Sunday, July 19, 2015

Count Adam Gurowski to James S. Pike, April 16, 1860

New York, Monday, April 16.

Dear Yankee: Congratulate Mr. Potter for me from the bottom of my heart.

What is the talk about code of honor? There is and never was such a codification in Europe among the genuine chivalry for these one thousand years, neither among nobles of any country of Europe. There is a kind of common law which every one knows, and a practice of details which is acquired in the same way as by a lawyer. I fought more than thirty duels, was second perhaps sixty times at least, and all with gentlemen and noblemen, and never heard of code of honor or absolute rule about weapons. If there is any code, rule, or common law about it, it is this: that cowards only refuse when a weapon magnifies danger. I assisted to duels, as second, when one of the combatants, pistols in hand, proposed to approach each other from ten paces (the original distance) to three. It was accepted. Old and hoary as I am, and never having really seen the use of a bowie-knife, I would accept it if I still should insist on my reputation as duellist. We Polish nobility, we fight generally with short, half-round Turkish swords. It makes ugly gashes, and I saw bowels come out once.

Mrs. Potter is a Spartan lady, and has a true gentleman for a husband. Greeley is an ass.

Yours,
Gurowski.

SOURCE: James Shepherd Pike, First Blows of the Civil War: The Ten Years of Preliminary Conflict in the United States from 1850 to 1860, p. 513

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