Duke of Wellington (1769-1852)

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Works
Civil Correspondence and Memoranda 1807-09, ed. by his son (1859); Speeches in Parliament, 2 vols. 1854).

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Criticism
Elizabeth Pakenham Longford [Countess of Wellington], Wellington, 2 vols. (1969); Christopher Hibbert, Wellington: A Personal History (London: HarperCollins 1998); Richard Holmes, Wellington: The Iron Duke (London: HarperCollins 2002), 324pp. See also lives by Gordon Corrigan and Andrew Roberts.

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Commentary
Robert Lee Wolff, ed., [John Banim,] The Denounced by the O’Hara Family, 3 vols. [facsimile edn.] (NY: Garland 1978), ded. Wellington; consists of two novels, The Last Baron of Crana, and The Conformists [pl. sic], the latter set near Coleraine and featuring a fanatically anti-Catholic bishop in the historical person of Anthony Dopping, Bishop of Meath (1643-1697) as an example of savage prejudice of Protestant Ulstermen [Wolff]. The novel bears an epigraph from Moore, ‘- bright o’er the flood/Of her tears and her blood,/Let the rainbow of hope be Wellington’s name’. The dedication reads, ‘Addressed to His Grace Arthur, duke of Wellington, these tales most gratefully, and most respectfully, are enscribed.’ The Preface of three pages speaks briefly of the commencement of writing and the ‘old laws ... at that time debated’ which had since ‘became unexpectedly decided’ (p.[v]), and defends the author against “continuing prejudices” and “opening wounds afresh”, possibly language used by Wellington. In his introduction, Wolff refers to the dedication in the light of the fact that Wellington was castigated in The Anglo-Irish of the XIXth Century. The implication is that the dedication must be ironically intended, even that The Denounced is none other than Wellington himself. Vide the lines ‘He Said that he was not Our Brother’, occasioned by a ‘ferocious attack provoked by some utterance of Wellington about Ireland’, according to McCarthy (ed., Irish Literature, 1904; cited supra). And note also the occasion when Wellington attacked the Catholic mayor of Kilkenny, as reported in Cabinet [?], who may have been Michael Banim.

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Times Literary Supplement (17 July 1992), review of The Iron Duke: A Military Biography of Wellington, a work concentrating on his achievements in logistics, manpower and money, in the Napoleonic War, which absorbed 60 to 90 percent of government revenue, and involved the loss of 3,217 ships, 223 wrecked or foundered; also mentions Elizabeth Longford’s biography, Norman Gash, ed., Studies in the Military and Political Career of the First Duke of Wellington, and a more recondite article on Wellington as a horseman for the Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, by G. Tylden.

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Vincent Cheng, ‘White horse, dark horse: Joyce’s allhorse of another color’, [Chap. 9] in Joyce, Race and Empire (Cambridge UP 1995), espec. p.263ff., which incls. paintings of Wellington and his horse Copenhagen by B. R. Hayden. Cheng argues somewhat tendentiously that ‘surely Joyce [...] knew that Copenhagen was not white’, and treats suggests that Joyce was engaging in a ‘Freudian slip or rather Wakean pun’ that turns on the whiteness of King Billy’s mount. (Op. cit., p.268.)

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Scott Hughes Myerly, British Military Spectacle from the Napoleonic Wars Through the Crimea (Harvard UP 1996): ‘Command and Design’ [Chap. 2]: ‘Even the Duke of Wellington suffered indignity and potentially serious injury as a result of George IV’s and Victoria’s passion for the martial image. As the realm’s first soldier, the duke often had to wear the uniform of the units he was connected with and the military offices he held. When wearing the nearly two-foot-high regulation First Life Guards’ bearskin cap with its enormous swan feather while attending a review in 1829, he was literally blown off his horse by a gust of wind in front of tens of thousands of spectators and soldiers. The incident aroused considerable ridicule in print and caricatures, and had the undesirable political effect of giving a good fillip to the strong feelings of hostility towards the duke at a time of political crisis. While attending the queen on the royal navy ship St. Vincent in 1842, when he was seventy-three, he wrote: “The queen had repeatedly insisted upon my wearing my hat, a large cocked hat with [a] feather, and I had besides my sword.” But the weapon got tangled in the rungs of the steep ship’s ladder while he was climbing down, and “I was obliged to be nearly doubl in order to avoid touching the top deck with my hat.” Though he was unhurt, the duke wrote that the queen “forced me to wear my hat on Tuesday, [the next day] she repeatedly warned me not to fall again.” (p.39.) Note also that George IV’s brother and successor William IV told Wellington that he [William] had saved the day at Salamanca by bringing up some cavalry “when things were looking very bad indeed.”’ (Idem., p.31.)

