The School of Fencing

Posted by J. Mark Bertrand
on Wednesday, April 23, 2008
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An interest in swords is something a man doesn't have to account for. No need to explain when the topic first came to his attention, why it caught his imagination, and so on. Of course it caught the imagination -- swords are sharp metal things you poke people with. Why wouldn't they? For as long as I can remember, I've been reading about them, daydreaming about them, and occasionally brandishing them. In some ways, I took it farther than most, which is how I ended up in Ewart Oakeshott's kitchen, eyeing the light cavalry sabre on the mantle. Which is how I ended up with a sabre of my own, wrapped in brown paper, which I toted around London like a character from Highlander. Here it is:



Of course, I took an interest in the literature of swordplay, too, which happens to be a rich one, with fencing manuals going back to the Middle Ages. Perhaps the most famous is Domenico Angelo's The School of Fencing, a lavishly illustrated instruction book from the mid-eighteenth century, by which time the art had been very refined, but had not quite disappeared from the streets. I included a photo from Roworth's much cruder handbook last time, but I figured I should share a few plates from Angelo (or, to be precise, an excellent reprint of Angelo from the 1960s).













Growing up, we had a reproduction of Gainsborough's The Blue Boy on the wall. Who didn't? How much more interesting he would have been to my childhood self if, like the fellow in blue featured in Plate 31 (the fourth from the top), he'd been running his sword through the body of another fellow.