Secrets of the Sword

“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.

The First Evening

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.

IV

“You will tell me that my comment is too grave for my text, but you know as well as I do that small things and great are linked together by bonds, which may be invisible but are none the less real.”

“Every age,” remarked one of my friends, “has its own manners and customs. We no longer live in the days when every gentleman carried a sword at his side and as a matter of course knew how to use it. The taste for fencing is not so universal that we are all impatient to be initiated into its inmost mysteries. Some of us may not have sufficient leisure or sufficient inclination; we are too busy or too lazy. I believe that what most men think about it can be put in a very few words: – ‘We don’t want to fight but– if we must, we should like to be able to show our teeth and fight like gentlemen,’ that is all that the average man wants with fencing.”

“Quite right,” chimed in the Vicomte de G. with a laugh, “we only want just so much of it as will serve our private ends.”

“All that you say,” I continued, “is true, but it is not the whole truth, as you would readily admit if you paid a visit to one of the fencing rooms of Paris. If you happened, for instance, to drop in on my friend and esteemed master, M. Pons, you would find a gathering of amateurs, who are devoted to the practice of arms, who keep up the traditions with taste and culture, and understand thoroughly well how a sword ought to be used.

“But, to be quite fair, I must hasten to add that the prowess and prestige of these brilliant players would not suffer by the simplification of sword-play. The point I wish to make is that a treatise on fencing for the use of gentlemen, who have so little time to spare and so much to waste, is a book to be written, a book of real utility and importance, and indeed almost indispensable. I have put my finger on a felt want, and if you will allow me I will briefly explain how I think such a book ought to be written, and what it ought to teach. I know, of course, that I shall be violently contradicted, but after all – I know that I am on the right track.

V

“I have told you that we are asked to make an absolute distinction between two schools of fencing. Obviously it is the new school that is wrong, and, as I happen to belong to that school, you must give me leave to defend it, or, at all events, to explain its tendencies logically, theoretically, and practically.”

“Take care, Sir,” a voice was heard to remark, “those three words are decidedly appalling.”

“Don’t be afraid,” I answered, “they are not so formidable as they seem at first sight. You will find that if we thresh out the general principles, what I have to say presently will be much simplified and easier to follow.

“You often hear men say: ‘There is no pretty fencing nowadays. It has relapsed into its primitive brutality.’

“Not at all,” I should answer, “it has come back to its proper object. For consider, – an exercise, an art which starts with the fundamental idea of a fight between two men who are thirsting for each other’s blood, cannot be regarded as a mere amusement, or as an academical study in civility and good manners. One might argue with some effect, that to sacrifice the first essential principle of the art to superior refinements, which were really too exclusive, was a risky game to play, and that, sooner or later, the players were sure to discover that fact to their cost. Now I should maintain that the revolution, which has been brought about, is a clear advance, and only brutal, if you will have it so, because it is the assertion of the brutal truth.

“With the exception of the few who have the ambition to make themselves accomplished swordsmen, men you meet in the fencing room do not as a rule come there to sit at the feet of the professor, and imbibe the mystic lore of scientific theory which he expounds, but rather to be drilled and disciplined in the practical use of the sword which he holds in his hand.

“As a young man I was passionately fond of fencing; I worked at it with enthusiasm; my diligence and devotion were untiring. Among my contemporaries were several very strong amateurs, really skilful swordsmen, experts worthy of the best days and most glorious traditions of the sword. I am thinking of such men as Ambert, Caccia, Choquet, Lord Seymour, the Marquis de l’Angle and others, a group of amateurs well able to hold their own with the most skilful masters. I believe that at that time, and I give you this as my sincere conviction, fencing reached as high a level as at any period in its history.

VI

“It was the opening of a new era. Hitherto the art had advanced along a narrow track. Now the old ways suddenly broadened out. Old methods were superseded. Fencing was no longer treated as an academical accomplishment, a graceful exercise in courtly skill and bearing, from which originality was barred. It had become something more than the glib repetition of set phrases, that had been got by heart from a book and carefully rehearsed. The new movement, as it may well be called, though it abandoned the perfect manner, which had grown too perfect, brought our elusive art back to regions less celestial, I readily admit, but at the same time brought it face to face with other than imaginary difficulties.

“The art received a new impetus. ‘Natural fighters,’ men equipped with abundant energy and assurance, who were convinced that all that was necessary for self-defence was a general athletic training such as they possessed, called the fencer’s skill in question. Regarded as fencing their style may have been faulty, not to say atrocious, but they confronted the fencer with this logical dilemma: – ‘You are a master of the sword or an accomplished amateur, I, on the other hand, know nothing about it. Hit me and do not let me hit you. That is all I ask. I shall fight by the light of nature and do what I can; you will be strictly scientific and keep to your rules.’

“To my mind the only way to silence an opponent of this sort was to take sword in hand, and literally demonstrate to him that he was equally ignorant and incapable. This course, however, did not commend itself to others, who were content to fight this modern hydra, which reappeared every day in some new shape, with – contempt.

“The professors gnashed their teeth and swore, though a few of them kept their temper: —

‘Is our Art then,’ they declaimed, ‘a mere delusion, a fallen idol? Are we to prostitute and expose it to the barbarous excesses of a brutal and ignorant mob? Are we to join in an outlandish Babel, where every one claims to be heard in his own tongue, some jargon which no one can understand?’

“There certainly was something in this line of argument, however magisterially it might be stated. But at the same time it was impossible to deny that there was, wrapped up in these ungainly eccentricities, a real truth, which could not be entirely neglected. For among the noisy crowd, who would have liked to set their fads upon a pinnacle, one found fencers of experience, men who by long training and the use of scientific method had acquired sound judgment and thorough workmanship. These men, it is true, had the courage to trample on the ancient superstitions, and gladly welcomed the widening of the field, which would give ample room, and scope for every kind of bias.

“It was clearly a revolution, and declared itself by the unmistakable signs of all revolutions, by its aggressive attitude and by its onslaught on old ideas and traditions, which till then had been thought unassailable.

“Molière’s famous maxim, – ‘Hit and don’t be hit back,’ – asserted itself triumphantly. Truth and falsehood went hand in hand. The thing to be done was to winnow the chaff from the corn, and not reject the whole as worthless.

VII