In a book inscribed as “A Slight Souvenir of the Season 1845-6” we find a delightful little glimpse of “the hero of a hundred fights” as a country gentlemen. “What can be a finer sight than to see the Duke of Wellington enter the hunting field?” the author asks. “Not one of those gorgeous spectacles, it is true, such as a coronation, a review, the Lord Mayor’s Show, or a procession to the Houses of Parliament--not one of those pompous Continental exhibitions called a _chasse_, where armed menials keep back the crowd, and brass bands proclaim alike the find and finish; but what can be a finer sight--a sight more genial to the mind of a Briton--than the mighty Wellington entering the hunting field with a single attendant, making no more fuss than a country squire? Yet many have seen the sight, and many, we trust, may yet see it. The Duke takes the country sport like a country gentleman--no man less the great man than this greatest of all men; affable to all, his presence adds joy to the scene. The Duke is a true sportsman, and has long been a supporter of the Vine and Sir John Cope’s hounds. He kept hounds himself during the Peninsular War, and divers good stories are related of them and their huntsman (Tom Crane), whose enthusiasm used sometimes to carry him in the enemy’s country, a fact that he used to be reminded of by a few bullets whizzing about his ears.”
Wellington was now the trusted friend of Queen Victoria, who ever held him in the highest esteem. He was one of the first persons, perhaps actually the first,[105] outside the Royal family and the medical attendants to see the baby who afterwards became Edward VII. According to one account he was met outside Buckingham Palace by Lord Hill, who was informed “All over--fine boy, very fine boy, almost as red as you Hill.”
Two days after the first anniversary of the birthday of Edward Albert, Prince of Wales, the Queen and the Prince Consort, accompanied by the Royal children, journeyed to Walmer Castle to pay the Duke a visit. An even greater honour was reserved for the veteran warrior, for on the birth of her Majesty’s third son on the 1st May 1850, it got noised abroad that the infant was to be called Arthur, “in compliment to the Hero of Waterloo.” The present Duke of Connaught is thus a living link with Wellington. “I must not omit to mention,” the Queen writes exactly a year later, “an interesting episode of this day, viz., the visit of the good old Duke on this his eighty-second birthday, to his little godson, our dear little boy. He came to us both at five, and gave him a golden cup and some toys, which he had himself chosen, and Arthur gave him a nosegay.”