Honour code
Joseph Farrell explains the history of duelling
As editor of the Caledonian Mercury, Dr James Browne had had an easy time of it. Since its foundation in 1720 his journal, published three times a week, enjoyed a monopoly in Edinburgh, but all that changed in 1817 when the upstart Scotsman made its first appearance, initially as a weekly which came out on Saturdays.
The two publications bickered and snarled ferociously at each other from opposite ends of the political spectrum. The Scotsman’s editor, Charles Maclaren, a man of high, radical principle, declared himself appalled at the 'unblushing subserviency' of the existing press. In the restless days following the Napoleonic War, his editorial line demonstrated his support for the extension of the suffrage and for Catholic emancipation, as well as his determination to expose ‘corruption, reaction, nepotism and privilege.’
Dr Browne had not a thick enough skin to merely disregard these attacks from his irreverent rival, but how was a gentleman to respond in those days? There was only one answer, so he issued a challenge to his counterpart to meet him on the ‘field of honour.’ The two met at dawn at Ravelston, exchanged shots, which both went wide. Under the code of the duellist, that was that, but feelings ran high and in defiance of gentlemanly manners they refused to shake hands before returning crest-fallen to their offices to continue sniping in print.
To modern eyes, there are elements of comedy in this scene but duelling was part of the code of the gentleman. The Browne-maclaren event caused a sensation in newspaper offices both north and south of the border, but only because of the status of the men involved. More typical were the spare, sad lines in the Glasgow
Herald in 1805. 'The duel between Mr Romney and Mr Leckie, students attending medical class at Edinburgh University, resulted in Mr Leckie receiving a wound from which he died.' For centuries duelling was commonplace among officers and gentlemen, who were prickly over questions of honour.
Honour was once an essential component of a gentleman’s standing, and offences were routinely settled by a duel. There are some recorded ‘petticoat duels’ between women, but they were rare. A lady had no agency, and her honour rested on different considerations, pre-marital chastity and conjugal fidelity.
Ridicule and satire have long since seen off the very ideas of honour and duelling but once they were no laughing matter. The twin notions had their origins in the Italian Renaissance, but the idea degenerated until any foible, cross word or perceived provocation set in motion the established ritual of demands for ‘satisfaction’.
Duels were fought all over Europe from the Russian steppes to the south of Spain, and made a transition across the Atlantic to the Americas as part of the cultural baggage the colonists brought with them. The success of the musical, Hamilton, dramatising the famous duel between Aaron Burr, who was Vice President of the USA at the time, and Alexander Hamilton, who had been Secretary to the Treasury, has revived interest in the subject. The men were political rivals and both had fought previous duels. Hamilton’s son was killed in a duel with a member of the Burr faction. The enduring enigma is that although Hamilton was opposed to duelling, he felt he had an obligation to meet Burr. The two men met on a recognised duelling ground in New Jersey where Hamilton was killed.
Duelling is not to be confused with a mere brawl, a spontaneous squabble among the lower orders. Its ritual, jargon and rules were outlined in the Clonmel code, drawn up by a group of Anglo-irish gentlemen in 1777, which described the nature of various offences. ‘If A gives B the lie, and B retorts with a blow (being the two greatest offences), no reconciliation can take place, till after two discharges each, or a severe hit.’ It also specified that ‘any insult to a lady under a gentleman’s care or protection, is to be considered as, by one degree, a greater offence than if given to the gentleman personally, and to be regulated accordingly’.
Casanova fought a duel in Warsaw with a Polish count and left an interesting account in a booklet. President Andrew Jackson was an inveterate duellist. The Scottish banker John Law fought a duel in London and had to flee to France, where he set up a bank whose failure is viewed as one of the causes of the French Revolution. The Irish ‘Liberator’, Daniel O’connell killed a political opponent in a duel outside Dublin. The poet Pushkin, in the greatest loss of any duel, was killed in Saint Petersburg.
To this list could be added assorted Prime Ministers, Presidents, Cabinet ministers, lawyers, accountants, generals, colonels, landowners, clergymen, roués, gamblers, earls, dukes, writers, artists and even some sovereigns. Others had a close shave. Sir Walter Scott wrote a biography of Napoleon which offended one of the Emperor’s admirers, who issued a challenge. Scott had come into possession of a pair of Napoleon’s duelling pistols, and was afraid he would be required to use them, but the matter was patched up. Both Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson included accounts of duels in their fiction, Stevenson magnificently in The Master of Ballantrae, and Scott in St Ronan’s Well. This latter is based on an actual duel, fought in 1822, between Sir Alexander Boswell, son of Dr Johnson’s biographer, and Francis Stuart of Dunearn. The dispute was political. Boswell was a Tory and Stuart a Whig, and Boswell
Duelling was commonplace among officers and gentlemen, who were prickly over questions of honour
used his talent for light verse to mock Stuart in the Beacon, a party publication. The outraged Stuart first horse-whipped the editor in daylight in the Old Town, an offence which went unpunished. He identified the author of the verse and to settle the matter, the two men repaired to Kirkcaldy, where their pistols can be seen in the town’s museum. Boswell was killed and buried in the family mausoleum in Auchinleck beside his father. Stuart stood trial and was defended by Henry Cockburn and Francis Jeffrey, the cream of the Faculty of Advocates. There is a monument outside Kirkcaldy commemorating another celebrated duel, the last fought in Scotland, between George Morgan, a bank manager, and a local businessman, David Landale, ancestor of the BBC'S diplomatic correspondent James Landale, who wrote a lively account of the affair. Morgan was killed and Landale found not guilty of murder.
As late as 1967, Gaston Defferre, socialist politician and Mayor of Marseille at the time, fought a duel with René Ribière after an exchange of insults inside the French National Assembly. Nowadays these matters are settled by bilious exchanges on social media. I suppose that is progress.
Joseph Farrell’s Honour and the Sword: The Culture of Duelling is out now, published by Signal Books (£20)