Personal reminiscences of the first duke of Wellington : with sketches of some of his guests and contemparies

Front matter

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Dedication

DEAR DUKE OF WELLINGTON,

It is with the greatest pleasure that, with your permission, I dedicate to you my father^ s reminiscences of the intim,acy with which your iUustrious grandfather honoured him.

They were written when my father's mind was as clear and his pen as vigorous as at any period of his life, although he was verging upon his ninetieth yea/r; and they are published now as they were written, with the exception of one or two sentences and certain names which it appeared desirable to suppress.

Contents

INTEODUCTION.

PAOB

His military genius— As a party leader— Dislike of domestic politics — Admiration of the old constitution — His relations with his coUeagnes— Eoman Catholic Belief Act— Mistakes in policy ....... 1

Chapter I

With the Peninsular Army — Introduction through ' The Subaltern' — ^A projected biography — Sir Thomas Munro— First visit to Walmer — Offer of a Crown-living . .19

CHAPTER n.

Agricultural distress in 1830 — Machine-breaking at Ash — Incendiarism at Ash — The Duke and Sir Robert Peel — The Duke and Palmerston — The Duke and Huskisson . 32

CHAPTER m.

Political situation, 1830— Fall of the Duke's Administration . 45 vm CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IV.

Parliamentary reform — The Reform Bill — Passage of the Bill — A scheme for a newspaper campaign — ^The Duke's contempt for the Press — His fear of reform — ^A suggested compromise — The Duke's answer . . . . . .60

CHAPTER V.

The dissolution of 1831 — The Duke on the crisis^ — Sir Edward Enatchbull — The military and politics — The House of Lords and the Bill — ^A confidential letter — Question of petitions ....... 71

CHAPTER VI.

A suggestion from 'Blackwood' — The Duke's confidence — *The Morniug Herald' — The Duke threatened — Lord Harrowby — Lord Douro — The Duke on George IV. — Dinner table-talk ....... 93

CHAPTER Vn.

Lord John Russell's offer — A personal explanation — The incident closed — Farewell to Ash — End of " confidences " . 110

BOOK IL

OF THE DUKE'S PLACES OF RESIDENCE, AND SOME OF THOSE WHO VISITED HIM.

CHAPTER L

The nation's gift — Stratfieldsaye — The Rector of Stratfieldsaye — The Curate of Stratfieldsaye — A case of pluralities— Walmer Castle — The Cinque Ports — His life at Walmer . . . . . .123

CONTENTS- ix

CHAPTER 11.

THB duke's PORBIGN QUB8T8.

Talleyrand — The Duchess of Cumberland— The blind King of Hanover — ^Prussia and Hanoyer — Qenera) Alaya — Qeneral Nugent— The Duke's little joke , .141

CHAPTER m.

THE DUKb's guests " DU MAJORUM GENTIUM."

Lord LyndhuTBt— Sir Robert Peel . . .161

CHAPTER IV.

"du minorum gentium."

Charles Arbuthnot— Mrs Arbuthnot— John Wilson Croker— Lord Clanwilliam— The Marquis of Salisbury .198

CHAPTER V.

"dii minorum gentium" — continued.

"Dirty" Charlie— Sir Robert Wilson— "Billy " Holmes— "Chin Grant" — Lord Carrington — ^Billy Holmes' joke — Lady Stanhope ...... 261

BOOK IIL THE DUKE IN HIS DOMESTIC RELATIONS.

CHAPTER L

Lady Catharine Pakenham — ^The Duchess of Wellington — An unfounded belief — Students' escapade— The Duke's sons . 271

X CONTENTS.

