This is the story of a guy who fits the classic Regency hero mold, and who could have had a classic Regency romance — if only real life worked like romance novels. But it doesn’t. In real life, even the smartest, best-intentioned people make stupid, life-altering mistakes. And in real life, some promises are better broken.

I can’t recall when I first met Arthur Wellesley, but it was long before I read my first Regency. I’ve been into British history since I was in junior high, and I’ve always been fascinated with the Napoleonic wars in general, the Peninsular War in particular, and Wellington particularly in particular. Diva loves telling people her mommy has a crush on a dead guy.

He’s been portrayed on TV in the exceptional Sharpe’s series, as well as in countless movies, but few depict him in his younger days, when he cut a dashing figure. One of his nicknames was “The Beau,” because he was so fastidious in his dress and grooming.

He’s a constant, if often unseen, presence in Regency romances. Sometimes he gets speaking roles. According to Georgette Heyer, every line spoken by Wellington in An Infamous Army was uttered by him in real life. He’s certainly one of the more quotable figures of British history.

You’ve heard the phrase “Publish and be damned”? That was Wellington. The famed courtesan Harriette Wilson, writing her memoir in order to pay off her debts, offered to leave his name out of it in return for a hefty payment. But a whore’s blackmail threats couldn’t scare the famously unflappable victor of Waterloo.

That’s not my favorite Wellington quote vis à vis Harriette, though.

When he first received permission to call on her – she charged potential “protectors” just for an initial interview – she was not impressed with his skill at small talk. That’s not surprising, given that he had none. Wellington (he was merely Sir Arthur at this point) was your typically laconic military man, not inclined to flattery or witty repartee. Harriette was soon exasperated. When she complained that she thought he’d come there to make himself agreeable to her, and that he wasn’t doing a very good job, he replied, “What, child! Do you think that I have nothing better to do than to make speeches to please ladies?” (Hibbert, 47 – see below.) Any soldier who served under him would’ve recognized the impatient bluntness; he was there to do something, not to stand around talking about it.

But Harriette’s not always the most trustworthy of sources. Here’s a description of Col. the Hon. Arthur Wellesley, of His Majesty’s 33^rd Regt. of Foot, at about the age of 30:

“He was not considered to be conventionally handsome; but he was alert and vital, attentive and eager; his body was lithe and strong, and the lingering gaze of those ‘clear blue eyes’ was pleasantly unsettling.”

That passage wouldn’t be out of place in one of the better Regencies. It’s actually from a biography by the eminent, and eminently readable, historian Christopher Hibbert (Wellington: A Personal History, HarperCollins, 1997). Recently, as I was reading more about Wellington the man, as opposed to Wellington the military leader, something kept nagging at me. I had a persistent feeling that I’d met this guy before.

It wasn’t until I started reading Elizabeth Longford’s Wellington: The Years of the Sword (Harper & Row, 1969) that it finally hit me: he’s a classic Regency hero. If you’ve read more than a few samples of the genre, you’ve met his type.

Consider:

He had an unhappy childhood. Arthur was the fifth of eight surviving children of a titled, but impoverished, Irish Ascendancy family. A loner, he was eclipsed by his eldest brother, Richard, the family’s golden boy. Neither of his parents, nor his teachers, nor other adults who knew him, saw much potential in the somber young boy. His cold, remote mother observed that her “‘ugly boy Arthur’ was ‘food for powder’ [i.e., cannon fodder] and nothing more.’” (Hibbert, 6.)

As a youth he had a dreamy, artistic nature, but he turned himself into a man of action whom other men would follow to the death.  Arthur had a gift for the violin, but he put it aside when he joined the military. Elizabeth Longford says he burned it:

Now he must take negative action, destroy everything that stood in the way of his military vocation. First, the card-playing in the Dublin clubs. Next, the violin.

He burnt it in the summer of 1793 with his own hands: burnt the hours strolling beside the little waves at Coolure, the bouquet of wine at Angers, the dozing in Brussels, the mooning by the Thames at Eton and the lingering on the ancient bridge over the Boyne at Trim; burnt all the dreams and poetry going back to his childhood when he had listened enraptured to his father’s playing.

[Longford, Wellington: The Years of the Sword, 34].

Now that, my friends, is the stuff of romance. (If Lady Longford says he burned it, I believe her. But Wellington would’ve scoffed — witheringly — at the sentimentality of the account.) Plenty of military men pursued musical hobbies — what would make a young man burn the instrument he’d so enjoyed, and so excelled at, all his life?

Love, of course.

