Bornstable ghentleman
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Jump to navigationJump to search- born ... stable ... gentleman: Wellington, on being "accused" of being Irish, replied: "Because a man is born in a stable that does not make him a horse". These words were never actually spoken by Wellington; they were attributed to him as a joke by his Irish rival Daniel O'Connell at a Monster Meeting at Mullaghmast for the repeal of the Act of Union (1 October 1843, during a formal dinner given after the meeting itself) → see also William Makepeace Thackeray, Lectures on the English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century, "If Swift was Irish, then a man born in a stable is a horse" → cf Von Falke's joke (in Sigmund Freud, Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious) on Wellington and his horse in the Dublin waxworks (same white harse)
- Barnstaple: a town in North Devon, 45 miles east of the town of Wellington in Somerset, from where the Duke of Wellington took his name
- Ghent: a city in Belgium. Louis XVIII fled to Ghent during the Hundred Days. He returned to Paris shortly after Waterloo.
