Wellington: Pillar of State

Wellington #2

by Elizabeth Longford

The Duke of Wellington's years of the sword ended abruptly while he was still in his prime. Weeping for the dead of Waterloo, he prayed he had fought his last battle. So he had; it might be supposed that the rest of his career would prove to be one long aftermath. Yet such was the power of this extraordinary man to propel himself into the path of great events that the second half of his active life was as eventful as the first--and, as a subjective story that rocketed between the zenith and the nadir of fortune, it was unique. If he was indeed the Iron Duke, it was iron which had been returned again and again to the fire.

Wellington was in one sense a ready-made "Pillar of State" for the new Europe. During the first years after Waterloo he was the ruler of occupied France in all but name. When he returned to his native land he was full of good resolutions to be a public servant rather than a Tory party politician. But the tragedies of Peterloo and the Cato Street Conspiracy, followed by the rowdyism of Queen Caroline's trial, quickly alienated him from the parties of change and welded him to that of law and order. He spent the next twenty-five years discovering that repression is not enough.

The violent death of his close friend Lord Castlereagh left him to maneuver with the antipathetic Canning, and he finally found himself at the head of a divided Tory party and Prime Minister of a country loudly demanding every variety of reform. The granting of "Catholic emancipation," highlighted by a personal duel in Battersea Fields, raised him to be a pinnacle of fame which neither he nor anyone else had enjoyed since Waterloo. Then as anti-hero in the struggle over the constitutional Reform Bill, a victim of his own delusion that reform was tantamount to revolution, Wellington's character acquired a lurid glint. Yet in the end it seems that the Bill was his crucible as well as his torment--for he emerged years later, at the time of the Irish famine, as the statesman who dared to say "Right about face!" to the Tory peers and so enable Peel to abolish the Corn Laws.

Many other strands had gradually come together in Wellington's character, to make of it at last the ideal he had always held out for himself: "the retained servant of king and people." Lady Longford's first part of this biography, Wellington: The Years of the Sword, was greeted with enormous acclaim, and this second and final volume is a pleasure to read: lucid, sympathetic, balanced, rich in personal details, but solid and scholarly, too. It triumphantly succeeds in making the Duke of Wellington into an unforgettable, appealing and human character.

Genres: Biography, History, British Literature, 19th Century, Nonfiction, Politics, Biography Memoir

472 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Elizabeth (Harman) Pakenham, Countess of Longford, CBE was born on 30 August 1906. She was the daughter of Nathaniel Bishop Harman. She married Sir Francis Aungier Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, KG, PC, son of Thomas Pakenham, 5th Earl of Longford and Lady Mary Julia Child-Villiers, on 3 November 1931. She died on 23 October 2002.
Her married name became Pakenham.

The Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography was established in 2003 in memory of Elizabeth Longford (1906-2002), the British author, biographer and historian. The £5,000 prize is awarded annually for a historical biography published in the preceding year. The Elizabeth Longford Prize is sponsored by Flora Fraser and Peter Soros and administered by the Society of Authors.

Reviews

[Czarny Pies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published the year I started university, "Wellington: Pillar of State" would have made me furious had if I had read it at that time. It was everything that my undergraduate professors s told me that history should not be; it was written by the descendant of its subject with the avowed purpose of making a hero out of an arch-conservative aristocrat who devoted his political career to opposing progress on all fronts. Longford's book however has aged very well and today stands as a masterpiece of conservative writing.

In "Wellington: The Years of the Sword" Longford portrays Wellington as having been very ambitious during his years in the armed forces. Although he was tremendously talented, a major component of his success was his desire to succeed and his willingness to use his connections to the utmost in order to advance. As a politician he was indifferent to success. He neither intrigued nor energetically promoted himself. He fell into being premier minister. He lost his position two years later and made no efforts to recover it. (He did however agree to hold the the office for a one month period in order to allow Robert Peel who was out of the country to return and assume the position.)

Longford's thesis is that Wellington was a "Pillar of State" in that it was he who would persuade the most reactionary conservatives to accept change once it was clear that further resistance might set of a revolution similar to those that broke out frequently during his life-time in France. Wellington resisted the abolition of the rotten boroughs, expansion of the voter franchise, low-church theology, Greek independence, Italian unification, worker rights and low-church theology. During his brief two-year term he did however emancipate the Catholics of the British Isles, the only progressive cause that he ever took a leadership cause in promoting. After much agonizing, he resolutely did nothing to help the victims of the potato famine in his native Ireland.

