The Other Wild West:
Fencing in New York in the 1880s and After

	The "Austrian Womens' Rapier Team" (c. 1888). Art courtesy of Metropolis Fencing.

 

"Honneur aux Armes!" is the inspiriting inscription over the entrance to a fencing academy in Broadway near Forty-third-st., the Salle d'Armes of Regis Senac, formerly Maître d'Armes in the Grand Imperiale of France. Covering the four walls of the Salle is a glistening array of rapiers, broadswords, duelling-swords, and foils. In the middle of the room stood yesterday the master, teaching two of the jeunesse derée how to open up vistas in the body of an imaginary opponent, when a tribune reporter entered just in time to "wave back the shadow of death to come.". . .

"What is the value of learning the art?' asked the reporter.

"It equalizes circulation by forcing the whole body to be in action, it quickens one mentally, trains the eye to be alert, and-pardon me, Monsieur-it teaches one to keep his temper under control."

    —From the New York Tribune, January 6, 1883