AUTHOR'S NOTE ON ILLUSTRATION No. IV.
The duelling incident has already been found fault with by certain superficial criticasters, on the alleged ground of its improbability at so modern a period as the present.
I will only reply that I am not addicted to describing—even in fiction—manners and customs of which I have had no personal experience, and also drop a hint that some such duel may actually have taken place in London not so many years ago (though, of course, under a rose without the presence of any reporter), and that a native gentleman, who shall be nameless, may possibly have figured as hero on that occasion.
I have not many remarks to offer on this illustration, which is sufficiently true to Nature to pass muster.
Monkeys are not usually permitted to be present at these encounters, but it is quite credible that the one in the picture was a particular pet of Duchess Dickinson's and therefore the chartered libertine.
Only I am strongly of opinion that she would have ordered him off the line of fire, for fear that he might receive his quietus from some stray bullet.
Mr Bodgers ought not to have been drawn in a sun-helmet. He wore, of course, the more ceremonious covering of chimney-pot pattern. But poor Mr Pahtridhji could not perhaps be expected to know this!
D
