IN the autumn of that year I went abroad for the first time. Frederick Villiers was then staying at Boulogne; engaged, he said, in the study of Political Economy. And early one morning I burst into his room.
“My dear friend,” he exclaimed, “you have come just in time to do me an essential service. I must fight a duel, and you must be my second.”
Herewith he commenced a narrative which I thus briefly condense.
He had been staying at a boarding-house near Boulogne. Among the boarders was General Wemyss, a tall, stout man, between fifty and sixty, accustomed to enforce authority, and fitted to exact deference. One day at dinner, my lively friend contesting one of his opinions, and having the best of the argument, General Wemyss said petulantly, “Mr. Villiers, you talk too loud and too fast.”
“Sir,” answered Villiers, who occasionally stuttered, “that is a very imper-pertinent observation.”
Therewith the General waved his long arm so as to touch insultingly my friend, who was seated next but one to him.
Villiers rose, bowed to the company, and passed by the General to quit the room. Wemyss, perhaps mistaking his quiet silence for faint-heartedness, rose also, and struck him as he passed. Villiers then paused, and said, “Sir, when a gentleman forgets himself so far as to strike me in the presence of ladies, my proper course is to retire and call him out; but when a gentleman strikes me a second time, it becomes a matter of self-defence, and, instead of calling him out, I knock him down.” Suiting the action to the word, he felled the General.
The General sent a Colonel Knight to him, demanding satisfaction. A young friend of Villiers’s, named Shafto, happened to be passing though Boulogne, and Villiers put the affair into his hands. Shafto was little more than a boy in character as in years, and no match for a veteran like Colonel Knight; who induced him to subscribe an apology to General Wemyss, without exacting a suitable apology in return. Villiers was furious on hearing this; but the second had bound the principal, and there was an end of the matter. The General, however, being, I fear, somewhat of a Bobadil, went about the cafés, boasting of the humiliation he had inflicted on the young hero, and reviving, in fact, the extinguished quarrel by those aspersions on courage which in that day no young man was accustomed to submit to. These aspersions had just been conveyed to Villiers, and with an intimation that they were beginning to prejudice him in the eyes of the chivalry of Boulogne. Thus stood the affair on the morning of my arrival; and the service exacted from me was to demand of General Wemyss a written denial or retractation of the injurious words ascribed to him, failing which — satisfaction.
New as I was to the philosophy of duelling, I saw that the affair was complicated; and that it would be difficult, on the strength of words reported by the gossips of cafes, to induce a wary and elderly soldier either to commit himself to any written declaration of a nature to content my friend, or to reopen a quarrel which had been formally closed. However, sympathizing with my friend’s indignant feeling, and aware of the stigma which at that time rested upon any gentleman who at the outset of life was suspected of showing the white feather, I undertook the mission, and waited upon General Wemyss. I found that gentleman (just as I had expected) very indisposed to enter into the matter at all; striving to treat me as a boy, boasting much of his own military reputation and services; magisterial, dignified, sullen. At length, however, thanks chiefly to some unguarded expressions indicative of disrespect to myself (which I took up very sternly — implying that if he escaped my friend, he would have to account with me), I forced him to change his tone, and he ended by referring me to his former second — Colonel Knight. I repaired to that warrior. He was as hard to manage as the General. But I succeeded at last, not in obtaining any written retractation or denial of words uttered before many witnesses, but in arranging a hostile meeting for the next morning. My friend’s thanks and joy on my return with this intelligence were evidently unaffected, and strongly contrasted with my own anxiety and fear for his safety. But the practice of these encounters (especially abroad) was then so general that every young man of fashion visiting France made up his mind beforehand that he must pass through the ordeal of single combat. The next morning my friend, who was (and is to this day) a consummate epicure, took especial pains in ordering the déjeûner à la fourchette to which we were to return from the encounter: after which we repaired to the field — I, grave and silent; my friend, light-hearted and voluble.
