Robert Nye,“The Culture of the Sword: Manliness and Fencing in the Third Republic” from Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France (1)

The Glorification of Dueling

 

Perhaps the most popular novel of the early Third Republic was Georges Ohnet's Le Maitre des forges (The Ironmaster), first published in 1882, and in its 181st edition in 1884. Though not a writer of the first rank, Ohnet achieved a considerable following for his works by treating subjects of contemporary interest and employing the formulas for literary success of his day. His melodramatic play of the same title was a succés fou  [wild success] in 1883, earning the plaudits "moving" and "true" from the fashionable critic Francisque Sarcey.1 Ohnet's novel is interesting to me because it displays the social and cultural implications of male honor more fully than any literary production in the era of the fledgling republic, in terms that spoke directly to the immediate concerns of its readers.

The hero of Ohnet's story is Philippe Derblay, a bourgeois of early middle age who has accumulated a fortune by reviving the failed ironworks he inherited from his father. Educated as an engineer at the prestigious Ecole Poly technique, Derblay was a hero in the war of 1870, "dark and male" with great personal courage and a distinctly unbourgeois taste for hunting and firearms. 2 All that is lacking in his worthy and productive world is a wife.

Philippe falls in love with a young aristocratic lady of the neighborhood, Claire de Branlieu, whose mother sees in Derblay the kind of match that noble families with good names but scarce resources made frequently in the nineteenth century. Claire's brother, Octave, regards Derblay as the wave of the future and hopes that the alliance of their families will make an "aristocracy" in the "new democracy," uniting those qualities that make a nation great: "past glories and progress in the present." 3 Alas, Claire is still pining for her childhood companion the callous Duke de Bligny, a diplomat whose dissolute ways and gambling have "marked and hardened" him, making him an unsuitable match.

Ohnet makes much of the physical contrast between Philippe and Bligny. The latter is blond and "slender" with an elegant manner and "spiritual" mouth, a "finished model of the delicate grace and weakness of the nobility." Bligny plays the golden-corseleted "wasp" to Philippe's industrious but less glamorous "honeybee," but the nobleman still possesses a sting in the courage and dueling skills that are the heritage of his "race." 4 Up to no good, the idle duke, now married to a woman of his own ilk, moves into the neighborhood.

Duel of Prince Henri d'Orleans and the Count of Turin, Petit Journal, 1897

Claire meanwhile, is inconsolable and distant, her marriage to Philippe unconsummated. Crushed by her disdain, the saintly Derblay treats her with tenderness and consideration, but is too gallant to demand his marital rights. By degrees, his generosity, self-control, and moral superiority win her grudging admiration, if not her love. She recognizes that men like him are the "dominant force of the century," becomes his helpmeet in the business, and begins to regret her pride.

At this point the duke and his new wife make an appearance at a reception chez Derblay. Finding Claire alone, the duke attempts to reawaken her love for him by disparaging Derblay's roturier  [non-aristocratic] origins, at the very moment that Claire catches sight of the duke's wife flirting with Philippe in the garden. She flies to her husband, and, in the presence of the guests, demands the duke escort his wife away. An occasion for an affair of honor has presented itself, and the women become suddenly invisible. 5 The duke asks Philippe if he will make his excuses, and the latter raises himself up in his "male vigor" to declare that all Claire does is "well done" in his eyes. Turning away, Bligny declares to a crony that Philippe is a "dead man," as Philippe assures his wife that "in defending you it was my honor that I was defending." 6

As the offended party, the duke chooses pistols and dangerous conditions for the duel. Claire spends an agonized night in fear she has caused her husband-champion's death, while Philippe, serenely untroubled, makes out his will, regretting only not having tasted the joys of love. The following morning, in a caricature of such occasions, Claire begs Philippe not to go, but he is in fine manly spirits and can speak only of the perfect weather and of "duty and honor." At the scene of the duel, however, there is a surprise ending. Claire rushes between them at the last instant, receives a wound in the hand, and is carried, bleeding, back to the house. The affair of honor is concluded amicably, both men having displayed their courage, and Philippe returns home to exchange with Claire their "first kiss of love." 7

Save for Claire's dramatic intrusion, Ohnet's chivalric representation of the French affair of honor reproduces in all important respects the late nineteenth-century conventions of the ritual. His close association of the concept of personal honor with the themes of class integration, patriotism, and national revival also expressed sentiments common in France in the decades after the humiliating Prussian victory in 1870 and the ensuing terrors of civil war, as if the organic spirit and knightly virtues of the MiddleAges might help regenerate modern French society. However, outbursts of enthusiastic medievalism were by no means restricted to France in the nineteenth century. Mark Girouard has chronicled the astonishing rebirth of chivalric ideals in British upper-class culture, which he connects with the search for a gentlemanly code that might ease the progressive intermixture of old and new elites. 8 In England, Germany, and elsewhere, the most fantastic expression of this obsession with chivalry and its values was the effort to stage authentic medieval tournaments, complete with armored warriors, costumes, and knightly insignia. 9 More effective and lasting gains in this cultural movement were registered in the decorative arts, painting, architecture, and literature, but behind all these activities lay a hunger for an integrated and spiritual society that might redeem the strife and class warfare of the contemporary industrial order.