CHAPTER II. SOME OF THB DUKB's SPECIAL 0HARA0TERI8TI0S

His loTe of musio — His love of hunting— A memorable drive — Major Todd — ^Golonel Gurwood — Lord Charles Wellesley — Chancellor of Oxford University — His aristocratic views — Belations with the army — His temper — As army reformer — Opposed to short service — ^Ambassador in Paris — His view of Napoleon — And of Marlborough — ^The Government of the Regency — His aid to Napier — A characteristic trait — His secretiveness — His self-possession — His gentleness — His good fortune in battle — His memory — A stickler for etiquette — His views on army education — His last years — The aged warrior — The Baroness Burdett- Coutts^Epileptic fits— His death .... 282

Appendix

Memorandum ok the War ik Russia ik 1812 . . 344

PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF THE FIRST DUKE OF WELLINGTON

Introduction

It is not my purpose in the following pages to speak of the Duke at length as either a soldier or a statesman. In both capacities the world has judged him very fairly. I don't think the continental writers do his genius as a military commander full justice, nor can we be surprised at the circumstance. Their military systems are so diflferent from ours that they cannot see the force of events which constrained him in making war to exercise the quality of prudence to an extent which would have been in the case of some of their leaders quite blameworthy. They forget that while they raise their armies by conscription, we depend for recruits on voluntary enlistment, and that the loss .of a few thousand men in a battle, even if it went in his favour, might cripple a British general throughout the remainder of the campaign. In his Indian wars, when no such incubus lay upon him, the Duke exhibited as much of dash as the most apt scholar in the school of Napoleon could desire. But when he came to

A

2 BEMINISCENCBS OF DUKE OF WELLINGTON

operate against the French, in the Peninsula, he soon found that caution was more necessary than enterprise, because the Spaniards were worthless except in guerilla warfare, and hardly to the last could the Portuguese be relied upon. Hence thirty thousand or forty thousand British troops — and he never but once had more than forty thousand in hand — ^were the backbone of his strength, and he was obliged to nurse and spare them, because of the difficulty of supplying the places of such as might be destroyed. Napoleon fully imderstood this, for among his instructions to his marshals in Spain one was frequently repeated : " Force Wellington to fight on every possible occasion. Win if you can, but lose a battle rather than deliver none. We can aJSTord to expend three men for every one he loses, and you will thus wear him out in the end,"

Was not this President Lincoln's policy during the great Civil War in America : ** Peg away, and wear them out" ? I have heard that the Duke was taken to a phrenologist on a certain occasion, who examined his head, and not knowing who was under his fingers, pronounced that he had never foimd before in man so large a development of the organ of caution.

The Duke's military excellence was the veritable inspiration of genius. He had received no scientific, scarcely any tactical education, but he possessed a wonderful power of grasping quickly whatever problem was submitted to him — a marvellous eye for

HI8 HILITABY GENIUS 3

country, and an extraordinary faculty for calculation. He served with both the infantry and the caTaky as a regimental officer, yet scarcely long enough with either to acquire by process of routine what ordinary men take in after constant practice. In spite of this drawback, however, caused by his serving a good deal on the staff, he proved, when put in command of the 33rd Regiment, one of the best drills, and most efficient commandingofficers in the Army. He knew likewise as if by intuition what men could both dare and do, how much they could endure of privations and &tigue, and never, except in the last extremity, overworked his troops. Even the retreat from Burgos, though it called forth loud complaints both in and out of the Army, was conduct^ without excessive suffering. I was much struck with his criticisms on various military commanders, both domestic and foreign, especially with reference to what they lost for lack of well considering these points. To Sir John Moore, for example, he gave full credit for talent as well as bravery : '* but his defect was, that he did not know what his men could do." He thought highly of the Archduke Charles of Austria, both as a leader of armies and a military writer ; ^'but," speaking of him in the latter capacity, he added, ''he forgot that men are not mere machines, one as good as another, and that a plan of action which would be perfectly justifiable in an officer commanding English troops, might be the reverse

4 BBMINISCENCES OP DUKE OF WELLINGTON

in one commanding Austrians or Prussians/ Jomini's great work he had by heart, but he criticised it, just as he did the Archduke Charles. "The theory is correct throughout except on an important point in tactics. His preference of columns of attack, to lines, is a great error. Columns cannot fight, they are only formations of manoeuvre. But excellent as his strategical lessons may be, the commander of an army who considers himself bound to adhere strictly to the principles there laid down may find himself beaten by a less learned and more enterprising opponent." What he thought of Napoleon will be told by and by.

