Credit Where Credit Is Due

I've recently been taken to task (nicely, by someone who handed me a beer first) for giving myself insufficient credit on my fencing progress. This is up there with "You need to work on angles and redoubling" in the list of common feedback I receive, but usually it just provokes owlish blinking from me.

If and when I say "I'm not a good fencer," I mean it. I'm not. I'm a beginner! I don't expect to be a good fencer. But too often I think people hear "I'm not doing well enough," which isn't at all what I mean. You'll never hear me say "I'm not a good student." or "I'm not good for someone who's only been fencing for a year," because both seem demonstrably untrue. By that metric, I'm doing great! Similarly, when I walk away from a fight or practice listing off all the things I did wrong, that doesn't mean I'm not silently acknowledging what I did well, it's just that what I did wrong is the list of things that I need to focus and work on.

Unfortunately, this means my practice notes look skewed to the negative, and unless you're Donovan, you haven't witnessed my "I'm going to be a good fencer one day!" excitement that hits every few months or milestones.

Am I as good as most of my friends? No. Let's be real, here. I hang out with far too many OGRs and MoDs for that to be true. Do I have peers within the community and even within my friend group? I do! But I don't have a good idea of how many, or where I stand in the SCA fencing community at large. But hey, that's what events are for, and I've already made plans to better benchmark myself and my progress. And I am making progress. There's nothing I like more than sparring someone I haven't fought in several months and seeing how differently the fight goes.

And the more important question: Am I as good as I'd like to be right now? I don't know. I could be better. I've been taking it easy the past few months. That's been a good call, and I've enjoyed being focused on other aspects of my life, but I'm a little sad the timing matched up with when I would otherwise have been prepping for Pennsic. But such are things. My Pennsic experience won't suffer for it, and I'll pick back up again in the fall.

So how about this: I'll start folding my positive progress into my practice reports along with my critiques, I'll continue to try to be better about taking compliments, rather than blushing and mumbling shyly, and as part of my self-assigned Pennsic homework, I'll come home with a list of things that I am definitively good at, rather than "personally improved" or "not bad enough to focus on right now." Sound fair?

And in the meantime I'll continue having fun, poking at the holes in my abilities, and frowning and dithering because I'm a creature of structure constantly reassessing how to best move forward and grow in this skill without a set path. (And, ideally, documenting whatever path I create in case someone finds it useful later on.) That's most of what I'm here for anyway. That and simple love of violence.

Meanwhile, Egerton

One on my long list of stalled personal projects is digging more into the historical context of these fencing styles and masters I hear so much about. At this point I can recognize Capoferro versus Fabris and can follow along on discussions of Spanish versus Italian styles, but I've been around far more skill and theory discussion than history discussions. Who was learning these styles in their various times and places? How were their schools or lessons structured, if they were? What safety measures did they take for their own practice? Who built off whom?

Mostly I'm just curious, but I figure knowledge of different periods and places is always good, and maybe one will strike me enough that I'll shift my garb or persona focus in that direction rather than my current vague strategy of "The countries of my ancestors seem less appropriative." and "Clothes are probably good to wear, particularly if swording."

A few months back I was inspired enough to do some research, and I dug up Egerton Castle's Schools and Masters of Fencing : From the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century as a suggested starting place. I've since encountered a number of negative reviews that complain about his obvious bias for Victorian fencing, and the fact that his book is basically structured as a thesis describing its inevitable evolution and superiority into the (then) current form. To which I have to wonder, what did they expect? Academic writing is all biased and attempting to prove a point. And if something written by a Victorian Englishman wasn't overwhelmingly condescending toward everyone and everything else, I'd be far more startled and a little suspicious.  He does describe the Victorian style of fencing as "perfect" seven times in the introduction alone, but I found that rather endearing, and so long as he lists some primary or secondary sources I can go investigate directly, it will serve my purpose. 

Maybe I'll change my tune after I read further in, but that will require getting my act together and working through it. If so, I'll let you know! But until then, he did have a few things to say that seemed reasonable and relevant to other fencing thoughts, even in his introduction:

"[I]f, trusting to his youth and agility, the beginner does not start by drilling himself into correct action--which admits of all but infinite variety--he will never get beyond a few favorite attacks and parries, which may, however, by constant practise, be performed with intense vigour and rapidity. But as his physical power fails, instead of reaping the benefit of practise, he becomes less and less dangerous to his opponents, and ends by accusing his years and giving up an exercise which might have delighted him to his last days."

Further thoughts on beginners drilling correct action (not my strong suit of late) will doubtless follow.

Other interesting Egerton Castle facts I might look into if my wandering focus revives: If the dates I've seen around are accurate, he was younger than me when he wrote Schools and Masters of Fencing, and he wrote a handful of other stories and novels, some co-authored with his wife, including a romance and a novel on "Our Sentimental Garden," which details, among other things, the quirks of their spoiled Pekinese named Loki. I might need to investigate that further.