![\"wellington-111214\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/wellington-111214.jpg\")
\n(The Iron Duke- Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS gives us an imperious look. I have to tell you, I have enjoyed taking a trip back in time to visit some of the great cities of Asia from a long time ago. Since I threw in a trip report about the war in the Balkans, I thought I might open the aperture and account for a lost weekend in London, on a mission to confer with our opposite numbers in the UK’s MoD). <\/p>\n
After a shivering return from Portobello Road I surveyed my situation from Room 531, Churchill Hotel, Portman Square, London. The sky outside still shed its liquid burden. My London Fog raincoat was in the sink with the hair dryer tucked under it. The hot air forced it up into a tent. I longed to climb back under the covers and doze the afternoon away, but this was the last day in London. I glanced in the London Guide for inspiration. Westminster Abbey was done, I had been to Saint Paul\u2019s and the British Museum many times. Not that there wasn\u2019t something new to see on each visit, but I craved something new. I glanced down the columns in the Times as the hairdryer made it\u2019s muffled roar in the background. There was the Tetley Tea Museum, or an exhibition of contemporary life in the junkie culture at The Chaucer Hotel. The Oxford Union had the debate of the week. This one looked interesting, dealing with the apparent failure of some of the hallowed colleges to attract underprivileged students. James Collard in the Supplement noted that:<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t have to be a Marxist to suppose that in the lottery that is British life, keen minds are sometimes wasted, But in truth the class system has never been as solid as it looks, not least because the ruling class has always been perfectly ready to drop its standards (not to mention its knickers) for anyone who brings home the bacon, from Vanderbilts to construction millionaires.\u201d<\/p>\n
It looked interesting, but my eye caught the next listing. \u201cApsley House. Formerly Number One London. Town residence of the First Duke of Wellington. Houses the Duke\u2019s extensive art collection in great public rooms. The Duke\u2019s decorations are on display. Hyde Park Corner, SW1, 10:00-5:00, daily.\u201d<\/p>\n
The write-up looked like the Duke might be at home. It was close and that was it. I decided to visit the Duke for the afternoon. My raincoat as warm and only slightly damp. I put the hairdryer under my ball-cap and was ready to go in five minutes. My sneakers squished a bit, but there was nothing for it. I left the hotel and headed back toward Marble Arch, turning left on Park Avenue and skirted Hyde Park headed south.<\/p>\n
On my left I passed a series of discrete car dealerships. Jags. Mercedes. Nothing less than L38,000- $55 grand to start. Nice automobiles. My favorite was a modest plate glass window, behind which lurked a fantastic bat-winged racing vehicle. It was a McClarran grand touring machine. It modestly was billed as the faster production passenger automobile ever built. \u201cOnly 54 were built. When one becomes available, the McClarran Factory will custom refurbish the vehicle to your exacting standards\u201d I wondered what those might be. Entry level prices started at L115,000. A boutique car dealership, another enterprise trading in the vast attic of an Empire. Tempted to waste their time, I braced my shoulders and walked on.<\/p>\n
I passed the Hilton on my left as I approached Hyde Park Corner. Another block brought me to a great ring-around of London. Traffic flowed in a river. To cope, there is what they call a subway, which in British parlance means an underground walkway. Useful, because in the rain and the gloom and always looking the wrong way it would have been death for a Yank. Gray clouds scudded low over the buildings. I walked down and under the busy road and popped up in front of an iron fence that ringed a tall sandstone manor house, now isolated by traffic. I walked through the mist and up the gravel circular drive to a massive Regency sandstone building. The fa\u00e7ade went up three full floors and there might have been something lurking above that. There was scaffolding up there, some work needed to keep the forces of entropy from intruding into the attic.<\/p>\n
![\"apsley-house-111214\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/apsley-house-111214.jpg\")
