(1712 - 81), 2nd dau. of Robert Pitt of Boconnoc, Corn.; Maid of Hon. to the Queen 1732 - 7; Privy Purse to Ps. of Wales 1751 - 2.
1774 - 8 Pisa, Florence (Apr. 1774), Abano (May) [Venice (Jun.)], Naples (by 5 Oct. 1774), Rome (Apr. 1775), Florence (May), Abano [Geneva, Nancy, Sep.] Rome (by 22 Nov. 1775) [Lorraine] Florence (Apr. 1776), Pisa, Rome (Dec. 1776), Naples, Rome (by 8 Apr. 1777 - Mar. 1778), Florence (by 14 Apr. - 28 May), Bologna [England, Sep.]
When Anne Pitt was about to set out for Pisa in February 1774, Horace Walpole told Horace Mann that she was 'Lord Chatham's sister as well as his very image'.1 She was not in good health and, finding that the baths at Pisa did not agree with her, she came in April 1774 to Florence where Mann, charmed by her 'lively and entertaining' conversation, gave her an apartment in his own residence.2 He observed that she was 'weak and emaciated', 'her vivacity often [exhausting] her strength' and late in May she set out to try the waters at Abano near Padua.3
Anne Pitt was in Italy at the same time as Mrs Penelope Pitt (who was also elderly and unwell) and it is at times difficult to establish which is which, but the 'Madama Pitt' in Venice on 24 June 1774 was probably Anne,4 and she was certainly in Naples in October.5 On 20 May 1775 Mann reported she was about to return to the baths at Abano, having recently come back to Florence from Rome, where she had been 'more active in running after curiosities than any of the young men,'6 and where she presumably had been the 'Madama Pit' staying 'Seguita la Selciata di S. Sebastianello' in the parish of S.Lorenzo in Lucina at Easter 1775.7 In September 1775 she was in Geneva about to go to Nancy.8 By November she had returned to Rome holding conversazioni 'for ye English every Monday'.9
In April 1776 she had just returned to Florence, having been in Lorraine (she had frequently stayed in France in the past)10 and driven from the baths at Pisa 'by the riot and noise of building the scaffolds for their ridiculous battle of the bridge after Easter'.(11) In December 1776 she was again in Rome,12 and she visited Naples early in 1777, returning to Rome in April.(13) She was then still not well, according to Thomas Pelham who saw her in Rome in April and July. In December Mann said she was 'still at Rome', her compassion for a sick French servant preventing her from going to Naples that winter.14 She was in Florence by April 1778, 'in better health than for some years past',15 and on 16 May she stood proxy for the Grand Duchess at the baptism of Lord Cowper's second son.16 She left on 28 May for Bologna 'hoping to be able to proceed to England in the course of the summer, but [she] dreads the fatigue'.17 She was back in England by September, but shortly afterwards her nervous temperament gave way and she was confined until her death in 1781.18
1. Wal.Corr., 23:557. 2. Ibid. 567. 3. Ibid., 24:6, 9. 4. ASV is 760. 5. SP 93/29 (Hamilton, 5 Oct. 1774). 6. Wal.Corr., 24:105. 7. AVR sa. 8. Wal.Corr., 23:131. 9. Home notebks.MSS (22 Nov. 1775). 10. T. Lever, House of Pitt, 72, 91, 106. 11. Wal.Corr., 24:188. 12. Ibid., 31:187. 13. Pelham letters MSS, ff.218, 224, 285 (8, 16 Apr., 30 Jul. 1777). 14. Wal.Corr., 24:344, 353. 15. Ibid., 374. 16. Ibid., 381n8. Gazz.Tosc. 17. Wal.Corr., 24:381. 18. Ibid., 33:10n24. Lever (at n10), 206.