A Visit to Russia, 1839
George Charles Henry Victor Paget, the 7th Marquis of Anglesey, shares the stories behind the trip that his ancestor, the 1st Marquess of Anglesey, paid to the Court of Russia with his sons during the summer of 1839.
It was George IV, according to Mrs. Arbuthnot, who once remarked that, whereas in former times the human race was said to be divisible into “men, women and Herveys,” nowadays mankind appeared to consist of “men, women and Pagets.” A gifted, unruly family, they seemed to make their own laws; and none was more brilliant, more erratic than Henry William Paget, first Marquis of Anglesey, a cavalry commander whose covering actions during the retreat to Corunna and whose headlong charges at Waterloo had placed him on the same level as Prince Rupert and Prince Eugene.
His military gifts brought him early promotion. But in 1809, when he was married and the father of six children, he became enamoured of and eloped with the Duke of Wellington’s sister-in-law—an escapade that cost him £24,000 damages and is said to have involved him in a duel with his mistresss brother. Between Anglesey and Wellington it produced a coldness that lasted until they were both old men and was responsible for their famous exchange upon the field of Waterloo. To Anglesey’s startled “By God, Sir, Vve lost my leg!” Wellington merely replied, “By God, Sir, so you have!”
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