FENCING SCHOOLS.
Fencing in France--A National Art--Some Extracts from the Writings of M.
Legouvé, One of its Chief Exponents--The Old Style of Fencing and the
New.
Fencing is in England the pastime of a few amateurs; in France it is a
national art. An ingenious reason has been adduced by M. Legouvé why
proficiency with the rapier should be acquired by everyone. “The sword,”
he writes, “possesses the finest of all advantages: it is the only
weapon with which you can avenge yourself without an effusion of blood.
What is nobler for a man of chivalry and skill when he finds himself
confronting the man who has offended him, and whom he is privileged to
kill, than at once to punish this adversary and to spare his life--to
disarm him, that is to say.”
It is in his character of dramatic author, however, that M. Legouvé
chiefly values duelling. “What would become of us wretched playwrights
without the sword-duel?” he asks. “The pistol is a brutal contrivance,
suitable only to dark melodramas and to dénouements.... What do you
think could be done in a comedy with a man who haply had received a
bullet wound? He is no longer good for anything. But if he has been
wounded with a sword, he returns two minutes afterwards with his hand
thrust in the folds of his waistcoat and an attempted smile on his face.
The young woman says to him, ‘How pale you are!’ ‘I, mademoiselle?’ Then
the end of a bandage is somehow perceived. ‘Gracious heavens! you have
been fighting a duel,’ she exclaims.” M. Legouvé must now be allowed to
continue in his own language: “Ah! l’admirable verbe que le verbe _se
battre_! Tous les temps en sont bons. _Vous vous battez? battez-vous!...
Ne vous battez pas!..._ Et comme il va bien avec les exclamations: ‘_Mon
ami! par grâce! Monsieur, vous êtes un lâche!... Arthur! Arthur!... Je
me jette à tes pieds!_’ Speak not to me of dramatic writing without
those two indispensable collaborators: love and the sword.
“Fencing interests me, moreover, simply as an observer. A fencing-school
is a theatre at which as many amusing characters may be seen as on any
stage. First of all there is a class of fencers who do not fence and
never will. Then there are the men who fence in order to reduce their
bulk; who have been told by their doctor or their wife that they are too
fat, and who, after sweating like oxen, blowing like seals, steaming
like boiled puddings, for a couple of hours, tell you in the calmest
manner that they have been fencing.
“Then there are the fencing-masters, or professors of fencing, as they
prefer to be called. They are generally gay, good-natured, well-meaning
fellows, devoted body and soul to their pupils, especially to those
pupils who have done them the honour to kill someone in mortal combat.
Their weak point is said to be veracity; not on all occasions, but
whenever they have the foil in hand. “I have never,” says M. Legouvé,
“met a single fencer who would not--say once every year--deny that he
had been touched when the hit was palpable. It is so easy to say ‘I did
not feel it,’ and a hit not recognised does not count. Ah, if we
dramatists could only annul hisses by saying: ‘I did not hear them!’
“My first professor,” continues M. Legouvé, “was an old master known as
Père Dularviez. He had a daughter of whom he was exceedingly proud. She
was employed in a milliner’s shop, which caused her father some
uneasiness as to her possible conduct. There was nothing to justify his
uneasiness, but he was uneasy. At last, unable to rest, he wrapped
himself up in a cloak and took up his position at the corner of the Rue
Traversière, close to the Rue Saint-Honoré, where his daughter worked.
‘You may imagine,’ he said to us, ‘how my heart beat when I saw her
appear. I approached her, and averting my face, whispered in her ear a
graceful little compliment which I had invented for the occasion. O joy!
she turned round and administered to me with all her might a box on the
ear. I guarded myself _en tierce_ and said: ‘My child, you are truly
virtuous.’
“Fencing has, moreover, its utilitarian value. It teaches you to judge
men. With the foil in hand no dissimulation is possible. After five
minutes of foil-play the false varnish of mundane hypocrisy falls and
trickles away with the perspiration: instead of the polished man of the
world, with yellow gloves and conventional phrases, you have before you
the actual man, a calculator or a blunderer, weak or firm, wily or
ingenuous, sincere or treacherous.... One day I derived a great
advantage. I was crossing foils with a large broker in brandies, rums,
and champagnes. Before the passage of arms he had offered me his
services in regard to a supply of liquors, and I had almost accepted....
The fencing at an end, I went to the proprietor and said: ‘I shall buy
no champagne of that man.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘His wine must be adulterated--he
denies every hit.’
“Apply my principle, and you will find it profitable. Some of you are
already married. One day you will have daughters to marry. Well, if a
suitor presents himself, do not waste time in collecting particulars
which are too often false. Say simply to your future son-in-law: ‘Will
you have a turn with the foils?’ At the end of a quarter of an hour you
will know more about his character than after six weeks of
investigations.
