The Sentiment of the Sword. Richard Francis Burton
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very square to one another, and would risk many chances of grappling and "in-fighting," at which the better fencer might be worsted by a muscular opponent ; science, in fact, made far less difference than it does at present. A more accurate and more complete system became a necessity. So the point by degrees superseded the edge entirely. One weapon was found sufficient both for attack and for defence ; for the point kept men at their distance, and the fencer, using one hand for balance, did all that was possible, by standing sideways, to efface the surface of his body open to attack.
It is, perhaps, significant that the era which produced the perfection of fencing, the crowning masterpiece of the riposte, was also the age when duelling with the sword went out of fashion in those countries where the national skill had not rendered it practically innocuous. The history of firearms pro- vides an example of a similar series of causations. When Gentlemen of the Guard fired first, and the officer's cane pressed down their musket barrels on a mark some fifty paces distant, the slaughter of the volley would have made modern humanitarians turn pale. But in these days of the- repeating rifle and the Mauser magazine, one army has hardly time to see the manly countenances of its foes throughout a whole campaign, and, relatively, very Kittle bad blood has been spilt when all is over. It has remained for the days of "scientific hygiene" to count more victims killed by disease than fell in action. So the sword was in danger of becoming a mere symbol, though always a brilliant symbol, for the martial poet,
Clanging imperious
Forth from Time's battlements
His ancient and triumphing song.
Perhaps this is why, both in France and England, the military authorities have shown a creditable anxiety to remove it from the vulgar sphere of practical utility, and the six-shooter has entirely replaced it in the United States, and meanwhile the subtle perfection of foil play steadily came more and more into favour. Emancipated from the bonds of too strenuous utilitarians, freed from the fetters of an encyclopaedic scholasticism, yet glowing, still, with the romance of all its glorious past, the sublimated spirit of good swordsmanship throughout the ages seemed to float over the fencing-rooms of the last decade of the nineteenth century; for here, even in England, the discovery of the French duelling sword '(or epee de combat) had given renewed zest to practice with its elder sister, the foil. Even the exquisite art and laudable enthusiasm of a Camille Prevost could not, however, recommend to the average militant male a pursuit which he regarded as a mere academic elegance, with very little reference to the serious issues of personal combat and no pretence to the employment of a serviceable weapon. Englishmen asked for something more practical, and in epee play they have found it. The late W. H. C. Staveley, whose recent and untimely loss all English fencers have so sincerely mourned, was first-rate with the foil before his epee and sabre play had reached international form, and he was as eager to preserve the qualities of the foil as he was to fight the foremost with the sword. Capt. Hutton, too, who died within a few days of his younger comrade, was a president of the Amateur Fencing Association whose place will be difficult to fill, for he guided modern developments with an experience of the past that was well-nigh unequalled, and the swordsmanship of the last thirty years owes much to his presence and example.
