“A Modern Cabinet of Curiosities” contains some favourite things—old or new—along with some curiosities and some just plain oddities.

Monday, September 16, 2019

The Poetic Duel



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!


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