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Quotations
Allhorse: Wellington is accredited with the possibly apocryphal remark that a man may be born in a stable without being a horse - a remark variously quoted as: ‘a horse is not an ass because he is born in an ass’s stable’. (For the latter, see Charles Lysaght, ed., Great Irish Lives [Times Books], HarperCollins 2008, Introduction, p.xvi.) See also under James Joyce in Notes, infra.

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References
Hyland Books (Cat. 224) lists Letters of the Duke of Wellington to Miss J., 1834-1851 (1st edn. 1889); F. A. Wellesley, ed., The Diary and Correspondence of Henry Wellesley, First Lord Cowley 1790-1846.

Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica, Irish Worthies (1821), Vol. II, p.422, Garnet Mornington, Earl of Wellington.

Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition (Ulster Mus. 1965), lists port. by John Lucas in the National Portrait Collection (London).

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Notes
Wilson’s Dublin Directory [contemp. notice]: ‘His Excellency Marquis Wellesley [i.e., Richard Wellesley] visited the Theatre Royal when a most disgraceful party riot took place, and some missiles were thrown at his Excellency’s box. This occurrence occasioned a serious and protracted enquiry in the ensuing session of the Imperial Parliament.’

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Marquess [sic] of Wellesley, older br. of Duke of Wellington, served as diplomat and later Lord Lieutenant in Ireland, where he advocated Catholic Emancipation, and angered George IV, but also attracted the antagonism of the Orange Order whose members threw bottles at him in 1822; resigned from Viceregal office when his br. Arthur became Prime Minister in 1828. (See Vincent Cheng, Joyce, Race and Empire, Cambridge UP 1995, p.272.)

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G. B. Shaw remarked on the ‘untheatrical’ Wellington in his Preface to John Bull’s Other Island.

Trim, Co. Meath: The Wellington Monument [var. Column] was erected Trim, Co. Meath, in 1819; a Wellington Court Hotel stands on the Dublin road. William Bulfin makes mention of the monument to Duke of Wellington at Trim, Co. Meath, erected by ‘gentry of Co. Meath’. (Rambles in Eirinn, 1907).

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James Joyce (1): See the reference in “Gas from a Burner” (1912): ‘Shite and onions! Do you think I’ll print/The name of the Wellington Monument. [...].’

James Joyce (2): In Finnegans Wake, he is the ‘bornstable gentleman’ on his big white horse in the “Museyroom” episode of Book I, while the ‘memorial’ to Wellington in the Phoenix Park becomes the ‘overgrown milestone’ with numerous more phallic associations passim.

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Mornington House, the former home of the Mornington/Wellesley family on Merrion St., Dublin -facing the Toaseach’s Office (formerly IOAS Building assoc. with Sir Horace Plunkett) - is now the premisses of the Merrion Hotel, a premier hotel and restaurant (Gibaud) in Dublin which is home to a fine collection of older and modern Irish painting.

Portraits (inter alia) those by John Lucas in the National Portrait Collection (London); Wellesley by the Comte d’Orsay; profile in The New Irish Magazine and National Advocate (Jan. 1823), pp.244-47; port. of Wellington by Sir Thomas Lawrence at Wellington College, Berkshire; an equestrian statue by Wyatt.

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