The Sentiment of the Sword. Richard Francis Burton
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is at your service. To begin it without foil play as an introduction were as futile as learning slides before fixed seats in rowing, but once the preliminaries are mastered an epee pool becomes the true combat of personalities, the keen revealer of temperaments, the merciless arbitrament of skill. It changes with every pair who stand ujp man to man. It can be twenty minutes of the hardest bodily exercise ever known, and it may be either a series of single matches or a combined team fight in sets of four or six. The days of Angelo have come back again, with a difference: the tragic comedians of the duel have silently vanished into limbo, and one of the best sports in modern Europe sounds in the ring of glittering steel.
THEODORE ANDREA COOK.January, 1911.
THE MANUSCRIPT of the following Dialogue was entrusted to me by the late Lady Burton some time after Sir Richard Burton's death in 1890, together with the notes ajid memoranda he left for the continuation of his Book of the Sword. It will, I hope, be of interest as the work of one of the greatest travellers, finest sportsmen, and strongest personali- ties of the Victorian era; but it will appeal more especially to lovers of the sword and foil, who have increased so vastly in numbers since Burton wrote. For it contains the matured opinions upon the art and methods of offence and defence in England and on the Continent of one who was throughout his life an ardent student of the theory, and an acknowledged master of the practice, of the art of swordsmanship.
We have Burton's own statement (Life, Vol. I., p. 134) that he began his long practice with the sword seriously at the age of twelve, sometimes taking three lessons a day, and he never missed an opportunity of studying the fencing or fighting methods of whatever country he was in, savage or civilised. In 1850, at the age of twenty-eight, he was devoting himself to fencing at Boulogne. " To this day," writes his widow, " the Burton une-deux, and notably the manchette (the upward slash disabling the sword arm and saving life in affairs of honour), are remembered; they earned him his brevet de pointe for the excellence of his swordsmanship, and he became a maitre d'armes." This diploma he placed after his name upon the title page of his Book of the Sword. In 1853 he published A Complete System of Bayonet Exercise, which, at first pigeonholed at tho War Office, was subsequently adopted in the army.
Burton's original title for his work was " The Secrets of the Sword," suggested by the Baron de Bazancourt's volume Les Secrets de VEpee, published in Paris in 1862, from which he quotes freely in the following pages, and so well known in England by Mr C. Felix Clay's fine translation (illustrated by Mr F. H. Townsend), which has forestalled this title here. The one chosen in its place, " The Sentiment of the Sword," perhaps suggests even better to non-fencers Burton's intimate sympathy with and affection for the weapon and its correspondence with his own nature, while to swordsmen and fencers it brings home le sentiment flu fer invented by our "sweet enemy France" for that inner feeling of the foil, that magnetism of the blade, that sense of touch or " tact " which no other expression in any language so happily conveys.
I have ventured to omit a few passages from Burton's work which time has rendered of less lively interest, and have allowed myself the liberty of a few notes where the text seemed to require it, or the title of an early fencing work has been given in full
A. FOEBES SIEVEKING12, Seymour Street, W., December, 1910.
THE FIRST EVENING
Ne, che poco io vi dia da imputar sono, Che quanto io passo dur, tutto vi dono. ARIOSTO.
I. Introduction
IN the long world journey of the traveller, who is something of an explorer, there are two lights. The greater is that wild and fiery joy which accompanies actual discovery; the lesser light is the mild and tranquil enjoyment snatched from rude life and spent amid the radiance and fragrance of civilisation.
II. Point and Edge amongst Ancients and Primitive Peoples
One evening, many strangers being in the smoking-room, our talk happened to touch upon the sword. Seaton was certain that the English would never be a fencing nation, that the Pointe wae the invention of modern Continental Europe, that the French school is the only system worth learning, and so forth the usual commonplaces of swordsmen.
I differed with him upon sundry details. It is hard to say what a nation cannot do; two centuries ago England could teach mueic to that all-claiming German race why should she not teach it again? The Greeks and Romans used the point, although their weapons were rather knives than " long knives," and the Turkish yataghan, the Malay kris, the Afghan "charay"[1] the Kabyle flissa[2], and the Algerian dagger, from which the Due D'Aumale borrowed the French sword-bayonet, are made for " thrust " as well as for "cut." We must not go beyond the assertion that only the exclusively pointed weapon, a revival of the old " stocco," that with which General Lamoriciere proposed to arm the French cavalry, is the invention of comparatively modern times. As regards the Italian schools, the old and the new, I supported their prowess in the field, and the aristocracy of the family from which they claim descent.
The discussion became animated enough to impress the general ear, despite the protestations of the schoolman and the objections of the cosmopolite. The many present who had never touched a foil were impressed with the halo of feelings which I threw round my favourite pursuit. They began to understand that mind or brain force enters, as well as muscle, into the use of the sword; that character displays itself even more than in the " bumps " of the phrenologists, or the lines of the physiognomist; and that every assault between experts, who despise the mere struggle of amour-propre, is a trial of skill and temper; of energy and judgment, of nerve, and especially of what is known as " coup d'oeil " and the " tact of the sword." Regarding nerve, I asserted that the same quality which makes an exceptionally good rider, marksman, or skater, a cricketer, tennis, or billiard player, to name no others, is required for the finished swordsman. Lastly, I proved, to my own satisfaction at least, that, although the man who would be a perfect master of fence must begin in boyhood, simple offence is easily, and defence is even more easily, taught. I fear, in fact, that my form of conversation became somewhat tectural, professorial, and dogmatic.
III. History and Development of Sword
"Do you know," said the Chatelaine, " that you are revealing to us the Secrets of the Sword? "
I accept the epigram, was my reply, and certainly nothing can better describe my intention. Amongst all weapons the rapier alone has its inner meaning, its arcana, its mysteries. See how it interprets man's ideas and obeys every turn of his thoughts! At once the blade that threatens and the shield that guards, it is now agile, supple, and intelligent; then slow, sturdy, and persevering; here light and airy, prudent and subtle; there, blind and unreflecting, angry and vindictive; I am almost tempted to call it, after sailor fashion, " she."
Unhappily its secrets are generally neglected, and even those who give what are called " fencing lessons," like those who take them, mostly fail to pass beyond the physical view.
Our great-grandfathers wore swords by their sides, and all gentlemen learned to use them. Presently the pistol came into fashion an ugly change of dull lead for polished steel, and the "art of arms " fell so low that many a wealthy city in England had a "fencing master" who combined the noble functions of dancing master sometimes of dentist. The effect of the "muscular movement" has made the foil rise again in the market of popularity, but it is too often used as a mere single-stick might be the single-stick, like the quarter-staff, a weapon for Gurths and Wambas.
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