Pain, bloodshed linked to glory and honour
Duelling even entailed, writes Ute Frevert in The Taming of the Noble Ruffian, an element of reconciliation — with the challenger abstaining, once granted a fair fight, from further revenge or retaliation. That was the theory, anyway.
Codes of dress, manners, rules of combat were soon devised. They were almost elegant, duels being fought by statesmen and appearing in great works of literature.
Among the best known is the 1804 duel between U.S. treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton (who would be fatally wounded) and the sitting vice-president, Aaron Burr.
In this country, in the Legislature of the united colonies of Upper and Lower Canada, Sir John A. Macdonald took umbrage at the hectoring of William Hume Blake in 1849 during debate on the Rebellion Losses Bill. According to Patricia Phenix in her book Private Demons, Macdonald wrote a note, summoned a page and had it dispatched to Blake. On receipt of it, Blake paled. Sir John had challenged him to a duel.
Macdonald left the chamber, Blake followed.
The sergeant-at-arms chased after them. Eventually, he found Macdonald. Blake, for his part, appeared to be in hiding. By the end of the evening, both were in police custody until John A. withdrew the threat.
The last deadly duel in Toronto — certainly its most famous — took place in what was then known as York, at daybreak on July 12, 1828. Samuel Jarvis — yes, of that Jarvis clan — shot and killed 18-year-old John Ridout, of an equally prestigious (and flush, unlike the financially troubled Jarvis crew) Upper Canada family.
The two had earlier come to blows on the street over the bad blood between the families. Jarvis was tried for murder but, as was the custom of the day, he was acquitted after the court held the duel was conducted fairly.
The man who stood as second for Samuel Jarvis in the Ridout duel was James Small. His father, John Small, had in 1800 duelled and killed Upper Canada’s attorney general, John White, after a dispute apparently sparked by insulting com- ments the men made about each other’s wives. The elder Small was also acquitted.
The last fatal duel in Canada is widely believed to have taken place in 1833 in Perth, just west of Ottawa. Law students Robert Lyon and John Wilson apparently duelled “over the honour of Miss Elizabeth Hughes,” as the Town of Perth’s website puts it. Lyon was killed. Wilson was, of course, acquitted.
Lyon was buried in the cemetery beside what is today the Perth summer attraction, Last Duel Park and Campground.
Obviously, fewer duels are reported in the sports pages in modern times, and fewer threats of them make their way into the Commons. The contest fell out of fashion toward the end of the 19th century, although Ernest Hemingway was challenged to a duel in Cuba in 1954 and — hard as it might be to believe from the exemplar of the manly male — declined.
If the Trudeau-brazeau bout has caused a public stir, it’s not for nothing. Boxing, along with baseball, is the sport to produce the greatest literature, revealing as it does the most complex and raw of human attributes.
Boxing has been called a metaphor for life. The great A.J. Liebling dubbed a gym- laden strip of New York “the University of Eighth Avenue.” It has been the particular focus of some of the greatest sportswriters.
In 1922, Heywood Broun reported on the lightweight championship bout between Benny Leonard, the best boxer of his era, and the young challenger Rocky Kansas.
“With the opening gong, Rocky Kansas tore into Leonard,” he wrote. “He was gauche and inaccurate, but terribly persistent.” After a few rounds, Broun reported that enthusiasm was once again no substitute for expertise.
“The young child of nature who was challenging for the championship dropped his guard, and Leonard hooked a powerful and entirely orthodox blow to the point of the jaw. Down went Rocky Kansas. His past life flashed before him during the nine seconds in which he remained on the floor, and he wished that he had been more faithful as a child in heeding the advice of his boxing teacher. After all, the old masters did know something. There is still a kick in style, and tradition carries a nasty wallop.”
Both Trudeau and Brazeau need watch out for those “nasty wallops.”
In any event, this is unlikely to be the worst of pugilism exhibitions. Boxing has in recent years morphed into weird celebrity bouts between the likes of former NBA beanpole Manute Bol and former NFL lineman William “The Refrigerator” Perry — one man more or less as tall as the other was wide.
Now, there is also the mayhem of mixed martial arts, and retired basketball star Shaquille O’neal has apparently challenged drug-enhanced former major league slugger Jose Canseco to a free-for-all should the spirit move him.
Meanwhile, for the timid, the tubby, the talentless, those of us who never did make it to a duelling stage, or a boxing ring, or even Parliament or the Senate, those of us never apt to be alpha primate in our particular troop, manhood is asserted in the gentler realms of the rotisserie league, or office slo-pitch tournament, or by donning face-paint and scarves and jerseys in the colours of the tribe we support.
And if perhaps there’s less honour and glory in it, well, there’s also a lot less pain and bloodshed.