Nothing preoccupied the mind of an Edwardian hostess so much as planning a dinner party. From matters of food and drink, to table service, to the guest list and matters of precedence, every detail was of the utmost importance, and a dinner of tepid or cold food, of dull guests, and of the seating arrangements which didn’t take the rank and form of each guest into account, could doom a lady’s social aspirations in one evening.

Since dinner giving was the most important of all social observances, gentlemen and their wives held them much more frequently than balls or other social venues; a dinner was more intimate and invitations were sent to those one was intimate with or with those the host and hostess hoped to further their acquaintance. In the greater scheme of social precedence, dinner giving was a test not only of the hostess’s position, but also the direct road to obtaining a recognized place in society. When issuing invitations to a large dinner party, it was customary to give three weeks’ notice, though, by the 1910s, the notice was extended to four to six weeks in advance. This permitted sufficient time for the guests to bow out in case of an emergency–though the acceptance of the invitation was socially binding. Invitations could be purchased at stationary shops, and were blank save lines where the hostess or her social secretary would fill in the names of the guests, the date, and the time of the dinner, and these were sent in the name of both the host and hostess as following:

The dinner hour was approximately eight to nine, and guests were expected to appear at least fifteen minutes prior to the time listed on the invitation. By the 1900s, the long, slow, and heavy meals of the mid-nineteenth century had disappeared: now hostesses preferred their dinner parties swift and filling (though this was taken to the extreme by Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, who would hurry her guests through eight or nine courses in forty minutes), most likely to make time for evening entertainments.

On arrival, ladies and gentlemen would take off their cloaks in the cloakroom or leave them in the hall with the servant before entering the drawing-room, where the host and hostess awaited them. The vogue for pre-dinner cocktails was strictly an American custom until after the war, and once the host and hostess greeted each guest, the ladies sat and the men stood, chatting lightly until the last guest had arrived. If any parties were unacquainted, the hostess would introduce the guests of the highest rank to one another. At very large dinner parties, however, the butler was stationed on the staircase and announced the guests as they arrived, and no introductions were required.

According to Arnold Palmer’s Moveable Feasts: Changes in English Eating Habits, the custom of pairing off to go in for dinner did not begin until early in the reign of William IV, and this was refined throughout the nineteenth century until it morphed into its usual form: The host should take the lady of the highest rank present in to the dinner, and the gentleman of the highest rank took in the hostess. This rule was absolute, barring the highest ranking male and female were related to the host or hostess, in which case his or her rank would be in abeyance, out of courtesy to the other guests. Another don’t was for a husband and wife, or father and daughter, or mother and son, to be sent in to dinner together. As often as possible, the hostess was advised to invite an equal number of men and women, though it was usual to invite two or more gentlemen than there were ladies, in order than married ladies should not be obligated to go in to dinner with each others’ husbands only. Should the numbers be skewed–such as more women than men, or more men than women–in the case of the former, the ladies of highest rank would be taken into dinner by the gentlemen present, and the remaining ladies followed by themselves; in the case of the latter, the hostess would go in to dinner by herself, following the last couple. Prior to entering the dining room, the hostess would inform each gentleman whom he would take in to dinner.

Until the guests have taken their seats, the host remained standing, and motioned to each couple where he wished them to sit. When the host did not indicate where the guests were to sit, precedence took over, and each lady and gentleman sat near the host or hostess according to their rank. In seating, the host and the lady he took in to dinner sat at the bottom of the table, she sitting at his right hand. The hostess sat at the top of the table, and the gentleman who brought her in to dinner sat at her left. According to precedence, the lady second in rank sat at the host’s left hand, and the other female guests sat at the right of the gentleman who took her in to dinner. It was at large dinner parties where place-cards with the names of the guests were placed on the table, and in some instances, the name of each guest was printed on a menu and placed in front of each cover. The menus themselves were placed along the table, each viewed by one or two persons. These menus could be simple or elaborate, depending on the hostess’s tastes, and the dishes available in each course were written in French.

