Secrets of the Sword

I

Why have I written this book? I will tell you. For of all the subjects that might have occurred to me, this I am sure is the last in the world on which I should have ever dreamed of trespassing. Accident, however, is apt to take a hand in the most trivial things of this world as well as in the most important. It is continually responsible for the most unlikely events, and it was in fact by accident that I undertook this work, in which I have collected and jotted down remarks that are entirely my own, concerning an art to which I have devoted myself for more years than I care to remember.

I was staying in the country at an old manor house belonging to one of my friends. The litter of autumn, fallen leaves and withering herbage, was scattered over field and woodland. This is a favourite season with poets, when Nature before her winter sleep affects a serene and melancholy air, that inclines to reverie and lends wings to fancy. The season also favours sportsmen. Coverts in which the game has hitherto found shelter are no longer impenetrable, and every day the wind robs the poor persecuted beasts of some fraction of their shield of verdure. At my friend’s house there were no poets, but there was instead a large shooting party. We used to take the field after breakfast, and come home towards dusk, all of us as tired as a man has a right to be when he has done six or eight hours’ walking. After dinner we invariably adjourned to the smoking room, and spent the evening in discussing things in general over our cigars.

II

One evening – I quite forget how it came about – we found ourselves talking about fencing. Some one’s casual remark, as erratic as the blue wreaths of smoke that floated vaguely towards the ceiling, was taken up by some one else, and led to other remarks, which gradually became more definite and finally solidified into a conversation.

One can always talk, and one enjoys talking about a subject in which one is interested. That is one of the general truths. And as I have always been devoted to the practice of arms, I found myself talking at some length and expounding some views of my own, which I have tested by practical experience and observation till they have established themselves in my mind as axioms.

I was listened to with attention, though there were few fencers present. And after all the art of fence does furnish a most interesting fund of conversation – the art of skilful fighting at close quarters, which implies a knowledge of theory combined with a trained power of execution, which taxes eye and hand, vigour and judgment, and brings into play every faculty of mind and body, each doing its part, and each in turn supplementing and reinforcing the other.

III

“Are you aware,” said one of my friends, “that these are the secrets of the sword that you are revealing to us?”

“Only,” I replied, “those secrets which I happen to know. But really you have hit upon the right word, for the secrets of the sword are innumerable. It is a Proteus in the hand that orders it, and obeys the least motion of the will with the quick docility of an attendant spirit. It can be the insolent and overbearing bully, it can be the wary and diplomatic courtier. At one moment it is all menace, a keen attacking point, the next it changes to a protecting shield.

“But alas for our poor faithful servant; to-day the sword and its secrets are almost forgotten, or at least but little valued. There was a time, and a time not so very remote, when a knowledge of sword-play was considered one of the credentials of a gentleman. Apply that test now; apply it to yourselves. We have here in this room a large number of gentlemen met together, and I do not doubt that each one of you could make good his title to gentle birth, and that in more ways than one; and yet how many of you would be seriously embarrassed if you were required to manipulate a sword! How many of you, if you will allow me to say so, would make but a very pitiful exhibition of yourselves!”

I saw by the smile that went round the room that my remarks were only too well founded.

“Of course,” I continued, “I know the usual answer: – ‘True,’ you will say, ‘we may be duffers, but we are not afraid of fighting.’ Yes, you are not afraid of fighting, that is to say you are willing to be killed by the first bully, who chooses to force a quarrel upon you. Brave words truly! But after all is it worth while to be the owner of so many talents, youth and strength, a cultured mind, a healthy body, and yet not even to know how to defend your life?

“I am reminded of the story told of a certain General. When one of his officers, who disagreed with him on the policy of some strategic movement, had said: – ‘Well, General, when the time comes I will show you that I know how to die.’ ‘Don’t be a fool, Sir,’ replied the General, ‘your duty is not to see that you get killed, but to take care that you don’t’.”

