The duellist, as we have seen, was a peculiarly public creature, particularly, even obsessively, concerned with self-image. Certainly, he was disposed to look outward rather than inward and to find his estimation of himself not through contemplation but through envisaging how he appeared to others. Henri Rochefort put it succinctly: the duel would die ‘if there weren't always four gentlemen available to draw up a duel report, and fifty newspapers to print it. In ninety-one out of ninety-two cases, one duels for the gallery. Suppress the gallery and you exterminate the duel.’ Changes in the way that duels were reported and the increasing danger of being mocked were then particularly liable to affect the duellist. However, to expect the press to take a principled and consistent stand against duelling would perhaps have been too much. In general, attitudes in the press were changing, albeit somewhat tardily, but still they were opportunistic, never inclined to let principle obstruct the path to good copy. They were prepared to both glorify and vilify duellists depending upon the circumstance. It was significant, then, that within the space of five years four duels took place that were both sensational and entirely disreputable and which ensured that the duel was the subject of negative copy at a time when it was clearly already in serious decline.

The first of these was the duel between Mr Eliot and Mr Mirfin in August 1838, the disgraceful conduct of which I have already alluded to. The second was that between Lord Cardigan and Col. Harvey Phipps Tuckett in September 1840. Of the four duels, that between Cardigan and Tuckett was the exception insofar as there was no fatality and insofar as the parties did not flee but surrendered to justice. Much of the hostility to this duel, therefore, was engendered not by the duel itself nor by its aftermath but by the circumstances that had preceded it. Cardigan was at the time the subject of vehement public antipathy. His mismanagement of his 11th Light Dragoons after his appointment in 1837 is too convoluted to relate, save that in consequence of his conduct, nineteen officers voluntarily left his regiment.