There were a variety of methods for decorating the table, though they were a matter largely of taste rather than etiquette. The basic table setting was of a mixture of high and low center pieces, low specimen glasses placed the length of the table and trails of creepers and flowers laid on the tablecloth. The fruit for dessert was usually arranged down the center of the table, amidst the flowers and plate. Some dinner tables were decorated with a variety of French conceits, while some were sparse, save the flowers and the plate. Lighting was an important feature, and though electric lights were in vogue when possible, it was not uncommon to dine by old-fashioned lamps and wax candles. Accompanying the decorations and lighting was the “cover,” which is the place laid at the table for each person, and consisted of a tablespoon for soup, fish knife and fork, two knives, two large forks, and glasses for the wines to be served.

Dinner-table etiquette was strict–an uneducated or uncouth person who appeared innocuous enough, would reveal their inexperience in a finer milieu should they display such shocking customs as eating off a knife, or tucking a napkin into the collar of their shirt. When a lady took her seat at the dinner table, she removed her gloves at once, though should they be long gloves, they were usually made to allow the glove to be unbuttoned around the thumb and peeled back from the wrists. Both the lady and gentleman would unfold their serviettes and place them in their laps. Soups were of course, eaten with a tablespoon, though one spooned away from themselves and never ever slurped. Fish was eaten with the fish knife and fork, and all made dishes (quenelles, rissoles, patties, etc) were eaten with a fork only, and not with a knife and fork. Poultry, game, etc were eaten with a knife and fork, as was asparagus and salads. Peas, the test of true breeding, were eaten with a fork. In eating game or poultry, the bone of either wing or leg was not touched with the fingers; the meat was cut from the bone with the knife. Jellies, blancmanges, ice puddings, and practically any substantial sweet, were eaten with a fork. Cheese was eaten daintily, with small morsels placed with the knife on small morsels of bread, and the two conveyed to the mouth with the thumb and finger. When eating grapes, cherries, or other pitted fruits, they were brought to the mouth, whereupon the pits and skins were spit discreetly into the hand to be placed on the side of the plate.

Dessert was served to the guests in the order in which dinner was served, and when the guests had helped themselves to the wine and the servants had vacated the dining room, the host would hand the decanters to his guests, commencing with the gentleman nearest him, as ladies were not supposed to require a second glass of wine during dessert. If she required a second glass, the gentleman seated beside her would fill the glass–she would definitely not help herself to the wine. Ten minutes or so after the wine had been passed once around the table, the hostess gave a signal for the ladies to leave the dining room by bowing to the lady of the highest rank present. The gentlemen rose when the ladies did, and the women quit the dining room in the order of their rank, the hostess following last. The gentlemen were left to their port and claret, while the ladies retired to the drawing room for coffee. While the ladies drank their coffee, a servant took the coffee to the gentlemen, and after a few more rounds of wine and the cigarettes and cigars were smoked, they joined the ladies. This custom, however, shortened by 1910 or so, and at times, the practice of ladies and gentlemen separating after dinner was abandoned by smarter hostesses.

Dinner ended in town about half an hour after the men joined the women in the drawing room. In the country, it was common to begin games or play cards into the wee hours of the night. There was no etiquette for leave-taking, and after the host and hostess saw each guest into his or her or their carriages, their duties were done for the night.

Further Reading:
Manners and Rules of Good Society by A Member of the Aristocracy
Manners and Social Usages by Mrs. John Sherwood
Etiquette of Good Society by Lady Colin Campbell
The Correct Thing in Good Society by Florence Howe Hall

May Yohe

Perhaps it was the possession of the ill-fated and cursed Hope Diamond which destined Mary Augusta Yohé to a life of infamy and ruin. Nonetheless, you must say that her fate was that of a series of missteps and foolish actions–rather in the vein of Lily Bart–with which the ebullient American musical actress chose to guide her life.

