Читать книгу The Book of Duels - Michael Garriga - Страница 7

When challenged to a duel, do much or nothing at all.

Casanova, The Duel (paraphrase)

“Duels were demonstrations of manner, not marksmanship; they were intricate games of dare and counterdare, ritualized displays of bravery, military prowess, and—above all—willingness to sacrifice one’s life for one’s honor. A man’s response to the threat of gunplay bore far more meaning than the exchange of fire itself.”

Joanne B. Freeman, Affairs of Honor

In one of the most famous duels of early New Orleans, Bernard Marigny challenged James Humble, a Georgian who stood almost seven feet tall, to a duel. Humble told a trusted friend, “I will not fight him. I know nothing of this dueling business.”

“You must,” his friend protested. “No gentleman can refuse a challenge.”

“I’m not a gentleman,” Humble retorted. “I’m only a blacksmith.”

Humble was assured that he would be ruined socially if he declined to meet the challenge of the Creole, who was a crack shot and noted swordsman. However, his friend pointed out that as the challenged man, the blacksmith had the choice of weapons and could so choose to put himself on equal terms with his adversary. Humble considered the matter for a day or two and then sent this reply to Marigny: “I accept your challenge, and in the exercise of my privilege, I stipulate that the duel shall take place in Lake Pontchartrain in six feet of water, sledgehammers to be used as weapons.”

Since Marigny was less than five feet and eight inches tall, and so slight that he could scarcely lift a sledgehammer, this was giving Humble an equal chance with a vengeance. Marigny’s friends urged him to stand on a box and run the risk of having his skull cracked by the huge blacksmith’s hammer, but Marigny declared it impossible for himself to fight a man with such a fine sense of humor. Instead he apologized to Humble, and the two became firm friends.

Herbert Asbury, The French Quarter (paraphrase)

Inspired by movie gunfights, Nobel Prize–winning physicist Niels Bohr first suggested the intentional act of drawing and shooting is slower to execute than the reactive response. He once did an impromptu research project to find out why good guys in movies always win quick-draw duels. After many mock gunfights in university hallways with graduate students, Bohr concluded the villain always tries to draw his gun first (and so must consciously move his hands), while the hero always reacts and draws by reflex as soon as he sees the villain moving. There is good evidence from imaging scans that our brain system uses different messaging routes depending on intentional and reactive movements, but this is the first time the two speeds of thought have been calculated.

Welchman, et al., “The Quick and the Dead” (paraphrase)

“I, being a citizen of this State, have not fought a duel with deadly weapons within this State nor out of it, nor have I sent or accepted a challenge to fight a duel with deadly weapons, nor have I acted as second in carrying a challenge, nor aided or assisted any person thus offending, so help me God.”

Current oath of office for Kentucky State officeholders

To avert an all-out war, the vice president of Iraq, Taha Yassin Ramadan, suggested the following on October 2, 2002: “The American president should specify a group and we will specify a group and choose neutral ground, with Kofi Annan as referee and use one weapon with a president [Saddam Hussein] against a president [George W. Bush], a vice president against a vice president, and a minister against a minister in a duel.”

Associated Press

“In the freshly minted United States of America, the punishable-by-dissection category was extended to include duelists, the death sentence clearly not posing much of a deterrent to the type of fellow who agrees to settle his differences by the dueling pistol.”

Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

“Some people stop living long before they die.”

Drive-By Truckers, “The Living Bubba”

“I thoroughly disapprove of duels. I consider them unwise and I know they are dangerous. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge me now, I would go to that man and take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet retired spot, and kill him.”

Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“On February 5, 1897, Marcel Proust challenged the literary critic Jean Lorrain to a duel after the latter, a homosexual himself, alluded to Proust’s sexual affair with a man of means, suggesting this was how his novel Pleasures and Days came to be published. Both men fired shots and missed and, in this manner, Proust’s honor was restored. It has been apocryphally noted that, years later, Proust would say that when he fired his pistol, the smell of the gun smoke was so strong, it sent a series of flashes roiling through his brain to an ultimate moment when, as a child, he’d first sat in front of an open fire eating, but what else, a madeleine.”

Michael Garriga

“Those are people who died, died / They were all my friends, and they died.”

Jim Carroll Band, “People Who Died”

“Another study found only one duelist in fourteen died. Most duelists escaped unscathed, or with minor wounds, at worst. It had become fashionable among some writers to portray these affairs as more farcical than fatal.”

Thomas Fleming, The Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Future of America