Number 10 (1983) s01e07 Episode Script

The so-called Boston so-called Tea Party, sir, is not an end, sir, but a beginning.
It will blow over, my Lord Chatham.
Aye, my Lord North, it will blow over! Ultimately it will blow to a storm that will blow away our entire authority over our American colonies.
It will blow over, upend and destroy the Empire! That I, sir, vote for this country.
Would you but return tooffice, sir, I'd gladly vacate this chair for you.
- Ah! - The nation would rise to the most illustrious statesman in its history.
Our American brethren would bow in allegiance to the name of Pitt.
Have they not named one of their little towns for you? Pittsburgh? There can be no question of that.
My interludes can strike me at any time, as you know.
At any time and without warning.
The nation needs a stable continuance of its affairs.
In time, it may be, God willing, that another Pitt may come forward to provide it.
How goes it with the boy? A sickly child, sir.
Sickly in the body but powerful in the brain.
But we have high hopes of a new regimen from Dr Addington.
The lad is to take a bottle of port a day to build up his constitution.
And as to his education? Since he is too weakly to go from home, I have always undertaken his schooling myself.
Come here, William.
You understand what we are about, do you not? Yes, sir.
Lord Chatham, I must protest against these proceedings.
The lad's constitution is still dangerously weak.
Rubbish, Doctor, rubbish.
Since you have prescribed him his daily regime of port, he has proceeded to flourish like a young lion.
Hiley, stand you by William.
My son, my lord, is the same age as yours.
Does not the picture tell its own story? Is it not the reason that you have shielded William from the rigours of Winchester and had him schooled at home? Public schools, Doctor, are suitable for boys of a forward and turbulent disposition.
Where there is any gentleness in the personality, they can be disastrous.
And yet, having protected him from all else, A boy who is destined to be a beacon to his country must be ignorant of nothing.
One taste of barbarity will inform him but not, I think, damage him.
Master Addington.
The rod, if you please.
- My Lord, I beg of you - William, the chair.
Now, little counsellor, I want you to take your punishment like a Pitt.
It will be the harder for you since you have done nothing to deserve it.
- My Lord Chatham! - Dr Addington! Bend over, William.
Now, Master Hiley, as you do at Winchester.
Lay on with the will.
And mind you, William I shall be watching your face.
And I do not wish to see so much as a tremor pass across it.
Proceed! That would scarcely bruise a flea.
Harder.
Harder! If you wish your father preferment in his profession.
Harder, boy! Harder! As you do it at Winchester, sir! - My lord! - Very well.
Enough.
William.
Thank you, sir.
You've let a little run down your chin, William.
I believe it was Ovid, Father, who said, "Better that wine should stain one's face than one's linen.
" My little lionheart.
My philosopher! - William - I am greatly obliged to you, Addington, and to your muscular son.
Goodbye, Doctor.
And you, Master Hiley.
- Goodbye, sir.
Goodbye, William.
- Goodbye.
- And William - It's all right, Hiley.
It really is all right.
Come now, little orator.
Are you up to your speechifying today? So long as I may stand to do it.
Ha-ha-ha! I never knew an orator yet could do it sitting down.
Come, let us take a case.
Lord North, as surely as the sun moves down the sky, is moving towards war with our American brothers.
Already I hear he has sent emissaries to sound out the willingness of the Red Indian to act as his ally, and has touched the Prince of Hesse on the subject of hiring his mercenaries to intimidate the colonists.
You are addressing the House of Commons.
The Government - damn scoundrels! - Are over there.
Commence.
If I were an American as I am an Englishman, and a foreign troop was landed in my country, I would never lay down my arms.
Never, never, never.
That's good.
"Never, never, never," it's very strong.
It is a brave style of speech.
I might steal it from you one day, if ever I have cause.
Ahh! Are you there again, sir? Do you think I can't see you? Well, do you? Follow me to the gates of Hell and you shall plunge in before I do.
Oh, ho, ho.
Forgive me, William.
