BERNARD MANDEVILLE AND THE TRADITION OF CIVILITY AND DUELLING

When the Female Tatler reached its 52nd issue on 4 November 1709, ‘Mrs. Crakenthorpe, a Lady that knows every thing’, gave way to ‘a Society of Ladies’. The members of this society included Susannah Centlivre and Bernard Mandeville. New authors also meant new topics, and when Lucinda, Camilla, Emilia and Rosella were accompanied by Colonel Worthy in the 52nd issue, ‘the Discourse fell upon Courage’. The Colonel pointed out that he had always been most careful so ‘as not to give the least Shadow of an Affront to any, and so happy as to have received none yet’. Although ‘it should be with the highest Regret, if ever he engag'd in a private Quarrel’, he would always be ready to follow the rules of honour and to fight a duel.

The 52nd issue, written by Mandeville, was no mere curious incident, for duelling became a staple topic in The Female Tatler for the next sixty issues, and was hardly less important in Mandeville's other writings. He briefly mentioned it in The virgin unmask'd (1709) and examined it more thoroughly both in one of the Remarks of the first volume of The fable of the bees, which appeared for the first time in 1714, and in ‘A search into the nature of society’ also published as part of the same volume.