e wear and tear of politics. His affection for Wilberforce,
perhaps, had not quite regained its former fervour. As for the vinous
society of Dundas, a valuable colleague but a far from ideal companion,
Pitt must in his better moments have held it cheap. He rarely saw his
mother, far away in Somerset; and probably his relations to his brother
had cooled since he removed him from the Admiralty. In truth, despite
his loving disposition, Pitt was a lonely man.

The voice of rumour, in his case always unfair, charged him with utter
indifference to feminine charms. His niece, Lady Hester Stanhope, who
later on had opportunities of observing him closely, vehemently denied
the charge, declaring that he was much impressed by beauty in women, and
noted the least defect, whether of feature, demeanour, or dress. She
declared that, on one occasion, while commending her preparations for
the ball-room, he suggested the looping up of one particular fold. At
once she recognized the voice of the expert and hailed the experiment
as an artistic triumph. Hester's recollections, it is true, belong to
the lonely years spent in the Lebanon, when she indulged in ecstatic or
spiteful outbursts; and we therefore question her statement that Pitt
was once so enamoured of a certain Miss W----, who became Mrs. B----s of
Devonshire, as to drink wine out of her shoe. But Hester's remarks are
detailed enough to refute the reports of his unnatural insensibility,
which elicited coarse jests from opponents; and we may fully trust that
severe critic of all Pitt's friends, when, recalling a special visit to
Beckenham Church, she pronounced the Honourable Eleanor Eden gloriously
beautiful.[436]

[Illustration: THE HON. ELEANOR EDEN. (From a miniature)]

To this bright vivacious girl of twenty years Pitt's affections went
forth in the winter of 1796-7;[437] and she reciprocated them. Every one
agrees that Eleanor combined beauty with good sense, sprightliness with
tact. Having had varied experiences during Auckland's missions to Paris,
Madrid, and The Hague, she had matured far beyond her years. In mental
endowments she would have been a fit companion even to Pitt; and she
possessed a rich store of the social graces in which he was somewhat
deficient. In fact, here was his weak point as a political leader. He
and his colleagues had no _salon_ which could vie with those of the Whig
grandees. The accession of Portland had been a social boon; but Pitt and
h