rofound regard for truth and loyalty which led
him to admire and appreciate the straightforwardness of Miss Pakenham's
conduct. Lady Shelley exultingly exclaims, "Well might she be proud and
happy, and glory in such a husband." That the Duchess was proud of her
husband is certain. Whether she was altogether happy is more doubtful.

One of the stock anecdotes about the Duke of Wellington is that when on
one occasion some one asked him whether he was surprised at Waterloo, he
replied, "No. I was not surprised then, but I am now." We are indebted
to Lady Shelley for letting us know what the Duke really thought on this
much-debated question. In a letter written to her on March 22, 1820, he
stated, with his usual downright common sense, all that there is to be
said on this subject. "Supposing I _was_ surprised; I won the battle;
and what could you have had more, even if I had not been surprised?"

It is known on the authority of his niece, Lady Burghersh, that the Duke
"never read poetry," but his "real love of music," to which Lady Shelley
alludes, will perhaps come as a surprise to many. Mr. Fortescue,
however,[86] has told us that in his youth the Duke learnt to play the
violin, and that he only abandoned it, when he was about thirty years
old, "because he judged it unseemly or perhaps ill-sounding for a
General to be a fiddler." The Duke is not the only great soldier who has
been a musical performer. Marshal St. Cyr used to play the violin "in
the quiet moments of a campaign," and Sir Hope Grant was a very fair
performer on the violoncello.

It was characteristic of the Duke to keep the fact of his being about to
fight a duel with Lord Winchelsea carefully concealed from all his
friends. When it was over, he walked into Lady Shelley's room while she
was at breakfast and said, "Well, what do you think of a gentleman who
has been fighting a duel?"

It appears that during the last years of his life the Duke's great
companion-in-arms, Bluecher, was subject to some strange hallucinations.
The following affords a fitting counterpart to those "fears of the
brave" which Pope attributed to the dying Marlborough. On March 17,
1819, Lady Shelley made the following entry in her diary:

We laughed at poor Bluecher's strange hallucination, which, though
ludicrous, is very sad. He fancies himself with child by a
Frenchman; and deplores that such an event should have happened to
him in his old age! He does not so