The Duel

Whose Feet Have Slipped in Gore:

On the Remorse of Duelists

Remorse of Duellists

This is a painful theme. In the notices entitled Camelford, William Barrington, O’Connell, and Colclough, the reader will find details to move his feelings. But these are only examples. A gentleman of wide observation, who has always lived in a duelling section of the United States, and who has taken much pains to inquire into the mental condition of every person who had slain an adversary, remarked, that not a single instance had come to his knowledge which did not afford him proof, that peace of mind was forever destroyed. The same sad intelligence has been derived from others; and as the result of my inquiries, I can truly say, that the narratives which I have read and to which I have listened have uniformly reminded me of the words of Psalmist: “Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me: for I am desolate and in misery.”

Addison, in the Spectator, refers to Thornhill (who slew Sir Cholmy Dering) under the translated name of Spinamont, and possibly gives us the substance of what fell from the lips of the unhappy survivor in an address to the imaginary King Pharamond: “I come not,” he says, “O excellent prince, to implore your pardon; I come not to relate my sorrow, a sorrow too great for human life to support”; and again, “Know, then, that I have this morning killed in a duel the man whom of all men living I most loved.” Dante, in his Hell, describes the sufferings of the damned in words that cause us to shudder; but unless we doubt the veracity of some of the first characters in the country, the poet’s inexhaustible imagination fails to express the wretchedness of most of the living men whose “feet have slipped in gore.” Some utter unceasingly,

“My own life wearied me!

And but for the imperative voice within,

With mine own hand I had thrown off the burden.”

Others, men of gentle and affectionate nature, who had often grieved at the wanton killing of a bird, and on whose bosom wife and children nestled, —with the blood of a husband and a father upon their hands,—dwell, in their woe, upon the thought that

“Not all the blessings of a host of angels

Can blow away a desolate widow’s curse!—

And though thou spill thy heart’s blood for atonement,

It will not weigh against an orphan’s tear!”

Still others, the nervous system shattered, the whole of the physical or intellectual powers weakened or destroyed, see and hear their victim in every passing object, or whisper of the wind; and, as time wears on, sink into hopeless imbecility or raving madness.

I forbear the mention of particular names and instances of either class, for obvious reasons; but such has been the fate of many pure and highly gifted men who have passed away, of many who yet survive. For, say what we will, facts show that persons of the most eminent worth, and most hopeful talents, are oftenest involved in duels. There are, indeed, fiends who howl for blood like ravening wolves, who, because national peace prevents its flow in streams, seek their life long to lap it in drops from the breast of individuals. But let no one believe that even such men are strangers to remorse. The fire is lighted, and slowly consuming them; nor can the shout which these men send up at the midnight carouse, from brothels and drinking and gambling hells, conceal its progress from keen and searching eyes.

“Remorse is as the heart in which it grows;

If that be gentle, it drops balmy dews

Of true repentance; but if proud and gloomy,

It is a poison tree, that, pierced to the inmost,

Weeps on tears of poison.”

—from Notes On Duels and Duelling by Lorenzo Sabine (1803–1877). Sabine was a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts, as well as a historian noted for writing on the subject of loyalists during the American Revolution. Anti-dueling books and treatises increased in the decades following the death of Alexander Hamilton at the hands of Aaron Burr in 1804.

Thomas Fuller’s Bird

Fabulous Bird—Among the many quaint and beautiful conceits in Fuller, there is one preeminently fine: in which he likens the life-long remorse of a man who has slain another in a duel to the condition of “a bird I have read of, which hath a face like, and yet will prey upon, a man; who, coming to the water to drink, and finding there, by reflection, that he had killed one like himself, pineth away by degrees, and never afterwards enjoyeth itself.”

—from the Feb 19^th, 1853 edition of Notes and Queries. The Fuller quoted above is Thomas Fuller, the celebrated 17^th century English churchman and historian. This selection is followed by a query from a reader, asking where Fuller might have read such a grim fable. Notes and Queries had no response. Neither did Charles Lamb or Charles Dickens, both of whom cited Fuller’s description of the raptor.

Unhappily Ever After

Captain Gillespie, who, as second of Lieutenant McKenzie in the duel of the latter with William Barrington, In Ireland in 1777, assassinated Barrington during an altercation, and who became afterward an eminent general officer in the British army, suffered a good deal from what the jury seemed to think was “justifiable homicide.” It has been said of Gillespie that he always seemed to court death during his many engagements with England’s enemies, and that he at last received a fatal bullet while leading his command into the thickest of the fight. Theodore Neuhoff, of Wesphalia, the remarkable young Jesuit who, in 1736, gained the throne of Corsica, never overcame the grief he experienced after killing a fellow-student in a duel in 1729, and died in England, in 1756, or remorse and disappointment.

James Paull, who killed Sir Francis Burdette in 1807, became frantic with insomnia afterward, and committed suicide in 1808. Captain Best, who killed Lord Camelford in 1804, although he did everything in his power, almost, to effect a reconciliation, never recovered from the shock he felt as seeing his antagonist fall mortally wounded and left for dead on the field. “No moment of my life has been an entirely happy one,” he once said, “since I killed that man. I often see poor Camelford standing up before me.” Best died from delirium tremens at the age of forty-eight. Mr. Thronhill, who killed Sir Cholmeley Dering in 1711, suffered great distress of mind in consequence. One of the most painful events in the annals of duelling was the meeting (in Ireland in 1808) of Messrs. Alcock and Colclough. They had been the warmest of friends; and soon after Aclock’s trial for murder, and his acquittal, he became demented and died in an asylum for the insane. His sister, who was engaged to be married to Colclough, also became hopelessly insane.

—from The Field Of Honor: Being A Complete and Comprehensive History of Duelling In All Countries by Major Ben C. Truman (1835–1916). Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Truman was a Civil War correspondent and respected authority on duels.