Wellington: A Personal History. Christopher Hibbert

to an officer to do so for forty-eight hours ‘which is as long as any reasonable man can wish to stay in bed with the same woman’.² But when he received a letter from England on behalf of a young lady who was said to be pining away for love of an absent major, he replied sardonically that, while there were believed to be ‘desperate cases of this description’, he himself could not say that he had ‘ever yet known of a young lady dying of love’. ‘They contrive, in some manner to live, and look tolerably well, notwithstanding their despair; and some even have been known to recover so far as to be inclined to take another lover, if the absence of the first has lasted too long.’ He did not suppose that this particular lady could ever recover so far, but he hoped that she would ‘survive the continued necessary absence of the Major, and enjoy with him hereafter many happy days’.³

      As for the demands of family business and private concerns, his own opinion was that there were no such that could not ‘be settled by instruction and power of attorney’. Indeed, he eventually prevailed upon the Horse Guards to send him no general officers who were not prepared to undertake that they would not ask for leave to attend to private business at home during their term of absence. He might occasionally feel obliged to grant leave of absence to an officer, but he could never approve of it. Why, were he to grant all requests for leave that were made to him, ‘between those absent on account of wounds and sickness, and those absent on account of business or pleasure’, he would have no officers left. A characteristic rebuff was delivered to Lieutenant Gurwood of the 52nd Regiment:

       The Commander of the Forces cannot grant leave of absence to any officer in the army, except for recovery of health or for the arrangement of business which cannot be settled without his presence, and the settlement of which is paramount to every other consideration in life. As Lieutenant Gurwood’s application solely implies private affairs as the plea, without stating their nature, it is not in his Excellency’s power to comply with his request.⁴

      There were those who condemned him for being hard and unfeeling. Certainly he always endeavoured to keep his emotions firmly under control and was ill at ease in the company of those who could not. Stories about his restraint were constantly repeated in the army: once, early one morning when excitedly informed that the enemy were withdrawing after he had waited long for them to do so, he paused for a moment, his razor motionless against his chin, murmured, ‘Ay, I thought they meant to be off; very well,’ and continued unhurriedly with his shaving.⁵ When told with equal excitement that his advance-guard had suddenly come upon the entire French army, he observed conversationally, ‘Oh, they are all there, are they? Well, we must mind a little what we are about.’⁶ Distressing news was greeted with the same imperturbable self-control as the most joyous intelligence, although those who knew him best were well aware when his innermost feelings were aroused. The death, for instance, of a brave and talented young Intelligence Officer, Major Edward Somers-Cocks, son of Earl Somers, affected him deeply. Colonel Frederic Ponsonby, commanding officer of the 12th Light Dragoons, recorded how Wellington had suddenly entered Ponsonby’s room to break the news, how he had paced up and down in silence, opened the door again, and left, announcing abruptly, ‘Poor old Cocks was killed last night.’ His look of despair at the funeral was such that no one liked to talk to him.⁷

      On less emotional occasions, men were often wary of approaching him, for fear lest they were met with one of those rebuffs which the General would deliver, apparently unconscious of how wounding they could be. The Judge-Advocate General, Francis Seymour Larpent, observed that some officers were ‘much afraid of him’. Larpent himself when going up to him with his papers for instructions – which would always be given in a ‘civil and decisive’ way – felt ‘something like a boy going to school’.⁸ Yet there were times enough in the headquarters mess, as there had been in the mess of the 33rd in India, when the General seemed quite prepared to tolerate a jovial informality, when his highly distinctive laugh could be heard, ‘very loud and long’. He also tolerated much informality in dress. He himself was usually clothed in a well-cut grey frock-coat, rather shorter, like his boots, than was the normal fashion and slightly tighter so that, now he was in his early forties, he could be seen to be as lithe and trim as he had been as a subaltern. ‘He is well made and knows it,’ Larpent wrote home to his step-mother, attributing entirely to vanity what was also dictated by practical requirements, ‘and is willing to set off to the best what nature has bestowed. In short, like every great man present or past, almost without exception, he is vain … He is remarkably neat and most particular in his dress … He cuts the skirts of his coat shorter to make them look smarter: and only a short time since, on going to him on business, I found him discussing the cut of his half-boots and suggesting alterations to his servant.’ In wet weather his cocked hat was carefully encased in an oilskin cover.⁹

      His officers were permitted the same kind of latitude as he allowed himself in matters of dress. ‘Scarcely any two officers were dressed alike,’ one of them said. ‘Some wore grey braided coats, others brown: some again blue; many (from choice, or perhaps necessity) stuck to the old “red rag”.’¹⁰ Nor was much attention paid by the General to the uniform of the soldiers. ‘Provided we brought our men into the field well appointed with their sixty rounds of ammunition each,’ this same officer recorded, ‘he never looked to see whether trousers were black, blue or grey.’ ‘I think it indifferent how a soldier is clothed,’ Wellington wrote himself in a letter to the Horse Guards, ‘provided it is in a uniform manner, and that he is forced to keep himself clean and smart, as a soldier ought to be.’¹¹

      Visitors to headquarters were sometimes astonished by the amateurish, almost disorderly look of the place. Not only did officers walk about in a variety of clothes, some smart in their regimental uniform, others dressed in an individual manner which would have horrified their King had he seen them at a levee. The whole atmosphere, so a German commissary recalled, was ‘strikingly’ informal. ‘Had it not been known for a fact, no one would have suspected that [General Wellington] was quartered in the town. There was no throng of scented staff officers with plumed hats, orders and stars, no main guard, no crowd of contractors, actors, valets, cooks, mistresses, equipages, horses, forage and baggage waggons, as there is at a French or Russian headquarters. Just a few aides-de-camp, who went about the streets alone and in their overcoats, a few guides, and a small staff guard; that was all. About a dozen bullock-carts were to be seen in the large square of Fuente Guinaldo, which was used for bringing up straw to Headquarters; but apart from these no equipages or baggage trains were visible.’¹² What was not to be missed, however, was the Commander-in-Chief’s marquee which enclosed the tent in which he slept. This ‘large Marquee’ also served as ‘a sitting and dining room’, wrote his cook, James Thornton. ‘The gentlemen of the staff had a tent each … I had a round tent to sleep in, the Butler one also, my two Assistants had one between them, the Duke’s footmen and all the staff servants had one tent for two servants, all the servants’ tents were round ones, the gentlemen’s small Marquees.’¹³ The cooking was done ‘in a Room made with poles and a Tarpolain … There was a mound of earth thrown up, and niches cut round this in which we made fires and boiled the saucepans. We had a larger niche cut out for roasting. We stuck a pole in that and dangled the meat. When it rained hard, they had nothing but cold meat and bread.’¹⁴

      Thornton’s cooking, the General had to concede, was not very good: ‘Cole gives the best dinners in the army; Hill the next best; mine are no great things.’¹⁵ However, the wine at Wellington’s headquarters was better than that at any other; much of it, including champagne, being sent out from England.

      Sometimes the General was seen walking up and down in the company of one or other of the staff or with another General or perhaps a civilian visitor; and the conversation would range over all manner of topics, not all of them military, politics perhaps, or that night’s theatricals, or the prospects for next day’s hunting, for he still allowed himself his hunting days and kept a pack of hounds, known as The Peers’ ’, which had been brought out for him by two aides-de-camp, Lord Tweeddale and Lord Worcester. Indeed, as often as he could he went hunting in the uniform of the Hatfield Hunt, a black cape and sky-blue coat, which Lady Salisbury had given him, chasing after the quarry – which once turned out to be a load of salt fish – not much caring what the hounds ran so