\n(Apsley House- Number One London).<\/p>\n
Apsley House now stands in splendid isolation in the traffic. Once, when it was carriages that passed through the gate into London, this was the first stately house to be seen. After the Victory at Waterloo it was only appropriate that they would call this place \u201cNumber One London.\u201d I walked up to the massive door and worked the ancient knob and lock. This was the real thing, unchanged for nearly two centuries. Inside there was gloom, and a strange hooded leather chair. It was where a servant dozed, on call to meet guests of the Duke at any hour of the day. There was a small placard advising me not to touch it. It was un-restored, unchanged by anything except time and decomposition since the last servant\u2019s withered buttocks had occupied it. That was what I found in this house of the General of His Age. It was as though the owner had only stepped out. Somewhere in this pile of sandstone are boxes of shirts, crisply starched and banded with ribbons, ready in case the Duke returns.<\/p>\n
There was an interpretive handset available in the gift shop and I took it. But it wasn\u2019t really necessary. This was a place that is both regal and personal. It was the Duke\u2019s house, his home and his castle all at once. The most celebrated man of his era, he entertained and lived a long and public life after his great victory.<\/p>\n
The young Arthur Wellesley was born in Ireland in 1769, a minor noble of the Irish Ascendancy. In the usual manner of the day a Commission was purchased for him to have a second-son\u2019s calling in the Army. He entered service in 1787 and had a career synergistic with that of his older brother Richard. Arthur\u2019s regiment was posted to India in 1796, and he was there when Richard was appointed governor-general of India. Arthur was offered command of a division, which he commanded at the invasion of Mysore and in 1799 he was appointed governor of Seringapatam. His decade on the sub-continent taught him many valuable lessons in practical warfare, leading coalition forces. Napoleon was said to have remarked derisively on Wellesley\u2019s time in India, the experience being unworthy of a Gentleman. That might be so, but Arthur was a valued counselor to his brother, advising him on political and military issues. When Richard was recalled to England, Arthur went with him and was knighted for his distinguished service.<\/p>\n
Arthur won election to Parliament in 1806 and was elevated to Irish Secretary in 1807. But the hostile empire across the Channel had established the Continental System, which excluded imports from Britain or its colonies and chaos loomed. England had to do what it could within limited means. In 1808 Wellesley was sent to advise and support the Portuguese in their revolt against the French, much as Americans went out to Indochina for the same purpose. Wellesley did it better. The campaign on the Peninsula had nine
\n major engagements, and the Peninsula Medal on his red tunic displayed in the basement of Apsley House is the only one with all nine battle clasps.<\/p>\n
Wellesley ultimately assumed command of the same sort of combined force he had lead in India, and the experience there stood him in good stead. He led British, Portuguese, and Spanish forces in the Peninsula, fusing the rugged ground, fierce local patriotism and the preoccupation of the Corsican with campaigns elsewhere on the continent. Wellesley drove the French north of the Pyrenees. Despite the grudging support he received from Whitehall, he pushed on into southern France and when Napoleon abdicated in 1814 he was at Toulouse. A hero.<\/p>\n
Part of my admiration for the Iron Duke is derived from this dispatch from the field, which is perhaps folk legend, but better sums the contempt of the forward-deployed for those in the rear:<\/p>\n
\u201cGeneral the Earl of Wellington, K.B.<\/p>\n
Central Spain, August 1812<\/p>\n
Gentlemen,<\/p>\n
Whilst marching from Portugal to a position which commands the approach to
\n Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been diligently complying with
\n your requests which have been sent by H.M. ship from London to Lisbon and
\n thence by dispatch to our headquarters.<\/p>\n
We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents and tent poles, and all manner
\n of sundry items for which His Majesty’s Government holds me accountable. I
\n have dispatched reports on the character, wit, and spleen of every officer.
