13. Wellington v Windsor (7)
But the personality of the Sovereign under whom the first two years of his ministry were spent was one of his greatest difficulties. There can seldom have been two men whose mentalities were more offensive to each other than George IV and Wellington. The King was selfish, thriftless, idle, ostentatious, pleasure-loving, capable of any trick or evasion; yet extremely clever withal, an actor of talent, full of amusing conversation, capable when he chose of managing a negotiation as well as the most unscrupulous diplomatist, a fascinating host, if a most unreliable friend. He spent his life in finding plausible excuses for shirking unpleasant duties, but discharged pleasant ones with brilliant success and undeniable tact.
The Duke was unostentatious, even ascetic; he had a perfect genius for bleak discomfort in the conduct of his private life. He was obsessed, even beyond the bounds of wisdom, by the desire to carry out every formal duty in the most complete fashion. The amount of prolix and often unnecessary private letters which he wrote causes wonder; he got up every morning at five o’clock to deal with them. The King was seldom dressed by noon, but when he did dress it was a triumph. Wellington hated full-dress uniform—he fought the whole Peninsular War in a grey frock-coat and a plumeless cocked hat, and only brought out his decorations—he had an inconvenient bushel of them—for very great occasions.
The King was a gourmet: the Duke did not care what he ate. In 1814 he once dined at Paris with the Arch-Chancellor Cambacérès, the greatest epicure of France. Cambacérès watched the Duke working through his dinner with obvious want of appreciation of its excellence. At last he called his attention to a dish on which special talent had been employed—was it not attractive? “Oh yes,” replied Wellington, “quite good—but I never notice what I eat.” “Mon Dieu,” exclaimed the ex-Chancellor, “and you come here to dine with me!” In his old age the Duke was so neglectful of his meals that he sometimes fell in a fainting fit from having forgotten how long it was since he last tasted food.
When he got into official converse with his Sovereign, the difficulty was to keep King George to the point—if the point was one on which he did not want to be pressed. He was a lively conversationalist, and adroit at getting away from distasteful topics. Wellington, as he said himself, had “no small talk”, and had to be harking back to the question of the moment in spite of the discursiveness of a master whose frivolity was a terrible trial to him. It is on record that on his first appearance as prime minister the King did everything that could revolt his stiff and formal servant. George was found in bed, in a dirty silk dressing-gown and a turban night-cap, but in high good humour. “Arthur,” he chuckled, “the late Cabinet is defunct”, and then proceeded to give a ludicrous dramatic rendering of the behaviour of the various members of the Goderich administration, at their final interview with him to give up their seals of office, mimicking the peculiarities of each with much accuracy and animation. Wellington did not like mumming, and he did not like dirty dressing-gowns. I do not think that he liked being called “Arthur”, and he regarded this moment as the most serious in his life, when he was called to an arduous situation, and what he considered a very disagreeable duty. His feelings may be easily imagined.
Loyalty to the Crown turned out to be a very odd business, when the Crown was worn by George IV. It often consisted in what His Majesty called “bullying”, i.e. in compelling him by steady and constant pressure to do things which he did not like. Considering the thorough knowledge of the King’s mentality which he possessed, the Duke was particularly irritated when his master took up the line of resistance called “conscientious objection”. This was employed all through the time of the Catholic Relief Bill. The King kept impressing on the Duke that he was afraid that his coronation oath and his religious scruples forbade him to give his Royal assent to the Act. This method had been tried by George III on William Pitt with complete success: every one did know that the elder King possessed a conscience, and a very obstinate one.
But the exhibition of an active Protestant conscience by George IV was not a convincing move. “I make it a rule”, said Wellington, “never to interrupt him, and when he turns the conversation and tries to get rid of the subject, I let him talk himself out, and then quietly put before him again the matter in question, so that he cannot escape from it!”
On February 1, 1829, George IV signed the draft of the King’s Speech which committed him to Catholic Relief: on March 3rd he suddenly revived his scruples and protested that he had been misled and deceived. The ministers offered to resign—nay, did so, after a very distressing and emotional interview. The Cabinet thought that all was over: but Wellington had made out that His Majesty was only bluffing. “Don’t be afraid”, he said; “before to-morrow morning, depend upon it, I shall hear from the King again.” And so it was, the bluff having been called. Before he got to bed that night Wellington received a five-line note from Windsor. “God knows what pain it costs me to write these words: under the circumstances you have my consent to proceed with the measure.” And this was what the Duke called serving the Crown.
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