It was always pleasing and interesting to me to feel and to know that my old friend Kinglake and my dear brother Alexander, though they did not then know each other personally, were linked together by a common opinion on a subject they both took very deeply to heart: the subject of duels. Kinglake could never pardon the Duke of Wellington the abolition of duelling in the British Army.
Personally, having always felt very strongly against every kind of violence or bloodshed, I found his point of view very difficult to understand, and often tried to investigate more profoundly the ethics of the question.
"Do you really mean," I said to Kinglake one day, "that it is right and justifiable for people to attack each other, sometimes for the flimsiest reasons, as is so often done in Germany, just for the fun of the thing—while the tragic little game, as often as not, ends in the death of one of the combatants?"
"That is so," said Kinglake seriously; "but the possibility of a duel ennobles the spirit of a country, is an education in manners, and results in the development of a kind of moral muscle."
The anecdote, by the way, is well known that Kinglake once sent a challenge, went off to Boulogne where the duel was to take place, waited there for days in vain, and, his adversary having failed to appear or to make any sort of response, returned to London in disgust. The point of this story, however, has never been revealed, and after so many years I think I can hardly be accused of indiscretion if I tell my readers the interesting detail that the adversary to whom Kinglake had sent his unanswered challenge was no less a personage than Louis Napoleon, afterwards the Emperor Napoleon III! I have this from Abraham Hayward, a very indiscreet friend of Kinglake's, who never appreciated the importance of the Oriental saying: "Speech is silver and silence is gold." For my part, I have often regretted having said too much, and never deplored having said too little.
But to return to the serious aspect of the question. My brother, though he always strongly condemned the frivolity and light-mindedness with which the practice of duelling is treated in Germany, held the view that duels were an indispensable necessity where questions of honour are concerned.
"Can you imagine," he said to me one day in reply to a remonstrance in this connection, "that I could, for instance, allow some madman to attack with impunity your good name or that of our mother? How could I hesitate for a moment to send him a challenge?"
"But you yourself say 'a madman,'" I protested. "A madman is not responsible for his actions."
"The line between madness and sanity," answered my brother, "is a very difficult one to determine. The punishment of certain misdeeds is necessary, not only for the culprit himself, but as a deterrent and precautionary measure, without which no civilised society can long exist in safety."