The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [97]
By the time the crisis that Grenville’s Stamp Act had engendered was at hand, he had lost office. The King, long irritated and bored by Grenville’s habit of lecturing him on economic policy, became enraged when his mother’s name was eliminated by Grenville’s faction for devious political reasons from a Regency Bill drawn up in consequence of the King’s illness early in 1765.* George dismissed him, unfortunately before locating someone sufficiently master of the conflicts stirred up by the Regency Bill to form a ministry in his place. At a loss, George turned to his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, a person of un-Hanoverian ability and considerable prestige. The Duke offered the premiership to Pitt, who obstinately refused for reasons not easily discerned in this complex and opaque character. He may have been already determined on repeal and not sure whether he could command it and too stiff-necked to compromise or, given that he had been absent from affairs for the past year, the physical and sometimes mental disturbances that afflicted him from time to time may have been active.
Historians have suggested that, had Pitt taken office in 1765, the course of the next decade might have been different, but that is a supposition dependent on his continuing to function, which, as events soon proved, he could not. Pitt’s intransigence and exaggerated demands for an autonomous hand unquestionably weakened the government during the conflict with America. With his immense popularity, reputation and influence, and his incomparable sway over the House of Commons, he was an epic figure who had won, and could not save, an empire.
Pitt owed his rise as a younger son of what Lord Chesterfield called “a very new family” to force of character and his own abilities. His grandfather, called “Diamond” Pitt, was a nabob of the East India Company, of brutal temperament and wild and tyrannical habits, who had made the family fortune in the Indian trade and held a share of command for a while as Governor of Madras. The diamond for which he was known was bought by the French Crown for more than two million livres. In England the family acquired the rotten borough of Old Sarum in Wiltshire, whose seat Pitt held from 1735. He took it over at 27 from his elder brother, who, having dissipated his fortune and alienated all friends in the process, retired abroad “in very bad circumstances” and intermittently mad, “though not confined but obliged to lead a very retired life.” The streak of madness in the blood, whether or not stemming from the grandfather, appeared also in Pitt’s sisters, one of whom was confined and two others more or less so.
Throughout his life Pitt suffered from incapacitating gout, which had afflicted him since schooldays at Eton. Rare in youth, gout at that age was evidence of a severe form. Its recurring pain caused the irritability common to gout-sufferers and required a gout-stool and huge boot to be built into the front of Pitt’s carriage and sedan chair.
His political career gained notoriety by a much publicized refusal as Paymaster of the Forces to take commissions or hold back for personal investment the sums assigned for pay, both customary perquisites of office. As Secretary of State during the Seven Years’ War, he was able to abide shared command with the Duke of Newcastle as premier because Newcastle stayed within his specialty, the handling of patronage, and left policy to Pitt.
Pitt was driven by conviction that England’s destiny was maritime supremacy and that her resources could prevail in the rivalry with