The
Poetic Duel
Do duels lend
themselves to poetic mockery? The whole idea is very silly, yes. Here are three very different poets from
different centuries and from two different countries, all mocking the duel. For
two it was topical; for the third, merely a glance at the past. All three have
identical ironic dénouements!
Mid-18th Century
The insult was
insupportable, honour must be satisfied,
and Frog and
Mouse go to it!
Christopher Smart (1722-1771).
“The Duellists.” The Gentleman's Magazine, Aug. 1754.
Those few who
have heard of the English writer Christopher Smart these days probably connect
him with his poem (actually part of a much longer one) on considering his cat, Jeoffry.
He could be very clever, and very, very rude, and very funny. The Duellists is one of his lighter,
more amusing works.
You can read more about the astonishingly
talented, prolific and unstable Christopher Smart and his very sad life story in:
Frank Key. “Christopher Smart’s Jubilate
Agno”, The Public Domain Review.
The Duellists
What’s honour, did your Lordship say?
My Lord, I humbly crave a day.—
’Tis difficult, and in my mind,
Like substance, cannot be defin’d.
It
deals in numerous externals,
And is a legion of infernals;
Sometimes in riot and in play,
‘Tis breaking of the Sabbath day:
When ’tis consider’d as a passion,
I deem it lust and fornication.
We pay our debts in honour’s cause,
Lost in the breaking of the laws:
‘Tis for some selfish impious end,
To murder the sincerest friend;
But wou’d you alter all the clan,
Turn out an honourable man.
Why take a pistol from the shelf,
And fight a duel with yourself.—
’Twas
on a time, the Lord knows when,
In Ely, or in Lincoln fen,
A Frog and Mouse had long disputes,
Held in the language of the brutes,
Who of a certain pool and pasture,
Shou’d be the sovereign and master.
Sir, says the Frog, and d—n’d his blood,
I hold that my pretension’s good;
Nor can a Brute of reason doubt it,
For all that you can squeak about it.
The Mouse averse to be o’erpower’d,
Gave him the lie, and call’d him coward;
Too hard for any frog’s digestion,
To have his froghood call’d in question!
A bargain instantly was made,
No mouse of honour could evade.
On the next morn, as soon as light,
With desperate bullrushes to fight;
The morning came—and man to man,
The grand monomachy began;
Need I recount how each bravado,
Shone in montant and in passado;
To what a height their ire they carry’d,
How oft they thrusted and they parry’d;
But as these champions kept dispensing,
Finesses in the art of fencing,
A furious vulture took upon her,
Quick to decide this point of honour,
And, lawyer like, to make an end on’t,
Devour’d both plaintiff and defendant.
Thus, often in our British nation,
(I speak by way of application)
A lie direct to some hot youth,
The giving which perhaps was truth,
The treading on a scoundrel’s toe,
Or dealing impudence a blow,
Disputes in politics and law,
About a feather and a straw;
A thousand trifles not worth naming,
In whoring, jockeying, and gaming,
Shall cause a challenge’s inditing,
And set two loggerheads a fighting;
Meanwhile the father of despair,
The prince of vanity and air,
His querry, like an hawk discovering,
O’er their devoted heads hangs hovering,
Secure to get in his tuition,
These volunteers for black perdition.
(“monomachy” means single combat)
Early 19th Century
Two lords a-fighting… A Grand Pigeon Match:
Wellington has
at it; Winchilsea shrinks in fear of
the Lobster’s
popery
In the first years
of the 19th century ridicule of the duel became more general, as we can see in
the contemporary caricatures. More than one artist had a go at the Duke of Wellington
when he fought a duel with Lord Winchelsea in 1829—by which time he was an elder
statesman, two months off his sixtieth birthday, and British Prime Minister!
Wellington became Prime Minister in 1828. “His
term was marked by Catholic emancipation: the granting of almost full civil
rights to Catholics in Great Britain and Ireland. … The Earl of Winchilsea
accused the Duke of ‘an insidious design for the infringement of our liberties
and the introduction of Popery into every department of the State.’ Wellington
responded by immediately challenging Winchilsea to a duel. On 21 March 1829,
Wellington and Winchilsea met on Battersea fields. When the time came to fire,
the Duke took aim and Winchilsea kept his arm down. The Duke fired wide to the
right. Accounts differ as to whether he missed on purpose, an act known in
dueling as a delope. Wellington claimed he did. However, he was noted for his
poor aim and reports more sympathetic to Winchilsea claimed he had aimed to
kill. Winchilsea did not fire, a plan he and his second had almost certainly
decided upon before the duel. Honour was saved and Winchilsea wrote Wellington
an apology.” (“Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington”, Wikipedia)
Wellington is shown as a lobster partly in
reference to his famous hooked nose; and also because “lobster” was “a
disparaging nickname for a British Army soldier.” (“The
Duel in Cartoons”, King’s College London Online Exhibitions: The Duke of
Wellington)
In this Piggy’s
Progress the gallant protagonist, slain
by darts from Miss Crane’s eyes, fights a triumphant
duel
in her honour –
but that isn’t the last of it!
Lady Delaware (author) and Thomas
Crane (1808-1859) (artist).
Life and Adventures of Mr. Pig and
Miss Crane: a Nursery Tale, Embellished with Designs. [Chester, Crane Press,
1836?]
