Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 1/Ana (July 16, 1859)
ANA
Birthplace of the Duke of Wellington.— If it be legally as well as poetically true that “every child that’s born at sea belongs to the parish of Stepney,” we congratulate the good people of Stepney on a somewhat distinguished parishioner. It has always been stated that the great Duke of Wellington was born either at Lord Mornington’s residence in Dublin, or at Dangan Castle, county Meath; and even Burke accepts as an established fact his nativity on Irish soil. The Duke, it is well known, would never say 'yes’ or 'no’ when questioned on the matter in the later years of his life. We are in a position to state, upon evidence that admits of no dispute, that the Great Duke was born neither in Ireland nor in England: he was a Stepneian — a genuine child of the ocean. The Countess of Mornington, his mother, was taken with the pains of labour whilst crossing in a sailing-boat from Holyhead to Dublin. The wind was adverse, and the future conqueror of Waterloo first saw the light on board a packet, about half- way between the coasts of Wales and Ireland. The late Lady Mary Temple, daughter of the Marquis of Buckingham, who was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland when “Arthur Wesley” obtained his first commission, used to say that she had often heard him joked, and had joked him herself, at her father’s vice-regal table, on the place and circumstances of his birth. The Duke, as A.D.C. to the lady’s father, could not well be angry then with Lady Mary; but he begged her, in after-life, never to mention the subject again in his presence. The story, however, is confirmed by the fact of the Duke having been baptised in Dublin, in May, 1769, on the 1st of which month his birth is said to have happened. At all events, if the Great Duke was really a native of Stepney, it would seem as if a grateful nation had “passed” his ashes after death to the neighbourhood of the parish to which he belonged.
Campbell the poet was led home one evening, from the Athenaeum Club, by a friend of mine. There had been a heavy storm of rain, and the kennels were full of water. Campbell fell into one of them, and pulled my friend after him, who exclaimed, in allusion to a well-known line of the poet’s, “It is not Iser rolling rapidly, but Weser.”