Mary Augusta, known henceforth as “May,” was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on April 6, 1866 to William W. Yohé, a former officer of a Pennsylvania Regiment during the Civil War, and Lizzie Batcheller, the daughter of a hotel proprietor. The two separated sometime during May’s childhood, and Lizzie supported the two with a successful business (of which has yet to be revealed) in Philadelphia. May’s father, William, was known for his dark good looks and musical talents, and Lizzie spent her free time singing in church choirs. Lizzie had apparently acquired enough money and success to send twelve year old May abroad for her education, and three years later she returned home, pretty, polished, and poised. However, May wanted to go on stage. She went in as chorus girl, and within a few years she emerged as a star after a well received turn as “Prince Prettywitz” in the Crystal Slipper at the Chicago Opera House in the summer of 1887. From then on, May’s career was a dazzling success, a success which baffled her critics, who found her “an indifferent actress [who] does not possess good stage presence, and has a figure by no means striking.” But perhaps that was what audiences desired: a beautiful woman who was on stage to have fun.

By the early 1890s, May was famous for another reason: her rumored elopement with Lord Francis Hope, the younger brother and heir presumptive to the Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne, who was owner of a half-dissipated estate. Lord Francis himself, who acquired the surname “Hope” and the legendary Hope Diamond from a grandmother’s bequest, was in dire financial straits, and after his quiet 1894 marriage to May, he and she continued their extravagant ways. Not even a year later, the two had frittered away his entire inheritance–the land, the estates, the pictures, the heirlooms, and the Hope Diamond. But as a future Duke and Duchess, Lord and Lady Francis Hope could beg or borrow on their expectations, which they did, further increasing their exorbitant debts.

In 1900, flush with ill-gotten wealth, Francis and May undertook a world tour. On their way home, they acquired an acquaintance, the dashing Captain Putnam Bradlee Strong, who was one of the most popular officers in the US Army and a particular favorite of President McKinley. May took one look at Captain Strong and fell head over heels in love. Rather than continue on to England with Lord Francis and, in the manner of the well-born Englishwoman of the day, keep Captain Strong as a lover, May deserted her husband for her darling Bradlee (American women were much too sentimental and conventional to English eyes). May became Mrs Strong in San Francisco, but within two years, their quarrels and relative poverty tore apart the marriage, and she charged that Captain Strong made off with £20,000 worth of jewelry. Strong appeared in London soon after to denounce this claim, and May followed him, where a reconciliation was had.

May and Bradlee, both penniless but flush with publicity, decamped for America where May returned to the stage in an act created for the two. Unfortunately, May’s theatrical success had been forgotten and Captain Strong had no acting talents whatsoever. Rather than remain shackled to a waning star, the captain filed for bankruptcy and divorce in 1905. After this, May sunk into obscurity, and years of poverty followed, whereupon she took positions as a scrubwoman, a housekeeper, and a janitor. In 1914, she wed Captain John A. Smuts, and remained married to him for quite some time. When in early 1938, LIFE Magazine featured her in a short article, it was only because of her tenuous connection with the Hope Diamond, which by then was in the possession of Washington D.C. socialite Evalyn Walsh McLean, and the novelty of a former owner working for the WPA as a statistics research clerk for $16.50 a week. A few months after this feature, the tempestuous May died at age 72 of “arterial sclerotic heart disease and chronic vascular nephritis.”

Paris under water

One hundred years ago, the “gayest city in the world” was drenched with water. The Seine river had risen many times before, but it had retreated before it could do any damage to the “City of Lights.” This changed, however, the morning of January 21st, 1910. The following is an eyewitness account of the flood, courtesy of Esther Singleton’s The World’s Greatest Events, v 9:

AT TEN minutes to eleven on the morning of Friday, January 21, 1910, almost the very hour at which on another January 21 Louis XVI. mounted the scaffold, the power station from which all the public clocks of Paris are worked by compressed air was flooded by the Seine; all the clocks stopped simultaneously with military exactitude, and with a start of surprise Parisians began to realize that the Seine in flood was not a harmless spectacle that could be watched with the cheerful calm of philosophic detachment, and that the river in revolt was an enemy to be feared even by the most civilized city in Europe. Crowds, it is true, had gathered on the embankments, admiring the headlong rush of the silent yellow river that carried with it logs and barrels, broken furniture, the carcasses of animals, and perhaps sometimes a corpse, all racing madly to the sea; they had watched cranes, great piles of stones, and the roofs of sheds emerge for a time from the flooded wharves and then vanish in the swirl of the rising water, while barges and pontoons, generally hidden from sight far below, rose gradually above the level of the streets, notably one great two-storied bathing barge, a vision of unsuspected hideousness, that threatened at any moment, triply moored as it was, to crash into the parapet.

But it was in the order of things that wharves should be flooded; it was sad that the little suburban towns by the river should be swamped, but these incidents could be regarded with altruistic sympathy. The stopping of clocks, however, and the irritating obsession of onze heures moins dix which confronted the Parisian from every street and cafe clock was something new and alarming; with its suggestion that time had stopped dead at the most ill-chosen of moments, this petty but perpetually repeated annoyance was the symbol of all the manifold inconveniences wrought by the flood, the failure of electric light, the disorganization of trams and ‘buses, the bursting of drains and the swamping of houses, and perhaps none of them was more demoralizing.

By the time that Paris woke up to the fact that it was war with water, the most evasive and insidious of enemies, the Seine had made the low-lying suburbs its own. From visits to out-lying districts I retain a vague impression of thick black slime, abject shivering misery and great lakes of yellow water, with here and there the upper story of a house rising like an island from the desolate waste.

From the Ile de la Grande Jatte, where the little restaurants were six feet deep in water, I watched a rescue party row back with difficulty across the river. They had saved a few pathetic sticks of furniture and a great mattress which, as its owner with exultation pointed out to the sympathetic crowd, was perfectly dry. A covered cart was in waiting, but the inside was already full and the mattress was hoisted on to the roof. Alas! for the vanity of human exultation! Hardly had it been tied in place when a storm of torrential rain swept down and drenched the mattress and its poor despairing owner as thoroughly as though they had fallen in the Seine. All the time the Seine was rising remorselessly, and those whose houses were threatened gathered along the banks in the rain, watching the river with the silence of utter dejection, though some of the braver spirits were building walls of masonry across their thresholds— walls over which a few hours later the river had risen.

At Bercy, within the fortifications, the quay was under water. The scene was indescribably desolate: a long row of cheerless houses three feet deep in water, as far as the eye could see; a double row of lighted gas-lamps burning pale and absurd in the gray daylight, because the flood had made it impossible to extinguish them; a punt conveying a workman to his flooded home, poled slowly along by two policemen and bumping monotonously against the poplars and sunken railings; two soldiers on a flimsy raft that the most destitute of mariners would have scorned, steering an erratic course, as one of them paddled desperately with a tin pan; and only one bright touch. From the sixth story of one of the beleaguered houses a scarlet duster shaken by same careful housewife waved defiance to the river.

Parisian life during the Flood

A day or two later the Seine was working havoc. havoc in the very heart of the city. On the left bank the defenses were weakened by the low level railway lines running from the great Orleans terminus of the Quai d’Orsay to the Austerlitz Station and from the Esplanade des Invalides to the Auteuil viaduct. The whole length of these lines was flooded twenty feet deep. The Seine actually flowed through the Orsay terminus as the water poured on to the line higher up the river and then fell back into the Seine through the ventilation shafts of the station, which looked for all the world like a swimming bath. Only the iron gallery, on a level with the entrance from the road, was left unsubmerged; the central depth had been converted into a huge tank of muddy water, while the sightseer looked vainly for the engines and carriages that lay drowned beneath. The unfinished works of the Metropolitan railway, running from north to south, had been converted into a subterranean river at right angles to the Seine two miles long, and were flooding squares and streets a mile away near the Saint Lazare Station.

