THE DUEL AND THE NEWSPAPERS.
Barring the two services, doctors used, I fancy, to be the great duellists among professional men. And still, ever and anon, some irascible Sawbones rushes to the ten-paced turf, where, though he be spectacled or pot-bellied, those disadvantages rarely calm his blood-letting rage. But editors are the modern magnates of the code; not because they thirst for gore, but only because the guild of M. Paul de Cassagnac is professionally liable to give offence, and hence to be dragged to the field of glory and to die with boots on. I once saw a statement that the famous fighting editor of the "Pays" had taken part in eighteen duels, "besides having a man to kill next month"; and he was greatly coveted by a Missouri paper that had been losing its writers in street encounters too rapidly for convenience.
The newspapers have emptied their vials of wrath or ridicule upon Mr. Bennett for his duel with young May: now in horror over his resort to the measured ground, and anon in scorn at the bloodless result. Nevertheless, had Mr. Bennett failed to fight that duel, he and his newspaper would have been butts during his lifetime for the shafts of half the editorial archers of the land. A noble refusal to resent the public insult would have been misrepresented with ingenious malice, in the hope to disgrace him and ruin his property. In answer to "Herald" arguments on disputed questions, the unresented cowhiding of its owner would have been paraded by rival sheets. Rarely in business or political controversy would they have failed to taunt him with cowardice. Life would have been a burden to him; and if the consciousness of having refrained in that instance from breaking the laws of man and of God could have saved him from desperation, it would not have been for lack of the sneers of newspapers continually fomenting and reviving public contempt against him. Sometimes a man is goaded by such stings into a second duel, after having been able to resist fighting the first; or else he puts an end to a life which has been made unendurable through constant imputations. Let those who doubt what would have occurred recall the instantaneous newspaper sarcasms, after the street assault, on the question "whether a man is answerable for hereditary tendencies to receive a public cowhiding without resenting it." The satirist who eggs on a duel in that fashion feels justified afterward in invoking public contempt for the man that fights it.
What is the upshot of this comment? That duelling is ever commendable? Most emphatically no. Duelling, branded by the law, is also now so branded in public opinion that it would be waste of words to anathematize it. But what is suggested by the venom of some of the press writers is that they have never put themselves into the place of a man who, with the average sensitiveness to personal affront, and with thorough-going physical courage, had also a clear perception of the remorselessness of his journalistic rivals. From some of them he could expect no more mercy than from the red gentry of the plains. Let those who are sending their arrows into Mr. Bennett ask themselves whether they are wholly sure that in his position, with his family history behind them, they would have done otherwise after the street assault. At any rate, neither duelling nor that cowardly substitute, shooting down an unprepared man who has done some wrong, will be driven out of fashion by bringing newspaper taunts of "showing the white feather" against those who fail to resort to such lawlessness.
THE INDUSTRY OF INTERVIEWERS.
It was a quarrel totally apart from newspaper affairs, as we all know, that carried the editor of the "Herald" to the field of honor at Marydell. Indeed, Mr. Bennett's conduct before and after the duel was so "unjournalistic" that the Philadelphia reporters are said to have sent him a letter, while he tarried in that city, protesting that a gentleman so well aware of the "usages of the profession" ought to submit to be interviewed. But the physician does not always swallow his own drugs. Mr. Bennett, on receiving the missive, remarked that it was "all right," and remained uninterviewed, thus setting an awful example to the community.
A public attack by a man armed with a cowhide upon another not so armed is hardly a feat that excites admiration, while the affair at Marydell was in no sense such reparation for the previous insult as in common parlance to be thought "satisfaction." But one feature of the Bennett-May quarrel not unpleasant to read was the outwitting of the news-gatherers and their resulting desperation. "Had the duel taken place on the Canada border the parties to it could hardly have evaded our extensive arrangements to report it," said one journal after the affair, in a somewhat lugubrious and yet self-vindicating strain. The promptness of Mr. Bennett's movements, and his skill in throwing the reporters off the scent, lest the duel might be stopped, were hard blows to the newspapers. But theirs was no dishonorable defeat—it was one of the fraternity that beat them. Even the device of giving imaginary accounts of the battle in order to draw out the true one was unsuccessful until Mr. Bennett had sailed for Europe.
On the May side there was a trifling gain for the interviewers, but not much. Dr. May, senior, seems to have been condemned to a copious acquaintance with journalists; for, though in knowing Mr. Bennett he had already perhaps known one too many of them, his house appears to have been overrun, after the Fifth avenue assault, with the fraternity, who, in the "strict discharge of professional duty," swarmed multitudinously upon him. At least, one morning the "Tribune" said: