Camelford has given a title, and that to a remarkable man, Lord
Camelford, the duellist. He was the great-grandson of Governor Pitt,
who acquired an ample fortune in India. He was born in 1775, and even
when a boy was violent and unmanageable. He was put in the navy, but
owing to his refractory conduct was treated with severity by his
captain, Vancouver, and on his return home, meeting Vancouver in Bond
Street, was only prevented from striking his captain by his brother
throwing himself in the way.
In town he was incessantly embroiled. On the night of April 2nd, 1799,
during a disturbance at Drury Lane Theatre, he savagely attacked and
wounded a gentleman, and was fined for so doing the sum of £500 by the
Court of Queen's Bench. He attacked watchmen, insulted anyone who
crossed his humour in the least degree, committed all kinds of
violence, till his name became a terror, and he was involved in first
one quarrel and then in another. His irritable and ungovernable temper
at length brought about fatal consequences to himself. He had been
acquainted with a Mrs. Simmons. He was told that a Captain Best had
reported to her a bit of scandal relative to himself. This so incensed
his lordship, that on March 6th, 1804, meeting with Best at a
coffee-house, he went up to him, and in the hearing of everyone called
him "a scoundrel, a liar, and a ruffian." A challenge followed, and the
meeting was fixed for the next morning. The seconds having ascertained
the occasion of Lord Camelford's wrath, Best declared himself ready to
apologise, and to retract any words that had given offence which he had
used to Mrs. Simmons, but his lordship refused to accept such an
apology. Agreeably to an appointment made by the seconds, Lord
Camelford and the captain met early next morning at a coffee-house in
Oxford Street, where Captain Best made another effort to prevail on
Lord Camelford to make up the quarrel and to withdraw the expressions
he had addressed to him in public. To all remonstrance he replied, "Let
it go on."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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