On the right bank the river was threatened to overflow the embankments, and the problem of defense became a difficult one; for the damage done by the inundation of the Saint Germain quarter by the water from the Orsay Station, and of many streets in the central districts by percolation, would have been nothing to the havoc that would have been wrought by the direct sweep of the Seine over the embankments on the right bank. One of the difficulties of the situation was the Pont de I’Alma, which, with its low arches, was almost submerged, and held back in the center of Paris great masses of water that threatened to sweep over the quays.

Up the Seine on the right bank men were working for dear life by the light of naphtha flares to raise the earthworks along the parapet of the embankment. The Quai de la Conference and the fashionable avenue of Cours la Reine were deep in water, but a thin line of sandbags backed here and there by wooden screens still kept back the surface flood. As the river rose, and it rose eventually over five The seine feet above the level of the embankment, the military engineers raised the height of the barrier, which was half a mile long. That night the water was steadily creeping higher and higher, while a civil engineer, mud-bespattered, with the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor in his button-hole, was standing on the corner of the sandbag bastion by the Pont de la Concorde and measuring its advance. He turned to a stranger beside him and said: “The river is still rising as fast as ever. If the barrier goes, five feet of water will sweep across the Place de la Concorde, the Boulevards—over everywhere,” he added with an expressive gesture, “until it meets the flood that the Metropolitan is pouring out round the Saint Lazare Station.” Then abruptly he turned to a non-commissioned officer awaiting orders behind him: “Give me another tier of sandbags.” Orders were hoarsely shouted, and a crowd of little black figures, each shouldering a sandbag, swarmed like ants along the narrow earthwork, on the one side a few inches above the river, on the other a foot or so above the flood that lay deep on the embankment and on the avenue of Cours la Reine.

Weary as they were, after three days’ unceasing toil, each man swung his sandbag into its place with a will and burst into a soldiers’ chorus that sounded strangely merry amid the desolation around. That night the Quai du Louvre was barred off by the police, and a silent crowd gathered at the barrier, though nothing could be seen, anxious for the safety of the collections that are the pride of France. In the mist the Seine seemed as broad as the Rhine at Cologne, and the eye of fancy could descry Notre Dame between two raging floods, splendid and fearless in the majesty of its builders’ faith. At this point the river flows beneath the Pont des Arts, and as its water poured through the iron supports of the bridge it made the little rippling noise of a hundred small cascades, a sound like malicious laughter even more terrible than its silence.

The roadway along the southern facade of the Louvre was all uneven with the pressure of the overflowing drains beneath it, as though an earthquake had passed, and it sagged down suddenly just beneath the balcony of the splendid Jean-Goujon door. Here out of sight of the anxious crowd there was a scene of feverish activity. Men were tearing up cobbles from the road and building a rough wall across a gap in the parapet, where a flight of steps goes down to the river. There was need of haste; for the water that looked black and stagnant in the glare of the naphtha flares was creeping up apace and licking the lowest tier of cobbles. Others were recklessly digging great holes in the footpath between the poplars, and ramming the earth into bags, or nailing together great pieces of driftwood, fished from the river, to form a screen behind the sandbags on the parapet and hold them against the pressure of the current, while carts kept rumbling in and unloading piles of stone and rubble against the wall and screen. I glanced over the screen that reached my chin, expecting to see the river five feet or so below me, and drew back with a start of alarm when I saw the gleam of water above the stone parapet and realized that it was only held back by the flimsy barrier. A few hours later and the river would have won; all the basements of the Louvre would have been flooded, and the water would have carried ruin across the Rue de Rivoli and Palais Royal.