After waiting a few minutes, the two hostile warriors appeared. But what was my surprise, when the General approached me as I was measuring the ground, drew me aside, and said, with a fatherly air, at once lofty and tender, “Sir, you are very young; do not have the blood of your friend on your hands. It will be a subject of remorse to you throughout life. My aim is unerring. Do not provoke it. Say that your friend is sorry for the mistake he committed in sending you to me, and I pardon him. I can afford to pardon him. My courage is proved. My breast is scarred with wounds in the service of my country!”
“General Wemyss,” said I, “I am not so young as not to know that a principal who addresses words like these to the second of his adversary is sinning against every rule which a General should inculcate on his officers. And you almost tempt me to believe that the wounds you boast of were received rather on the back than on the breast.”
The General stood speechless for a moment, and then faltered out, “Enough, your friend is a dead man!”
After this terrible prediction he slowly allowed Colonel Knight to place him at his post.
Two shots were exchanged. My friend’s failed. That was natural, seeing that, before that day, I doubt if he had ever handled a pistol. But that a hero whose aim was so unerring should fire at least forty yards wide of the mark was more singular. Here Colonel Knight interposed, declaring that the laws of honor were amply vindicated, and that his principal was withdrawn.
“Not till he has either retracted or amply apologized for the words he has publicly uttered.”
Colonel Knight hesitated; but the tall General approached with a majestic step.
“Young gentleman,” he said to Villiers, “it is true that I doubted your courage. I may so have expressed myself. I was in error. You have exposed yourself to face a British officer not unknown in the annals of his country. I retract. I apologize. I am deeply sorry for my mistake. Can I say more? If so, I say it.” Tears rushed to his eyes, and coursed his manly cheeks. “Young men, may you both be spared to serve your country, as I have done! Accept an old man’s blessing, and his hand.”
Thus ended the first duel in which I was engaged. We returned to the déjeûner Villiers had so carefully ordered. Naturally enough, my friend rose greatly in my estimation after this adventure. The sang froid that characterized his courage — free from all nervous excitement and all truculent swagger — was a quality that, however misapplied in the instance of duelling, might well in itself be admired. Indeed, I should doubt if a man more constitutionally brave than Frederick Villiers could be found.
I have seen him on many occasions in positions of danger that might somewhat shake the hardiest nerves, and in these his fearless and cool self-possession was perfect. Much in this and other attributes of the man — such as his lively humor, his playful satire on “common people,” contrasted by a logical philosophy that made him, if aristocrat by temper, democrat by reason, assisted me in finishing and completing the character of Pelham. He differed from that worthy chiefly in the utter absence of the ambition which supplies motive power to Pelham, and impresses the reader with the belief that he is destined to outlive and redeem all his more frivolous feelings and affectations. But nothing could ever have induced Frederick Villiers to undergo the persevering trouble necessary to a successful career. Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle, was his answer to all encouragement to him to develop and put forth his natural abilities. Perhaps the circumstances of his birth had something to do with this spirit of inaction. His mother and aunts, poor women, were always afraid that he should do something that would make the world inquire who he was.
After a short sojourn at Boulogne, during which neither of us made much progress in Political Economy, I hired a carriage and persuaded Villiers to accompany me on a tour through the principal Flemish towns, including Brussels, intending to close at Paris.
In this journey we might have enjoyed ourselves much as other young men, but for the chilling nature of my companion’s philosophy. He had a good-natured sneer for everything that inspired me with interest. Monuments of art in painting and architecture, associations connected with the general history of Flanders and liberty, even the ordinary sentiment of pride any Englishmen might feel in exploring the battlefield of Waterloo, were to him subjects of contempt — half epicurean, half cynical. In short, I was an enthusiast in company with a man older than myself, and in many things cleverer, but who mocked at enthusiasm; and thus by degrees his very gayety depressed me.
We concluded our tour at Paris, and I was not sorry when my friend took there an apartment and left me free to muse in the solitude of mine.