. The life of this extraordinary fellow, his extraordinary prowess, commitment and fervour can be epitomised in his last words, ‘Oh My country, How I love my country’. Wilberforce commented ‘he was the wittiest man I ever knew, and what was quite peculiar to himself, had at all times his wit under entire control’.

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