Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 6, December 1852Various
General
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 6, December 1852
Various
Literature -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals
gratified, doubtless, by the homage that awaited him everywhere.
On the 18th of June, he gave yearly, at Apsley House, a grand
entertainment to all those officers who had been at Waterloo. People
said he should have discontinued it--seeing it tended to keep up
ill-feeling between England and France. But the feelings of the French
were not worth respecting. They have as much levity and slavishness as
their ancestry in the time of Louis Quatorze; a sad thing to say. The
duke would interest himself in every thing considered important to
society; and from his high character and his supposed influence with the
ruling powers, at all times, he had crowds of volunteer correspondents
in his time, asking all sorts of questions, and begging all sorts of
interferences and favors. The first general sensation created by the
Irish starvations at Skibbereen, in 1847, was produced by a letter
addressed to the duke, and printed in the London _Times_. He almost
invariably sent an autograph answer to his correspondents, beginning:
“F. M. the Duke of Wellington presents, etc.” His replies were succinct
and _ad rem_; some very trenchant, and some, which we have seen, very
courteous.
Wellington was a man of cold thought and calculation. There was very
little generous impulse or fine feeling in his character. Any thing like
sentimental talk of glory he would smile at as stuff and nonsense. He
knew that all the British glories of the Peninsula were won by the
greatest scamps and blackguards in the three kingdoms, who composed the
strength of the regiments. He was simple and matter-of-fact; his
thoughts were subdued and hardened by the drilling of a lifetime. His
style of writing was as disciplined and calm as his mind. He could never
have written any of those bulletins with which Napoleon used to fire the
blood of his soldiers, and in which he could show himself as impassioned
as Mirabeau, as condensed as Tacitus. It is said Wellington cried out:
“Up, guards, and at them!” when Ney had climbed the ridge at Waterloo.
But on being asked about it, by a painter to whom he sat for his
portrait, the duke smiled, and said he did not remember saying any such
thing. He did not understand any melo-dramatic un-British balderdash! He
loved the simple vernacular, and even slang of old England. At
Salamanca, he turned to General Leith, and pointing to a height, said,
“Push on, and drive them to the devil!” O Sallust, Tacitus, Polybius,
how should you have got over the battle-speeches of such a man! After
the battle of Salamanca, he said: “Marmont has forced me to lick him.”
At Waterloo, with his watch in his hand, and his keen, cold glance bent
through the rolling smoke, in the direction of Warre, he said: “This is
hard pounding, gentlemen; we must only see who will pound the longest!”
using, in that sublime and trying moment, the language of a London prize
ring! Thus, cool and courageous as a steel blade, he never exhibited any
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