A quick post, before I hit the books to plan a Bartitsu Class. Actually I’m thinking this will be a chance to martial my thoughts for the intro to Bartitsu I’ll need to give at the start of the class. I should have got this whole trip sorted by now, but the black dog has been nipping my bum a little, so I’ve had a lazy day and some Pizza and wine, but now I should get thinking about Victorian martial arts.
Bartitsu was a brief and quickly forgotten bit of martial arts history, and might never have been remembered, but for a bit of a mention in a Sherlock Holmes story. It was started by a Victorian guy called Edward William Barton-Wright. He was an engineer with an interest in the manly combat arts of the period, and in the 1880’s he was working in Japan, and became one of the first Westerners to study Juijitsu. He was impressed with it’s effectiveness in the standing grapple, but realised that it was less effective at punching range than European Pugilism.
This lead to his great insight. Most of the martial arts specialized at a particular range. Fencing works only at weapon range. Savate is effective for kicking. Boxing is only any good at punching distance, and the catch-as-catch-can wresting of the period was for rolling about on the floor. What Barton-Wright realised is that for a true self defence system for the unpredictable real world, you need to be able to work at a range of distances. So what he did on his return to England was to draw together some of the finest practitioners of le canne (cane fencing), Savate (French kickboxing), Pugilism, Juijitsu and European wresting, and cross train them to create the first mixed martial art.
So anyway, there’s a bit of a revival of Bartitsu now. Not as an effective street defence but just as something to study for it’s own sake. I’ve been involved in the study of techniques in plain clothes, as well as costumed demonstrations for the public. In a couple of weeks I’ll be teaching a class for some other students of historical fencing at rather a fine country house in the borders. I’m not a confident teacher, so I’m busy making it worse by not preparing, but hopefully it will be fine, after all what could be more fun than beating up your friends.