“Surely,” suggested one of my friends, “the real difficulty is that it takes years of conscientious and continual application to make even a moderate fencer.”

“Quite a mistake, I assure you.”

“Why, only the other day I happened to pick up one or two books about fencing and glanced through them. I assure you, they really are appalling.”

“There we have it,” I exclaimed, “and with that word you go over bag and baggage to the enemy’s camp. You are not the first to be appalled, merely because the professors have omitted to caution the reader, that they cannot in the exercise of their craft afford to be otherwise than omniscient, and that their omniscience must be aired. It is because they are afraid of being taxed with ignorance, or of being rated as less men than their predecessors, that they insist on science at any price; science they must have, interminable and unmitigated science, and so they produce their laborious treatises, monuments of erudition, but as you say – appalling.

“For my part, after reading and rereading, with the most scrupulous attention, everything that has been written on the subject, I remain convinced of this, that if I were writing a manual of fencing my first object would be to get rid of the alarming jargon of technical terms, which are supposed to be indispensable – a formidable array, quite enough, I freely admit, to give pause to the most resolute, and to blanch the cheek of the keenest aspirant.”

“Ah, you are quite right,” said my host with the air of a man who had made the experiment. “How much the art and the professors too would have gained, if they had only studied simplicity, and taken the trouble to make themselves intelligible.”

IV

The conversation, you see, was getting on.

“Unfortunately,” I continued, “most of the professors who have committed themselves to paper have thought otherwise. They plunge into interminable dissertations on the denomination of thrusts. They use words which, it is true, may be found in the dictionary but which have an unfamiliar appearance. For instance they talk about the hand in pronation or in supination, instead of simply saying the hand with the nails turned up, or the hand with the nails turned down.

“Others have devoted their energy to working out combinations and classifications of feints, parries, and ripostes, distinguishing between them by the nicest shades of difference, and to devising subtleties of terminology, even going so far as to compile and exhibit with the pride of a collector a prodigious catalogue of twelve thousand five hundred strokes.1 What memory could possibly contain them?

“Now I, on the contrary, should have spared no pains to prove that it is perfectly possible to learn the practical management of the sword without a superhuman effort, and that sword-play is worth cultivating as a delightful exercise and one of the finest kinds of sport.

“For unfortunately we have to remember that Latin, which one uses so seldom, perhaps once or twice after leaving college, and Greek, for which one has even less occasion, are considered useful and even necessary parts of polite education, but that such things as swimming, which may on an emergency be the means of saving your life, or fencing, which is one of the most healthy of athletic exercises, the best thing in the world for developing and bracing a feeble youngster, and which enables you to defend yourself if you are challenged by a bully or assaulted by a blackguard, are reckoned merely frivolous accomplishments. And it is generally recognised of course that it is not right to waste time on mere accomplishments.

“I mentioned Latin and Greek, which we all learnt more or less at school. Well, do you suppose that the man who is going to make learning his profession carries his studies no further than the rest of us, however scholarly some of us may be? No, of course he must go deeper and examine the remotest bearings of the particular branch of knowledge, which he will presently have to teach.

V

“If you want a still more striking analogy, take horsemanship. Most men learn to ride, and can as a matter of fact manage a hack in the park without making an exhibition of themselves, or even join the road-riders when it is a question of following the hounds. But do you suppose that the mere man on horseback takes the trouble to acquire the whole art of horsemanship, the severe mastery which the professional requires, the ‘high airs’ of the school rider? Does every one study the fundamental principles, and analyse the nice distinctions, which go to make the finished equestrian, – such a man as the late Mr Astley?

“How few there are who attain or pretend to attain this rare degree of excellence. And yet they alone can tell you how much perseverance, how much continual application, and downright drudgery they have had to go through. For you may be quite sure that perfect mastery of any kind whatever can only be the matured result of extraordinary diligence. Yet you seldom meet a man who cannot ride tolerably, and you find that men ride with more or less grace, or freedom, or vigour, according to their natural disposition, and gradually perfect their style, or if you prefer it, unconsciously complete their education by the growth of habit and experience. It is just the same with fencing.

