Passage Illustrated: A Duel with Pistols rather than Rapiers Ends Surprisingly

"Messieurs, your pistols," said Le Capitaine la Garde, who, as he handed the weapons, and repeated once more the conditions of the combat, gave the word to march.

I now walked slowly forward to the place marked out by the stone; but it seemed that I must have been in advance of my opponent, for I remember some seconds elapsed before Trevanion coughed slightly, and then with a clear full voice called out "Une," "Deux." I had scarcely turned myself half round, when my right arm was suddenly lifted up, as if by a galvanic shock. My pistol jerked upwards, and exploded the same moment, and then dropped powerlessly from my hand, which I now felt was covered with warm blood from a wound near the elbow. From the acute but momentary pang this gave me, my attention was soon called off; for scarcely had my arm been struck, when a loud clattering noise to my left induced me to turn, and then, to my astonishment, I saw my friend O'Leary about twelve feet from the ground, hanging on by some ash twigs that grew from the clefts of the granite. Fragments of broken rock were falling around him, and his own position momentarily threatened a downfall. He was screaming with all his might; but what he said was entirely lost in the shouts of laughter of Trevanion and the Frenchmen, who could scarcely stand with the immoderate exuberance of their mirth.

I had not time to run to his aid — which, although wounded, I should have done — when the branch he clung to, slowly yielded with his weight, and the round, plump figure of my poor friend rolled over the little cleft of rock, and, after a few faint struggles, came tumbling heavily down, and at last lay peaceably in the deep heather at the bottom — his cries the whole time being loud enough to rise even above the vociferous laughter of the others. [Ch. XXXIV, "The Duel," 246]

Commentary: A Comic Outcome illustrative of "Streaky Bacon" Plot Construction

Since Harry is the one challenged, he elects to duel with pistols ("at the barrier" — "a barriere") rather than rapiers, but the French opponent, the Baron D'Haultpenne, demonstrates that he is a brilliant shot by shooting off the thumb of a glove thrown into the air. The illustration, appearing at the head of the episode, significantly influences the reader's response to what the bare text suggests is likely to be a negative outcome for the protagonist. Instead of portending tragedy (unlikely, given the first-person point of view that Lever has adopted) we end in mirth in what a Victorian reader would have recognized as streaky bacon plot construction. Phiz has realised the setting, the stone quarry, effectively, but focuses on the comical antics of O'Leary, rather than upon the wound Harry has just sustained. Indeed, one would have peruse the letterpress rather than the plate to determine that Harry has been wounded — nobody in the plate pays him any attention, as Trevanion, the Baron, and the Dragoon officer serving as D'Haultpenne's second are all laughing uproariously at O'Leary as he falls off the cliff face.

Phiz focuses not on the serious outcome (Harry's being wounded by his sharp-shooting opponent) but the comic scene of Harry's pistol discharging a ball that lands just above O'Leary's head. From the first, his appearance in the scene has constituted comic relief because he must act nominally as Harry's second, but speaks not a word of French. Although Captain Trevanion is in fact stage-managing the duel, as a resident of Paris he is liable for prosecution after serving in any official capacity in this affair of honour.

I was speedily relieved by Trevanion calling O'Leary to one side, while he explained to him that he must nominally act as second on the ground, as Trevanion, being a resident in Paris, might become liable to a prosecution, should anything serious arise, while O'Leary, as a mere passer through, could cross the frontier into Germany, and avoid all trouble. [245]

In fact, by the time that Lever published this novel, duelling either with rapiers or pistols had declined considerably in France, and the last-known fatal duel occurred in England in 1845. But Trevanion's caution is worth noting, for as a non-resident O'Leary would not likely be pursued by the authorities. The last famous duel fought on French soil occurred in 1832.

Related Material: Duelling and "Streaky-Bacon" Plot Construction

• Duelling in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
• Exorcising a Spirit in "The Doctor's Tale," Charles O'Malley Chapter LXVIII (March 1841)

Illustrations of Duelling in Other Victorian Novels, 1838 to 1842

Left: The Cruikshank engraving of the protagonist's giving satisfaction, The Duel in Tothill Fields (1842) in Ainsworth's The Miser's Daughter (July 1842). Centre: Phiz's humorous depiction of a stage duel, The Country Manager Rehearses a Combat in Nicholas Nickleby, Chapter 22 (Oct. 1838). Right: Phiz depicts the kind of quarrel that might well lead to a duel in Nicholas Nickleby: The Last Brawl between Sir Mulberry and His Pupil (July 1839). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Bibliography

Buchanan-Brown, John. Phiz! Illustrator of Dickens' World. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978.

Chartres, J. A. "Duelling." The Oxford Companion to British History. Ed. John Cannon. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1999. 308.

Griffin, Margaret. Regulating Religion and Morality in the King's Armies, 1639-1646. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004.

Lester, Valerie Browne Lester. Phiz! The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.

Lever, Charles. The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. Dublin: William Curry, Jun. London: W. S. Orr, 1839.

Shoemaker, Robert B. "The Taming of the Duel: Masculinity, Honour and Ritual Violence in London, 1660-1800." The Historical Journal 45, 3 (2003): 525-545.

Steig, Michael. Chapter Two: "The Beginnings of 'Phiz': Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 24-85.

Stevenson, Lionel. Chapter V, "Renegade from Physic, 1839-1841." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939. Pp. 73-93.

_______. "The Domestic Scene." The English Novel: A Panorama. Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin and Riverside, 1960.

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Created 1 May 2023