Sometimes I think the gout has gone to my head.
Miserable tormentors, merciless tormentors! Will you never let me be? Forgive me, William.
We shall continue this evening.
Yes, Father.
- Father - Yes? Oh Nothing, sir.
This evening I shall expect you to read me off six pages of Thucydides of my choosing, in the original Greek.
And to translate it straight into English without one mistake.
You shall have it, sir.
Well, William? Was your father satisfied with you today? Mama - Father's interludes.
- What about them? What is their cause? Diamond Jack Pitt.
You will recall he found the diamond in India on which the Pitt fortune was based.
Yes.
- His blood runs in all of you Pitts.
- His blood? - It's a wild blood.
- Wild? Unpredictable.
It brings genius with it but sometimes it brings strange fancies and uproar in the brain.
Perhaps you have it.
Perhaps not.
If you have, you must learn to counter it with the colder blood of us Grenvilles.
A Grenville can freeze a live coal at a glance.
The Grenville must imprison the Pitt.
Dispatch for Mr Pitt.
Urgent.
I doubt that Mr Pitt will wish to be disturbed.
He would by this.
- Very well.
- Mr Pitt's own hands.
Those being my instructions.
You'll feel Mr Pitt's own tongue if he doesn't like it.
I beg you, ma'am, look towards the man.
You look tired, William, you need a woman in this crumbling old house to sustain you.
It is not this house, madam, that will kill me - but the one across Parliament Square.
- Rubbish.
You'd live there if you could.
Like our father before him.
Lunacy runs in the family.
Your father, Lord Chatham, was a great man.
Brought us an empire.
I've only known one other to equal him.
Excuse me, your graces, my lord.
Dispatches, Mr Pitt, posthaste to your hand only.
Will you excuse me? Brother, your tongue.
Can't even have a quiet tipple with his friends without damn politics butting in.
He needs a woman to set him right, mark my words.
Someone to throw her arms round him and keep the world out.
- He's not meant for it, I'm afraid.
- Fudge.
You remember his cockerel days when he came down from university.
I do, I do indeed.
I also remember the night he and I galloped through a tollgate without paying, a blunderbuss thundering rusty iron about our ears while he consigned the toll keeper to damnation! - And he was Prime Minister at the time! - I'll not credit it.
But 'tis true! We'd been carousing with wenches at inns Oh, it was a long time ago.
Then I'll declare he's lived like a monk since to atone for it.
Why, with women the man's a statue.
He lives only to defend our country from the French corporal.
All else is sacrificed to that.
That may be, but I tell you, there's a streak of something in that icy statue that nobody dreams of.
- If you please, Prime Minister.
- Parslow.
Lord and Lady Auckland and their daughter, Miss Eleanor Eden.
Oh How lovely to see you again, my dear, after so long.
But where is little Eleanor? Oh, she's primping and smoothing in your peer glass in the hall.
Primping? My little sparrow? I've scarce seen her without dirt on her face and blackberry juice on her cheeks.
Napoleon Bonaparte has embarked upon the building of the largest fleet of invasion barges the world has yet seen, here at Boulogne.
He has cannons in the prow, mortars in the stern and each barge carries 1oo men.
Confounded things will never float.
They'll go to the bottom of the Channel like stones.
The French have never been sailors, sir.
They too heartily dislike water.
Is it little Eleanor? Hardly so diminutive I would have said, sir.
I am, after all, 20 years old.
Eleanor, pray do not be forward.
I apologise, I was just trying to think how long it is since I last saw you.
At your home, at Eden Farm.
Why, you were scarcely 14.
I was 14 and seven months.
We sat in a field against a hay wain and you explained to me how to solve the Irish question.
Ah, well, then I must have been very much cleverer then than I am now.
My father says you're the cleverest man in England.
Your father is the most scandalous exaggerator in England.
Shall we go in? Five years? Pretty, that Eden girl.
Oh, yes.
- It's only the bailiffs again, sir.
- Ah, well.
Miss Eden.