But though our amateur fencing championships, with foil, epee, and sabre, are now regularly carried out each year, it may be feared that the art of swordsmanship remains a mystery tp the larger part of the inhabitants of these isles, and that few of the great sporting public know the meaning of the little Tudor rose (commemorating Bluff King Hal, as aforesaid) which hangs at the watch-chain of those who have represented England in an International Tournament. Yet there was a time when Englishmen, sword in hand, could face the rest of Europe without fear, either in the fencing-room or on "the field of honour." They had at first been a long time learning Ibat the Continent had really got something to teach them; having at last learnt it, they proceeded to outdo their masters. But they gave up the game as soon as they dropped wearing swords. Practical danger appealed to them ; artistic recrea- tion left them cold. They had laughed duelling out of fashion, both with steel and pistol ; they forthwith gave up going to the fencing-room. Angelo's work seemed likely to be wholly forgotten within scarce two generations of his prime. A few men only Burton, Chapman, Hutton, Egerton Castle, the two Pollocks, perhaps a short half-dozen mnrp savod foil play from complete oblivion in Ixmdon. during Ihe long years of ccli}> < The following dialogue, of which the first publication began in the pages of the Field, is from the hand of Sir Richard Burton, that curious blend of the mystic and the athlete, of the explorer and the linguist, of the antiquary and the scholar. A man who felt as strongly as it has been ever felt the passion he calls "the wild and fiery joy which accompanies actual discovery," Burton equally delighted in the subtler expression of intellectual, tem- peramental, even psychical emotions; and was therefore very peculiarly qualified to describe "the Sentiment of the Sword." His sketch of " Shughtie," one of the characters in his con- versation, is probably intended as a portrait of the writer (or one side of him) by himself. Hie dialogue, which throws several curious sidelights on Mid-Victorian society (in velvet smoking caps and whiskers), is valuable not merely for its sound doctrines of swordsmanship, but for its revelations of his own character and personality. It has been edited by Mr Forbes Sieveking, a skilled upholder of the foil, to whom London owed, some dozen years ago, an exhibition of first-rate foil play in the Portman Rooms that was not surpassed either in excellence or in interest until the famous evening when the King saw Pini and his Italian champions vanquished in the Empress Rooms by Kirchhoffer, Merignac, and the flower of France. That was a typical encounter, for which those who had seen Camille Prevost's elegant classicalism on the former occasion were more than half prepared. The passing of the sceptre from Italy to France had been foreshadowed already. It may now be taken as an accomplished fact.
First-rate foil play has invariably been too delicate in its essence,, too ideal in its aim, too unpractical in its courteous fragility for the majority of Englishmen. It is the foundation of the knowledge of all weapon play, and your true foil player need never be at a loss in a scrimmage, even if he bears but that unromantic symbol of civic respectability the silk umbrella. But in itself the foil has always appealed to a very small minority of our countrymen. The scoring was compli- cated, restricted, and liable to much misconception, save by the rare and tyrannous expert. The somewhat artificial ceremonies attending it had too Continental a flavour for your insular athlete, who liked to know both when he hit his foe and when he had been hit himself. And so the whirligig of time has brought yet other changes. Fencing has experienced a miraculous Renaissance in this country owing to the introduc- tion of the pool system and the epee dc combat, the triangularly fluted rapier of the French duellist, with its semicircular cup hilt, its light, blade, and foil handle, its grim simplicity of method, its virtual reproduction of the conditions of the duel, its strictly businesslike and obvious scoring. The first pool ever held here in public with this weapon was in the Steinway Hall in 1900. By 1903 the first English fencing team that ever crossed the Channel competed in Paris in the International Tourna- ment. Much to the surprise of their compatriots they were not last, for a victory over the Belgians served as an anticipatory atonement for lost Grand Challenge Cups at later Henleys.
In 1906, only three years afterwards, the English team fought France to a dead heat in the final at Athens for the first time in any open international event. It is not too much to hope for even greater honours in the future. The popularity of the new sport for new it is, in its first decade etill would have fairly astonished Richard Burton, and, we may safely add, have thoroughly delighted him, for he knew all about the possibilities of the epee, ae did a few other Englishmen in the latter half of the nineteenth century ; but it never became really popular till after 1900, and now we hear so great an authority as J. Joseph- Renaud, across the Channel, saying that " foil play is dead." We do not believe that the foil will ever die while swordsman- ship remains alive ; but it is a fact that the epee has given an impulse to English fencing of which the foil has never in its whole history been capable. Non cuivis contingit adire Corinthum; not all may wear the Tudor rose of English swords- manship, but scores more than ever cared to perfect themselves with a foil may now learn, something of the joys of swordsman- ship, may feel the fine thrill of that sentiment du fer when your blade seems like a nerve outstretched from the eager point of it to your own heart and brain, when your opponent's steel bewrays him as it palpitates with the tremor of his struggling will and adverse energy. In any weather, indoors or out of doors, at any hour, at any age, this game of games