Richard Francis Burton

“ I shall leave it, therefore, to the father, to consider how far the temper of his son, and the station he is like to be in, will allow or encourage him to comply with fashions, which, having very little to do with civil life, were yet formerly unknown to the most warlike nations, and seem to have added little of force or courage to those who have received them; unless we will think martial kill or prowess have been improved by duelling, with which fencing came into, and with which, I presume, it will go out of the world. ”

“ You prefer to keep out of distance, and you find that a closer approach preoccupies your mind, embarrasses your thoughts, and subjects you to the surprise of a swift lunge, which comes upon you like a flash of lightning. ”

“ The assault is the image of the fight; it is what drill is to battle. Only your artificial systems of arms allow one style in the fencing school, another in the field. Such " company manners," as my nurse called something of the kind, are not admissible. They are shams, they are snares, they are delusions.
The natural system, based, I have said, upon utility and experiment, allows every man his liberty of action. It does not pretend nor attempt to teach him grace and neatness of execu- tion, if his instinct and his individuality find these qualities factitious and foreign. ”

“ Without noticing the moral effect in drawing out character and in confirming courage, or the diversion, excitement, and noble emulation of the exercise, I believe fencing, which of course includes extension movements, to be the very best plastic exercise in the world in fact, the piince of calisthenics for acquiring grace, ease, and the full use of the limbs. ”

“ And there- fore, if any provision is to be made against such accidents, and a man be to prepare his son for duels, I had much rather mine should be a good wrestler than an ordinary fencer; which is the most a gentleman can attain to in it, unless he will be constantly in the fencing school and every day exercising. But since fencing and riding the great horse are so generally looked upon as necessary qualifications in the breeding of a gentleman, it will be hard wholly to deny anyone of that rank these marks of distinction. ”

“ They say to the older school, you are an academy, a sort of "elegant exercise"; you have carried to excess your agility, your address, your artificiality; you read like a book.
But what remarked the Fox about the tragic mask? However fair be the front, there .is nought behind; it is an absolute "dickey," a hole where we expect a hill. You have prescribed, nay you have issued, your syllabus, your anathema- maranatha against the individuality of man, against that imprevu upon which every strong man relies. We want a larger arena; we want elbow room for our own natures. ”

“ And when a man is in the field, a moderate skill in fencing rather exposes him to the sword of his enemy than secures him frojn it. And certainly a man of courage, who cannot fence at all, and therefore will put all upon one thrust and no.t stand parrying, has the odds against a moderate fencer, especially if he has skill in wrestling. ”

“ The labours of Hume, Adam Smith, Bentham, and John Stuarl Mill are gradually establishing utility as the test of morale, and therefore of law, and therefore of fencing. An ever increasing success tends to weld into one mass our knowledge of physical nature and our acquaintance with the moral world fencing included. ”

“ In the ladies' fencing room, however, the master requires peculiar qualifications. He must make the exercise amusing as well as profitable; he should inspire his pupils with the wholesome ambition of becoming accomplished fencers, which, of course, they will not be. ”

“ The remains still linger in the Italian position of guard when the dagger is absent; the left hand is held horizontally extended across the middle of the chest, not in the airy curve of the French school, and it is evidently intended to take part in the parade. The advantage is that by throwing it back a greater impetus is secured for the lunge; on the other hand, it is apt to bring the left shoulder forward, causing increased exposure when standing on guard. In practising, and more especially in serious rencontres, at Naples, the seconds always determine how far the left hand may be used ”

“ Let your pupil form himself after his own image as far as you can with conscience. If you force him to copy, to resemble you, it will make him only an easier victim to all the originals of your traditional system. ”

“ As the point is freely used, in addition to the edge, nothing can be more illogical; a curved weapon with a centre of percussion thus takes the place of the stiff, straight sword, not the bent wire of the Frenchman, whose speciality was the thrust. Perhaps broadsword is chosen because it is, generally speaking, less mortal than rapier, but if so, why use the point?
IX Has anyone in this room ever been at Bologna, where the Lambertini, father and eon, teach the scuola mista? ”

