The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2

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_Finally_, with respect to the suggestion of a _Court of Honour_, much
might be said that my limits will not allow; but two suggestions I will
make. _First_, Recurring to a thing I have already said, I must repeat
that no justice would be shown unless (in a spirit very different from
that which usually prevails in society) the weight of public indignation
and the displeasure of the court were made to settle conspicuously upon
the AGGRESSOR; not upon the challenger, who is often the party suffering
under insufferable provocation (provocation which even the sternness of
penal law and the holiness of Christian faith allow for), but upon the
author of the original offence. _Secondly_, A much more searching
investigation must be made into the conduct of the SECONDS than is usual
in the unprofessional and careless inquisitions of the public into such
affairs. Often enough, the seconds hold the fate of their principals
entirely in their hands; and instances are not a few, within even my
limited knowledge, of cases where murder has been really committed, not
by the party who fired the fatal bullet, but by him who (having it in
his power to interfere without loss of honour to any party) has cruelly
thought fit--[and, in some instances, apparently for no purpose but
that of decorating himself with the name of an energetic man, and of
producing a public '_sensation_,' as it is called--a sanguinary
affair]--to goad on the tremulous sensibility of a mind distracted
between the sense of honour on the one hand, and the agonising claims of
a family on the other, into fatal extremities that might, by a slight
concession, have been avoided. I could mention several instances; but,
in some of these, I know the circumstances only by report. In one,
however, I had my information from parties who were personally connected
with the unhappy subject of the affair. The case was this:--A man of
distinguished merit, whom I shall not describe more particularly,
because it is no part of my purpose to recall old buried feuds, or to
insinuate any _personal_ blame whatsoever (my business being not with
this or that man, but with a system and its principles); this man, by a
step well-meant but injudicious, and liable to a very obvious
misinterpretation, as though taken in a view of self-interest, had
entangled himself in a quarrel. That quarrel would have been settled
amicably, or, if not amicably, at least without bloodshed, had it not
been for an unlucky accident combined with a very unwise advice. One
morning, after the main dispute had been pretty well adjusted, he was
standing at the fireside after breakfast, talking over the affair so far
as it had already travelled, when it suddenly and most unhappily came
into his head to put this general question--'Pray, does it strike you
that people will be apt, on a review of this whole dispute, to think
that there has been too much talking and too little doing?' His evil
genius so ordered it, that the man to whom he put this question, was one
who, having no military character to rest on, could not (or thought he
could not) recommend those pacific counsels which a truly brave man is
ever ready to suggest--I put the most friendly construction upon his
conduct--and his answer was this--'Why, if you insist upon my giving a
faithful reply, if you _will_ require me to be sincere (though I really
wish you would not), in that case my duty is to tell you, that the world
_has_ been too free in its remarks--that it has, with its usual
injustice, been sneering at literary men and _paper pellets_, as the
ammunition in which they trade; in short, my dear friend, the world has
presumed to say that not you only, but that both parties, have shown a
little of'----'Yes; I know what you are going to say,' interrupted the
other, 'of the _white feather_. Is it not so?'--'Exactly; you have hit
the mark--that is what they say. But how unjust it is; for, says I, but
yesterday, to Mr. L. M., who was going on making himself merry with the
affair in a way that was perfectly scandalous--"Sir," says I,'----but
this _says I_ never reached the ears of the unhappy man: he had heard
enough; and, as a secondary dispute was still going on that had grown
out of the first, he seized the very first opening which offered itself
for provoking the issue of a quarrel. The other party was not backward
or slack in answering the appeal; and thus, in one morning, the prospect
was overcast--peace was no longer possible; and a hostile meeting was
arranged. Even at this meeting much still remained in the power of the
seconds: there was an absolute certainty that all fatal consequences
might have been evaded, with perfect consideration for the honour of
both parties. The principals must unquestionably have felt _that_; but
if the seconds would not move in that direction, of course _their_ lips
were sealed. A more cruel situation could not be imagined: two persons,
who never, perhaps, felt more than that fiction of enmity which
belonged to the situation, that is to say, assumed the enmity which
society presumes rationally incident to a certain position--assumed it
as a point of honour, but did not heartily feel it; and even for the
slight shade of animosity which, for half an hour, they might have
really felt, had thoroughly quelled it before the meeting, these two
persons--under no impulses whatever, good or bad, from within, but
purely in a hateful necessity of servile obedience to a command from
