Tales: The Great Winglebury Duel

Name: Tales: The Great Winglebury Duel
Author: Charles Dickens

In the market town of Great Winglebury, a coach delivers a richly-dressed woman, Miss Julia Manners, who takes a private room at the Winglebury Arms and immediately summons Joseph Overton, the town's solicitor and mayor, whom she has known since he mismanaged the estate of the late Mr. Cornberry, her former intended. Julia tells Overton she has eloped with young Lord Peter, who fears his family's disapproval; the two arranged separately to travel to Winglebury, and Lord Peter is expected to arrive that afternoon under cover of a story that he is a harmless lunatic being conveyed by Julia to a private asylum, to throw off any pursuers. Meanwhile Alexander Trott, travelling under his own name, has taken a room at the same inn. His father has commanded him to marry Emily Brown for her fortune, against her own wishes, and Trott is journeying to the Browns' unwillingly. He receives a threatening letter from Horace Hunter, who loves Emily himself and has learned of Trott's errand; Hunter, signing from the Blue Lion, demands Trott meet him with pistols at dawn at a place called Stiffun's Acre, and warns him against buying gunpowder or ordering breakfast first. Terrified, the cowardly Trott sends a defiant reply to satisfy honour, then devises an escape: he has the one-eyed "top-boots" of the inn deliver an anonymous, deliberately garbled note to the mayor's house describing a young gentleman in number nineteen bent on a "rash act," urging his removal that night for the preservation of life. Overton receives both this letter and Julia's, and mistakenly concludes that Trott's note was written by Lord Peter as the promised anonymous signal of his arrival and room number. Overton visits Trott, addressing him repeatedly as "my lord," and Trott, bewildered but wanting only to be spirited away from Hunter, plays along, agreeing to leave that night by post-chaise and even asking to be placed under apparent restraint to make his removal look convincing. Overton assigns the one-eyed boots to guard "the lunatic" until half-past midnight; the literal-minded boots takes the charade seriously, menacing Trott with a large stick and forcing him to sit still and silent for hours, genuinely frightening him. At half-past twelve, waiters and the landlady, Mrs. Williamson, escort the ranting, protesting Trott downstairs and bundle him into a waiting chaise, believing his shouts are mere play-acting for pursuers' benefit. Inside the chaise sits a cloaked figure Trott assumes is the vengeful Hunter; it is in fact Julia Manners, awaiting the man she believes is Lord Peter. Once the chaise is away from the inn, the two converse and discover the mutual mistake. Trott, young, well-off in prospects to a modest degree, and newly bold after his ordeal, and Julia, wealthy and eager for a young husband, decide rather than turn back to continue on together to Gretna Green and marry each other, which they do. The narrative closes by noting that the same blacksmith's register at Gretna records, just before their entry, the marriage of Emily Brown to Horace Hunter. Hunter takes his bride home and is forgiven; Trott likewise returns home with his wife and is pardoned. Lord Peter, who had been delayed by drinking champagne and riding a steeple-chase at the Honourable Augustus Flair's house, never completes his journey to Winglebury; he returns to more champagne and steeple-chasing and is thrown from his horse and killed. Hunter is credited with having preyed cleverly on Trott's cowardice, and all these facts, in time discovered and recorded, are said to be given, at the Winglebury Arms, as the true account of the Great Winglebury Duel.

By Charles Dickens · First published 1841 · Genre: Fiction, Satire, Humor · 7,940 words

First lines

The little town of Great Winglebury is exactly forty-two miles and three-quarters from Hyde Park corner. It has a long, straggling, quiet High-street, with a great black and white clock at a small red Town-hall, half-way up-a market-place-a cage-an assembly-room-a church-a bridge-a chapel-a theatre-a library-an inn-a pump-and a Post-office. Tradition tells of a ‘Little Winglebury,' down some cross-road about two miles off; and, as a square mass of dirty paper, supposed to have been originally intended for a letter, with certain tremulous characters inscribed thereon, in which a lively imagination might trace a remote resemblance to the word ‘Little,' was once stuck up to be owned in the sunny window of the Great Winglebury Post-office, from which it only disappeared when it fell to pieces with dust and extreme old age, there would appear to be some foundation for the legend.

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Tales: The Great Winglebury Duel is listed on Textopian as a short story by Charles Dickens, dated 1841 CE.

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Work type: Short story
Author: Charles Dickens
Date: 1841 CE
Language: English
Genres: Fiction, Satire, Humor, Short Stories
Length: 7,940 words
Structure: 1 section, 165 paragraphs
Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)

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Genres

Fiction — As a work by Charles Dickens, this book is a work of imaginative narration, classifying it as Fiction.
Satire — Charles Dickens is known for his satirical style, often using humor, irony, and exaggeration to criticize human nature or societal issues.
Humor — The book's elements of absurdity and comical characters classify it under the Humor genre.
Short Stories — As a part of Dickens's collection of short stories, the book falls under the Short Stories genre.