but surely there was a better way to do it than revealing this previous model of grace and self-possession as a bestial savage—once his thin Oxford skin is scratched—incapable of restraining himself from murder unless physically held down by three Anglo-types?
Indeed.
What's particularly appalling is that it never would have occurred to Marsh to suggest that the killing temper was always lurking just beneath the skin of the English gentleman, despite the fact that at the time she was writing there were potentially people living who had childhood memories of a time when English gentlemen fought to the death over matters of honour.* And surely there were some who remembered the year when one Anglo-Saxon-descended American gentleman battered another with a stick on the floor of the US Senate.
Parenthetically, I speak as one who could be tarred with the same brush--my three-greats-grandfather was a noted duellist. Then again, he was born in Menorca, so I'm sure Marsh would have something patronising to say about hot Mediterranean tempers, and never mind the fact that WASPs in New Orleans (and the rest of the South) were just as apt to duel as anyone else, and, given their preference for pistols, less likely to be satisfied by merely drawing blood. I'm certain my mother's people, the Striblings and Bloses and Trimmiers/Trimyears and so on, fought their fair share.
*The last recorded fatal duel in England between Englishmen is reported to have been in 1845; the combatants were an officer of the cavalry and another of the Royal Marines.
Indeed.
What's particularly appalling is that it never would have occurred to Marsh to suggest that the killing temper was always lurking just beneath the skin of the English gentleman, despite the fact that at the time she was writing there were potentially people living who had childhood memories of a time when English gentlemen fought to the death over matters of honour.* And surely there were some who remembered the year when one Anglo-Saxon-descended American gentleman battered another with a stick on the floor of the US Senate.
Parenthetically, I speak as one who could be tarred with the same brush--my three-greats-grandfather was a noted duellist. Then again, he was born in Menorca, so I'm sure Marsh would have something patronising to say about hot Mediterranean tempers, and never mind the fact that WASPs in New Orleans (and the rest of the South) were just as apt to duel as anyone else, and, given their preference for pistols, less likely to be satisfied by merely drawing blood. I'm certain my mother's people, the Striblings and Bloses and Trimmiers/Trimyears and so on, fought their fair share.
*The last recorded fatal duel in England between Englishmen is reported to have been in 1845; the combatants were an officer of the cavalry and another of the Royal Marines.