Three invitation cards hand written by the Duke of Wellington dated 1840

WELLINGTON, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of. Three engraved invitation cards, each completed in hand by the Duke of Wellington. 
 
Issued from Walmer Castle and inviting Sir John Hollams, the Mayor of Deal to dine. September 1840.
 
Three cards, each 115 × 85 mm, printed with the formal wording “The Duke of Wellington requests the honor of … company at dinner…”, with the recipient’s name, the days, dates and times supplied in Wellington’s hand in ink. Overall condition: very good. Light toning and scattered spotting; minor edge wear; all three cards with small areas of surface loss to the blank verso from old mounting;  but all manuscript clear and legible.
 
The cards invite Sir John Hollams to dine at Walmer Castle on Wednesday 5 September at seven o’clock, Wednesday 9 September at seven o’clock, and Saturday 22 September at two o’clock, and bear the printed line “The favor of an answer is desired.”
 
One card carries an additional contemporary manuscript note by Wellington at the foot, “to meet H.R.H. the Princess Sophia Matilda”, indicating that the dinner was arranged in connection with the presence of Princess Sophia Matilda of Gloucester, niece of George III and a senior member of the royal family. The reverse of another card bears a memorandum, likely in the hand of the Duke, recording the occasion: “Dined with this group at Walmer Castle, Sept. 9 1840 – Sir John Hollams, met there the Marquis of Bute.”
 
Walmer Castle was Wellington’s official residence as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, an office he held from 1829 until his death in 1852, and in the 1830s and 1840s it served as the principal setting for his social and political engagements in semi-retirement. The present cards preserve his hand in the routine business of arranging and recording such occasions, that document specific dinners held by Wellingron in September 1840, in Walmer Castle attended by a royal princess and by John Crichton-Stuart, 2nd Marquess of Bute, one of the leading aristocratic figures of the period.