Attributed to William Salter, 1804–1875 Portrait of Arthur Wellesley (1769–1852), 1st Duke of Wellington

Attributed to William Salter, 1804–1875

Portrait of Arthur Wellesley (1769–1852), 1st Duke of Wellington

2nd June 1820

oil on canvas

46 x 35 cm. (11.1/4 x 13.3/4 in.)

Arthur, first duke of Wellington (1769–1852), army officer and prime minister, was the third surviving son ofGarret Wesley, first earl of Mornington (1735–1781), and his wife, Anne (1742–1831), eldest daughter of Arthur Hill, first Viscount Dungannon. The family name was altered from Wesley to the older form Wellesley by Richard Wellesley, second earl, who used this spelling from 1789. Arthur did not sign himself Wellesley until May 1798. There is disagreement over the date and place of his birth, but 1 May 1769 and 6 Merrion Street (later 24 Upper Merrion Street), Dublin, have been accepted by modern biographers. The register of St Peter's Church, Dublin, records his christening under the date 30 April 1769. This is reconcilable with the alternative birth date of 29 April preferred by some earlier authorities, including the Dictionary of National Biography, but it would imply a degree of haste in the ceremony unusual except in cases of imminent danger, for which there is no evidence. Both parents subsequently attested to the date 1 May and this was the day kept as his birthday by Arthur himself.

Arthur Wesley lost his father at the age of twelve and was thought by his imperious mother to be foolish and dull in comparison with his elder brothers, Richard Wellesley, second earl of Mornington, and William Wellesley-Pole, later Baron Maryborough and third earl of Mornington. His only talents seemed to be for playing the violin (which may have come from his father, who was an accomplished amateur musician) and arithmetical calculation. But these minor gifts were obscured by his physical indolence and social awkwardness: signs perhaps of an unhappy and lonely childhood. His education was disjointed and his record undistinguished. As a small boy he attended the diocesan school at Trim, co. Meath, near the family seat at Dangan. He was then taken by his parents to London, where he became a pupil at Brown's Seminary, Chelsea. In 1781 he went to Eton College with his younger brother Gerald, who soon surpassed him scholastically. The little evidence that survives suggests that he was an unsociable and occasionally aggressive schoolboy who made little effort to learn. As a result he was removed from the college in the summer of 1784 to make way for the more promising fourth son, Henry Wellesley (later Baron Cowley). When his mother moved to the cheaper society of Brussels in 1785 he accompanied her and received lessons in French from their landlord, a lawyer (avocat), Jacobus Foubert (not apparently Goubert as usually stated). On Lady Mornington's departure to England she dispatched him to the Academy of Equitation at Angers in preparation for the military career which seemed the only possible employment for such an unpromising boy.

The academy, where Arthur arrived in January 1786, was less a military college than an international finishing school for young men, which had been run for generations by the Pignerolle family; nearly a third of the intake that year came from the British Isles. In addition to fencing, horsemanship, and the science of fortification (none of which seems to have left much mark on him), there were lessons in mathematics, grammar, and dancing. Out of school, besides drinking, gambling, and youthful rowdiness, there were occasional invitations from the local nobility. At the end of the year, when Arthur reappeared in London, he had visibly improved in manners and social deportment, with a command of fluent if old-fashioned French.

Lord Mornington, after the manner of the Ascendancy aristocracy, took seriously the duty of providing for the family of which he had become the youthful head. In March 1787 a commission was obtained for Arth