It is a curious fact that he, who, at mature age, earned so proud a name, both as a leader of Armies and a Statesman, should have been in boyhood remarkable for his indolence. A letter from his mother. Lady Momington, still exists, in which, speaking of her sons, she says : " They are all, I think, endowed with excellent abilities except Arthur, and he would probably not be wanting, if only there was more of energy in his nature ; but he is so wanting in this respect, that I really do not know what to do with him." That his first start in life bore out Lady Mornington's appreciation of his temperament there can be no doubt. He made no figure at Eton, and seems to have been as little conspicuous at Angers.^ And even after joining the

^ '* I shoald be gUd, if I possessed the reqabite information, to giye some accoant of the Duke's manner of life while a pupil in the militar;

^aujii

AS A PARTY LEADER 5

Army and becoming aide-de-camp to the Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, he appears to have lived a rather dreamy and solitary life. Doubtless it was for this reason that he never of his own accord alluded in conversation to his schoolboy days, and always, if by chance a reference happened to be made to them, changed the subject. Yet how entirely those were mistaken, who anticipated for the indolent boy an obscure manhood, the lapse of a few years made manifest.

As a constitutional politician, meaning thereby a skilful party leader in a free state, the Duke cannot be placed in the foremost rank. He had grown up under the shadow of the first French Revolution, and entertained an exaggerated dread of the Democracy. Yet his perceptions of what was best for Europe and for England at the close of the great war were clear and just. He deprecated and prevented the dismemberment of France in 1815, because he foresaw that such a measure, while it weakened one Power, might lead to endless complica-

school at Angers. If any memorials of him were ever establislied there, the avalanche of the first French Revolution must have swept them all away. But none would appear to have been set up. His early Mends, of whom not one now survives, used indeed to say that he made better use of his time at Angers than be had done either at Chelsea or Eton, and he himself stated that he formed some agreeable acquaintances in the neighbourhood, from whom he learned to speak French with the accent and precision of the days of the old monarchy. But here our materials for narrative fail us. We know nothing more than that he pursued his studies at Augers for about a year and a half or two years, and then returned home." — The Life of Arthuty Duke of WdUngton, by 0, B. Gleig,

6 BEMINISCENOES OF DUKB OF WELLINGTON

tions among the rest. He regarded Russia with great suspicion, which subsequent events have shown to be well founded. He would have been glad to see parliamentary institutions introduced into Spain and Portugal, but entirely disapproved of England going to war in order to force them upon these countries. Of the breach of their promises to their subjects by the continental sovereigns he always spoke with regret and censure, but he had no sympathy with secret societies or popular insurrections. He was anxious to avoid all interference in the quarrel between the Spanish American Colonies and the mother country, except so &r as this must be done by recognising for commercial purposes the de facto government in each. In a word, his view of the policy of England in her relations with foreign states was in substance this : that she should stand aloof from the intestine strifes of all, taking no part either with the sovereigns against the peoples or with the peoples against the sovereigns except when invited to mediate : and then doing what was possible to bring about an equitable compromise. He would neither join the Holy Alliance, nor give the smallest countenance to Carbonarism or Freemasonry.

The Duke was dragged against his will into taking a prominent part in domestic politics. He detested them, not only because the whole course of his active life had carried him, so to speak, outside their sphere, but because the shifts and devices,

DISLIKE OF DOMESnO POLITIGB 7

not always either creditable or honest, to which party leaders are driven, were to him peculiarly distasteful It was Canning's readiness to fall back upon these, whenever he had a point to carry, and his consequent coquetting with the leaders of the Opposition, which quite as much as his strong personal ambition alienated the Duke from him. No doubt these peculiarities of temperament were the main cause of the serious mistakes into which as Prime Minister he fell. Yet it is impossible not to recognise the beauty of those moral qualities which, worthy of all admiration in the man, rendered him incapable of ever becoming the successful administrator of the a£&drs of a country jealous of its liberties, and prone, as all popularly governed countries are, to be cajoled into clamouring for whatever adroit flatterers lead them to regard as conducive to their welfare.

