No duel carriageways or railing in the aisles

An item from the "In our pages 100 years ago" section of the International Herald Tribune caught my eye recently: "1898: Berlin - A duel between a lieutenant in a regiment of guards stationed at Berlin and a well-known lawyer took place this week in the neighbourhood of the Bellevue Palace in the Thiergarten. The combat was with pistols, and resulted in the civilian receiving a dangerous wound in the shoulder. Its cause was a petty quarrel in a carriage on the City Railway. The lieutenant, it seems, placed his legs so that the lawyer, upon entering, stumbled over them, whereupon words ensued. After the duel the lawyer was conveyed to some relatives in Magdeburg, where he now lies in a precarious condition."

In these more enlightened times, probably the first reaction of any right-thinking person to such a story is: "Good to see a lawyer losing for a change." And probably the second reaction is to be appalled at how cheap life was in the 1890s, when a petty quarrel in a railway carriage could lead to pistols at dawn in the Thiergarten.

But I say: let's not be so hasty. The same week the Herald Tribune item appeared, in the sort of coincidence a less-scrupulous columnist would make up, The Irish Times had a report about overcrowding on Irish trains, complete with pictures of travellers standing in the aisles, obviously smouldering with resentment.

The message was clear (to anyone with a column to write). A century on from that Berlin incident, railway carriages are still breeding grounds for murderous urges. And not just railway carriages, but any confined spaces in which human beings are forced to co-exist - suburban housing estates are another example.

Only the means of expressing those urges have changed. Duelling has all but disappeared in the past 100 years; while, after that brief setback in Berlin, the lawyer has been transformed from victim to weapon of choice for anyone suffering insult or injury from a third party.

Instead of exchanging pistol shots at 20 paces, modern protagonists exchange legal argument. Many other aspects of duelling survive: opposing lawyers often work 20 paces apart as they broker last-minute deals in the halls of the Four Courts; their helpless clients, caught up in a drama of their own making but now beyond their control, have the wits scared out of them; and the whole thing ends with one or both parties' finances lying in a precarious condition in Magdeburg, as it were.

In the light of recent Irish experience, it is apt that the Herald Tribune story involved a soldier and a lawyer: every cloud has a silver lining, and the Army deafness problem has more than made up for that small misunderstanding between the two professions, which are these days as inseparable as salt and pepper. But of course it's not just soldiers - everybody's doing it. As a result, our courts are as overcrowded as our trains and the only guaranteed winners are the lawyers.

Which is why I say we should bring back duelling. Just imagine, for example, if instead of sueing the State, the Army claimants settled their cases in the once traditional way, at dawn in the Curragh. The poetic justice of it: soldiers, hearing-impaired from firearms training, salvaging their honour by shooting at (I give this only as an example) the Minister for Defence, or a delegated official. (One shot only, mind, and given the improvement in firearms technology, from a distance greater than 20 paces - give the minister a sporting chance).

The fact is, we've never lost the instinct for duelling, for turning petty quarrels into life or death matters of honour. The difference is that nowadays it happens mostly when we're driving. Here is a typical exchange between motorists (interpreted for a 19th century observer):

First driver: "Beep!" ("Confound you for a scoundrel!") Second driver: "Bee-ee-ee-eeep!" ("Damn your insolence, sir, you were driving so slowly I had no choice but to overtake you on the inside and cut back in")

First driver, giving hand signals: "Beeeeeeeeeep!" ("Your mother was a sheep!")

Second Driver, brake-testing first driver: Beeep!!!! ("Very well then! Pistols at dawn, it is. My seconds will be in touch with yours to arrange the details.")

So it should be easy enough to formalise the process. Since bloodshed is best avoided, however, I propose that if we do reintroduce duelling, we should use the 19th Century French model.

According to no less a witness than Mark Twain, who toured Europe in the 1870s, French duelling was the laughing-stock of the continent. In A Tramp Abroad, he lampooned it himself, describing an affair in which the protagonists failed to hit each other, as usual, but one of them (a large man) fainted at the sound of the gunshot, falling on his assistant. The assistant (whom Twain claimed to be) was hospitalised as a result, eted feted as the first man hurt in a French duel "in 40 years," and awarded the Legion of Honour.

Sneer as we might at the French, they are here, as ever, models for civilised behaviour. The point is that honour could be satisfied in this way, without legal advice and without physical injury either. Once drawn into a duel, the protagonists had to contemplate their mortality in the nervous days and hours beforehand, but usually survived the experience. Chastened, no doubt, and thenceforth more philosophical about life's little insults.

Duelling was not always so harmless, admittedly. Those of you who've seen the film Barry Lyndon will recall its brutal climax, when the eponymous Irish adventurer is challenged to a "meeting" by his English stepson. The boy is so nervous while waiting his turn to be shot, he throws up. And when Lyndon sportingly fires at the ground, it seems honour has been served. Instead, the boy fires again: Lyndon is hit this time and loses a leg as a result.

Of course, nowadays it would all be done through lawyers. And he would have lost an arm as well.