“Finally, I like fencing because you cannot learn it. It does, indeed,
demand practice, and long practice; but that is not sufficient, it must
be your vocation: you must be born a fencer, just as you must be born an
artist. And then, when the apprenticeship has been served, what pleasure
is enjoyed! I doubt whether there is in external life a single act in
which a man feels himself to live more fully than in a vigorous assault.
“Look at the fencer in action. Each member, each muscle is stretched,
and each for a different purpose. Whilst the hand glances rapidly and
lightly, always tending forwards, the body holds itself back, and the
legs, vigorously contracted like a spring, await, for their extension,
the signal to be given by the arm as it prepares to make its sudden
thrust. The whole of the members are like so many obedient soldiers to
whom the general says: ‘March’--‘Halt’--‘Double.’ The general is the
head, that head which, at once inspired and calculating as though on a
real field of battle, detects at a glance the faults of the enemy, lays
traps for him and compels him to fall into them, simulates a retreat in
order to give him confidence, and returns suddenly upon him with a
frightful assault....
“And to think that this art, complex as it is, in which the whole of the
body is engaged, should really be concentrated between the end of the
forefinger and the thumb. For there it all is: there resides the
delicate and masterly faculty which alone constitutes the superior
fencer--tact. Is it not wonderful to see how much sensibility and life
flows between these two digits? They tremble, they palpitate beneath the
pressure of the foil in contact with their own, as if an electric
current communicated to them all its movements. For them the aid of
sight is not necessary, for they do more than see the hostile sword;
they feel it, they could follow it with their eyes bandaged; and if you
add to these magnificent delights of the sense of touch the powerful
circulation of the blood which runs in great waves through the veins,
the beating heart, the boiling head, the throbbing arteries, the heaving
breast, the opening pores; if you join, moreover, to this the delight of
feeling your power and your suppleness increase tenfold; if you think,
above all, of the ardent joy and bitter grief of self-love, of the
pleasure of beating and the vexation of being beaten, and of the
thousand vicissitudes of a struggle which terminates and begins again at
each fresh thrust--you will understand that there is in the exercise of
this art a veritable intoxication, of which the passion for gambling can
alone give an idea. It is play without vice and with health superadded.”
M. Legouvé, who, besides being an admirable writer, possesses no
superficial knowledge of fencing, next proceeds to a few detailed
observations on the art of the foil and its professors. We can hardly do
better than preserve his own words. “Fencing,” he says, “has undergone
during the last half-century the same revolution as poetry, music, and
painting. It has had its romantic period and its contending schools.
“The distinguishing characteristics of the old school were rigidity,
grace, and a certain academic elegance. The words themselves express the
thing. To practise fencing was to ‘go to the Academy.’ A fencer of the
old school could not run to the attack, nor suddenly break off. He
neither bent down nor sprang forward, but under all circumstances
maintained, more or less, the same attitude. Fencing was in those days,
above all things, an art; which, like every art, had the beautiful for
aim.
“Very different was the system of the new school. To make hits was its
one object. The means were of no importance, provided the result could
be obtained. Fencing was now more a combat than an art; its programme
included everything, even the ugly. Fencers would now lie on the ground,
would avoid a thrust by ducking their head, aim below the belt, and
reduce all the qualities of the fencer to one only: rapidity.
“Gomard and Charlemagne were the two last representatives of the old
school: Roussel and Lozes the two first of the new one. I have had the
honour, in my youth, of fencing with all four; and I do not hesitate to
say that, in my opinion, while fully recognising the incomparable
quickness of Lozes, the superiority rested altogether with the
representatives of the old school. Fencing ran the risk not of being
renewed, like poetry, in another form, but of being lost altogether, at
least as an art. Then came forward a young man who combined in himself
the opposite qualities of the two schools. Every lover of fencing will
understand that I am referring to Bertrand. As rapid as Lozes and as
regular as Gomard, he borrowed from romanticism its audacity, its
inspiration, its occasional rashness, and preserved at the same time the
elegance of bearing, the severity of attitude, the caution and the
science of the classical school. He may fairly be said, in company with
Cordelois and Pons the elder, to have saved the art of fencing. He is an
exceptional fencer among exceptional fencers. If I may be allowed to use
the expression, there is genius in his art. The fencing-masters who came
next were the products, somewhat mixed, of the three schools; the four
professors who figure in the first rank being MM. Robert the elder,
Gâtechair, Mimiague, and Pons the younger. Robert has a quickness of
hand, an accuracy of attitude, and a rapidity of reply which recalls
Bertrand. Gâtechair is the most academic of the masters of the present
day. There is, however, something a little theatrical in his elegance
and in his imposing carriage.
“Mimiague is supple, insinuating, adroit, sure to profit by every
opportunity. There is a sort of cajolery in his play. If you ask who is
the best of these four professors, I shall recommend you to apply the
test of Themistocles. Bring together the principal fencing-masters of
Paris, and ask them to write on a slip of paper the names of the two
best fencers in Paris. Each of them will give the first vote to himself;
but Robert will have all the second votes: from which I conclude that he
deserves the first.”