3-011-648 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Challenge: A Puritan's Struggle between Honour and Conscience", by W. G. Orchardson, in the Winter Exhibition of Cabinet Pictures, 1864. Engraving of a painting. 'The glove on the floor is not without significance; and now the Cavalier, with a most irritating affectation of extreme courtesy towards the man he would provoke to a deadly encounter, doffs his hat and gives his lowest bow as he presents the letter containing the challenge, held forth at the point of his rapier - implying, of course, that the Puritan is only fit to be treated with at the point of the sword...the Puritan looks like a sturdy Cromwellian veteran, and we have little doubt that he knows well how to use that rapier of his leaning against the chair-back...his first impulse is to...accept the cartel. But then he has the gravest conscientious objections...he considers it an excuse for murder devised by the devil...What is a brave man to do...? Is he to commit, as he believes, a heinous crime...or is he, while conscious of his own courage, to submit to that most dreadful stigma of "coward?...The agonising "struggle" of conflicting feelings in the mind of the Puritan is, of course, beyond a painter's power of realisation, yet Mr. Orchardson has done much to suggest it'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.