The Duel by Joseph ConradMelville House, 2011

As I was reading this book (which was originally published in 1908, but is set during the Napoleonic Wars), I kept thinking about Hamilton, probably not surprisingly. Specifically, I kept thinking about the part of The Ten Duel Commandments that goes like this:

[BURR]
Can we agree that duels are dumb and immature?
[HAMILTON]
Sure
But your man has to answer for his words, Burr
[BURR]
With his life? We both know that’s absurd, sir
[HAMILTON]
Hang on, how many men died because Lee was inexperienced and ruinous?
[BURR]
Okay, so we’re doin’ this

So, right: at the start of this book, D’Hubert and Feraud are both young lieutenants in Napoleon’s army, stationed in Strasbourg, and Feraud has just had a duel with a civilian. D’Hubert seeks Feraud out to deliver a message from the general: the general is not pleased with Feraud’s dueling, and wants him to go to his quarters and stay there. Feraud is incensed. “I can’t call the general to account for his behaviour, but you are going to answer to me for yours,” he tells D’Hubert, who asks what he means exactly (14). To which Feraud’s answer is this: “”I mean,” screamed suddenly Liet. Feraud, “to cut off your ears to teach you to disturb me with the general’s orders when I am talking to a lady!” (ibid.). D’Hubert thinks this is nuts, but he can’t just not fight Feraud at this point. But the fight, once started, won’t end: Feraud is wounded but sends a message to D’Hubert saying it’s not over, and they proceed to have rematch duels over a period of years, as they both rise through the ranks of the army. Their duel (which Conrad apparently based on a true story) becomes the stuff of legend: no one knows what started it, they won’t talk about what started it, and so everyone assumes it must be some huge/deep thing. D’Hubert, meanwhile, is caught up in the momentum of it: even as he despairs over “the imbecility of the impending fight” at one point, he can’t just stop (51). Or even if he stops, it’s just temporary: at one point, a superior imposes a 12-month truce on the pair, and they also don’t fight each other when they’re retreating from Moscow together, since they’re too busy nearly dying of cold and starvation and also too busy fighting off Russians (the retreat from Moscow is probably my favorite part of the book, or maybe is tied with the pair’s final duel as being my favorite part).

There are five different books called The Duel in Melville House’s Art of the Novella series, and this is the third I’ve read and maybe my favorite so far, but that may not be saying much: I may just not be a fan of books about duels? We’ll see how I feel if I eventually read the other two in this set.


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One response to “The Duel by Joseph ConradMelville House, 2011”

  1. Jenny @ Reading the End Avatar

    Hahahaha, yeah, maybe duels aren’t quite the thing for you! I read a book called, I want to say, Gentlemen’s Blood?, which was all about the history of dueling. I liked it at the time, but when I went back to see what it had to say about Alexander Hamilton, I found the author was making Unpleasant Insinuations about what he might have said about Aaron Burr to cause him to want to duel. It was total speculation and also really ugly, and it made me really mad about Barbara Holland.

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