A Tramp Abroad
It was not merely under the excitement of the sword-play that this
fortitude was shown; it was shown in the surgeon's room where an
uninspiring quiet reigned, and where there was no audience. The doctor's
manipulations brought out neither grimaces nor moans. And in the fights
it was observable that these lads hacked and slashed with the same
tremendous spirit, after they were covered with streaming wounds, which
they had shown in the beginning.
The world in general looks upon the college duels as very farcical
affairs: true, but considering that the college duel is fought by boys;
that the swords are real swords; and that the head and face are exposed,
it seems to me that it is a farce which had quite a grave side to it.
People laugh at it mainly because they think the student is so covered
up with armor that he cannot be hurt. But it is not so; his eyes and
ears are protected, but the rest of his face and head are bare. He
can not only be badly wounded, but his life is in danger; and he would
sometimes lose it but for the interference of the surgeon. It is
not intended that his life shall be endangered. Fatal accidents are
possible, however. For instance, the student's sword may break, and the
end of it fly up behind his antagonist's ear and cut an artery which
could not be reached if the sword remained whole. This has happened,
sometimes, and death has resulted on the spot. Formerly the student's
armpits were not protected--and at that time the swords were pointed,
whereas they are blunt, now; so an artery in the armpit was sometimes
cut, and death followed. Then in the days of sharp-pointed swords, a
spectator was an occasional victim--the end of a broken sword flew five
or ten feet and buried itself in his neck or his heart, and death ensued
instantly. The student duels in Germany occasion two or three deaths
every year, now, but this arises only from the carelessness of the
wounded men; they eat or drink imprudently, or commit excesses in the
way of overexertion; inflammation sets in and gets such a headway that
it cannot be arrested. Indeed, there is blood and pain and danger
enough about the college duel to entitle it to a considerable degree of
respect.
All the customs, all the laws, all the details, pertaining to the
student duel are quaint and naive. The grave, precise, and courtly
ceremony with which the thing is conducted, invests it with a sort of
antique charm.
This dignity and these knightly graces suggest the tournament, not the
prize-fight. The laws are as curious as they are strict. For instance,
the duelist may step forward from the line he is placed upon, if he
chooses, but never back of it. If he steps back of it, or even leans
back, it is considered that he did it to avoid a blow or contrive an
advantage; so he is dismissed from his corps in disgrace. It would seem
natural to step from under a descending sword unconsciously, and against
one's will and intent--yet this unconsciousness is not allowed. Again:
if under the sudden anguish of a wound the receiver of it makes a
grimace, he falls some degrees in the estimation of his fellows; his
corps are ashamed of him: they call him “hare foot,” which is the German
equivalent for chicken-hearted.
CHAPTER VII
[How Bismark Fought]
In addition to the corps laws, there are some corps usages which have
the force of laws.
Perhaps the president of a corps notices that one of the membership who
is no longer an exempt--that is a freshman--has remained a sophomore
some little time without volunteering to fight; some day, the president,
instead of calling for volunteers, will APPOINT this sophomore
to measure swords with a student of another corps; he is free to
decline--everybody says so--there is no compulsion. This is all
true--but I have not heard of any student who DID decline; to decline
and still remain in the corps would make him unpleasantly conspicuous,
and properly so, since he knew, when he joined, that his main
business, as a member, would be to fight. No, there is no law against
declining--except the law of custom, which is confessedly stronger than
written law, everywhere.
The ten men whose duels I had witnessed did not go away when their hurts
were dressed, as I had supposed they would, but came back, one after
another, as soon as they were free of the surgeon, and mingled with the
assemblage in the dueling-room. The white-cap student who won the second
fight witnessed the remaining three, and talked with us during the
intermissions. He could not talk very well, because his opponent's sword
had cut his under-lip in two, and then the surgeon had sewed it together
and overlaid it with a profusion of white plaster patches; neither could
he eat easily, still he contrived to accomplish a slow and troublesome
luncheon while the last duel was preparing. The man who was the worst
hurt of all played chess while waiting to see this engagement. A good
part of his face was covered with patches and bandages, and all the rest
of his head was covered and concealed by them.
It is said that the student likes to appear on the street and in other
public places in this kind of array, and that this predilection often
keeps him out when exposure to rain or sun is a positive danger for
him. Newly bandaged students are a very common spectacle in the public
gardens of Heidelberg. It is also said that the student is glad to
get wounds in the face, because the scars they leave will show so well
there; and it is also said that these face wounds are so prized that
youths have even been known to pull them apart from time to time and
put red wine in them to make them heal badly and leave as ugly a scar
as possible. It does not look reasonable, but it is roundly asserted
and maintained, nevertheless; I am sure of one thing--scars are plenty
enough in Germany, among the young men; and very grim ones they are,
too. They crisscross the face in angry red welts, and are permanent and
ineffaceable.