Last month when I was here I took some of your accounts back to Eden Farm.
Yes, I know.
Your debts amount to £40,000.
And that is because for years you have been systematically cheated and defrauded.
- Shh-shh-shh.
- No.
No, you must listen.
Here are your incomings.
As Prime Minister, salary: £3,780.
As a Lord of the Treasury: £1,220.
Both of which, I may say, are 18 months in arrears.
As Chancellor of the Exchequer, £2,452, and as Warden of the Cinque Ports, £3,080.
- Total: £10,532.
- That's a pretty enough sum.
But here are some of your outgoings.
Here's a butcher's bill, from which it would appear that 30 hundred weight of meat was consumed in this house during a month when the entire household was in the country.
30 Ha-ha.
And here's a bill from your wine merchants.
Ah.
In one year, you are supposed to have consumed 2,410 bottles of port, 854 bottles of Madeira and 572 bottles of claret.
Yes, that I'll warrant is correct, down to the last cork.
William.
Can't you see it? While you're spilling out your life's blood for your country, people are robbing you.
Well, I dare say they need to.
But twice the City of London have offered you an outright gift of £1oo,ooo to remove all worries of this kind, and twice you have refused it.
Why? Because I have to remain completely independent, beholden to noone, answerable only to my country.
Now please, Eleanor, I do not want to talk about this any more.
Don't lift your haughty Grenville nose in the air at me, sir.
I still can't come down to the country this weekend.
Oh, but you need the country.
Oh, William.
You look so tired.
You're so much better when you're in the country, you know you are.
Could you not just as well fight Napoleon Bonaparte from your house at Holwood? Which just so happens to be five miles away from your home at Eden Farm.
You know, when we first met again two months ago, I used to go down to Holwood at weekends and at still midnights I used to look out from my bedroom window and fancy that I could see your window shining through the trees, five miles away.
You cannot imagine how wonderfully strangely that affected me.
- It was such a comfort.
- Well, then.
The struggle can only be directed from the seat of power.
Here.
At Number 10 Downing Street.
Now, Miss Eden, I am sending you and your maid back to your family.
- So soon? - Yes, yes, yes.
Listen, you must leave.
I have so much work to do.
You are so Ohh, Eleanor.
Oh, my dear.
- This is primal idiocy.
- Why idiocy? - Oh, my dear child.
- I'm a woman.
I was a woman when we sat against that hay wain five years ago.
It was not a hay wain, it was a stile.
I can help you.
You need help.
You need someone to look out for you.
- Eleanor - I can help you.
Undoubtedly.
You will come down to the country this weekend? I will do everything in my power.
If you please, Prime Minister, Mr Charles James Fox to see you.
I put him in the study.
That dreadful Fox.
Oh, why does he hate you so? Parslow, will you be so kind as to show Miss Eden to her carriage and apologise to your father, Lord Auckland, for keeping you so long? - Mr Fox.
- Mr Pitt.
The Iliad.
This passage.
Hecabe's speech on the death of Hector.
Why is it marked? My father, Pitt the Elder, had me read it to him on his deathbed.
"Ah, woe is me.
"How shall I live in my sore anguish now thou art dead? "Thou that wast my boast night and day in the city, "and a blessing to us all, "both to the men and women of Troy throughout the town, "whoever treated thee as a god.
"For verily thou wast to them a glory exceeding great, while yet thou livedst; "but now death and fate are come upon thee.
" Why do you suppose he asked you to read that to him, Mr Pitt? - On his deathbed.
- Well, as his son, I believe I know.
As a stranger, I find it impertinent of you to speculate.
Impudence is my forte, you know, Mr Pitt.
I suggest his purpose was to impress upon you the transience of all power.
- Say what you have to say.
- I came to warn you that should you raise the tax upon incomes to thruppence in the pound, as you propose, I shall bring your administration crashing down around your ears.
Napoleon will not be kept at bay with painted soldiers and cardboard ships, Mr Fox.
Liberty must be paid for.