“ But how many sad tragedies that reason has bejen the occasion of, the tears of many a mother can witness, A man that cannot fence will be more careful to keep out of bullies' and gamesters' company, and will not be half so apt to stand upon punctilios, nor give affronts, or fiercely justify them when given, which is that which usually makes the quarrel. ”

“ The true strength of a swordsman consists less in the charm of his manner, in the academic grace of his pose, in the magis- terial regularity of his movements, than in his judgment, his spontaneity, and his quickness of attack and defence.
When a fencer has once mastered the few fundamental rules upon which his science, like all others, is based ”

“ Those few who study fencing have wholly adopted the French school. In London, however, a salle was opened by the famous Antonio Francolanza, of Catania, the last descendant of the well-known Sicilian fencing master. In Germany and Hungary, and generally in the provinces bordering upon Turkey, the favourite weapon is the sabre, and the people have become most dexterous in its use.
The French system is thus described:
The French fencer, armed with a blade lacking shell and cross- bars, is unable to adopt some attacks and not a few defences ”

“ Dilettantism and amateurship are the banes of what you are pleased to call, in outrage of all respectable authority, the Anglo-Scandinavian and Anglo-Celt. He cribs a few hours from business, he reads a few books on architecture or antiqui- ties, and .straightway he becomes an architectural or an antiquarian authority. ”

“ He doesn't show to advantage amongst men who've begun the study in their boyhood, and who've possibly inherited it from father and grandfather; he'd stand out far better if men looked at his ledger or his cash book. Dilettantism is very well in its way as that great political compromise ' half a loaf,' but it will boast itself to be the whole. ”

“ On the contrary, you must offer him your sword, il faut donner le fer. Such is the rule, such is the law; only bad swordsmen and ferrailleurs, who thrust wildly right and left, attempt to do otherwise.
Your hand has not the height of the classic fencer, you some- times thrust with a bent arm, and you even strike low in the stomach, for instance. Certainly in a duel nothing could be more fatal, yet the sallcs d'armes tell you that it is bad form. ”

“ My reading convinces me, as I should have expected, that in this, as in other arts, simplicity is the reduction of a mass of complications; we begin with combinations and details which we end by throwing away. ”

“ As for fencing, it seems to me a good exercise for health, but dangerous to the life, the confidence of their skill being apt to engage in quarrels those that think they have learned to use their swords. This presumption makes them often more touchy than needs, on Pqjnt of honour, and slight or no provocations.
Young men in their warm blood are forward to think they have in vain learned to fence, if they never show their skill and courage in a duel ”

“ There are phases in the modern French system which require some allusion. The first is fencing considered in the light of a graceful rather than a manly exercise; "a school of deportment," as were the universities, the lineal offspring of tho mile. I have seen old Angelo (38) at Oxford bring his foil to the
(37) We travel into Italic to learne the art of fencing, and practise it at the cost of our lives before we know it; it were requisite, according to the order of true discipline, we should preferre the theorike before the practike. We betray our apprentissage. ”

“ It gives abundant exercise within a short time, no small recommendation during " the season," when we have so little to do and yet so little time to do it in. Really, an hour a day may easily be borrowed from the ride or the walk, and the good results will appear in sound sleep, untroubled by dreams. ”

“ Your opponent acts without judgment, beating, as it were, the blades, whipping the air, making futile half attacks; lunging when out of distance; stopping you at the moment most dangerous to himself; parrying, now dully, then with a convulsive force ”

“ Not at all; you must take your place within the recognised limits that is, within reasonable reach of the opponent's weapon.
You feel yourself overweighted in the match; your adversary has the better of you in straight thrusts, in degagemente, in upper-cuts (coupes) , and in the more complicated attacks; your sole defence is to withdraw your blade from his, so as to leave him no base of operations, as it were. ”

