is intimate followers exerted little influence on London Society. He
and Grenville were too stiff. Neither Dundas nor Wilberforce moved in
the highest circles. Portland, Spencer, and Windham held somewhat aloof,
and Leeds, Sydney, and others had been alienated. Accordingly, the news
that Pitt was paying marked attentions to Auckland's eldest daughter
caused a flutter of excitement. Her charm and tact warranted the belief
that in the near future the Prime Minister would dominate the social
sphere hardly less than the political.

Among his friends who knew how warm a heart beat under that cold
exterior, the news inspired the hope that here was the talisman which
would reveal the hidden treasures of his nature. The stiff form would
now unbend; the political leader would figure as a genial host; the
martinet would become a man. Assuredly their estimate was correct.
Pitt's nature needed more glow, wider sympathies, a freer expression. A
happy marriage would in any case have widened his outlook and matured
his character. But a union with Eleanor Eden would have supplied to him
the amenities of life. We picture her exerting upon him an influence not
unlike that which Wordsworth believed that his sister had exerted upon
his being:

thou didst plant its crevices with flowers,
Hang it with shrubs that twinkle in the breeze,
And teach the little birds to build their nests
And warble in its chambers.[438]

It was not to be. After toying with this day-dream, Pitt suddenly broke
away to Downing Street. His letter to Auckland, written there on 20th
January 1797, announced the decision of the Minister in chillingly
correct terms. In pathetically halting and laboured phraseology he
implied that he had throughout observed a correct aloofness. After five
long sentences of apology to the father he proceeded thus:

Whoever may have the good fortune ever to be united to her is
destined to more than his share of human happiness. Whether, at
any rate, I could have had any ground to hope that such would
have been my lot, I am in no degree entitled to guess. I have to
reproach myself for ever having indulged the idea on my own part
as far as I have done, without asking myself carefully and early
enough what were the difficulties in the way of its being
realised. I have suffered myself to overlook them too long, but
having now at length reflected as fully and as calmly as I am
able on