not only for its absurdity, but also for its aristocratic exclusiveness. Rousseau had said of duelling, “It is not an institution of honour, but a horrible and barbarous custom, which a courageous man despises and a good man abhors.” Napoleon was a sworn foe to it. “Bon duelliste mauvais soldat” is one of his best known sayings; and, when the king of Sweden sent him a challenge, he replied that he would order a fencing-master to attend him as plenipotentiary. After the battle of Waterloo duels such as Lever loves to depict were frequent between disbanded French officers and those of the allies in occupation. The restoration of the Bourbons brought with it a fresh crop of duels. Since then duels have been frequent in France—more frequent, however, in novels than in real life—fought mainly between politicians and journalists, and with rare exceptions bloodless affairs. If fought with pistols, the distance and the weapons chosen render a hit improbable; and, if fought with rapiers, honour is generally satisfied with the first blood drawn. Among Frenchmen famous in politics or letters who have “gone out” may be mentioned Armand Carrel, who fell in an encounter with Émile Girardin; Thiers, who thus atoned for a youthful indiscretion; the elder Dumas; Lamartine; Ste Beuve, who to show at once his sangfroid and his sense of humour, fought under an umbrella; Ledru Rollin; Edmond About; Clément Thomas; Veuillot, the representative of the church militant; Rochefort; and Boulanger, the Bonapartist fanfaron, whose discomfiture in a duel with Floquet resulted in a notable loss of popular respect.
Duelling did not begin in England till some hundred years after it had arisen in France. There is no instance of a private duel fought in England before the 16th century, and they are rare before the reign of James I. A very fair notion of the comparative popularity of duelling, and of the feeling In England.with which it was regarded at various periods, might be gathered by examining the part it plays in the novels and lighter literature of the times. The earliest duels we remember in fiction are that in the Monastery between Sir Piercie Shafton and Halbert Glendinning, and that in Kenilworth between Tressilian and Varney. (That in Anne of Geierstein either is an anachronism or must reckon as a wager by battle.) Under James I. we have the encounter between Nigel and Lord Dalgarno. The greater evil of war, as we observed in French history, expels the lesser, and the literature of the Commonwealth is in this respect a blank. With the Restoration there came a reaction against Puritan morality, and a return to the gallantry and loose manners of French society, which is best represented by the theatre of the day. The drama of the Restoration abounds in duels. Passing on to the reign of Queen Anne, we find the subject frequently discussed in the Tatler and the Spectator, and Addison points in his happiest way the moral to a contemporary duel between Mr Thornhill and Sir Cholmeley Dering. “I come not,” says Spinomont to King Pharamond, “I come not to implore your pardon, I come to relate my sorrow, a sorrow too great for human life to support. Know that this morning I have killed in a duel the man whom of all men living I love best.” No reader of Esmond can forget Thackeray’s description of the doubly fatal duel between the duke of Hamilton and Lord Mohun, which is historical, or the no less life-like though fictitious duel between Lord Mohun and Lord Castlewood. The duel between the two brothers in Stevenson’s Master of Ballantrae is one of the best conceived in fiction. Throughout the reigns of the Georges they are frequent. Richardson expresses his opinion on the subject in six voluminous letters to the Literary Repositor. Sheridan, like Farquhar in a previous generation, not only dramatized a duel, but fought two himself. Byron thus commemorates the bloodless duel between Tom Moore and Lord Jeffrey:—
“Can none remember that eventful day, |
There are no duels in Miss Austen’s novels, but in those of Miss Edgeworth, her contemporary, there are three or four. As we approach the 19th century they become rarer in fiction. Thackeray’s novels, indeed, abound in duels. “His royal highness the late lamented commander-in-chief” had the greatest respect for Major Macmurdo, as a man who had conducted scores of affairs for his acquaintance with the greatest prudence and skill; and Rawdon Crawley’s duelling pistols, “the same which I shot Captain Marker,” have become a household word. Dickens, on the other hand, who depicts contemporary English life, and mostly in the middle classes, in all his numerous works has only three; and George Eliot never once refers to a duel. Tennyson, using a poet’s privilege, laid the scene of a duel in the year of the Crimean War, but he echoes the spirit of the times when he stigmatizes “the Christless code that must have life for a blow.” Browning, who delights in cases of conscience, has given admirably the double moral aspect of the duel in his two lyrics entitled “Before” and “After.”
To pass from fiction to fact we will select the most memorable English duels of the last century and a half. Lord Byron killed Mr Chaworth in 1765; Charles James Fox and Mr Adams fought in 1779; duke of York and Colonel Lennox, 1789; William Pitt and George Tierney, 1796; George Canning and Lord Castlereagh, 1809; Mr Christie killed John Scott, editor of the London Magazine, 1821; duke of Wellington and earl of Winchelsea, 1829; Mr Roebuck and Mr Black, editor of Morning Chronicle, 1835; Lord Alvanley and a son of Daniel O’Connell in the same year; Earl Cardigan wounded Captain Tuckett, was tried by his peers, and acquitted on a legal quibble, 1840.
The year 1808 is memorable in the annals of duelling in England. Major Campbell was sentenced to death and executed for killing Captain Boyd in a duel. In this case it is true that there was a suspicion of foul play; but in the case of Lieutenant Blundell, who was killed in a duel in 1813, though all had been conducted with perfect fairness, the surviving principal and the seconds were all convicted of murder and sentenced to death, and, although the royal pardon was obtained, they were all cashiered. The next important date is the year 1843, when public attention was painfully called to the subject by a duel in which Colonel Fawcett was shot by his brother-in-law, Lieutenant Monro. The survivor, whose career was thereby blasted, had, it was well known, gone out most reluctantly, in obedience to the then prevailing military code. A full account of the steps taken by the prince consort, and of the correspondence which passed between him and the duke of Wellington, will be found in the Life of the Prince by Sir Theodore Martin. The duke, unfortunately, was not an unprejudiced counsellor. Not only had he been out himself, but, in writing to Lord Londonderry on the occasion of the duel between the marquess and Ensign Battier in 1824, he had gone so far as to state that he considered the probability of the Hussars having to fight a duel or two a matter of no consequence. In the previous year there had been formed in London the association for the suppression of duelling. It included leading members of both houses of parliament and distinguished officers of both services. The first report, issued in 1844, gives a memorial of the association presented to Queen Victoria through Sir James Graham, and in a debate in the House of Commons (15th of March 1844) Sir H. Hardinge, the secretary of war, announced to the House that Her Majesty had expressed herself desirous of devising some expedient by which the barbarous practice of duelling should be as much as possible discouraged. In the same debate Mr Turner reckoned the number of duels fought during the reign of George III. at 172, of which 91 had been attended with fatal results; yet in only two of these cases