He suffered an early broken heart. While in his 20s, newly commissioned in the Army and living in Dublin, Arthur courted Catherine “Kitty” Pakenham, the pretty and vivacious daughter of Baron Longford. (Elizabeth, Lady Longford, the historian quote above, married a descendant of one of Kitty’s brothers). Kitty’s family was more prosperous and more prominent than Arthur’s. When, in 1792, he applied to Kitty’s older brother for her hand in marriage, he was refused. His prospects at that time were uncertain, and Tom Pakenham thought his younger sister could do much better.  It must have been a serious blow to Arthur’s pride as well as his heart.

He told Kitty that his feelings would not change and that, once his prospects had improved, he would propose again. A man like him would’ve considered this a binding promise – but they might both have led happier lives had Arthur not been a man of honor.

More on that in a minute.

He had a dry wit and a careless insouciance. When the ship in which he sailed to Portugal encountered a furious gale off the Isle of Wight, his aide-de-camp ran into General Wellesley’s cabin to tell him they were about to sink. “‘In that case,’ said the General, ‘I shall not take off my boots.’” (Hibbert, 81).

And in a letter to his brother Henry, he wrote, “I believe I forgot to tell you…I was made a Duke.”

At least one historian thinks Wellington was the source of “the myth of British imperturbability, the famous stiff upper lip that would come to be identified as the national characteristic of Britain as the century wore on.” (Dancing Into Battle: A Social History of the Battle of Waterloo, Nick Foulkes, Phoenix, 2006, p. 117-119).

He was a man’s man. Despite his fastidious grooming, he wasn’t a dandy and he didn’t care for the soft luxuries of life. He was perfectly content with plain food and cheap wine. He slept in a narrow bed all his life, even as a wealthy old man at Walmer Castle. When asked about it, he would shrug and say “When it’s time to turn over, it’s time to turn out.”

He was fiercely self-disciplined, and demanded discipline of his men.

He was far more humane in his treatment of the people he governed or conquered than many leaders of his time. Although he didn’t think very highly of the native inhabitants of India (he was humane, but not particularly enlightened), he wouldn’t stand for them being abused, physically or financially, by men under his command. Similarly, even though he was a staunch Anglican, he insisted his soldiers respect the religious beliefs of the devout Catholic inhabitants of Spain and Portugal, and he executed them for looting and pillaging. (The British army didn’t live off the land, commandeering food and livestock, as the French did, which was another reason the Spanish and Portuguese people rallied to the British side against Napoleon).

And a ladies’ man. Like any decent Regency hero, he was a man of strong sexual appetites. Arthur dug the ladies, and the ladies dug him. “‘He had a ‘very susceptible heart,’ a fellow officer thought, ‘particularly towards, I am sorry to say, married ladies’.” (Hibbert, 38).

Okay — this is where Arthur’s character departs from the Regency hero’s. A Regency hero might dally with married women while he’s single, but once he weds his true love, he’s faithful for life. But Arthur didn‘t wed his true love, and he wasn’t faithful for life, and his reputation as a swordsman stayed with him . Take a look at a cartoon by Isaac Cruikshank. It was drawn in 1819, when the Duke had become Master General of the Ordnance:

He’s straddling a cannon, which is pointed at three ladies. One of them is saying “Bless us! What a spanker! – I hope he won’t fire it at me – I could never support such a thing!” (In case you didn’t already know it, Regency society was a hell of a lot looser than the later Victorian era.)

He also had the Regency rake’s disregard for tender romantic feelings. He usually gave his officers just two days’ leave to visit sweethearts, in the firm belief that no man would want to spend more than two days in bed with the same women.

In sum, Arthur Wellesley was as charismatic, intelligent, honorable (let’s ignore the adultery thing, okay? thanks), witty, randy and manly as any Regency hero.

And when he left India in 1805, he went back to Ireland to marry Kitty Pakenham, the girl he’d loved and lost thirteen years earlier.

Now, if this were a Regency romance, that would make the perfect ending. It might go something like:

Arthur sails into Dublin, jumping from the ship onto the quay before the sailors have had a chance to tie up. He races to Kitty’s mother’s house, barges past the butler before the poor man has had a chance to announce him, and runs from room to room calling for Kitty, sending all the women of the household into a tizzy, until a shocked and furious Lady Longford emerges from the library.

“General Wellesley! Pray recollect yourself, sir. I’ll not have you disrupting my home in such a manner! And without so much as a calling card first!”

But Arthur will not be deterred. He pays no attention to the outraged mama. Instead, he shouts, “Kitty! Kitty, I’ve come for you, just as I said I would! I never gave up, Kitty, and now I am a General, with 40,000 pounds, and I am asked to give advice to Whitehall and Horse Guards! Ha! Let Tom Pakenham question my prospects now, by God!”

