Once again the King requested Wellington to form a new administration, and several meetings were held with that idea in view, but to no purpose. He had to confess that the task was absolutely impossible: “I felt that my duty to the King required that I should make a great sacrifice of opinion to serve him, and to save his Majesty and the country from what I considered a great evil. Others were not of the same opinion. I failed in performing the service which I intended to perform....” Several resident members of Oxford University, including Professor the Rev. John Keble, impressed by the Duke’s devotion, raised funds for the purpose of a bust to commemorate his self-denying conduct. This appreciation of approval greatly pleased Wellington, who announced his intention of sitting for Chantrey, the celebrated sculptor, or whoever else the committee might choose, “with the greatest satisfaction.” When Grey resumed office the Reform Bill was read for a third time and passed, a number of peers having declared “that in consequence of the present state of affairs they have come to the resolution of dropping their further opposition to the Reform Bill, so that it may pass without delay as nearly as possible in its present shape.” Wellington quietly left the House. He was no more kindly disposed towards the Irish Reform Bill, and subjected it to a fire of criticism which did not, however, preclude it from passing.
One of the most remarkable events of the Duke’s crowded life occurred in November 1834. When Earl Grey resigned in July 1834, on which occasion his opponent made a graceful speech to the effect that there had been no personal hostility in his opposition, the retiring statesman recommended Lord Melbourne as his successor. This suggestion met with the King’s approval, but the reign of the new Administration lasted only until the middle of the following November. His Majesty sent for Wellington at six in the morning. The latter refused to form a Cabinet, and recommended Sir Robert Peel, who was then in Rome. The Duke promised to carry on the Government during the interim, with the result that he held the offices of First Lord of the Treasury, Home Secretary, Foreign and Colonial Secretary, and Secretary at War for nearly a month. On Peel’s return he appointed his industrious ally Foreign Secretary, a position he held until the following April, when the Government resigned. In 1841, in Peel’s second Administration, he occupied a seat in the Cabinet, without office, and in the following year he was created Commander-in-Chief for life by patent under the great seal.
During the Chartist agitation Wellington was asked who was to command the forces in London, where a riot was expected. He answered, “I can name no one except the Duke of Wellington.” He organized the arrangements with his usual thoroughness, disposing his troops to keep them out of sight, and taking prompt measures to protect important public buildings. Fortunately the excitement died down, and armed force was not required.
The Duke frequently spent several hours a day at the Horse Guards. “Speaking from the experience which I had of him,” says General Sir George Brown, G.C.B., “I should say that the Duke was a remarkably agreeable man to do business with, because of his clear and ready decision. However much I may have seen him irritated and excited, with the subjects which I have repeatedly had to bring under his notice, I have no recollection of his ever having made use of a harsh or discourteous expression to me, or of his having dismissed me without a distinct and explicit answer or decision in the case under consideration. Like all good men of business, who consider well before coming to a decision, his Grace was accustomed to adhere strictly to precedent; to the decisions he may have previously come to on similar cases. This practice greatly facilitated the task of those who had to transact business with him, seeing that all we had to do in concluding our statement of any particular case was to refer to his decision or some similar one.”
“Everybody writes to me for everything,” he once remarked to Stanhope. “They know the Duke of Wellington is said to be a good-natured man, and so at the least they will get an answer.” The Earl, astonished at the amount of the Duke’s correspondence, ventured to say that his host might expect to be allowed some rest and recreation while he was at Walmer. “Rest!” cried the Duke. “Every other animal—even a donkey—a costermonger’s donkey—is allowed some rest, but the Duke of Wellington never! There is no help for it. As long as I am able to go on, they will put the saddle upon my back and make me go.”
Georgiana, Lady De Ros, who was a frequent visitor at Walmer Castle and at Strathfieldsaye, relates an incident which has a direct bearing on this point. “Wellington,” she says, “would tell a story against himself sometimes, and amused us all quite in his latter days by the account of various impostures that had been practised upon him; for years he had helped an imaginary officer’s daughter, paid for music lessons for her, given her a piano, paid for her wedding trousseau, for her child’s funeral, etc., etc. At last it came out that one man was the author of these impostures, ‘and then,’ the Duke said, ‘an Officer from the Mendicity Society called on me and gave me such a scolding as I never had before in my life!’”
In a book inscribed as “A Slight Souvenir of the Season 1845–6” we find a delightful little glimpse of “the hero of a hundred fights” as a country gentlemen. “What can be a finer sight than to see the Duke of Wellington enter the hunting field?” the author asks. “Not one of those gorgeous spectacles, it is true, such as a coronation, a review, the Lord Mayor’s Show, or a procession to the Houses of Parliament—not one of those pompous Continental exhibitions called a chasse, where armed menials keep back the crowd, and brass bands proclaim alike the find and finish; but what can be a finer sight—a sight more genial to the mind of a Briton—than the mighty Wellington entering the hunting field with a single attendant, making no more fuss than a country squire? Yet many have seen the sight, and many, we trust, may yet see it. The Duke takes the country sport like a country gentleman—no man less the great man than this greatest of all men; affable to all, his presence adds joy to the scene. The Duke is a true sportsman, and has long been a supporter of the Vine and Sir John Cope’s hounds. He kept hounds himself during the Peninsular War, and divers good stories are related of them and their huntsman (Tom Crane), whose enthusiasm used sometimes to carry him in the enemy’s country, a fact that he used to be reminded of by a few bullets whizzing about his ears.”
Wellington was now the trusted friend of Queen Victoria, who ever held him in the highest esteem. He was one of the first persons, perhaps actually the first,[105] outside the Royal family and the medical attendants to see the baby who afterwards became Edward VII. According to one account he was met outside Buckingham Palace by Lord Hill, who was informed “All over—fine boy, very fine boy, almost as red as you Hill.”
Two days after the first anniversary of the birthday of Edward Albert, Prince of Wales, the Queen and the Prince Consort, accompanied by the Royal children, journeyed to Walmer Castle to pay the Duke a visit. An even greater honour was reserved for the veteran warrior, for on the birth of her Majesty’s third son on the 1st May 1850, it got noised abroad that the infant was to be called Arthur, “in compliment to the Hero of Waterloo.” The present Duke of Connaught is thus a living link with Wellington. “I must not omit to mention,” the Queen writes exactly a year later, “an interesting episode of this day, viz., the visit of the good old Duke on this his eighty-second birthday, to his little godson, our dear little boy. He came to us both at five, and gave him a golden cup and some toys, which he had himself chosen, and Arthur gave him a nosegay.”
The day was also that on which the great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace was opened. “The Royal party,” says Queen Victoria, “were received with continued acclamation as they passed through the Park and round the Exhibition house, and it was also very interesting to witness the cordial greeting given to the Duke of Wellington. I was just behind him and Anglesey [on whose arm he was leaning], during the procession round the building, and he was accompanied by an incessant running fire of applause from the men, and waving of handkerchiefs and kissing of hands from the women, who lined the pathway of the march during the three-quarters of an hour that it took us to march round....”