\n Each item and every farthing has been accounted for, with two regrettable
\n exceptions for which I beg your indulgence.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains unaccounted for
\n in one infantry battalion’s petty cash and there has been a hideous confusion
\n as to the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to one cavalry regiment
\n during a sandstorm in western Spain. This reprehensible carelessness may be
\n related to the pressure of circumstance, since we are war with France, a fact
\n which may come as a bit of a surprise to you gentlemen in Whitehall.<\/p>\n
This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request elucidation of my
\n instructions from His Majesty’s Government so that I may better understand
\n why I am dragging an army over these barren plains. I construe that perforce
\n it must be one of two alternative duties, as given below. I shall pursue
\n either one with the best of my ability, but I cannot do both:<\/p>\n
1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the benefit of
\n the accountants and copy-boys in London or perchance.<\/p>\n
2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain.<\/p>\n
I have the honor to be, &c.<\/p>\n
Wellington\u201d<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t find it in a book of his dispatches from Spain, but maybe it is true. It certainly sounds like The Duke.<\/p>\n
Returning to England, he received many honors and was created duke of Wellington. He served for a short time as ambassador to Paris, and then succeeded Viscount Castlereagh at the peace conference in Vienna. There was a rumor of the time that the Duke had traveled to the Louvre in Paris \u201cunhooking and taking down the pictures which Napoleon had accumulated from every corner of Europe.\u201d The Duke actually sent them back to their rightful owners, though other rightful owners demurred, and insisted that the Duke retain ownership of those he had actually captured in the field.<\/p>\n
Then came The Hundred Days. Napoleon left Elba and raised the Grand Armee again through levee en masse- a military draft on steroids. Wellington returned to the field and assumed command of the allied armies. The field of Waterloo was a desperate fight, one that Wellington himself called \u201cthe closest run thing you have seen.\u201d I have a tintype engraving done years after, of Wellington extending his hand to the Prussian Marshall, Gebhard Leberecht von Bl\u00fccher, for it was the appearance of the bewhiskered German and his troops that sealed the battle and made Wellington the man of the age.<\/p>\n
Again lavishly honored, he returned home to take an active interest in politics and service to his class.<\/p>\n
He had a healthy distrust of the common man, revered but never loved by his troops. Flogging was part of the discipline of the Royal Army. Wellington considered the values of the gentry to be that ordained by nature. He became the backbone of the Tory House of Lords throughout his long life and he was not content to live the pleasant life of a Lord\u2019s backbencher. Instead he actively served in a variety of cabinet posts, as master general of the ordnance in 1819 and represented England at the Congress of Verona in 1822. He fell out with George Canning over what the Duke saw as overly liberal ways and he left the government when Canning became Prime Minister in 1827.<\/p>\n
In 1828 Wellington reluctantly became prime minister himself, viewing it as a duty to class and Britain. He compromised some of his rigid principles- above all things the Duke was a pragmatic soldier and politician. He allowed the repeal of the Test Act and Corporation Act and the passage of the Catholic Emancipation bill. In so doing he alienated the rank-and-file Tories and his ministry fell in 1830.<\/p>\n
All through the rest of his long life Wellington held the Waterloo dinner on the anniversary of the battle. First it was held in the dining room of Apsley house with his close lieutenants. Later it evolved to the London event of the year in the magnificent banquet hall he constructed on the park side of the residence.<\/p>\n
They say that long after the battle that vanquished Napoleon the bacillus that he had unleashed continued to spread. It grew in England, rising to the movement that brought the Great Reform Act of 1832. Ludd and his Luddites, trashing machines that would eliminate weaving jobs in the cottages in the country, fighting the establishment of the knitting mills and the industrialization of the North. In that climate the Mob came to Number One London. The Duke\u2019s wife had died. He was in mourning, and not displaying the candle in the window that the Mob demanded as a token to Reform. They would have looted the place, Napoleon\u2019s swords, Gold Marshall\u2019s baton, plate and china, the whole lot. But a servant went to the roof, and fired a blunderbuss to heaven and fired it again until the mob retreated.<\/p>\n
Wellington was a Francophile. He is said to have had relationships with two of Napoleon\u2019s mistresses, and certainly was a collector of other articles associated with the Corsican. He also continued his public service. Under Sir Robert Peel he was foreign secretary twice. In 1842 he was made commander in chief of the Royal Army for life. He died in 1852, thirty-seven years after his last military triumph. He is buried under a magnificent bronze martial memorial in St. Paul’s Cathedral. When the procession took him to his rest there they say a million people clogged the streets, saying that they would not see his like again.<\/p>\n
I walked from the entry hall past a set of closed double doors on which was affixed the notice: \u201cPrivate Apartment.\u201d When the 7th Duke was killed serving with the Parachute Regiment during the war- and by that of course I mean the Second World War- the title fell to his uncle. The place was about down to wrack and ruin and there was no way he could keep up the city place and the country place. So he cut one of the historic deals with the Government. In exchange for deeding over the property to the Trust, he kept the private lawn in back and a nice apartment It looks like it is the entire third floor and the former Duke\u2019s private museum on the ground floor. I assume they have to use the old servants stairs to reach the apartment. The Duke\u2019s museum has been moved to the corner of the first floor.<\/p>\n