And Kitty, shouting and crying with joy, flies down the staircase into his arms….

But this wasn’t a Regency. This was real life, and in real life Arthur just wrote to a mutual acquaintance and mentioned that, although thirteen years had passed, he hadn‘t changed his mind about marrying Kitty. The message was relayed to Kitty. After some agonizing (I did mention that thirteen years had passed, right?), she broke off her engagement to Galbraith Lowry Cole, the Earl of Enniskillen’s younger brother, who apparently loved her very much.

Okay, that could still work. If this were a Regency, then, Arthur would have called on her properly, and after she’d indicated her approval of his suit, they would have enjoyed a romantic, chaperoned (though not necessarily, since she was thirty-two at this point) reunion. Later, Arthur would’ve sat down with Tom Pakenham to work out details of the marriage contract.

But in real life, he didn’t lay eyes on Kitty again until the very day of their wedding. And by then, it was too late.

See, in the thirteen years since he’d last seen Kitty, Arthur hadn’t written to her – not even once. And there’s no indication, in his letters or the letters and reminiscences of people who knew him, that he’d missed her, pined for her, or even thought about her much. Hibbert says Arthur “seemed almost to have forgotten her; certainly he never once wrote to her from India; none of the shoes he bought were destined for her feet, nor jewels for her throat, nor shawls for her shoulders.” (Hibbert, 54).

(Historians who write well – and by well I mean readably, lyrically – are few and far between. I like reading Hibbert even when I’m not that into his subject.)

Kitty had apparently thought of Arthur, though.

“‘I am happy to see you at my court, so bright an example of constancy,” [Queen Charlotte] said to her… ‘If anybody in this world deserves to be happy, you do. But did you really never write one letter to Sir Arthur Wellesley during his long absence?’

‘No, never, madam.’

‘And did you never think of him?’

‘Yes, madam, very often.’

(Hibbert, 55)

Was it love, for some mysterious reason unexpressed for thirteen years, or mere sense of duty, that made Arthur marry Kitty? You have to assume it was the latter, otherwise he would have, I don’t know, dropped her a line now and again, maybe arranged to see her when he first returned from India — or at least before the day of the wedding. Instead, he seems to have kept his promise only because he felt he had to, not because he wanted to.

But it was a mistake.

Someone had tried to tell him Kitty had changed. She wasn’t the same woman — girl, really — he’d known in 1792. No matter, Arthur replied – it was her mind he cared for, and that hadn’t changed.

That’s rather romantic, isn’t it? He’d loved her for her mind, apparently — her character, her personality — and he wasn’t worried about what she might look like. But Kitty had changed utterly, inside as well as out — and so had Arthur, of course. If they’d only spent a few days in each other’s company before getting married, one or both of them might have realized it wouldn’t work.

Once plump and pretty (and remember, plump wasn’t a bad thing in the 19^th century), vivacious and outgoing, she was now, at thirty-two, thin and sickly looking. She’d lost her old élan and self-confidence. After she’d broken off her engagement in order to accept Arthur’s proposal – such as it was — she started to worry. To read of her doubts and fears, expressed in a letter to her friend Maria Edgeworth, is heartbreaking.

She feared Arthur had renewed his proposal strictly from a sense of duty and that he wouldn’t be happy with her when they finally met again. (So why didn’t she insist they meet before she accepted his proposal?)

She would be “ ‘most truly wretched,’…if she had cause to believe that Sir Arthur was repeating his offer in fulfillment of an undertaking he had made so long ago. The letter from him which she had been shown did not contain ‘one word expressive of a wish that the proposition should be accepted’. There was no indication that ‘Yes would gratify or that No would disappoint’. Besides, she added, ‘I am very much changed and you know it within these last three years, so much that I doubt whether it would now be my power to contribute (to) the comfort or happiness of any body who has not been in the habit of loving me for years like my Brother or you or my Mother.’ (Hibbert, 56).

I think that’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever read. What makes it worse is that all her fears were realized.

When Arthur saw her again for the first time – on their wedding day – he’s reported to have whispered to his brother, ‘She has grown ugly by Jove.’

It didn’t get any better after that. When they returned from their honeymoon, he rode on top of the carriage with the driver, instead of inside with with his new bride.

Kitty was awkward, self-conscious and insecure. She was also terribly near sighted, and had to hold things very close to her face to see them, which only made her more self-conscious.

