Duel mandate – An Irishman’s Diary about the romantic misadventures of Norman Leslie

A few years before he died in the first World War, Monaghan-born Norman Leslie had the dubious distinction, reputedly, of being the last British army officer ever to fight a duel.

It was, of course, over a woman. A bit of a Lothario, he had survived many previous affairs unscathed. But his near-fatal mistake was in Egypt, in 1910, and involved a Turkish princess, Shevikar, who happened to be married.

When a letter he had sent her was intercepted by the husband, it became a diplomatic incident, literally. Yousury Pasha, the aggrieved spouse, was one of Turkey’s foreign envoys. During their subsequent confrontation, however, he was not seeking diplomatic resolution.

The fraught moment was recorded, with some black humour, in Leslie’s diaries: “[...] saw him alone in my room he threatened to shoot me where I was – offered him my revolver – on 2nd thoughts he said he wouldn’t murder me, but would wring my neck in the street unless I was man enough to see it through. Awful thought that he meant me to marry the lady . . . This passed, when in another fit of passion he said he’d send me his seconds tomorrow – felt inclined to say what I would do with them, but refrained fearing he would break furniture over my head . . .”

The episode, as told by historian Ian d'Alton, is one of the lighter interludes of a new book called The Country House and the Great War, written by various authors and arising from a conference at Maynooth University two years ago.

It’s not quite representative of the book’s overall tone, which is rather more sombre. But in its own mad way, the Leslie duel arose from the same sense of honour and upper-caste identity that impelled Ireland’s landed gentry to fight and die in the war in disproportionately large numbers, thereby accelerating the demise of their already-doomed way of life.

In any case, by poignant coincidence, Leslie’s confrontation with the angry husband happened in the same month that a certain Mark Twain departed this world. And Twain, in whose work duels had been a recurring theme, might have been amused to learn that the affair’s denouement, some weeks later, was in Paris.

In his later years, Twain came to despise duelling as an embarrassing anachronism.

But his was the zeal of the converted because, in hotter-headed youth, he had almost fought one himself.

Back in 1864, he and a fellow newspaper man came very close to settling a row with pistols. Then one or both thought better of it.

Surviving to maturity, instead, Twain grew fond of using the theme for purely satirical purposes. And in 1879, he combined it with another topic of which he by then took a dim view, France.

Thus his comic essay, The Great French Duel, in which he affects to have been one of the seconds at a recent "meeting" between two members of that country's national assembly, and to have been injured when his combatant – an obese individual – fainted and fell on him, earning Twain celebrity as "the only man who had been hurt in a French duel in 40 years".

That Norman Leslie’s showdown happened in Paris was part of an official cover-up. The possibility of mere death apart, Leslie risked losing his commission if the event became known.

On the other hand, he would lose face with the Egyptians if he didn’t fight.

So as Ian d’Alton explains, a “committee of honour” comprising British military men and other elders decided the duel could proceed, provided the newspapers didn’t hear of it.

It took place at one of the committee member’s houses, in Paris. And Twain’s lampoon of local duelling standards notwithstanding, Leslie – although already a skilled swordsman– took the precaution of an intensive training course beforehand with a French fencing master.

In the actual fight, he drew first blood, which might have ended the proceedings early. But his honour unavenged, the Turkish diplomat fought on for 40 minutes until Leslie suffered a hand wound. Then they called it a draw.

Leslie had also survived the wrath of his army superior, one Gen John Maxwell (later to earn infamy as the military chief who oversaw the events of Easter 1916). But they both soon had bigger things to worry about. When the Great War came, Leslie's sword-fighting skills would not save him. He was one of its earliest victims, killed by a German sniper in October 1914. The Country House and the Great War, edited by Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridgeway, is published by Four Courts Press.