Strange as it may appear and unpleasant as the statement may be to read, the Duke as a politician held in contempt what is called principle. His theory was that the obvious needs of the times and of the nation suggest the course which, from year to year, the Government ought to follow. The settlement of 1688 he held in high respect because the civil and religious liberties of the people were assured by it, but he no more considered it to be the duty of statesmen to maintain it to the letter in sectda sectdorum^ than it was their duty to resist the repeal of any law which

8 BBMINISCBNCES OP DUKB OF WELLINGTON

had become obsolete and therefore mischievous. This was shown in rather a curious way after dinner one day, as early I think as 1824, at which among other guests two clergymen were present. The incident, as related to me by his son, the late Duke, occurred at Strathfieldsaye, when a lady asked him what he thought of the laws affecting Soman Catholics. He replied almost in these words : *' The laws against Boman Catholics were passed at a time when the Protestant Church of England stood in need of protection. Whenever the Protestant Church is strong enough to stand without them, they will be repealed, and ought to be repealed."

On the other hand, the Duke had a perfect horror of everything that savoured of bad faith between man and man sitting in the same Cabinet. Canning, as has just been shown, he always distrusted, not only because of his backstairs connection with the Whigs, but also on account of a shifty method which he had of conducting the correspondence of the Foreign Office. Some one happened to speak in his presence of Canning as obstinate and unyielding. '* Unyielding! " was the Duke's answer. "I never knew a public man so pliable. We saw all the drafts of his more important letters, of course, and made our remarks on them. He never took offence, but on the contrary expressed himself obliged by the pains that were taken to improve them ; yet it invariably happened,

ADMIRATION OP THE OLD CONSTITUTION 9

somehow or another, that when sealed and sent off, they reiterated ahnost all the sentiments to which we had objected. The fact is, that while the annotated copy passed into the archives of the Foreign OflSce, the finished production expressed, though in somewhat different language, Canning's own views just as he had originally submitted them to us. Canning might be obstinate, but he was certainly not unyielding."

When I speak of the Duke as holding light what Lord Eldon, and statesmen of his class, regarded as principle, I refer only to pohtical arrangements which, however suitable they may have been to the condition of the coimtry when entered into, made it next to impossible, under a total change of circumstances, to carry on the Government. The settlement of the Crown in the Protestant line he held to be essential to the maintenance of a Protestant Constitution. Penal laws, which excluded from Parhament, and from holding office under the Crown, Romanists and Dissenters from the Established Church, he regarded as evils which, as soon as they ceased to be necesjsary, ought to be got rid of The case was otherwise with regard to arrangements on which the very constitution of society, according to his view of the matter, depended England was the happiest and most prosperous nation in the world because all real power was vested in the aristocracy. Hence his admiration of the old constitution as it existed

10 BBMINISOBNCBS OF DUKE OF WBLLINGTON

prior to the first Reform Act. Hence his partiality for the Com Laws, without which he did not see how the great landed proprietors would be able to hold their own against a powerful democracy. But apart from this one point, the Duke was a free trader, long before either Huskisson or Peel b^an their attacks on the system of protection to British industry.