I shall oppose you! Every step of the way! You will tread upon flints.
Mr Fox, I do have enough enemies abroad without more at home.
Is that all the help you have to extend to me? If so, please be gone to your mistress Mrs Armitage and vex me no more.
Ah, well.
If the topic is to be mistresses, sir - Oh, no, well, I'm - Well, sir.
We know what we know.
You know nothing.
That is why you speak in riddles.
I know the company you keep gets younger every day.
And rumour has it that even a lass has been admitted within these portals.
"Verily thou wast to them a glory exceeding great, "whilst thou livedst; "but now death and fate are come upon thee.
" Thank you, William.
Now listen to me, young senator.
The day may not be far hence when you are going to have to take over the governance of this country.
Oh, Father! Father, I'm not even yet in Parliament.
Don't argue with me, a man in my extremity has no time to be contradicted.
- But - The only man of any ability in the Commons is Charles James Fox.
But King George cannot abide him.
And he is a dissolute libertine to boot.
You will be needed and I thank God that you take after your mother's side.
A Grenville rather than a Pitt.
An icy heart and judgment will be needed to set this poor country to rights.
Father I am not a Grenville, I am a Pitt.
But your bearing, your calculation, your every action Studied, under your advisement.
Ever since the Winchester lesson.
Then Diamond Pitt is in you after all.
Do you suffer from interludes? Do you? Not in the way you do.
The mind can always be controlled with You have your own port, sir.
That is mine! Well, I'll be drinking yours soon enough.
Why not start now? You'll do, sir! You'll do! Only keep that proud and heartless tone in the Commons.
- If I get there.
- When you get there.
When you get there.
Only promise me this, William.
England is in poor straits.
Swear to me that you will do whatever is necessary to make her great again.
- I will.
- Then swear it.
I swear.
Doctor! Confound the doctor, this is England's business we are about.
It is Pitt business, too.
There is something else I want you to promise me.
Yes, Father? Promise me that should you find Diamond Pitt powerful in you, you will not perpetuate him.
No children, William.
There must be no children.
No, Father, I I cannot think you know what you ask of me.
I know very well what I ask of you.
The blood is a greedy blood.
It feeds grossly on genius.
Would you have the Pitt family dribble out in a trail of dolts and idiots? Swear to me that you will not let it happen at whatever sacrifice to yourself.
- Yes.
- You must swear it.
I give you my solemn oath.
Oh Parslow What, Prime Minister? How long have we known each other? Erm Well, it's been, er, 14 years in this house, your legal chambers previous, and university before that.
Would you say my temper has deteriorated in that time? Oh, not so you'd notice.
You've always been partial to your, erm well, outbursts.
Outbursts? Is that what we're calling them now? Well, er, kicking over the traces.
Your, erm, interludes, as one might say.
They never seem to alarm you.
No, bless you.
No, Prime Minister.
Well, your father, His Lordship, was just the same before you.
King George has gone mad again and is strapped down in Dr Willis's patent restraining chair, swearing lurid English oaths.
Ah, you think the King's mad? He certainly held a prolonged conversation with a tree in Windsor Great Park last week, under the impression that it was a relative.
Having seen some of his relatives, I'm hardly surprised.
Oh, Eleanor! Are these attacks of his really madness? Or does he simply wish to terrify us with the prospect of the Prince of Wales as regent? What a perceptive child you are! William Pitt.
If you call me child once more, I'II Yes, what will you do? I'll provide incontrovertible proof that I am nothing of the kind.
Brother! Ha! Prime Minister.
You wish to speak to me? Oh difficult.
Deuced, damnably difficult.
- What's difficult? - Oh, damn it, you know what I mean.
No, I confess, I am at a total loss.
Quite right.
You are.
- Quite right.
- Well, then? Well, then.
Er, do you suppose I might have a glass of port? Yes, rather.
I find it wonderfully clarifying to the mind.
Napoleon can't touch the stuff, it makes him, apparently, as sick as a dog.
Highly appropriate.