without--prepared to perpetrate what must, in that frame of
dispassionate temper have appeared to each, a purpose of murder, as
regarded his antagonist--a purpose of suicide, as regarded himself.
Simply a word, barely a syllable, was needed from the 'Friends' (such
Friends!) of the parties, to have delivered them, with honour, from this
dreadful necessity: that word was not spoken; and because a breath, a
motion of the lips, was wanting--because, in fact, the seconds were
thoughtless and without feeling, one of the parties has long slept in a
premature grave--his early blossoms scattered to the wind--his golden
promise of fruit blasted; and the other has since lived that kind of
life, that, in my mind, _he_ was happier who died. Something of the same
kind happened in the duel between Lord Camelford and his friend, Mr.
Best; something of the same kind in that between Colonel Montgomery and
Captain Macnamara. In the former case, the quarrel was, at least, for a
noble subject; it concerned a woman. But in the latter, a dog, and a
thoughtless lash applied to his troublesome gambols, was the sole
subject of dispute. The colonel, as is well known, a very elegant and
generous young man, fell; and Captain Macnamara had thenceforwards a
worm at his heart whose gnawings never died. He was a post-captain; and
my brother afterwards sailed with him in quality of midshipman. From
him I have often heard affecting instances of the degree in which the
pangs of remorse had availed, to make one of the bravest men in the
service a mere panic-haunted, and, in a moral sense, almost a paralytic
wreck. He that, whilst his hand was unstained with blood, would have
faced an army of fiends in discharge of his duty, now fancied danger in
every common rocking of a boat: he made himself at times, the subject of
laughter at the messes of the junior and more thoughtless officers: and
his hand, whenever he had occasion to handle a spy-glass, shook, (to use
the common image,) or, rather, shivered, like an aspen tree. Now, if a
regular tribunal, authenticated, by Parliament, as the fountain of law,
and, by the Sovereign, as the fountain of honour, were, under the very
narrowest constitution, to apply itself merely to a review of the whole
conduct pursued by the seconds, even under this restriction such a
tribunal would operate with great advantage. It is needless to direct
any severity to the conduct of the principals, unless when that conduct
has been outrageous or wanton in provocation: supposing anything
tolerably reasonable and natural in the growth of the quarrel, after the
quarrel is once 'constituted,' (to borrow a term of Scotch law,) the
principals, as they are called with relation to the subject of dispute,
are neither principals nor even secondaries for the subsequent
management of the dispute: they are delivered up, bound hand and foot,
into the hands of their technical 'friends'; passive to the law of
social usage as regards the general necessity of pursuing the dispute;
passive to the directions of their seconds as regards the particular
mode of pursuing it. It is, therefore, the seconds who are the proper
objects of notice for courts of honour; and the error has been, in
framing the project of such a court, to imagine the inquiry too much
directed upon the behaviour of those who cease to be free agents from
the very moment that they become liable to any legal investigation
whatever: simply as quarrellers, the parties are no objects of question;
they are not within the field of any police review; and the very first
act which brings them within that field, translates the responsibility
(because the free agency) from themselves to their seconds. The whole
_questio vexata_, therefore, reduces itself to these logical moments,
(to speak the language of mathematics:) the two parties mainly concerned
in the case of duelling, are Society and the Seconds. The first, by
authorising such a mode of redress; the latter, by conducting it. Now, I
presume, it will be thought hopeless to arraign Society at the bar of
any earthly court, or apply any censure or any investigation to its mode
of thinking.[16] To the _principals_, for the reasons given, it would be
unjust to apply them; and the inference is, that the _seconds_ are the
parties to whom their main agency should be directed--as the parties in
whose hands lies the practical control of the whole affair, and the
whole machinery of opportunities, (so easily improved by a wise
humanity)--for sparing bloodshed, for promoting reconciliation, for
making those overtures of accommodation and generous apology which the
brave are so ready to agree to, in atonement for hasty words, or rash
movements of passion, but which it is impossible for _them_ to
originate. In short, for impressing the utmost possible spirit of
humanising charity and forbearance upon a practice which, after all,
must for ever remain somewhat of an opprobrium to a Christian people;
but which, tried by the law of worldly wisdom, is the finest bequest of
chivalry; the most economic safety-valve for man's malice that man's wit
could devise; the most absolute safe-guard of the weak against the
brutal; and, finally, (once more to borrow the words of Burke,) in a
sense the fullest and most practical, 'the cheap defence of nations;'
not indeed against the hostility which besieges from _without_, but
against the far more operative nuisance of bad passions that vex and
molest the social intercourse of men by ineradicable impulses from
within.

