LITMIR.BIZ

       3 The Company of Men

      Pitt offered Hester a life with him, on the condition that she avoid Camelford, ‘whom’, as Hester put it, ‘he liked personally as much as [I] did, but considerations of propriety obliged him to keep him at a distance’. He knew her too well to tell her what she must do, but he certainly knew how to ask her to respect his terms.

      Pitt remained Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and had made his home at Walmer Castle. He had already done much to improve the speckled-stone castle with its bulbous bastions, one of a line of coastal forts built by Henry VIII as protection against the invasion the Tudor monarch feared would come from the combined forces of France and Spain. For Pitt, this was where he hoped to recover his health, repair the appalling state of his personal finances and spend more time reading and gardening. Hester was quickly caught up by day-to-day distractions at Walmer. She informed Jackson:

      Here, then I am happy to a degree; exactly in the sort of society I most like. There are generally three or four men staying in the house, and we dine eight or ten almost every other day. Military and naval characters are constantly welcome here; women are not, I suppose, because they do not form any part of our society. You may guess, then, what a pretty fuss they make over me.¹

      That Hester felt most at ease in the company of men we have already seen; she knew what to expect from them and, as a rule, was far more stimulated by their interests, their talk of war and politics, horses and journeys, and tended to be amused rather than offended by their dirtier jokes. She gave the impression of knowing more about worldly matters than she would have others believe. Something of this quality was sensed by her uncle, who told her he did not know if she were ‘a devil or an angel’.

      Many of Pitt’s friends and colleagues were also not sure what to make of Hester in her decidedly public new role. She was a talented mimic; her timing was perfect and often cleverly nasty. She could be sharp and scintillating; she also made flippant off-colour jokes, commenting on the shape of a man’s bottom, for instance, ‘He would not do for a hussar’ and laughing at one of Pitt’s visitors, who made a sweepingly low bow with his hat and a stoop in front of her: ‘One would think he was looking under the bed for the great business.’ Pitt did reprimand her: ‘You are too bad, Hester,’ he would say, adding weakly, ‘You should not be so personal.’ But he seems to have enjoyed her witticisms, and being teased out of his usual intimidating aloofness. Above all, she felt close to him. Hester would remember that ‘He used sometimes to say to me when talking away after my fashion, “You put me so in mind of my Father!”’

      An observer of her at the time, the nineteen-year-old William Napier, the future general, wrote: ‘Lady Hester … was very attractive, so rapid and decided was her conversation, so full of humour and keen observation, and withal so friendly and instructive, that it was quite impossible not to fall at once into her direction and become her slave.’²

What became clear was that after the successive deaths of two sisters and his mother, Pitt warmed to having her loving and vivacious presence in his life. She was exuberant and irreverent, a player of innocent pranks. Although he continued to watch over her sisters Lucy and Griselda, it was Hester who became the privileged keeper of many of his past and future confidences, and his châtelaine at Walmer.^* She was a sympathetic ear and could be surprisingly non-judgemental. Of his campaigns to eradicate sedition, which so enraged her father, she would later say that ‘[he] used to say that Tom Paine was quite in the right, but then he would add, “What [was] I to do?”’ She found that she had a unique influence; a position that must surely have been gratifying.

      One of the first things that strikes a visitor to Walmer today is how – for a castle – altogether intimate and informal it feels. It is easy to imagine Hester feeling content and self-important here. From the dining room, with the doors open, they could watch the spray over the Goodwin Sands and the great panorama of the Channel. She could choose her hours; she was free to stay for after-dinner discussions, and frequently to add her opinion. War stratagems and news from Westminster were constantly mulled over. Although he was courted by the Opposition, Pitt wished to maintain his mandate within the existing government; his return to power was germinating.

      Hester’s room was directly beneath Pitt’s chambers, and she often heard his footsteps pacing on the ceiling above her; she could even hear the clink of decanter against glass. From her room she could wander freely up the stone stairs to the bastion to spy on the night patrol or into the garden, no matter what the hour. Her windows overlooked the moat and the garden; a view which encompassed a magnificent magnolia tree. The scent of its opening flowers she would always afterwards associate with heightened expectation, a feeling that something marvellous was yet in wait for her.

      Two pursuits she took up at Walmer became lifelong obsessions: stargazing and gardening. She made use of the tomes on astronomy from Pitt’s library,

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