Thomas Crane
was an English artist, largely based in provincial towns, who was quite successful
in his time; he was the father of the more famous Walter Crane.
There
has been some disagreement by bibliographers over the author of Life and Adventures of Mr Pig and Miss Crane,
but it is fairly well established that she was a Lady Delaware. The little volume
is described as “composed by Lady Delaware of Vale Royale, for the Tarvin Bazaar
in 1836 and lithographed by the Crane Press” in Walter Crane, by Isobel Spencer (London, Studio Vista, 1975).
The
duel takes place in the middle of the inept Mr Pig’s story:
A Challenge sent, the Foes are met,
On blood and murder both are set
Miss Crane looks on, well pleased to see
The Captain stuck by bold Piggy.
The poem ends
with the elopement of Piggy and Miss Crane, in which they suffer, alas, the fate
of all our duelling protagonists:
T’wixt cup and lip Alas! we see
Both wine and lovers spilt may be.
Against the Post, the horses run
The Reins are lost the Coachman’s flung
Pig flies aloft, Miss tumbles down
Broke is her neck, and crack’d his crown!
Moral.
Behold the crisis of our awful story
And catch this Moral from the Scene before ye
If e’er at Gretna Green a lover glances
Crane-necks remember, and beware mischances.
You don’t get
the full flavour of it from these extracts: read the Internet Archive version: it
gives the two-page display of the original, with the verse on the left-hand page
and the illustration on the right. Each verse has its own delightful picture.
Tilting at Windmills?
Mellish and Hawke
go at it; Cruikshank has a go at them,
the duel, and the quixotry of the whole silly business
Here’s the caricaturist
Isaac Cruikshank’s take on the duel:
The dialogue reads:
R: Now Mr. Quixote take care of your Bread Basket for by
Jasus it's 5 to 4 but I'll hit you.
L: 6 to 4 you don't but harkee Sancho, take care of your
Cannister.
R: I’m winged, D—me. I say, lend us your Cravat to tie up
the broken pinion.
The protagonists depicted are a Colonel
Henry Francis (Harry) Mellish (1782-1817) (R.) and a Mr. Martin Hawke (1777-1839)
(L.), the younger son of a Lord Hawke (Martin Hawke, 2nd Baron Hawke, 1744-1805).
Mellish was well-known in fashionable sporting circles as the owner of horses
who won the St. Leger in successive years: Sancho (1804) and Staveley (1805)—hence
the “Sancho” reference in the cartoon. (“Sancho (horse)”, “Staveley (horse)”,
and “St Leger Stakes”, Wikipedia)
Henry Hall Dixon (1822-1870) in his Post and the Paddock, with Recollections of
George IV., Sam Chiffney, & Other Turf Celebrities, by the Druid (London,
Piper, Stephenson & Co., [1856], p. 118-119) tells us about this duel—it was
a real one, though Cruikshank is also mocking the contemporary sporting men’s
use of slang:
“Nimrod has dashed off Colonel Mellish's whole contour
with such a masterly hand, that our own touches would seem clownish after it.
We will therefore simply add that that quick-looking, pale-faced, and
black-haired ‘Crichton’ measured 5 feet 10 inches, and weighed 11st. 71bs. He
was no Sir Fopling Flutter, either in dress or mind; and his friend, the late
Earl of Scarboro' was never more delighted than when he heard him set two
disputatious young Oxford divines right … about the whereabouts of a certain
passage in Livy. His wonderful talents stood him in good stead in the Peninsular
War, where he was on the Duke of Wellington's staff, and at times entrusted
with the drawing up of despatches. He had gained some little experience of
bloodshed at home, as in 1807 he fought a duel with Martin Hawke, in a field by
the roadside, as they were returning in their drags from the Yorkshire
election. On this occasion he was wounded near the elbow joint, and on
perceiving it he immediately ran up to his opponent, and said, ‘D— it, Hawke,
you’ve winged me; but give me your hand.’ They were great rival whips, and some
ill blood on the point, as well as election matters, brought about this
extempore determination to resort to thirty paces and the saw-handles.”
Early 20th Century
You could eat
this duel: Cauliflower and Tomato fight it out,
seconded by Potatoes and Celery
Margaret Gebbie Hays (1874-1925).
“The Duel”, Vegetable Verselets
for Humorous Vegetarians; with illustrations by Grace G. Wiederseim.
Philadelphia and London, J.B. Lippincott Company, 1911.
The American
sisters Margaret Gebbie Hays and Grace Gebbie Drayton (formerly Wiederseim) wrote
and illustrated both together and separately in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. Grace G. Drayton’s work lasted much longer than her sister’s: she produced
the originals of the famous “Campbell’s Soup kids.” The Vegetable Verselets are so silly that they’re delightful. Unfortunately
Grace didn’t illustrate this one, but I’ve included her pictures that accompany
two of the other poems.
The Duel
Sir Cauliflower fought a duel
With gallant Lord Tomato.
The “seconds” of the former were
The brothers White Potato;
The latter had for “seconds”
The Messrs. Celery tall.
The time arranged was sunrise,
At Chanticleer's first call.
The combatants chose “pistils”
Culled from the Tiger-Lily.
I'll not say what ’twas all about,
The subject was too silly.
Th’ encounter met a “finish”
Not oft’ found in a book,
For the dramatis personæ
Were captured—by the Cook!