[16] If it be asked by what title I represent Society as authorising
(nay, as necessitating) duels, I answer, that I do not allude to any
floating opinions of influential circles in society; for these are in
continual conflict, and it may be difficult even to guess in which
direction the preponderance would lie. I build upon two undeniable
results, to be anticipated in any regular case of duel, and supported by
one uniform course of precedent:--_First_, That, in a civil adjudication
of any such case, assuming only that it has been fairly conducted, and
agreeably to the old received usages of England, no other verdict is
ever given by a jury than one of acquittal. _Secondly_, That, before
military tribunals, the result is still stronger; for the party liable
to a challenge is not merely acquitted, as a matter of course, if he
accepts it with any issue whatsoever, but is positively dishonoured and
degraded (nay, even dismissed the service, virtually under colour of a
request that he will sell out) if he does not. These precedents form the
current law for English society, as existing amongst gentlemen. Duels,
pushed _a l'outrance_, and on the savage principles adopted by a few
gambling ruffians on the Continent, (of which a good description is
given in the novel of _The most unfortunate Man in the World_,) or by
old buccaneering soldiers of Napoleon, at war with all the world, and in
the desperation of cowardice, demanding to fight in a saw-pit or across
a table,--this sort of duels is as little recognised by the indulgence
of English law, as, in the other extreme, the mock duels of German
Burschen are recognised by the gallantry of English society. Duels of
the latter sort would be deemed beneath the dignity of judicial inquiry:
duels of the other sort, beyond its indulgence. But all other duels,
fairly managed in the circumstances, are undeniably privileged amongst
non-military persons, and commanded to those who are military.

I may illustrate the value of one amongst the suggestions I have made,
by looking back and applying it to part of my last anecdote: the case of
that promising person who was cut off so prematurely for himself, and so
ruinously for the happiness of the surviving antagonist. I may mention,
(as a fact known to me on the very best authority,) that the Duke of
Wellington was consulted by a person of distinction, who had been
interested in the original dispute, with a view to his opinion upon the
total merits of the affair, on its validity, as a 'fighting' quarrel,
and on the behaviour of the parties to it. Upon the last question, the
opinion of his Grace was satisfactory. His bias, undoubtedly, if he has
any, is likely to lie towards the wisdom of the peacemaker; and
possibly, like many an old soldier, he may be apt to regard the right of
pursuing quarrels by arms as a privilege not hastily to be extended
beyond the military body. But, on the other question, as to the nature
of the quarrel, the duke denied that it required a duel; or that a duel
was its natural solution. And had the duke been the mediator, it is
highly probable that the unfortunate gentleman would now have been
living. Certainly, the second quarrel involved far less of irritating
materials than the first. It grew out of a hasty word, and nothing more;
such as drops from parliamentary debaters every night of any interesting
discussion--drops hastily, is as hastily recalled, or excused, perhaps,
as a venial sally of passion, either by the good sense or the
magnanimity of the party interested in the wrong. Indeed, by the
unanimous consent of all who took notice of the affair, the seconds, or
one of them at least, in this case, must be regarded as deeply
responsible for the tragical issue; nor did I hear of one person who
held them blameless, except that one who, of all others, might the most
excusably have held them wrong in any result. But now, from such a case
brought under the review of a court, such as I have supposed, and
improved in the way I have suggested, a lesson so memorable might have
been given to the seconds, by a two-years' imprisonment--punishment
light enough for the wreck of happiness which they caused--that soon,
from this single case, raised into a memorable precedent, there would
have radiated an effect upon future duels for half a century to come.
And no man can easily persuade me that he is in earnest about the
extinction of duelling, who does not lend his countenance to a
suggestion which would, at least, mitigate the worst evils of the
practice, and would, by placing the main agents in responsibility to the
court, bring the duel itself immediately under the direct control of
that court; would make a legal tribunal not reviewers subsequently, but,
in a manner, spectators of the scene; and would carry judicial
moderation and skill into the very centre of angry passions; not, as now
they act, inefficiently to review, and, by implication, sometimes to
approve their most angry ebullitions, but practically to control and
repress them.

