Probably hard to get the tenor of the times right for modern audiences to see and experience.
(Back then we were on the edge of 'modern times' --- with revolutions in thought, customs, science, medicine, politics, economics, you-name-it, breaking out all over. A time of upheaval that makes today's unrest look positively placid. And yet... there was still a slower pace to life, a formality derived from the European pace of things. Dueling, while still striking an approving macho/honorable cord in much of the public... was also increasingly held in disrespect in this emerging new world. Illegal in many places, though often tolerated in private, it existed in a Quasi-legal, semi-tolerated bubble of society. You were damned if you DID, and damned if you DIDN'T.) |
