Sir Aubrey de la Pole Blessington

Sir Aubrey de la Pole Blessington is both a decorated imperial soldier and a husband whose conduct leaves his wife trapped in an unhappy marriage. The contrast between his celebrated public image and her private account is central to his character: the same culture that praises his violence and honours his military service also gives him power over a woman whose suffering is mistaken for her own fault.

Identity and Public Reputation

Blessington's career begins under a cloud. At Sandhurst in 1846, a fellow student fell to his death during a prank that Blessington had initiated, although the account allows that he may not have untied the victim's bootlaces. His family connection to the Duke of Wellington may have helped him receive a reprimand rather than expulsion. The incident establishes a pattern in which proximity to powerful people limits the consequences he faces.

In 1848, while the Duke was organizing military forces against the Chartists in London, he employed Blessington as an aide and judged him unsuitable. Rigby's memoirs attribute to the Duke a bleak assessment: “Aubrey is a brave and clever soldier, but only feels alive when killing people. Unluckily most soldiering is spent waiting to do that. We must send him to frontiers as far from England as possible. We should keep him there.” The remark casts military service not simply as a profession but as the outlet for a man whom his superior considers most alive in violence.

The Duke died in 1852, but the proposed remedy—sending Blessington far from England—became a pattern of service. His frontier victories, often achieved with the help of native troops, delighted British newspapers. George Augustus Sala gave him the name “Thunderbolt Blessington,” and his reputation reached the Queen, who honoured him after recommendations from Palmerston, Gladstone, and Disraeli. Parliament voted him thanks and money. That acclaim was not unanimous: a radical member of Parliament sometimes accused him of “pacified” territories with undue ferocity. The qualification matters. The language of victory and public service sits beside the possibility that those victories were secured through excessive violence.

Marriage and Domestic Life

Blessington's military distinction does not make him an attentive husband. His wife recalls meeting him after her mother had died and after the convent education intended to prepare her for marriage. She could speak French, dance, play the piano, and discuss world events as Conservative newspapers reported them; Blessington, she says, was indifferent to what she knew, though he waltzed beautifully despite his wounds. His height, fame, wealth, appearance, and uniform helped make him an attractive escape from her father. She loved him for several reasons and was genuinely happy on her wedding day.

The marriage's private reality reverses that festive image. On their wedding night, she discovered why fellow officers called him “The Arctic Pole,” but believed the failure was hers. Six months later she experienced her third hysterical pregnancy and begged for a clitoridectomy. Dr. Prickett told her that a Scottish surgeon in London might “handle the job”; the account makes clear that the operation was being arranged at the General's wish. Her repeated distress and the proposed surgery show how the marriage turns a problem she cannot interpret into a proposed alteration of her own body.

Two months after saying goodbye to Godwin Baxter, she went to Glasgow and took a cab to 18 Park Circus. She had not become pregnant and had not considered leaping from a bridge; she had instead learned that the husband who would not give her a child was about to have one by a servant ten years her junior. The discovery exposes a sharp inequality within the household: Blessington's relationship with a younger servant has consequences for his wife, but does not appear to constrain him as her marriage constrains her.

The Marriage's Consequences

Blessington's wife had initially regarded marriage as an escape from her father, and her account does not reduce that choice to simple misjudgment. She had been taught by her mother to be a working man's domestic slave and by the nuns to be a rich man's domestic toy; the education that gave her social accomplishments also prepared her for dependence. Blessington's wealth and fame offered a way out of one form of control, but marriage placed her in another. Her belief that their wedding-night failure was her fault further shows how thoroughly she has been taught to turn male conduct into self-blame.

When she arrived at 18 Park Circus, Godwin Baxter received her without asking a question. He introduced her to his mother, Mrs. Dinwiddie, as a badly treated lady who would stay until she could afford a home of her own, and asked that she be treated as his sister. The contrast with Blessington is consequential: where her husband is connected with an unwanted operation and an impending child by a servant, Baxter offers rest and shelter without first demanding an explanation. Blessington's conduct thus helps precipitate her departure and her move into a household where she can recover some independence.

Military Image and Narrative Significance

The later account of Blessington's career intensifies the contradiction between acclaim and harm. Newspapers celebrated his frontier victories; the Queen honoured him, and Parliament rewarded him, while a radical critic questioned the ferocity with which he had subdued territories. Carlyle's portrait of him as a storm-scraped, upward-reaching pine tree transforms the soldier into an emblem of force and heroic endurance, even as its accompanying image of a lance makes violence seem like his defining instrument. Tennyson, impressed after meeting him at a public banquet supporting Governor Eyre, wrote “The Eagle” as a romantic portrait of his friend. Such praise shows how readily military power can be converted into admired character.

The domestic narrative offers a counter-image without erasing the public record. Blessington's handsome appearance, wounds, dancing, honours, and military fame make him socially legible as a hero; his wife's account instead follows the bodily and emotional costs of life with him. His failure as a husband is not presented as identical to the violence of his campaigns, but the two records sharpen one another: the man celebrated for taking action on distant frontiers exerts authority at home while his wife suffers, doubts herself, and ultimately leaves. His significance lies in that collision between the public language of honour and the private consequences of power.