WILLIAM PITT'S LOVE EPISODE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 22, 26 January 1901, Page 3 (Supplement)

WILLIAM PITT'S LOVE EPISODE.

A most tender, pathetic, and historically interesting article from the pen of Lord Rosebery appears in the ''Monthly Review" foi December. The biographer of the great Minister who survived the victory at Trafalgar only a few months pieces together, by means of a number of letters in the possession of Captain Pretyman, M.P., and Mr Dickinson, M.P., the incidents In the great love episode In the life of 'William Pitt, which explains his "persistent celibacy." Not until he had been a frequent visitor at Lord Auckland's honse for a long period did Pitt suddenly awaken to the fact that it was not merely the friendship of a political friend that was attractive. "It can hardly, I think, be necessary to say that the time I have passed among your family has led to my forming sentiments of very real attachment towards them all, and of much more than attachment towards one whom I need not name." The reference in this letter in which he revealed to the father his hopeless affection for the daughter broke a silence and opened a long correspondence. The motives which led him to frankly state that he could not marry have been open to doubt, and Pitt himself was not explicit But Lord Rosebery think* that "Pitt's shattered and neglected fortunes made it impossible, for him to make any provision for a wife. It would have been a mortification to his proud spirit to admit this. Moreover, he was well aware that his health was broken, and that he held to life by a precarious tenure. In these circumstances he was fofcad to realise that should he marry his wice might soon be a widow, and a widow dependent on the bounty of the nation. Pitt could never have brooked such a contingency. These are obvious and sufficient grounds— indeed, they scarcely left Mm an option. liut It may also be suspected that -when things came to a point and when Pitt was in a position to survey calmly the prospect before htm, he shrank, after a life of retired and easy celibacy, from the unknown liabilities and engagements of marriage. Moreover.he may not hare cared to be hampered by a family connection, with a politician so eager and so ambitious as Auckland. Every consideration, then, except the personal fascination of a charming girl, prompted him to the course which h.e adopted." In one of these communications, written several days nfter Pitt's confession that he could not marry, Lord Auckland wrote:: — "i'esterday the two of the same name were utterly itnahle to quit their apartments or to see friends who, being accustomed to meet them at church, called afterwards to inquire about them. The younger of thft two still shows too much by her looks what has passed in her mind to be able to appear to-day, and there are several persons towards whom, notwithstanding the natural strength of her understanding, her feelings will betray themselves at a first meeting." Thus it came about that Pitt lived and died a bachelor, breathing his last at Putnoy Heath exactly nine years to the day after the writing of Lord Auckland's letter from which quotation has been made. He never moved from the position that he first took up that marriage was a state he conld not enter, though Lord Auckland, eager for office and for the marriage on which he had counted, pressed on him toe necessity he felt to have "as soon as possible an ostensible and honourable pretext for throwing ourselves once more into the full tide of courts and of London society, and of weaning ourselves for a time from a place in which every idea for a time is poisoned respecting all our objects and projects of amusements." In short, Lord Auckland, as Lord Rosebery in his introduction to the correspondence says, suggested that the office of Lord Privy Seal, then vacant, should be conferred upon him. At that time Pitt did not give this peer the office lie sought, but 14 months later made him Joint Postmaster-General. Five years before the great statesman broke down completely and died, the two men had a quarrel which was never healed, though Pitt "managed with the remarkable facility of tbose days to settle an additional pension on i Lady Auckland, so that her husband should not suffer in fortune by his deprivation of cilice. For this favour Auckland wrote a lettei of warm and not undignified gratitude, signing himself Jever affectio*. at^ D S'Lord^Rosebery, "was fta last of'their long correspondence, and so begins and ends this strange tender episode -this secret mirage in a Jong aridity ot office" Lord Auckland's daughter afterwards married Lord Hobart, subseqaentty the Earl of Buckinghamshire, j