Some of these scars are of a very strange and dreadful aspect; and the
effect is striking when several such accent the milder ones, which form
a city map on a man's face; they suggest the “burned district” then. We
had often noticed that many of the students wore a colored silk band
or ribbon diagonally across their breasts. It transpired that this
signifies that the wearer has fought three duels in which a decision
was reached--duels in which he either whipped or was whipped--for drawn
battles do not count. [1] After a student has received his ribbon, he
is “free”; he can cease from fighting, without reproach--except some one
insult him; his president cannot appoint him to fight; he can volunteer
if he wants to, or remain quiescent if he prefers to do so. Statistics
show that he does NOT prefer to remain quiescent. They show that the
duel has a singular fascination about it somewhere, for these free
men, so far from resting upon the privilege of the badge, are always
volunteering. A corps student told me it was of record that Prince
Bismarck fought thirty-two of these duels in a single summer term when
he was in college. So he fought twenty-nine after his badge had given
him the right to retire from the field.
1. FROM MY DIARY.--Dined in a hotel a few miles up the Neckar, in a room
whose walls were hung all over with framed portrait-groups of the Five
Corps; some were recent, but many antedated photography, and were
pictured in lithography--the dates ranged back to forty or fifty years
ago. Nearly every individual wore the ribbon across his breast. In one
portrait-group representing (as each of these pictures did) an entire
Corps, I took pains to count the ribbons: there were twenty-seven
members, and twenty-one of them wore that significant badge.
The statistics may be found to possess interest in several particulars.
Two days in every week are devoted to dueling. The rule is rigid that
there must be three duels on each of these days; there are generally
more, but there cannot be fewer. There were six the day I was present;
sometimes there are seven or eight. It is insisted that eight duels a
week--four for each of the two days--is too low an average to draw
a calculation from, but I will reckon from that basis, preferring an
understatement to an overstatement of the case. This requires about four
hundred and eighty or five hundred duelists a year--for in summer the
college term is about three and a half months, and in winter it is four
months and sometimes longer. Of the seven hundred and fifty students in
the university at the time I am writing of, only eighty belonged to the
five corps, and it is only these corps that do the dueling; occasionally
other students borrow the arms and battleground of the five corps in
order to settle a quarrel, but this does not happen every dueling-day.
[2] Consequently eighty youths furnish the material for some two hundred
and fifty duels a year. This average gives six fights a year to each
of the eighty. This large work could not be accomplished if the
badge-holders stood upon their privilege and ceased to volunteer.
2. They have to borrow the arms because they could not get them
elsewhere or otherwise. As I understand it, the public authorities, all
over Germany, allow the five Corps to keep swords, but DO NOT ALLOW THEM
TO USE THEM. This is law is rigid; it is only the execution of it that
is lax.
Of course, where there is so much fighting, the students make it a point
to keep themselves in constant practice with the foil. One often sees
them, at the tables in the Castle grounds, using their whips or canes to
illustrate some new sword trick which they have heard about; and between
the duels, on the day whose history I have been writing, the swords were
not always idle; every now and then we heard a succession of the keen
hissing sounds which the sword makes when it is being put through its
paces in the air, and this informed us that a student was practicing.
Necessarily, this unceasing attention to the art develops an expert
occasionally. He becomes famous in his own university, his renown
spreads to other universities. He is invited to Goettingen, to fight
with a Goettingen expert; if he is victorious, he will be invited
to other colleges, or those colleges will send their experts to him.
Americans and Englishmen often join one or another of the five corps. A
year or two ago, the principal Heidelberg expert was a big Kentuckian;
he was invited to the various universities and left a wake of victory
behind him all about Germany; but at last a little student in Strasburg
defeated him. There was formerly a student in Heidelberg who had picked
up somewhere and mastered a peculiar trick of cutting up under instead
of cleaving down from above. While the trick lasted he won in sixteen
successive duels in his university; but by that time observers had
discovered what his charm was, and how to break it, therefore his
championship ceased.
A rule which forbids social intercourse between members of different
corps is strict. In the dueling-house, in the parks, on the street,
and anywhere and everywhere that the students go, caps of a color group
themselves together. If all the tables in a public garden were crowded
but one, and that one had two red-cap students at it and ten vacant
places, the yellow-caps, the blue-caps, the white caps, and the green
caps, seeking seats, would go by that table and not seem to see it, nor
seem to be aware that there was such a table in the grounds. The student
by whose courtesy we had been enabled to visit the dueling-place, wore
the white cap--Prussian Corps. He introduced us to many white caps, but
to none of another color. The corps etiquette extended even to us, who
were strangers, and required us to group with the white corps only, and