Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/360

Pitt vol. i. pp. xxviii, xxix). A few days after his elevation to the peerage a pamphlet, in which ‘the constitutional right of the House of Commons to advise the sovereign’ was warmly upheld, was attributed to Camelford, and referred to in parliament by Burke, who also ridiculed him as the alleged author of a tract relating to parliamentary reform. In the autumn of 1789 Camelford found it necessary to deny that he had published a treatise on French affairs. He is included in Park's edition of Walpole's ‘Royal and Noble Authors,’ iv. 348–50, as ‘the reputed author of a tract concerning the American war.’

From March 1762 Pitt lived at Twickenham, playfully calling his house the ‘Palazzo Pitti.’ He was then the neighbour of Horace Walpole, who recognised his skill in Gothic architecture, and went so far as to call him ‘my present architect.’ On the death in 1779 of the second Earl of Harrington, he bought the lease of Petersham Lodge (beneath Richmond Park, but now demolished and the grounds included in the park boundaries), and he purchased the fee-simple in 1784 from the crown, an act of parliament being passed for that purpose. In 1790 it was sold by him to the Duke of Clarence. Pitt also built Camelford House, fronting Oxford Street, at the top of Park Lane, London; and as a member of the Dilettanti Society, to which he had been elected on 1 May 1763, he proposed in February 1785 that the shells of two adjoining houses constructed by him in Hereford Street should be completed by the society for a public museum, but considerations of expense put a stop to the project. He interested himself greatly in the porcelain manufactory at Plymouth, where employment was found for the white saponaceous clay found on his land in Cornwall (, Devonshire, i. 60;, Reminiscences, i. 79–80; , Relics of Corkworthy, pp. 4–5; , Two Centuries of Ceramic Art, pp. 77–8, 115–16, 139–44). Angelica Kauffmann wrote to him on the free importation into England by artists of their own studies and designs (, Book for a Rainy Day, 1861, pp. 186–7). Pitt was a friend of Mrs. Delany, to whom he gave for her lifetime portraits of Sir Bevil Grenville, his wife, and his father, and he proposed to Count Bruhl that they should jointly assist Thomas Mudge in his plans for the improvement of nautical chronometers. The wainscoting of the stalls in Carlisle Cathedral, where his uncle, Charles Lyttelton, was bishop, was designed by him.

Pitt's letters to George Hardinge are printed in Nichols's ‘Illustrations of Literature,’ vi. 74–139. Some of the originals were sold on 5 Dec. 1874, from the library of John Gough Nichols. Further letters by Pitt are in the British Museum, Additional MS. 28060, and Egerton MSS. 1969, 1970. Some letters written to him by the second William Pitt are among the Fortescue MSS. (Hist. MSS. Comm. 13th Rep. App. pt. iii. pp. 219, 558, 591–2).

Pitt's portrait by Romney, a favourable specimen of the artist's talents, depicts him dressed in a scarlet suit and seated, resting his left elbow on a table. His daughter's portrait, by Madame Vigée le Brun, represented her as Hebe. It was painted at Rome in the winter of 1789–90, when she is described as ‘sixteen, and very pretty.’ Both portraits belong to the Fortescues of Boconnoc (Archæol. Journ. xxxi. 26).

[Gent. Mag. 1771 p. 377, 1793 pt. i. pp. 94, 141, 1803 pt. i. p. 485; Hutchins's Dorset (1861 edit.), i. 164; Merivale's Life of Sir P. Francis, i. 29, 331, ii. 217; Fitzmaurice's Lord Shelburne, ii. 375–82, iii. 79, 345; Souvenirs of Madame Vigée le Brun, i. 192–3; Gray's Works, ed. Gosse, ii. 378, iii. 28, 30, 85, 98–9, 406; Walpole's Memoirs of George III, i. 259, 396, ii. 194; Walpole's Journal of George III, i. 9–11, 43, 64, 368, ii. passim; Walpole's Letters, vol. i. p. xcvi, iii. 286, 402, 422, 479, 497, 501, 504, iv. 112, v. 312, vii. 58, 127, 348; Miss Berry's Journals, i. 181–3; Wraxall's Hist. Memoirs (ed. 1836), ii. 442–6, 511, 520–1, iii. 82–4, 93, 240–1, 400–6, iv. 571, 692–3; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. viii. 588; Hansard, xxiv. 348, 762, xxv. 248; Grenville Papers, ii. 198, iii. 79, 241; Letters of Gray and Mason, pp. 109–10, 200–2, 255–6, 484, 508, 513; Barrow's Sir Sidney Smith, ii. 120; Lysons's Environs, i. 400; Duke of Buckingham's Court of George III, i. 190, 207–213, ii. 198, 213–16; Flint's Mudge Memoirs, p. 59; Mrs. Delany's Life, v. 340–1, 400, vi. 488; Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornub. ii. 498–500, iii. 1314; Boase's Collect. Cornub. p. 740; information from Rev. Dr. Atkinson, Clare Coll. Cambridge.]  PITT, THOMAS, second (1775–1804), commander in the navy and duellist, only son of Thomas Pitt, first lord Camelford [q. v.], was born at Boconnoc in Cornwall on 19 Feb. 1775. He passed his early years in Switzerland, and was afterwards at the Charterhouse. In the autumn of 1781 his name was borne for a couple of months on the books of the Tobago, but in reality he entered the navy in September 1789 on board the Guardian, an old 44-gun ship fitted to carry out stores to New South Wales, under the command of Lieutenant Edward Riou [q. v.] When the ship, after striking on an ice-field near the