“ The third aspect is fencing considered purely as the art ol defending oneself, and of offending the enemy. Here the traditions of the salles are valued only as they suit the student's individuality; he modifies them for and to himself, instead ol doing, as his father did, the reverse. He ruthlessly sacrifices ornament to utility; he rejects complication and combinations the superfluities introduced by time and professors, which ar< admirable with buttoned foils, but which fly from the point The play becomes a serious and threatening struggle ”

“ The other flies to the opposite extreme, and to a certaii oxtenit does well, because extremes define the so-called " golder mean." It would change everything, the bad to the good, the good to the better, despite that subtle suggestion of Satan Oh, excuse me! le mieux est Vennemi du bien. It looks upon all that is old with suspicion, as fitted for its own day, unfit for ours. It believes in realism, utilitarism, progress, develop- ment, and its device is " Sic itur ad astra."
==XIII==.
Thus was the fencing room a picture of modern society, a miniature of the world. ”

“ III It is the custom to represent fencing as an affair of skill, a mere turn of the wrist. Nothing can be more erroneous. Moreover, I have never found a woman willing to go through the preparatory work, however trifling it is m my system. All want to fence loose, even before they know the routine of the room, or even tierce from carte. ”

“ Hence we have sets of feints for the plastron and not for the assault, and movements for the assault, not for the combat. And what more common than to read: " Les coups designes ci-dessus peuvent se tenter une ou deux fois dans au assaut, mais jamais en duel, car ils prescntent de grands dangers." (19)
The excellence of a fencer consists in a just appreciation of his own powers and those of his adversary, in readiness of judgment, in quickness of hand, wrist, and forearm ”

“ When his sinews have learned the difficult task of applying the exact force required, neither more, which would throw his sword out of line, nor less, which would deliver him into the hands of his enemy ”

“ Not a few writers have assumed that our modern system began with extreme simplicity; that it was an infant which had every- thing to learn, all things to discover, whilst others opine that our schools, after developing into complexity, are now return- ing to their older form. ”

“ It is not so easy to settle down into places when masculine brusquerie is tempered by softer material. A large armchair, a " Sleepy Hollow," extra sleepy, was playfully proposed as my cathedra, but firmly and uncompromisingly rejected; the hardest cane chair is likest the saddle, and the saddle is the properest seat for man. ”

“ Like all sciences, this demands special gifts, and without a peculiar organisation and a grace of intuition, the privilege of the heaven-born swords- man, aided and worked out by conscientious study and im- perious labour, constant withal and uninterrupted, no man can expect to arrive at real and remarkable force. ”

“ There is (1) the Italian, properly so called, and extending throughout the Peninsula; (2) the Neapolitan belongs to the south; and (3) the Sicilian is peculiar to the great Trinacrian Island. Florio asserts that the Italian school of his time happily blended, as was the character of the nation, French vivacity with Spanish gravity, whilst its weapon and its guards held the juste milieu between those two extremes of racial character. ”

“ This was more than impatient Seaton could bear. " The Academy" he cried, " is not half severe enough upon your mad freaks. This is a French Revolution you propoee a mere rationalism without tradition, a breaking with the past and no eye to the future. In practice we all have the fault of leaning the body forward. Look at the mass of evidence collected by Capt. George Chapman (Foil Practice, ”

“ When he is aware of the danger incurred by compound attacks, and 1 can rely for simple attacks upon his hand and his coup d'oeil;
When he has learned what nature has given to him and what she has refused, where he is likely to fail and how he is likely to succeed ”

“ The foil the Frenchman broke oji Pini's breast is preserved in the Sword Club, in Durham-street, Strand. A fragment of it fell at the King's feet in the heat of their assault.
26 ...
The moderns have adopted it, and, adapting it to a vast scale, we have produced not a copy, but a caricature. Briefly, to describe the effect of the aristocratic old city, the " rural capital of the Emilia," you have only to remember that of Manchester and Birmingham, and to conjure up into imagination the direct reverse. It is a noble mediaeval castle dwarfing the brand-new semi-detached villa. ”