Secrets of the Sword

“First, for defence, to allow the limbs their complete liberty of action, their natural elasticity and easy play; secondly for attack, to give the extension of the body its full force.

“Now try to change the position; straighten your legs; you will at once notice the increased difficulty of executing the different movements, whether of attack, defence, or retreat. You lose your balance, and the lunge either precedes the action of the hand and the extension of the arm, or follows those movements too late.

“The legs are springs which support the body and determine its most rapid movements. If you are out shooting and want to jump a ditch, you bend your legs in order to obtain the necessary spring. Or again, if you jump down from a height, you bend your legs at the moment your feet touch the ground; if you do not, your whole body is jarred.

“I dwell on this point in order to convince you of its absolute necessity, and to make you understand clearly the why and wherefore of the position. But, I repeat, instinct was the first teacher, experience came later and has only confirmed the principle.

“One last caution. When once you have learnt by practice how to harmonise your movements, and have realised how great a power at a given moment the faculty of making these movements with ease and rapidity may be, then, and not till then, venture to take your personal inclination into account. And if after carefully weighing the pros and cons you come to the conclusion that you can, owing to some personal peculiarity, improve upon the elementary rules of the lesson, do not hesitate to depart from them without scruple, but never without good reason. The best position is that which allows you complete freedom and perfect balance. But never forget that all exaggeration is bad, and that nothing can be worse than the exaggeration of an ungraceful and ungainly style. That is all I have to say this evening.”

The Third Evening

I

“We will continue the course of instruction of which you have studied at present only the first page; I am going into very minute detail, as you see.

“Our scholar now knows the different positions, and can appreciate why they are to be commended, and what is to be gained by adopting them. At the next lesson, – and each lesson would consist of not more than three bouts of eight or ten minutes each, – I should show him and make him execute the simple attacks and the simple parries: —Disengagements in tierce and quarte, straight thrusts, the cut over, and parries of quarte and tierce. The attacks will exercise him in the lunge, the parries will improve the flexibility of his wrist.

“I should make him continually retire and advance. I should, even at this early stage, take pains to secure a certain degree of life and speed in his execution, and I should be careful to vary the exercises, and never appeal to his intelligence at the risk of checking the activity of his movements. Sluggishness, I repeat, is a deadly foe, against which every avenue must be closed from the very first.

“Next I should go on to composite parries and composite attacks. I have already named them, and you remember that they are not very numerous. Counters, double counters, and combinations of the cut over and disengagement are the most useful things to practise, because they work the wrist in every direction, and make it both quick and supple.

“Although a great many instructors would say that I am wrong, I should make it my principal aim to form and cultivate a habit of executing all movements at speed. I should insist less on precision of control than on smartness of execution, and at the same time I should call my pupil’s attention to the mistakes which he must be most careful to avoid, and to the points of danger where he must exercise the greatest caution.

“I should practise him in retiring quickly, and should make him deliver simple attacks on the march, keeping his blade in position. After a few lessons I should repeatedly place my button on his jacket, if he did not parry quickly enough, or if he was slow on the recovery. In a word I should put plenty of life and go into my lessons from the first, and not allow them to become tedious.

“After every lesson I should direct his serious attention to the principal faults I had noticed, and I should make him understand the dangers to which these faults must inevitably expose him. For instance, if he caught the fatal trick of dropping or drawing back his hand, I should take care to make him attack and riposte in the high lines, in order to get him to carry his wrist high, and vice versa. In this way I should exercise his judgment by making him think, and his hand and body by keeping him closely to his work.

II

“Above all, the master’s lesson must not lose itself in a maze of attacks and parries and ripostes, which in some treatises are as numerous and interminable as the stars of heaven. The strict limitation of the number of strokes to be taught renders their execution proportionately easier, and makes a clear impression on the mind. Experience and fencing instinct teach, far better than any lesson, certain niceties, which give life and finish and character to the play. There you have the lesson complete.

“As the scholar gradually grows stronger, he learns to hold himself correctly, and acquires ease. He understands what to do without being told, and his hand is in a fair way to become the faithful echo of his thought.

III

“We here touch on another point, where I find myself at variance with nearly all the professional instructors.

“I have read in the books which deal with this subject of ‘the danger of premature loose play.’ ‘You run the risk,’ say some, ‘of spoiling a promising pupil, and of arresting his future progress, just when he is beginning to form good habits.’ Others go further and declare that: ‘The instructor who allows his pupil to commence loose play too soon sacrifices by an act of fatal indulgence the whole future of fencing.’

“I do not agree with this view. I cannot even see that it logically applies to those who mean to devote all their time to the study of sword-play, and who are prepared to make a determined effort to reach the topmost summit of this difficult art. Much less, then, to my mind, is it applicable to the generality of men, who have no ambition to become such learned fencers, as we were saying the other evening. The professors wilfully refuse to see this.

“And yet of all arts, the art of fencing may be considered from the most widely different standpoints, and particularly may be approached with very varied degrees of knowledge and application. Is it so very certain that ‘premature loose play,’ as the professors love to call it, is so pernicious as they think, – the bad seed that cannot fail to produce an evil crop of vices? Right or wrong, I can only say once more that I am of quite the contrary opinion.

“I fail to see that it is dangerous for a pupil to attempt the assault, when he has learnt by taking lessons for a month, – more or less, according to the progress made and his natural capacity, – to understand the various strokes I have described, and can already execute them with some degree of liveliness and control.