“If you would be an accomplished swordsman, you will certainly require years of hard work, close application, and incessant practice. But do you need this recondite skill? What would you do with it? You would find it embarrassing. All that you need as men of leisure, is to be able to use a sword as you do a horse, for your amusement, and when you have occasion for it. And observe I say for your amusement, for no sport is so attractive for its own sake, or so engrossing as the practice of arms.”

“You are of opinion then,” remarked the Comte de C… “that a man can learn to use a sword without devoting to it more time and trouble than he does to riding?”

“I am sure of it; but don’t misunderstand me, I mean riding in the sense of sticking on. In fact, without driving the analogy too hard, I should say that for both exercises a year at the outside is all that is required to obtain useful and solid results. And I should add that after a few months’ trial you will find that you cannot resist the fascination that belongs unmistakably to both these sports. Surely that is not too much to ask for putting you into good trim, and teaching you how to protect yourself?”

“Then, why don’t they say so?” some one remarked.

“Well, I do say so,” I replied. “And what is more I will make my words good, if one of these days you care to continue this discussion.”

I was unanimously called upon to keep my word, and that the next day.

“Well, to-morrow then,” I replied, “I shall do my best to convince you; but you don’t give me much law.”

“What, with twenty-four hours’ notice?”

“There’s something in that – I will sleep upon it – and so – good-night.”

That is the true history of the making of this book. The following chapters are the record of our conversations, which I have simply put into shape and revised.

I

The next day after dinner we all reassembled in the smoking-room.

“Well,” said my host, “your audience you see is complete, our cigars are alight, and we are ready to give you our best attention.”

“Of course,” I replied, “you will understand that I have no intention of inflicting upon you a course of instruction. As far as that goes, the books, especially the two that have appeared most recently, by Professors Gomard and Grisier, have said all that is worth saying, and in my judgment perhaps a great deal more. They give too much good advice, too many excellent rules, too many excellent maxims, too many thrusts, feints, parries, ripostes, counter-ripostes, and so forth.

“I am very far from holding with the received doctrine of the necessity or the importance of a great variety of play. I believe that the effectiveness of a skilful fencer depends on the correctness of his inferences, on the alertness and nicety of his judgment, on quickness of hand and precision of movement, whether in attack, parry, or riposte, rather than on a very varied play, which necessitates a much more elaborate training, and so far from being of any real use serves only to perplex the mind.

“The alphabet of fencing, if you will allow the expression, is as fixed and immutable as any other alphabet. Its characters are ascertained and definite motions, which are combined in accordance with the structure and balance of our organism, the natural action of the muscles, and the flexibility possible to the limbs and body. I do not set up for a schoolmaster, and shall not attempt to teach you this alphabet. I assume that you are already acquainted with it. All that I shall do, or at all events try to do, is to discuss the theoretical principles, for apart from them the material factors are only so much dull and senseless machinery.

“I shall try to keep within bounds, and to advance a few simple arguments, to convince you that swordsmanship is neither so slow nor so perplexing as you are inclined to suppose. Above all, I hope you will not allow me to forget that this is a conversation. Remember that you are at liberty to make any remarks that occur to you. That is part of the bargain.”

Several of my friends assured me that I need have no anxiety; they did not mean to let me off too easily.

II

“To begin then; my first object will be to make my meaning perfectly plain. The thing to do will be to take fencing in its broad outlines. It would be labour thrown away to enter the bewildering labyrinth of those interminable details, which after all are nothing more than the mathematical extension of elementary principles, which may be continued to infinity.

“Fencing in its infancy had to feel its way; its methods were yet to be found, its possibilities to be explored. Little by little, as one period succeeded another and the art became in many respects perfected, changes were introduced, and especially changes that tended to greater simplicity. Old theories became old fashioned and were thrown aside to make room for new doctrines.