She didn’t share Arthur’s interest in politics or the wider world. (And no wonder: well-born women were raised to be pretty, compliant and ignorant. If they showed any interest in intellectual pursuits, they were derided as bluestockings.) She worshipped him. He found her dull. He made her nervous, which only annoyed him more.

“Fifteen years later….he confessed that he had been a ‘damned fool’ to have married ‘such a person’…he found he might as well talk to a child..she made his house so dull that nobody [would] go to it…& that it drove him to seek abroad that comfort & happiness that was denied to him at home…At his home he had no creature to speak to, for that discussing political or important subjects with the Duchess was like talking Hebrew to her.” (Hibbert, 63).

What’s worse, she knew it. She loved him, and she knew he didn’t love her.

“…It has pleased God to deny me one blessing: on that one I had fixed all my hopes of happiness…Perhaps in time God will pity the agony I suffer…Oh Merciful Father, forgive and pity a very weak and suffering Being…My fault is great, but my punishment is most severe…From the time the Children go to bed, I find my mind torn with the most painful recollections.’ (Hibbert, p. 155)

He was never home. He spent six years in the Peninsula, and in all that time he never took leave. Six solid years, not one visit home. He didn’t write her very often, either, and when he did the letters were perfunctory. She was embarrassed that she knew no more about her husband’s activities than did anyone who read the papers.

It’s pretty well accepted that he wasn’t faithful to her. In the months leading up to Waterloo, Wellington was in Brussels with the large British expatriate community, and he was rumored to be spending a lot of private time with several young women — some married, some not.

Let’s face it – as a husband, Wellington was an asshole.

That’s the thing about an alpha male, though – he usually has a streak of asshole. Dominant men, men of heroic leadership abilities, frequently lack a sensitivity gene. And in early 19^th century Britain, marital fidelity simply wasn’t expected of aristocratic men, especially not ones as powerful and popular as the Duke of Wellington.

I’d like to report that Kitty took lovers herself, but there’s nothing to suggest she did. She stayed at home, taking care of children, venturing into society whenever she absolutely had to.

As a romance writer, there are so many ways I’d like to rewrite that story. Like – they met a few times before the wedding, and decided it wouldn’t work. But they were already engaged, and breaking an engagement was a scandal. So he agreed to do the honorable thing, and let her break it off, and let everyone assume he’d done something shameful. He was willing to sacrifice his reputation for a bit, so that hers would not be ruined.

Or — if this were really a Regency romance — Kitty woke up one day furious and determined to win her husband’s love. She’d show him she wasn’t the shy, scared, awkward thing he thought he knew — she’d rediscover the girl she had been so long ago. She’d learn about politics, and she’d redo her wardrobe, and she’d rent a town home in London for the Season and start attending parties, flirting shamelessly with any gentlemen who looked her way, and when he heard of her antics he’d rush to London…can you imagine what Loretta Chase could do with that story?

It didn’t happen, of course. Kitty stayed at home with the children, venturing into Society only when she had to.

She died twenty-one years before him; at the end, he’d come to recognize, and appreciate, what a wonderful mother she was. Kitty had been wrong, two decades earlier, when she’d doubted she could contribute to the happiness of anyone who hadn‘t already loved her for years. She was an excellent mother – careful and attentive and far more involved than most women of her class at that time. In addition to their two sons, she raised Arthur’s godson and looked after several of his nephew’s children.

At the end, Arthur

“…sat beside her with unaccustomed patience. It was as though he was trying to make amends for the irritation that he had so often displayed in her presence, for the impression he had given to the world — as Greville said in the single reference he made to her in his voluminous memoirs — that he found her ‘intolerable.’

He knew she had always loved him with a kind of fearful awe, and his conscience was struck by her dreadful pallor now, the pathetic thinness of her hands as she stretched out towards his sleeve. Once she tentatively felt inside his sleeve to discover whether or not he was wearing an armlet she had given him in the early years of their marriage. ‘She found it, as she would have found it any time these twenty years, had she cared to look for it,’ the Duke said later. It was strange, he thought, that two people could live together for so long and ‘only understand one another at the end.’

(Hibbert, 298)

Well. Not exactly the romantic HEA, was it? I hope I haven’t depressed you, and I hope you don’t hate him now. He was a great man, and great men often have great flaws. (Just ask Jackie Kennedy, or Sally Hemmings, or Mileva Einstein, or Elsa Einstein, or any woman Ben Franklin ever slept with…)

Tell you what. Next time I’ll give you a real life Regency romance between two very attractive aristocrats. It has a happy ending – once you get through the adultery, and divorce, and paternity scandal, threats of suicide and murder…it’s the kind of story Vanity Fair would love to cover, and the Duke of Wellington is involved (thought not as a participant….)