Answering three castlereaghsplaining asks in one cause I can. But before that, the anon who asked about Canning, hi if you are here, I love you, I see you, thank you, I'll get to your question eventually, I just know it's going to be another super long post and I'm Doing Other Things so it might take a while but it will happen 💋
I think I've answered this before, I enjoy Webster and Hyde. Webster's is just a very hard to top classic. Aside from my personal bias, Bew's biography might be good as a general overview but I think it requires a bit of prior knowledge to critically approach some of his takes.
I think I also already had an ask reply post with the general info about their relationship. So to make sure you won't regret asking I'll be brief: they were friends but probably not as close as some historians think, Castlereagh basically was always very nice to Wellington and Wellington kinda mostly emotionally brickwalled him. I mean Wellington famously yeeted to Europe in 1822 cause when your depressed suicidal friend tells you to leave him alone leaving him alone is, obviously, the correct option (no), especially when you are well aware of his history of mental breakdowns. Castlereagh said that Wellington shouldn't stay with him because 'it would make people believe that there was some reason for it' which, given the fact that Castlereagh was terrified of homosexual allegations, can mean 'people might think we're both gay' apart from the 'people might think I'm ill'. After Castlereagh's death Wellington proceeded to immediately tell Harriet Arbuthnot he's going to 'replace him' for her which is not very nice. Worth saying that while Castlereagh was a big Wellington enthusiast, some of his other friends and his brother were not, with Charlie actively trying to get Castlereagh out of that relationship. So it was a bit of a strange dynamic, in my opinion, hence the expression I used.
Castlereagh was generally pretty physically affectionate with people, more so with friends, of course, we have, for instanse, Dorothea Lieven writing to Metternich that Castlereagh greeted her with open arms and gave her 'a kind of semi-tender' embrace. I think what I meant in the original post (and I phrase it like that cause you know... I wrote that thing at 3am....) was that I came across a few instances of him randomly touching men he's never seen before in a very friendly/affectionate/weird way. My favourite Castlereagh touching story is probably from the memoires of Baron de Vitrolles, a young French monarchist. After knowing Vitrolles for a few days, Castlereagh randomly leaned over and put his hand on Vitrolles' knee while spilling some wisdom about the allies. I'm not sure if the memoires are in English, I read them in French, but you can find this lil instance in vol. 1 page 150 French edition. There's also a story of Castlereagh shaking a guy's hand twice or thrice in a row just because. Despite being cold and weird, he generally could be quite affectionate (and overshare a lot) with people he didn't know well and didn't have any gripes with them seeing him in a more intimate setting. He was a fan of receiving ambassadors while lying down in his dressing gown/half undressed in his dressing room cause he couldn't be bothered. He also knew that everyone thought he was hot and was not afraid to use that lol. As for his relationships with men, the dynamic with Clanwilliam is kind of one of the most interesting to me personally and the day I'll be able to get to Clanwilliam's journal mmmmmmm I shall become unbearable. The relationship with Canning/its sunsequent breakdown/everything that followed is very funky, esp since Canning was also most likely queer, it's giving 'when you have a crush and it goes terribly wrong' energy.