The entire house is filled with treasure. It is one of the attics of the Empire that not been consigned to Portobello road. To the left off the entrance is the Museum. It is a ground floor room that contains the personal trophies of the duke. There are his Marshall\u2019s batons, one from each of the Grand Alliance that brought down the little Corsican. The swords; the Duke\u2019s and the one Napoleon carried that day in Belgium. There are objects of silver and gold of astonishing detail, ewers and shields and candelabra. From the walls hang the embroidered flags of the vanquished French, intended for display as Napoleon marched into a conquered Brussels.<\/p>\n
![\"nude](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/nude-nap-111214.jpg\")
\n(Lager than life statue of Napoleon greets you at the door).<\/p>\n
There is china and silver and air everywhere, mostly art captured and art commissioned of the men who won their version of the Great War. Walking to the circular stairs to the public salons and the living quarters on the third floor is the treasure of treasures. is the eleven foot tall stature of Napoleon, carved from a single block of Carrara marble stands at the base of the great curved staircase. Carved by Antonio Canova, it depicted Napoleon as Mars. It is nude, save for a cloak, and he clasps a winged nymph in his right hand. One of the wings passes close to the curved handrail of the steps, and the 8th Duke has said is was a real hazard to young men sliding down banisters. The British Government bought the statue from the Louvre for 6,000 francs in 1816 and the Prince Regent presented it to Wellington. The floors of Number One London had to be reinforced to bear the weight of the thing.<\/p>\n
Napoleon won many more battles than the Duke of Wellington, but in the end it was winning percentage that counted. The Iron Duke was 100%. When he broke the proud Armee he guaranteed the British ascendancy for the rest of that century and bought the Pax Britannica that reigned for exactly one hundred years, 1815 right up to the gunshot that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914.<\/p>\n
![\"spectacular-silver-111214\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/spectacular-silver-111214-500x183.jpg\")
\n(The silver centerpiece donated by the people of Spain to The Duke).<\/p>\n
The residence is both human scale and majestic. One of the chairs in the dining room has been left un-reupholstered to show what a leather chair 181 years old looks like. On display on the dining table is a silver centerpiece that is thirty feet long and has 1,000 sculptures. It has little silver plaques for all the victories on the peninsula, and a magnificent detailed confection of silver in the middle. It the single most magnificent thing I have ever seen, and you could touch it, or lunge at it, if you so desired. This is a residence, open to the public. Not a sterile well-secured structure or vault. A house. Made by a man to enjoy his life and his station.<\/p>\n
That is all gone now. I saw a picture of how the place looked on hard times, fancy wallpaper falling in sheets like something out of Miss Haversham\u2019s house in Great Expectations. During the Blitz, the fig leaf covering the Napoleon statue\u2019s genitals was blown off by concussion. The sole remaining resident, an ancient lady of impeccable virtue, made it her first priority to have the strategic leaf restored. She was of an age that almost touched the Duke. To her, he was not a legend. For those that lived beyond it was something else. Giving the sandstone pile of Apsley House to the State was probably the only sensible answer<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know how the current Duke gets on with it all, living out of the way of the tourists. The Blair administration had effectively ended the hereditary component of the House of Lords. Those Hereditary Peers of the Realm who have been permitted to stay have been limited to fifty in number, and they may not pass their seats on to their progeny, effectively ending a tradition going back to medieval times. Effectively, they are all now Life Peers, good only for a single life. The Labor Lords love it, although even the Trades Union Council peers have shown a distressing affection for the pomp and perquisites. Blair is a trip, just like his Millennium Wheel that now dominates the London skyline.<\/p>\n
The Dukes of Wellington got a deal that pre-dates Her Majesty\u2019s current government. They get to keep the apartment. Maybe that will change with a fickle electorate. But I imagine sometimes after closing, when there is no one else around, the double door to the private apartment can be opened and the Eighth Duke can wander the house to his content and dream of what was.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he can even touch the talismans, and even play pretend. I can only wonder what the Ninth Duke can expect?<\/p>\n
![\"waterloo](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/waterloo-hall-111214.jpg\")
\n(The hall and table where the Waterloo Dinner was held).<\/p>\n
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra.com
\nTwitter: @jayare303<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(The Iron Duke- Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS gives us an imperious look. I have to tell you, I have enjoyed taking a trip back in time to visit some of the great cities of Asia from a long time ago. Since I threw in a trip […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9240"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9247,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9240\/revisions\/9247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}