Early Life and Education
Wellington was born in Ireland as "The Honourable Arthur Wesley", the fourth son—third of five surviving sons—to Garret Wesley, 1st Earl of Mornington, and Anne, the eldest daughter of Arthur Hill-Trevor, 1st Viscount Dungannon. He was most likely born at their townhouse, 24 Upper Merrion Street, Dublin, now the "Merrion Hotel". His biographers mostly follow the contemporary newspaper evidence in saying he was born 1 May 1769, the day he was baptised. His mother, Anne, Countess of Mornington, recalled in 1815 that he had been born at 6 Merrion Street, Dublin. Other places which have been put forward as the location of his birth include Mornington House (the house which used to be next door) - as his father had asserted, the Dublin packet boat and the family estate of Athy (which perished in the fires of 1916) - as the Duke apparently put on his 1851 census return.
He spent most of his childhood at his family's two homes, the first a large house in Dublin and the second, Dangan Castle, 3.1 miles (5 km) north of Summerhill on the Trim road in County Meath, part of the Province of Leinster. In 1781 Arthur's father died and his eldest brother Richard inherited his father's earldom.
He went to the diocesan school in Trim when at Dangan, Mr. Whyte's Academy when in Dublin, and at Brown's School in Chelsea when in London. He then enrolled at Eton, where he studied from 1781 to 1784. His loneliness there caused him to hate it, and makes it highly unlikely that he actually said, "The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton". Moreover, Eton had no playing fields at the time. In 1785, a lack of success at Eton, combined with a shortage of family funds due to his father's death, forced the young Wellesley and his mother to move to Brussels. Until his early twenties, Arthur continued to show little sign of distinction and his mother grew increasingly concerned at his idleness, stating, "I don't know what I shall do with my awkward son Arthur".
A year later, Arthur enrolled in the French Royal Academy of Equitation in Angers, where he progressed significantly, becoming a good horseman and learning French, which was later to prove very useful. Upon returning to England in late 1786, he astonished his mother with his improvement.
Read more about this topic: Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke Of Wellington
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.”
—Jacques Attali (b. 1943)
“Major [William] McKinley visited me. He is on a stumping tour.... I criticized the bloody-shirt course of the canvass. It seems to me to be bad “politics,” and of no use.... It is a stale issue. An increasing number of people are interested in good relations with the South.... Two ways are open to succeed in the South: 1. A division of the white voters. 2. Education of the ignorant. Bloody-shirt utterances prevent division.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)