Perhaps Longford is right after-all. The approach of Wellington and his fellow aristocrats to fighting change with determination before accepting the inevitable bore wonderful fruits. England never experienced a communist or fascist revolution. In the aftermath of WWII, it led the way for the Europe in its creation of the modern welfare state. Whether one agrees with Longford or not, her research is impeccable and she presents both sides of every issue that she discusses.

Like her more famous daughter, Antonia Fraser, Longford love inside and outside of marriage with remarkable finesse and exquisite colour. "Wellington: Pillar of State" is a fine work that should please readers with a wide variety of political views.

[Lucy Cummin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, yeah, I cried at the end. Few are born who can rise to an occasion of need and necessity and fulfill the role without a background buzz of personal ambition, by which I mean aggrandizement, acquisition etc. for the self alone, not for the greater good. In volume 2 Longford examines Wellington's post-Waterloo life, both politically and personally. His achievements were many and his mistakes remarkably few. It was he who pushed through Catholic Emancipation for Ireland (albeit a complex support) and he who saw that Ireland was a disaster waiting for happen, a whole country that ran essentially on barter, with no viable monetary system for the people, for saving money, for investing, borrowing, all the necessary things that one must have to have a viable economy. He (reluctantly) saw the need to repeal the Corn Laws (basically protectionism). He wanted to reform the landlord system in Ireland, but he could not get any traction. Longford softens his personal life--his relationship with his wife Kitty, with his sons, with various women. From Longford's point of view even though he and Kitty were not obviously suited, there was affection along with frustration. My feeling is that their marriage demonstrates Wellington's need to stay connected to his distant youthful self. One of the poignant moments in book 1, is when he burns his violin and never plays music again. He goes and learns to be the best military man he can be to prove everyone wrong for having turned him down as Kitty's suitor. She is so deeply connected to who he became . . . . He did all right, overall, with his sons. He loved children and at various periods he was close to them, but he missed their infancies and young childhood as he was on the Peninsula then. At some point in the decade or so after Waterloo it seems that his interest in women shifted from a mix of the sexual and conversational to the confidante with some flirtation thrown in. He liked talking to and listening to what women had to say and always had one or two intelligent and thoughtful women in his life. He had crushes and was clearly susceptible to a certain type of beauty, but I suspect it was all rather proper, heavy flirtation, shall we say, by the time he was in his late fifties, and possibly earlier. He adored flirting and that is so easy to misinterpret. This latter half of his life is not as exciting is the first part, and for me, there was heavy going as I am not so well-versed in the political scene in England between 1830-1850 and so had to look things up constantly. Overall, Longford succeeds in portraying a man who did well in this afterlife, faithfully serving England's best interests and, succeeding in learning and changing his positions, (though he remained horribly snobby!) and finding enjoyment if friends and family life. I can't help loving the man. (Me and Charlotte Brontë and a milion other women!) as a person and being awed by his achievements in the public sphere.
Wellington belongs in the pantheon. *****

[Igenlode Wordsmith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read the first volume of this biography, "The Years of the Sword", several times; I'd never previously read this one, being rather more interested in the Peninsular War than in 19th-century politics. But Elizabeth Longford displays the same gift here for managing to cover very complex material (in this case, the ins and outs of Whigs and Tories, Ultras and Reformers) in a manner that creates a coherent narrative and holds the reader's attention. I'm not sure I could give an account of all the varied administrations that held office in Westminster during the Duke of Wellington's long lifetime, but when I was reading the book I felt that I was understanding it! Some of the material I recognised from The Last Journey of William Huskisson, since Huskisson features here along with his political circle, but of course from Wellington's perspective those events were very much a footnote (as was Huskisson's famous death beneath the wheels of Stephenson's Rocket, although Lady Longford suggests that it contributed to a lifelong prejudice against railways on the Duke's part).

I'm not sure I buy her implied assertion that all of Wellington's numerous involvements with pretty young women were platonic, given the tone of the letters she quotes to at least two of them! But she does conjure up a very vivid picture of him as a person: stubborn, hardworking, pragmatic, terse, and sometimes explosive. The fact that he was not given to flowery language means that his letters remain to modern eyes very readable: "My dear Colonel! I am sorry to learn you are unwell. I should be very happy to see you here; you will find a Warm House and great tranquillity".

