Or compare the formal speech of their books against one I prefer: four books, issued variously in 1665, 1668, 1674, 1680, under the general title of The English Rogue. This is a work of fiction. You need not believe one-tenth of the author’s (or authors’) adventures. But its breezy speech is authentic, like its background. And you may trust its thieves’ cant, which scarcely varies a word from “A Dictionary of the Cant Language” in the famous Life and Adventures of Bampsylde-Moore Carew (printed for Thomas Martin, 1738).
OF SWORDPLAY
It has been indicated in the narrative that the swordplay of the time circa 1675 was unlike modern fencing. It was undeveloped; full of jumpings, circlings, foul thrusts and tricks considered quite fair; yet it was far more spectacular. No trick used in this story has been invented: all were really used. What may seem the curious guard adopted by Duroc in the fight on the sentry walk was the guard of many swordsmen, who tried to scare opponents with it.
For this subject the comprehensive and in fact the essential book is Egerton Castle’s Schools and Masters of Fence, Illustrated with Old Engravings etc. (George Bell & Sons, 1893). Here the wealth of engravings shows the exact details, as in The English Rogue the engravings give a far better picture of costume than some modern plate.
The botte by which Fenton disarms Duroc may be found in another valuable work, Mr. J. D. Alyward’s The Small-Sword in England (Hutchinson & Co., 1946), which deals with the transition of the rapier into the smallsword as well as the smallsword itself. Granting Duroc’s sword in the story to have such quillons, and there were many such swords, Fenton could have disarmed him in that way—but in hardly any other way. When in book or film you see the hero disarming his adversary by some weird slap or other, it is pure nonsense.
Finally, for a general survey of swords or other weapons, see Hewitt or Laking, both very fine standard works in their field, as, for example, is Taylor on medical jurisprudence.
About the Author
John Dickson Carr (1906–1977) was one of the most popular authors of Golden Age British-style detective novels. Born in Pennsylvania and the son of a US congressman, Carr graduated from Haverford College in 1929. Soon thereafter, he moved to England where he married an Englishwoman and began his mystery-writing career. In 1948, he returned to the US as an internationally known author. Carr received the Mystery Writers of America’s highest honor, the Grand Master Award, and was one of the few Americans ever admitted into the prestigious, but almost exclusively British, Detection Club.
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The Devil in Velvet Page 41