IV

“Of course I am quite ready to admit that his first assaults, like all first attempts that require a trained habit of mind, cannot be free from mistakes, exaggerations, faults of all sorts. But is not the master there to correct these errors with his lesson, and to bring his pupil, who is inclined to go astray, back to the right path? Cannot the leading strings be readjusted?

“The very fact that the master has had an opportunity of observing the mistakes, to which his pupil is most liable, when left to himself, enables him to devote all his care to overcome and correct them by both practice and precept. More important still, he has also had an opportunity of observing his pupil’s bias; he notices the strokes which come naturally to his hand, the parries he most affects, the natural promptings of his impulse, impetuous or cautious as the case may be. He makes a study of his artless scholar, who is clumsily feeling his feet, reads him like a book, catches him in the act so to speak, and detects the working of his character, and thenceforward he knows the way in which his studies may be most profitably directed to give full play to his individual temperament.

“The assault teaches the novice what no amount of lunging at the master’s pad can drill into him. It enters him to the sudden emergencies, which in one shape or another arise at every moment, to the movement and exertion and keen emulation of real fighting. The assault is in fact a lesson subsidiary to the formal lesson, and you may rest assured that the instruction it conveys is equally salutary.”

V

“Then,” smilingly remarked the Comte de R., “you are for open war with the existing routine?”

“And with the old traditions. Yes, I am afraid I am. But what can I do? You admit the force of my arguments?”

“Certainly.”

“And that fencing taught on my plan loses its terrors?”

“Yes, I quite admit that.”

“And in fact it is not really formidable. My system is able to satisfy the requirements of all, and I do not overshoot the mark, by over-anxiety to reach it.

“It is most important to bear in mind that it is not necessary or even desirable to attend all the professor’s lectures, to pass all the examinations and finally to qualify as Bachelor of Arms in order to become a fair ordinary fencer. After all in every art one usually admits the professor’s right to dictate the elementary principles of his subject, but after the elementary stage is passed we are not, I believe, always ready to accept the professor’s estimate of the importance of the art which he happens to teach. The remark applies equally to music, to painting, to literature, and why not to fencing? Poets we know are nothing if not first-rate, but why should fencers be singled out for this invidious distinction?

“You may judge how firmly my own belief is rooted, when I say that I am as strongly convinced of the good results that follow from ‘premature assaults,’ as I am of the necessity of making the lesson as simple and as clear as possible.

VI

“I remember a story told by my friend, M. Desbarolles, an artist who is endowed more liberally than most of my acquaintance with the warm artistic temperament. It is to be found in one of his neatly written essays. He had, it seems, studied fencing for two years under a French master, in Germany I think, when he paid a visit to M. Charlemagne, one of the most famous instructors of the day, to whom he had an introduction.

“He fenced before the professor, and when the bout was over expected to be complimented, under the impression that he had done rather well.

‘Will you allow me, Sir, to give you a word of advice?’ asked the great man.

‘By all means,’ replied my friend.

‘Then, let me recommend you to give up loose play altogether for at least a year, and confine your attention entirely to the lesson.’

“Good heavens, what amazing perversity, what pompous humbug! M. Desbarolles remarks that he was utterly taken aback, and I can well believe him, but he goes on to say that he accepted the master’s verdict, and never had reason to repent it.

“If he had not given his word for the fact, I should certainly have ventured to hope, most sincerely, that his sense of humour was sufficient to save him from following such a piece of advice to the letter, and in any case I am sure that it was quite unnecessary for him to do so, in order to become the charming fencer that he is and one for whom I have the warmest admiration.

“Do not tell me that the quickness of hand and rapidity of movement, the alertness of body and mind required in loose play, can be imparted by the lessons of a skilful instructor, if only he is careful to graduate his instruction in proportion to his pupil’s progress. The result is mere clock-work with the professor for mainspring, counterfeit vitality set in motion by the word of command; a most mechanical use of the intelligence. The pupil cannot go wrong because he is tied to his master’s apron-strings. The master’s sword shows him exactly where to go with the precision of a finger-post. He is like a man swimming in a cork jacket, practising the motions of swimming at his leisure, and not caring in the least whether these motions would really support him on the surface or let him sink to the bottom.

“That the formal lesson is useful I do not doubt, that it has a monopoly of usefulness I emphatically deny. Why allow it to meddle with and domineer over things which do not concern it? Let it keep its place and refrain from trespassing outside its own dominions.

“The lesson can explain the logic and theory of fencing, it can assign reasons and exhibit the mechanical process, but it cannot deal with the great Unknown, the tricksy spirit, which suddenly starts out on the fencer under every shape and form, always assuming some new disguise and upsetting in a moment the most perfect theories and the most scientific combinations.

“The young fencer who undertakes his first assault is like the heroic youth of the fairy tales, who leaves his humble cottage and goes out into the wide world to seek his fortune. Like him he will meet with many strange adventures, which will try his mettle, put his character to the touch, and call into play all the resources of his intelligence.

VII

“Perhaps you think that by continually presenting this question to you in a new light I am detaining you too long on one part of my subject. My intention is to bring home to your minds the conviction I so strongly feel myself. If you only knew how many striking examples I have witnessed of the truth of my assertion!