Holding these views, and actuated by the same high motives which carried Falkland into the royal camp in 1642, the Duke took office, with a mind fully made up to conduct the Government for the sake not of party but of the country. It has been charged against him and not without some show of reason, that his doing so was inconsistent with his own express views of what the specialities of the Prime Minister in a constitutional coimtry ought to be. To a certain extent this is true. He did declare in the House of Lords, when explaining why he had refused to support Canning, that he was fully conscious of his own imfitness to become the head of an administration ; and from that opinion he never deviated, either when in office or out of it. But with him the principle of loyalty was carried to an extreme, and when the King told him in plain terms that, imless he consented to form an administration, the Government could not be carried on, he felt or believed that there was but one course for him to follow. Even then, however, as the published correspondence shows, he made an

HIS RELATIONS WITH HIS COLLEAOT7ES 11

effort to pat Peel in the foremost place. It &iled, and nothing remained except to dare the worst. And the worst was in truth as formidable as it could well be. The old Tory party was already broken up. The Whigs had shown themselves incapable of forming an administration, and the Canningites with Robinson at their head were at their wits' end. Where was he to look for colleagues of whom a reasonable hope might be entertained that they would prove true to him and to one another ?

We all know now whither he turned in search of colleagues, and the selection which he made ought to have prepared the coimtry for the direction in which his views tended. He counted too much^ however^ on finding in others that unswerving loyalty to their chief which had ever been with himself a leading principle, and possibly his manner of setting forth his own views in Cabinet may have savoured a little of the tone of a Commander of the Forces explaining his plans. However this may be, we find in Lord Palmerston's published correspondence imiple proof that Mr. Huskisson and his followers, including Lord Palmerston himself, took office, neither expecting nor perhaps desiring that the Duke's guidance would be to them agreeable. The miserable East Betford question only brought to a head jealousies that had long been festering, and showed that in the Duke's hands at least the work of creating a truly national party was not

12 BEMINISCBNCE8 OP DUKB OF WELLINGTON

to be achieved. It might have been better perhaps, both for his own reputation and for the Commonwealth, if under the peculiar circumstances he had either accepted Huskisson's explanation or himself relinquished the attempt to carry on the Government. But the Duke was not a man to withdraw from what he held to be the path of duty because it was beset with difficulties. He let it be known in Whig circles that the way was open to negotiations with Earl Grey and the more high-minded of the party. But meeting with no response, he fell back upon his own personal adherents. Of all that followed no detailed accoimt need be given here. His measures, whether on a small scale or a large, failed to satisfy the people. Forgetting that the English are not, like the Spaniards, constitutionally temperate, he opened beer-shops all over the country, which, instead of breaking in upon the monopoly of the great brewers, served only to increase drunkenness and give a fresh stimulus to poaching. His foreign policy likewise was condemned as xm-English, because it was based upon a strict adherence to treaties, and a resolute abstention from interference in the internal afl&tirs of other countries. But the crowning offence of all was the passing of the Koman Catholic Relief Act. That this measure of justice to a large portion of the King's subjects came too late, is certainly true. Had it been conceded in 1801, when Ireland merged her parliament into that of the United Kingdoms,

BOMAN CATHOLIC RELIEF ACT 13

the condition of the sister country to-day would have been very diflferent from what it is. Nay, had the arrangements with which the Duke proposed to surroimd it been carried into effect, it is probable that the Koman Catholic hierarchy would have been as manageable in Ireland, as it was at that time in Holland and in Prussia. But can any man in his senses deny that the passing of the measure- in some shape or another had become in 1829 a necessity ? I must not, however, in such a sketch as I propose to draw, run into the consideration of great questions of State. The angry Tories insisted at the time, if any of them survive they probably would insist still, that the Duke's duty, if unable to %ht against destiny, was to resign ; and, leaving the Whigs to carry what was in truth their own measure, to come back as the recognised leader of the English Protestants and govern with increased vigour. But surely this is to contradict both the facts of the case and the inferences to be drawn from them. The Duke did resign on the King's refusal to sanction the proposed measure. The Eldon section of the Tories declined to form a Government on Protestant principles, and the Whigs, had they been requested to steer the ship^ which they were not because of the King's personal dislike to Earl Grey, would have certainly refused, knowing that they could not command a majority in either House. What was to be done? The Duke could not leave the King without a minister.

14 BEMINISCENOBS OP DUKB OF WELLINGTON

Peel would not consent to endow the Boman Catholic clergy. The only course left open was that which the Duke followed, and its consequences are familiar to us all.

