The Cult of the Rapier

By A. Jabber

Since Coming Events cast their shadows before,
It seems V.U.C. is preparing for war;
No bayonets or guns or powder and shot,
Or footling Field Marshals and that kind of rot.
No, dammit, we've shown our most valiant sense
By taking to rapiers and learning to fence—
Which doesn't mean mucking about in the mire
With shovels and post-holes and posts and barbed-wire,

which everyone knows already, and hopes won't be facetiously explained, but it is the traditional jest, mark you, and moreover shows the writer to be a plain fighter, and not one of the intelligensia.

For all that this theme is steeped in strife and bloodshed, it does not refer exclusively to the bristly sex; nay rather, in these days of he-mancipated women—but come along and see for yourselves, you civilian students, come along any Monday night and watch our doughty damsels fight like Homeric heroes and strike terror into the hearts of the (alas!) obsolescent Male of the Species. You couldn't tell them the quickest way to the heart of Man is through where the pudding makes him ache! Let them but clutch a rapier, and they'll show you what can be done with a wicked little thrust between the third and fourth ribs! Look out for yourself if the button comes off the point of the foil when you're in the midst of a duel—it's even more risky than when a button comes off unexpectedly in civil life.

Yet, despite the implacable feuds that rage throughout the evening, many are the sociable "smokos" that are interspersed between killings. It is quite good form to run a colleague through with a rapier, if so it be done with due observance of the proprieties, but to do so with an idle cigarette drooping from one's mouth brands one as a most discourteous Knight or Knightie.

Of course you could never fence with the masterly aplomb which is the hall-mark of the virtuoso without swotting up a swarm of eerie cabalistic terms, like sorcerers use to work strange spells withal—

For when your foe is waxing fierce,
You've got to fend his thrust in Tierce,
And make a lightning lunge beyond
His tardy parry in Seconde,
The which is almost sure to bluff
Anyone but John MacDuff,

and he's got to be a deal slicker than anyone else, because of the more extensive coast-line he has to guard.

But if thine adversary is a Downy Bird, and hasn't been playing wag o' Monday nights, he's likely to survive your feint in Seconde; and,

If his Quatre has got you licked
And his antics have you tricked,
This is just about the stage
To try a Double-disengage,
Which like as not will catch him out,
And end a grim and gory bout.

Then, when you've taken your foot off his throat, and folded his hands across his breast, and wiped your trusty blade on his shirt and ordered floral emblems, you go to the top of the class, feeling valorous as Mussolini, with de Duce streaming out of every pore after such a hot and stirring tussle, while the band plays "The Dying Gladiator" and "The Conquering Hero" all in one blast. So why visit Kaiwarra for a thrill when we have an abattoir within our gates? And now that the casualties have been carried off the field, let's call it a night.