Lady Longford has achieved an admirable job in organising a vast quantity of material covering Wellington's involvements across a wide variety of personal and professional fields, activities which inevitably overlapped chronologically and occur partly under separate headings, but which are pulled together here into a comprehensive account which never loses sight of its central figure as a human being experiencing events, rather than containing a mere list of political upheavals. We get to experience Wellington's prejudices and stubborn loyalties, as opposed to dry constitutional history; I've read historical novels that do a much worse job of 'info-dump' to establish their context and demonstrate their authors' research than this biography manages.

[Grim Tidings · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was difficult for me to decide on 4 or 5 stars for this review because, for all I have some critiques of the novel which prevents a perfect rating, this biography is one of the most engaging I have ever read. Longford’s writing style likely isn’t everybody’s cup of tea – bear in mind we are dealing with a book from the 70s here, which naturally uses more evocative language than is popular nowadays – but it paints an engaging narrative out of what might not be particularly engaging content otherwise.

That said, I am an avid hero-worshipper of Wellington and having read dozens of book on the man, this account does have interesting stories to tell. One thing I will say before anything further is that, for somebody new or even intermediate to this period, Longford’s history will likely prove illusive. She is covering quite a large period of history (1815 – 1852) in only 400 pages. The detail can be scant sometimes when describing the larger political picture before focusing on Wellington’s role specifically, or else the narrative can sometimes presume prior knowledge of the wider context.

For example, while I think the period of 1815 – 1834 was accounted for in adequate detail (though it would still be challenging for a beginner), following the Reform Act and Wellington’s final ‘premiership’ while interning for Peel, the period after was quite woolly. It was unclear at times who was even Prime Minister and there was little detail given on the reforms made to the Tory party in order to make it the Conservative party. For that reason I would say this does not excel at being a political history beyond the role Wellington had to play in politics at the given time.

Mrs Arbuthnot’s diaries play a huge role in the referencing of this novel, which is not uncommon for a book on Wellington. That said, maybe because of the time this book was written in, it did feel like following Arbuthnot’s tragic death in 1834, the narrative lost much of its consistency without her writing to guide it, hence my earlier comment.

Criticism aside, I can only compliment the style and narrative of this book. I can’t quite describe it if you have never read a historical book of this nature, but Longford just manages to thread a story out of everything she touches. She focuses on the key points in Wellington’s career, the salacious gossip, the political scandal, and brings it to life. She also diverts from the political goings-on throughout the novel to focus on Wellington’s personal life, an area that can sometimes be omitted given how monumentally ‘busy’ this period of history is. Her details on Wellington’s problematic sons, his distant family drama, and Kitty and the Duke’s relationship is a great insight and one that I had not read in such depth before.

Overall, I am confident any fans of Wellington will enjoy this lively, digestible book. Longford is an unabashed devotee of Wellington (and doesn’t, with any great pleasure, remark on his faults without explanations for them) and her passion for her subject seeps through the pages. This book doesn’t, as I mentioned previously, serve as a great introduction to the period itself and for that purpose I would likely prescribe a biography along the lines of those by Rory Muir or Christopher Hibbert. But for what it is, this biography fits the bill and slides alongside other such works as another great retelling of the great man’s life.

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As an aside, Longford includes some brilliant anecdotes and quotes from the great Duke in this book. I include some below to give a taste of the narrative:

'If I could avoid any sacrifice whatever, even one month of civil war war in the country to which I was attached, I would sacrifice my life in order to do it' - Wellington

In his old age he brushed his own clothes and wished he were 'strong enough' to clean his own boots. This, despite the protocol against such practices. A group of visiting diplomats were said to have protested... when they caught sight of him polishing away under their windows..
'In England no Gentleman ever cleans his own boots.'
'Indeed? Whose boots do they clean then?'

A tearful boy who had to leave his pet toad behind when sent away to school received regular notes from Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington to say the toad was well

[Marina · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a well-researched book (thanks to the author's access - due to her social position and relatives - to numerous archives, generally unavailable to a regular researcher). E.L. is also in awe of her famous relative and takes his side in every situation. To her, Wellington can do no wrong. Still, as celebrity biographies go, this one is decent. A solid 3 out of 5.

[Rob Markley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't particularly like Longford's style of writing. For sometime this was probably the definitive work (at least there was an index this time unlike volume one of my edition which lacks any index - glaring error for an important work), despite its weaknesses, but since surpassed by Rory Muir

[Davy Bennett]

Looks decent but I am keeping the other.
I only have a mild interest, one should do it.