It is not so easy to vindicate or even to palliate the next mistake which the Duke committed. Daniel O'Connell, as is well known, had been returned for the county of Clare, while yet the laws excluding Boman Catholics from Parliament were in force. He did not present himself to take his seat till the Belief Bill was passed. Technically, no doubt, his claim to be received as a member of the legislature was invalid, and the House had a right to do what it did, i.e. to send him back to his constituents for re-election. But everybody knew that his re-election was certain, and it was quite within the competency of the Government to make light of a mere technicality, and to throw open at once to the victor in the great struggle doors which could be closed against him only for a few days. O'Connell, though a demagogue, was not without generous impulses. It is quite upon the cards that such a concession to personal and Irish feeling might have stirred them to some good purpose. It is certain that the treatment which he received had no slight effect in making O'Connell what he afterwards became.

Worst, however, of aD was the blunder into which the Duke fell, in his abrupt and uncalled-for declaration against parliamentary reform in any shape.

MISTAKES m POLICY 15

Had George iv. been still alive, and the Parliament which granted Emancipation still in existence, the announcement, though not very wise, might have been harmless, because with the exception of Lord Winchelsea in the House of Lords and Sir Edward Knatchbull and one or two others in the House of Commons, there were none among the exasperated ultra-Tories so insane as to pronounce in favour of farther constitutional changes. But to thrust it forward without any provocation in the face of a Parliament, in which he could not count on a majority, was a mistake as fatal in politics as a flank march in presence of a vigilant and superior enemy in war. Not one of the angry Tories was conciliated by it. They regarded it, on the contrary, as a sort of improvoked defiance, and as men usually do when under the influence of blind fury, they sacrificed themselves, and all that they had fought for through life, by cheering the Whigs, when one after another they stood up to declaim against it.

On the whole, therefore, there is no denying that the great Duke's two years' tenure of office as First Lord of the Treasury added nothing to the glory which his eminent services in the field had ensured to him. I have often heard him say, that they were to himself the most unsatisfactory in the course of a long life — a life which he had no desire to live over again. But neither of his proceedings as a statesman, nor of his great deeds as a soldier, was

16 RBMINISCENCBS OF DUKE OP WELLINGTON

it my present purpose to speak. The little that has been put on record on these subjects must therefore be treated as nothing more than a necessary introduction to what follows.

BOOK I CONFIDENCES

B r:[\y^ i )|t ^ik (jj wm^ u\m c^T c^M .

lit' \^ris ilri'ss- i ii) a ]\\:}:t C''.' ' ^' • -^ cojil ^- >ro gi'<-'y V. hen r.Sieie w.j ti ^v-.-iiif? of ,- the coicnir l»eiiif( \.'>re c<Mi8]':i-j 'rj.; {',<•).. blu*^*)^ a C'U'ked-hat, low in t^e cr..-.^'. plarnc. and covered will: oil' kin.

CHAPTER I

I SAW the Duke of Wellington for the first time in September 1813> when a movement among the French, on the other side of the Bidassoa, led to some changes of position among our own people. The 85 th was winding its way in a long thin colimm by a sort of mule track along the side of a moimtain towards the foimdry of St. Antonio. Three horsemen overtook us, and stopped to converse with Colonel Thornton. One of these was the Duke (then Marquis) of Wellington ; another, if I do not mistake. Lord Fitzroy Somerset ; who the third was I don't know, but he may have been an Orderly Dragoon. There was no escort, nor any pomp or parade. The Duke was then forty-six years of age ; his countenance was very animated; his keen, clear, violetcoloured eye full of intelligence. His hair was beginning to show the slightest tinge of grey, but not so much as to detract in the slightest degree from the youthfulness of his general appearance. He was dressed in a light grey frock-coat (he always wore grey when there was a chance of active work, the colour being more conspicuous from afar than blue), a cocked-hat, low in the crown, without a pluine, and covered with oilskin. A pair of black