- There.
- Greatly obliged.
Right, then.
Out with the nasty news.
Nasty news? What nasty news? I don't know what you're referring to.
Dear brother, ever since we were children, that martial gait has always been the precursor of an attempt to give me unpalatable medicine of one form or another.
An attempt, sir? An attempt is correct.
Pray, what are you about to attempt now? Nothing.
Nothing in the world.
- Oh, except - Yes? Now, look here, Will.
You and Miss Eleanor Eden.
What about me and Miss Eleanor Eden? Do you think it is a an appropriate relationship? I'm not quite certain what you mean by the word "appropriate".
But whether it is or whether it is not, it is certainly no concern of yours.
Damn it, sir, I know that.
Can't you think of the most mighty struggle I've had with myself even to mention it at all? It is a struggle you could well have saved yourself.
Now if that is all, I must Will I speak to you not only on my own behalf.
I am a Oh, damn it, what's? - A delegate.
- On behalf of whom? - Certain gentlemen.
- For example? Mm I omitted to ask permission to mention their names and so therefore I may not do so.
Does your tender conscience allow you to indicate the species of the gentlemen? They are certain members of your Cabinet.
- The Cabinet? Ha! - Will, please, allow me to finish.
I might have more admired you if you'd come here on your own account than as a lickspittle to that collection of boobies.
Will, they are as genuinely concerned for you as I am.
Oh, and for the Party.
I think I may be allowed to know what is best for me.
As for the Party were it not for me there would be no Party.
That That is the point.
And in what way, exactly, is my association with Miss Eden meant to be injurious to me? Oh, Willie, Willie.
She is a child.
And nor are you in the least discreet about the liaison.
Oh, your vocabulary's improving.
You've developed the flair, Johnny, for the hurtful word.
My association with Miss Eden is not a liaison.
It is a deep and genuine friendship.
So be it.
Do you intend to marry the girl? I think you've said enough.
Please go.
- Not until I have an answer.
- You will have none from me.
Will, you must marry her or put her aside.
I cannot.
- I will not.
- Lf Have I not sacrificed enough for this voracious country of mine? My youth has gone by like a dream.
Don't.
- Willie, you - Mmm! Please don't touch me.
Don't, just don't.
Johnny, go.
I beg of you, go.
Willie appears to be using a black potion.
Do you know what it is? Oh, it's some new physic the doctors are trying on Mr Pitt, my lord.
And what do they say is wrong with him now? Oh, bless you, my lord, they've no idea.
But I know.
It's this house.
It's Number 1o and everything that goes with it.
14 years? Why, that's enough to kill an ox.
My dearest Wllllam.
I cannot bear thls enforced separatlon.
I slt here In the country looklng at the green meadows.
Wlthout you they are as desolate as the Russlan Steppes.
Could we but have a scant half-hour together, I could store It away llke a squlrrel and eke It out In my fancy for weeks and weeks.
Please come soon, Wllllam.
Please.
I don't know how much longer I can stand thls.
All my deepest love, my adored one.
Eleanor.
William! William! - Ellie! Oh, my Ellie! - I couldn't stay away any longer.
I know.
I know, I was on the point of writing such complete idiocies to you.
- Oh, still write them.
- That's my Ellie.
Oh, my dear, but it's late.
Where do your parents think you are? Where do you intend to stay? I'm visiting my Aunt Hester.
I shall sleep at her house tonight.
- Where does she think you are? - With my friend, Beatrice Oxtown.
- I don't like deception.
- Then don't think of it as deception but as a lovers' stratagem! - Good evening, my lord.
- Is my brother at home? Yes, sir.
He's in his study.
But when shall I see you? I shall come down to the country as soon as I possibly can.
Willie Miss Eden.
My lord.
You arrive too late, John.
Miss Eden was on the point of leaving.
How very disagreeable of her.
Perhaps next time I shall be more fortunate.
- Your servant, ma'am.
- And yours, sir.
Johnny The printer's proof to be published in tomorrow's Morning Post.
