This week's post asks you to examine the weapon Willoughby would have preferred when Colonel Brandon challenged him to a duel. The practice was already out of favor when Jane Austen wrote
Sense and Sensibility, and outlawed in England in 1840. Colonel Brandon was quite cryptic in his description of the event to Elinor:
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| Pistols being readied |
... when he returned to town, which was within a fortnight after myself, we met by appointment, he to defend, I to punish his conduct. We returned unwounded, and the meeting, therefore, never got abroad."
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| Duels were fought in isolated areas at the break of dawn |
And so we ask you, which weapons do you think Willoughby chose? Sword or pistol? Did he want closeness during the fight, or distance?
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