“Fencing, in fact, was developed like most other things. But we must not lose sight of the fact that the early methods of the old masters, both in Italy and France, date from the sixteenth or seventeenth century, and that the weapons employed in those days differed materially from ours in shape, weight, and function. The change of weapon has naturally led to a change of method.

“It would doubtless be interesting to the antiquary to trace the successive changes that have taken place in sword-play, and to compare it as it exists to-day with what it was in 1536, when Marozzo wrote his treatise on the sword. (Pray excuse my erudition.) The sword of that period was a wide straight blade with two cutting edges. I need not say that Marozzo was Italian. The first French work on the subject was, I believe, a treatise by Henri de Saint-Didier, which was published in 1573, and dedicated to Charles IX. At that time France was a long way behind Italy, where for twenty years already the edge had been abandoned for the point.

“It is not my intention to retrace the abstruse history of the development of swordsmanship; such an inquiry would, however, prove that in all ages the new truths were invariably denied before they established themselves as accomplished facts. There is no need then, as you will doubtless be relieved to hear, to discuss the systems of antiquity; we will pass over the intervening periods without further preface, and come down at once to modern times.

III

“We are told to draw a hard and fast line between two schools, – probably for the convenience of putting ourselves in the right and our opponents in the wrong.

“For my own part, and speaking seriously, I fail to recognise more than one. True, that one may be regarded from several points of view. I can distinguish three very clearly, but these different aspects are very far from being distinct in the sense of clearly defined natural orders. I will describe three kinds of play, which are adopted by fencers according to fancy.

“The first is fencing regarded as a graceful athletic exercise, contrived very much on the lines of a ceremonious dance, the interlacing movements of the combatants, as they close and fall back to their original positions, recalling the figures of a quadrille. One might almost say that the simplest example of this method is the single combat of melodrama, the stage duel with its concerted movements, and that it finds its most perfect expression, or, if you prefer the phrase, attains its object in the execution of a series of voltes and passes or dodgy side-steps, a complicated succession of attacks, parries, and ripostes, skilfully delivered, and brought off strictly in accordance with prescribed regulations.

“The second is fencing conceived as an exact science. Here it is ‘the noble art’ that calls for profound study and arduous research. The student must explore its truths and consider them in all their bearings, pursue theory to its remotest ramifications, and drag to light its most reluctant secrets. Solid hard work and assiduous application, such as science always demands of her votaries, backed by physical and intellectual resources naturally fitted to the task, are the only means which will enable you to achieve this consummate skill, the highest degree of attainment in the art. You will not be surprised when I say that the annals of the sword record but few names of undisputed preeminence, new stars that mark the epochs in its history.

“The third is fencing considered from the point of view of practical self-defence. In this case the method is fashioned, so to speak, by personal inspiration, and is impressed with the stamp of individual character. This is the real thing, battle in deadly earnest, complete with all the terrors and sudden crises of warfare. Instead of passes ingeniously complicated, and foiled by parries as scientifically elaborate, steel clashes with steel, intent on forcing somewhere a passage for the point. The game becomes a fight, and a fight all the more grim, because the fighting animal is reinforced by science, and chooses from her armoury the weapons that make him strong, rejecting whatever is cumbrous or likely to obscure his ‘native hue of resolution.’

“We now see the difference between the two styles, – call them schools if you like. One wishes to preserve intact and unalloyed the ancient academical traditions, – I had almost called them the traditions of the dancing master, – while the other inclines to what nowadays we call realism. Is that a gain or a loss? At the present time everything tends to realism, but we are not, so far as I know, obliged to admit that the dream is the type of perfect beauty, and the real the type of all that is ugly and bad. We live in a practical age, perhaps too practical. Sometimes one may regret that it is so; but what other result could you expect to follow from the convulsions that have so frequently shattered it? The ideal, scared by the noise and confusion of our revolutions, so often repeated, so seldom foreseen, has used its wings to some purpose, and taken flight to a world far removed from ours.