I knew in my heart that it couldn't goon and yet I let it goon.
All it says is that you are going to marry the girl.
There.
It's a perfectly happy remedy.
It is the one remedy that is not available to me.
Nonsense.
You are as free to marry as well, the simplest yeoman, sir.
- I cannot marry.
- For what reason? Johnny, you have the inestimable blessing of being all Grenville.
The Pitt strain passed you by.
I took it all.
Surely, sir, you You overstate it.
You recall the time we were attacked in St James's by Fox's thugs? Indeed.
And we gave as good as we got.
Do you remember how you had to prise my fingers away from Lord Crewe's throat? The heat of the moment.
It took four of you to do it.
I had every intention of killing him.
But the The icy composure The cool disdain The whole bearing you have used to put this country to rights.
Studied, calculated.
And any interlude can always be controlled with alcohoI.
Johnny, do you remember what it was that enforced our father out of public life? - Yes, yes.
- Well, it is that which lurks in me.
How can I inflict that on so precious a creature as Miss Eleanor Eden? How should I ever forgive myself if she were to bear mad things for children? Willie, the solution is simple.
You must tell all to her and allow her to make the choice.
No, no, no.
I cannot do that.
I know what her answer would be.
She would sacrifice herself.
So.
What will you do? I believe the expression is put her aside.
Aaah! Prime Minister, there's a total of 11 persons waiting to see you on various matters.
Get Adams, I must send out a disp Have you had anything to eat today? The Austrians scattered at the first whiff of gunpowder.
- Port.
That's all I need, port.
- Very good, sir.
The Prussian chargé d'affaires is due at any moment.
Send him in to me when he arrives.
And noone else.
You understand? Noone! Very good, sir.
And the 11 waiting in the library? It is essential that I retain not only Not only the respect from my colleagues but of the British people.
I'm sorry, Prime Minister.
I asked Miss Eden not to come upstairs That's all right, Parslow.
Thank you, Adams.
Prime Minister, there's an urgent message for you from the House.
They are mounting a censure motion on you for the conduct of the war.
Tell them I'll be along directly.
This seems to have been the pattern of our relationship.
I must storm your defences before I can even speak to you.
I am sorry, I did leave instructions not to be disturbed.
This letter, which you sent to my father.
- As you say, I sent it to your father.
- Don't try your celebrated sarcasm on me.
I am immune.
I sent it to your father because I felt that I had wronged his daughter by making her the centre of vulgar speculation.
Why did you not write to me? Why did you not come and speak to me? Because I felt that I had done you sufficient damage.
A cartoon implying that we were to be married? I did not feel greatly injured by that.
But we are not going to be married.
Are we? I don't recollect asking you.
How you do come to the point, William.
I am sorry if you were misled by the natural sympathy that existed between us.
A common feeling for nature, our ease of conversation.
The fact that we were in love? Oh Who knows what love is? I know! And you know.
Do you deny that there are feelings for each other, running through our minds and bodies which are the very essence of love? You speak in absurdities.
I am a middle-aged man, you are a young girl.
I am sick! All this is in the letter! Words! I know what I feel.
I know, whatever you may say, what you feel.
How very young you are.
Young? Yes, if it be a crime to be young, I plead guilty.
Yes, you are ill.
Yes, you take port wine as if it were a kind of dying and yes, you carry this country of ours on your shoulders.
And it is as if every shot discharged by the French strikes your own body.
But I can face it and carry it and help you to bear it.
And any other burden which you may bear and about which you have not yet spoken.
I do not wish to marry you, Eleanor.
That is not true, William.
You love me.
As I love you.
Well, you see, unfortunately, the fact that you love me does not inevitably mean that I love you.
And I do not.
You can still surprise me, William.
You are cruel! And I'd have staked my life that you were not.
God Prime Minister, you must return to the House.
They will tear you to pieces unless you get in there and tame them.
That house, this house! God Bonaparte.
Oh, Parslow.
They'll kill me between them.