Toward three o’clock i’ the morn James Smith made a move and Willis his exit.
In June 1834, Willis dined at Seamore Place, the hour appointed being the then unusually late one of eight o’clock. Again the company, who were awaiting the arrival of Tom Moore, was of mingled nationalities—a Russian count, an Italian banker, an English peer, Willis an American, and for host and hostess, a French count and an Irish peeress. Lady Blessington took the lead—so says Willis, and he should know for he was there, lucky dog—in the war of witty words that waged round the dinner-table, and we may be sure that D’Orsay was not among the hindmost.
The talk was turned by Moore upon duelling—
“They may say what they will of duelling; it is the great preserver of the decencies of society. The old school, which made a man responsible for his words, was the better. I must confess I think so.” He then told an amusing story of an Irishman—of all men on earth!—who “refused a challenge on account of the illness of his daughter,” and one of the Dublin wits made a good epigram on the two—
“Some men, with a horror of slaughter,
Improve on the Scripture command;
And ‘honour their’—wife and their daughter—
‘That their days may be long in the land.’”
The “two” being the gentleman above referred to, and O’Connell, who had pleaded his wife’s illness as an excuse upon a similar occasion.