THE LOVE-CHARM.

A TALE FROM THE GERMAN OF TIECK.[17]

Emilius was sitting in deep thought at his table, awaiting his friend
Roderick. The light was burning before him; the winter evening was cold;
and to-day he wished for the presence of his fellow-traveller, though at
other times wont rather to avoid his society: for on this evening he was
about to disclose a secret to him, and beg for his advice. The timid,
shy Emilius found in every business and accident of life so many
difficulties, such insurmountable hindrances, that it might seem to have
been an ironical whim of his destiny which brought him and Roderick
together, Roderick being in everything the reverse of his friend.
Inconstant, flighty, always determined by the first impression, and
kindling in an instant, he engaged in everything, had a plan for every
occasion; no undertaking was too arduous for him, no obstacle could
deter him. But in the midst of the pursuit he slackened and wearied just
as suddenly as at first he had caught fire and sprung forward. Whatever
then opposed him, was for him not a spur to urge him onward, but only
led him to abandon what he had so hotly rushed into; so that Roderick
was every day thoughtlessly beginning something new, and with no better
cause relinquishing and idly forgetting what he had begun the day
before. Hence, never a day passed but the friends got into a quarrel,
which seemed to threaten the death of their friendship; and yet what to
all appearance thus severed them, was perhaps the very thing that most
closely bound them together; each loved the other heartily; but each
found passing satisfaction in being able to discharge the most justly
deserved reproaches upon his friend.

[17] See the remarks in Prefatory Note, vol. i.

Emilius, a rich young man, of a susceptible and melancholy temperament,
on the death of his parents had become master of his fortune. He had set
out on a journey in order thereby to complete his education, but had now
already spent several months in a large town, for the sake of enjoying
the pleasures of the carnival, about which he never gave himself the
least trouble, and of making certain arrangements of importance about
his fortune with some relations, to whom as yet he had scarcely paid a
visit. On the road he had fallen in with the restless, ever-shifting and
veering Roderick, who was living at variance with his guardians, and
who, to free himself wholly from them and their burdensome admonitions,
eagerly grasped at the opportunity held out to him by his new friend of
becoming his companion on his travels. During their journey they had
often been on the point of separating; but each after every dispute had
only felt the more clearly that he could not live without the other.
Scarce had they left their carriage in any town, when Roderick had
already seen everything remarkable in it, to forget it all again on the
morrow; while Emilius took a week to acquire a thorough knowledge of the
place from his books, lest he should omit seeing anything that was to be
seen; and after all, from indolence and indifference thought there was
hardly anything worth his while to go and look at. Roderick had
immediately made a thousand acquaintances, and visited every public
place of entertainment; often too he brought his new-made friends to the
lonely chamber of Emilius, and would then leave him alone with them, as
soon as they began to tire him. At other times he would confound the
modest Emilius by extravagantly praising his merits and his acquirements
before intelligent and learned men, and by giving them to understand how
much they might learn from his friend about languages, or antiquities,
or the fine arts, although he himself could never find time for
listening to him on such subjects, when the conversation happened to
turn on them. But if Emilius ever chanced to be in a more active mood,
he might almost make sure of his truant friend having caught cold the
night before at a ball or a sledge-party, and being forced to keep his
bed; so that, with the liveliest, most restless, and most communicative
of men for his companion, Emilius lived in the greatest solitude.

To-day he confidently expected him; for Roderick had been forced to give
him a solemn promise of spending the evening with him, in order to learn
what it was that for weeks had been depressing and agitating his
thoughtful friend. Meanwhile Emilius wrote down the following lines:

'Tis sweet when spring its choir assembles,
And every nightingale is steeping
The trees in his melodious weeping,
Till leaf and bloom with rapture trembles.

Fair is the net which moonlight weaves;
Fair are the breezes' gambolings,
As with lime-odours on their wings
They chase each other through the leaves.

Bright is the glory of the rose,
When Love's rich magic decks the earth,
From countless roses Love looks forth,
Those stars wherewith Love's heaven glows.

But sweeter, fairer, brighter far
To me that little lamp's pale gleaming,
When through the narrow casement streaming,
It bids me hail my evening star;

As from their braids her locks she flings,
Then twines them in a flowery band,
While at each motion of her hand
The white robe to her fair form clings;

Or when she breaks her lute's deep slumbers,
And as at morning's touch up-darting,
The notes, beneath her fingers starting,
Dance o'er the strings in playful numbers.

To stop their flight her voice she pours
Full after them; they laugh and fly,
And to my heart for refuge hie;
Her voice pursues them through its doors.

Leave me, ye fierce ones! hence remove!
They bar themselves within, and say,
'Till this be broken, here we stay,
That thou mayst know what 'tis to love.'

Emilius arose fretfully. It grew darker, and Roderick came not, and he was
wishing to tell him of his love for an unknown fair one, who dwelt in the
opposite house, and who kept him all day long at home, and waking through
many a night. At length footsteps sounded up the stairs; the door opened
without anybody knocking at it, and in walked two gay masks with ugly
visages, one a Turk, dressed in red and blue silk, the other a Spaniard in
pale yellow and pink with many waving feathers on his hat. As Emilius was
becoming impatient, Roderick took off his mask, showed his well-known
laughing countenance, and said: 'Heyday, my good friend, what a drowned
puppy of a face! Is this the way to look in carnival time? I and our dear
young officer are come to fetch you away. There is a grand ball to-night at
the masquerade rooms; and as I know you have forsworn ever going out in any
other suit than that which you always wear, of the devil's own colour, come
with us as black as you are, for it is already somewhat late.'

Emilius felt angry, and said: 'You have, it seems, according to custom,
altogether forgotten our agreement. I am extremely sorry,' he continued,
turning to the stranger, 'that I cannot possibly accompany you; my friend
has been over-hasty in promising for me; indeed I cannot go out at all,
having something of importance to talk to him about.'

The stranger, who was well-bred, and saw what Emilius meant, withdrew; but
Roderick, with the utmost indifference, put on his mask again, placed
himself before the glass, and said: 'Verily I am a hideous figure, am I not?
To say the truth, it is a tasteless, worthless, disgusting device.'

'That there can be no question about,' answered Emilius, in high
indignation. 'Making a caricature of yourself, and making a fool of
yourself, are among the pleasures you are always driving after at full
gallop.'

'Because you do not like dancing yourself,' said the other, 'and look upon
dancing as a mischievous invention, not a soul in the world must wear a
merry face. How tiresome it is, when a person is made up of nothing but
whims!'

'Doubtless!' replied his angry friend, 'and you give me ample opportunity
for finding that it is so. I thought after our agreement you would have
given me this evening; but----'

'But it is the carnival, you know,' pursued the other, 'and all my
acquaintances and certain fair ladies are expecting me at the grand ball
to-night. Assure yourself, my good friend, it is mere disease in you that
makes you so unreasonable against all such matters.'

'Which of us has the fairest claim to disease,' said Emilius, 'I will not
examine. At least your inconceivable frivolousness, your hunger and thirst
after stop-gaps for every hour you are awake, your wild-goose chase after
pleasures that leave the heart empty, seem not to me altogether the
healthiest state of the soul. In certain things, at all events, you might
make a little allowance for my weakness, if it must once for all pass for
such: and there is nothing in the world that so jars through and through me
as a ball with its frightful music. Somebody once said, that to a deaf
person who cannot hear the music, a set of dancers must look like so many
patients for a mad-house; but, in my opinion, this dreadful music itself,
this twirling and whirling and pirouetting of half a dozen notes, each
treading on its own heels, in those accursed tunes which ram themselves
into our memories, yea, I might say, mix themselves up with our very blood,
so that one cannot get rid of their taint for many a miserable day
after--this to me is the very trance of madness; and if I could ever bring
myself to think dancing endurable, it must be dancing to the tune of
silence.'

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