"THERE IS NO MISTAKE."
(Vol. iv., p. 471.)
It may, perhaps, have puzzled others of your readers, as for some time
it did myself, to account for your correspondent F. W. J. having
undertaken to prove that the Duke of Wellington did not first use "those
celebrated words" _there is no mistake_, in his "reply to Mr.
Huskisson." F. W. J. shows that the Duke wrote "the sentence now so well
known" is 1812. No doubt he did: and it may not unreasonably be assumed
that he had used it many hundred times before under similar
circumstances. F. W. J. evidently confounds those words used by the Duke
in their natural sense with the slang phrase which has been current for
some years, and owes its origin, I believe, to a character in a farce,
"and no mistake." The slang phrase is used by way of binding or
confirming; as, for instance, "I will be there at two o'clock, _and no
mistake_,"--the latter words being equivalent to "You may depend on it:"
if, indeed, it be possible to fix a precise meaning to words so
improperly applied. It is hardly necessary to say, that in both the
instances referred to by your correspondent, the Duke used the words in
their natural and proper sense. F. W. J. is wrong in supposing that the
Duke used the phrase in his "reply to Mrs. Huskisson;" it was to Lord
Dudley his Grace addressed the words. Mr. Huskisson having voted against
his colleagues on the question of transferring the franchise from East
Retford to Birmingham, went straight from the House of Commons to his
office in Downing Street, and wrote a letter to the Duke, then Prime
Minister, announcing that he lost no time in affording his Grace an
opportunity of placing his (Mr. Huskisson's) office in other hands, as
the only means in his power of preventing the injury to the King's
service which might ensue from the appearance of disunion in His
Majesty's councils, &c. On receipt of Mr. Huskisson's note, the Duke
wrote to that gentleman stating that he had deemed it his duty to lay
his note before the King. It happened that the Duke's note reached Mr.
Huskisson whilst he was engaged in conversation with Lord Dudley, to
whom he had been describing his own note to the Duke, and speaking of it
(strange enough) as if it had not been a tender of resignation. When Mr.
Huskisson showed Lord Dudley the Duke's letter, which showed that his
Grace took a different view of the matter, his Lordship, knowing what
Mr. Huskisson had been telling him, naturally enough said that the Duke
must be labouring under a mistake. But this incident was narrated with
so much _naïveté_ by Mr. Huskisson himself, that I am tempted to quote
his words (spoken in the House of Commons) as they were reported in the
_Times_, June 3, 1828:--
"Upon showing this (the Duke's) letter to Lord Dudley, so struck
was he with the the different import which the Duke of Wellington
attached to the matter from that which was impressed on himself by
the previous conversation, that he remarked, 'Oh, I see the Duke
has entirely mistaken your meaning: I will go and see him, and set
the matter right.' (A laugh.) Lord Dudley returned shortly after
seeing the Duke, and said, 'I am sorry to say I have not been
successful. He (the Duke) says it is no mistake; it can be no
mistake; and (if Mr. Huskisson's relation of the words were not
imperfectly heard, for he let his voice drop repeatedly) it shall
be no mistake." (Loud laughter.)