A Beef with Wellington

With the bicentenary of Waterloo almost upon us, news that Napoleon’s hair is to feature in a limited edition Swiss watch is just the latest proof that the Frenchman, despite losing the battle, won the war.

His personality cult is nothing new, of course. The watch-makers wouldn’t have his hair now if people hadn’t collected pieces of it during his lifetime. But his ultimate defeat in 1815, followed by death in exile, only added to the romantic image that still surrounds him.

The man who triumphed at Waterloo, meanwhile, has no such appeal. In the absence of limited-edition jewellery incorporating his DNA, the Duke of Wellington continues to be commemorated chiefly by a mud-resistant boot.

Maybe the fashion houses will produce specially-designed Waterloo 200 editions, in time for next year’s Glastonbury. But that’s as much as Wellington’s admirers can hope.

Their man’s relative obscurity is a bit of an injustice, to say the least. It’s true he was an essentially defensive general: a Trapattoni to Napoleon’s Guardiola. For that reason, however, he was far more economical with the lives of his soldiers that the cavalier Corsican. He also had a better win record. And yet even Napoleon’s disasters, like the retreat from Moscow, have become romanticised. They’re all part of the Little Corporal’s outsized legend.

Napoleon wasn’t particularly little, by the way. He was about 5ft 7ins, above average for a Frenchman of his day, and at least as tall as Winston Churchill, who lived in an era of improved nutrition and whose height is rarely mentioned.

Maybe it was British propaganda that perpetuated the idea of Napoleon’s diminutive stature (and the implication that his military career was a severe case of small-man syndrome). If so, that backfired too.

Size isn’t everything, anyway, as I’m reminded every time I pass that giant phallic object, the Wellington Monument, in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.

As everyone knows, it’s Europe’s tallest obelisk. But if having Europe’s tallest obelisk was a competition any other city was interested in, the Dublin one would surely have been surpassed since its belated completion in 1861.

In some ways, the dour monument suits its subject. Yet even in Victorian times, when doggedness and solidity were highly prized, it was hard to like. A speaker in the House of Commons in 1860 dismissed it as a “gigantic mile-stone”, erected “in defiance of all rules of art and of taste”.

And unlike the Eiffel Tower, which also had its critics early on, the Wellington Monument hasn’t grown in popular affection since. It’s just big, and it’s there. Insofar as Dubliners can ignore it, they do.

Part of the problem, I believe, is that it doesn’t work – in the active sense of the term. Contrary to the sarcastic suggestion of the House of Commons speaker, it doesn’t function even as a distance marker, not being a mile from anywhere obvious (apart from my house, funnily enough).

But unforgivably for such a tall object, it can’t be climbed, either. And unlike just about everywhere else tourists gather, it doesn’t even have an interpretive centre where you can buy postcards. In short, to use that vulgar term, it can’t be “monetised”.

The French would never have made such a mistake. For all their flair in the visual arts, and as befits the country of the original Monet, they know how to make their monuments pay.

Witness the aforementioned Eiffel Tower, planned as a temporary installation, but now a permanent micro-industry. The Arc de Triomphe is a nice little earner too.

Tourists have a well advertised need to climb things and take pictures from the top. It’s a staple of foreign travel. Yet Dublin remains stubbornly horizontal, with few attractions on the vertical plane. The Spire only made things worse. For the city of Oscar Wilde to have one tall but useless monument was unfortunate. Two must give visitors the impression we don’t need money.

But maybe, even now, it’s still not too late to press one of these follies into service. Perhaps, with the Waterloo bicentennial to concentrate minds, architects could yet suggest ways of making the Wellington Monument more accessible.

A spiral staircase leading to a small viewing platform, is surely one possibility. Or a glass lift, luminous at night. Indeed, speaking of light, any illumination would be an improvement on the current nocturnal gloom. That’s why, personally, I wouldn’t be averse to seeing the monument as a giant neon advertising site, although of course it would have to be done in the best possible taste. @FrankmcnallyIT