It was no wonder that a sense of impending disaster hung over Paris; yet there was much in the situation that was simply comic. The special envoys of the King of the Belgians, invited to a lunch at the Foreign Office, were carried there in a large, flat-bottomed boat poled by a couple of watermen. Naval boats of the collapsible Berthon pattern were to be seen on wagons in the Avenue de l’Opera, while bare-footed sailors splashed contentedly in the lake opposite the Saint Lazare Station. At times the incongruity of these things was scarcely realized.

Bridge after bridge was closed to the public as great masses of driftwood that could not be dislodged formed against them, until at one moment traffic was forbidden over all the nine bridges that lie between the Pont Neuf and the Pont de Crenelle. Cabs, carts, and every kind of vehicle concentrated in the unflooded streets, were blocked into a solid mass that surpassed the wildest nightmares of congested traffic. Part of the Place de l’Opera began to collapse, and a cab might take two hours to get from the Opera to the Madeleine, five minutes’ walk. An unreasoning panic seized the cabmen and chauffeurs; they were possessed with the fixed idea that no bridge across the Seine was safe, and no bribe would persuade them to cross the river; while they refused to take fares for even the shortest distance. Men left their homes dry-shod in the morning, and returning from business had to wade up to their knees through unlighted streets or creep perilously along a narrow plank gangway, only to find that it stopped short just where the water was deepest.

One evening I was walking down a street which a few hours before had been thick with traffic. A single cart passed down beside me, and at once, without the slightest warning, the road began to undulate; and the next minute I was in water up to the knees, and one wheel of the cart had sunk through the wood pavement up to the axle. Once wet I plodded on through the water and in the darkness blundered against a plank which formed part of a trestle bridge some five feet from the ground; then climbing up, found myself at a perilous elevation on two exceedingly narrow planks. After cautiously venturing forward some little way, a woman’s shriek sounded so close to me that I almost lost my balance. Then in the obscurity a long row of black figures was discernible all on the bridge and coming in the opposite direction to myself. I succeeded in helping the young woman who had shrieked to pass me; then an elderly business man slipped between the two planks at my feet, and was hauled up with difficulty; then finally there was a crack, a plank broke and some unfortunate person fell flat on his face in two feet of filthy water. At last, somehow or other, I reached higher ground, and found a pathetic group of men and women, lighted by a policeman’s lantern, waiting to take their turn on the remains of the gangway. They were returning to their homes in the street which had been flooded since they went out.

On Saturday, January 29, Paris awoke to a bright sunny morning and the end of its nightmare. Early in the morning crowds gathered along the embankment, no longer murmuring in melancholy chorus, “Qa monte, qa monte” ; but laughing and chattering as they watched with uproarious satisfaction the broadening of the thin dark line which showed that the Seine was no longer rising or stationary, but slowly falling.

Sunshine restored, even in the flooded quarters, the true Parisian gaiety that had for a time been overclouded with a terrible sense of powerlessness and insecurity. The flooded streets were bright and gay in the sunlight, as boats plied to and fro carrying men and women to their work. Every one was good-humored, and even a portly business man swarming down a rope from a first-story window into a police boat, while his wife and children watched his gymnastic prowess with undisguised horror, was laughing heartily, and fully conscious of the humor of the situation. Throughout the day crowds flocked to all the quarters that the river had attacked. To make the scene more gay, soldiers were everywhere, standing on guard at dangerous points or gathered round fires of wood paving blocks and drinking coffee and hot wine. Every one had an air of triumph; for the Seine had at last confessed itself defeated, and it only remained for Paris to show once again its superiority to disaster. In almost every street between Montmartre and the river pumps were hard at work: encouragement came from the news that the Seine was failing to resume what had been before the hopeless task of emptying cellars and basements; there were pumps of every kind, large and small, hand-pumps, smart electric pumps, steam pumps, and monstrous indescribable pieces of machinery that took up half the roadway, obscured the sunshine with clouds of filthy smoke and looked as if they had been rescued from the scrap-heap. Half Paris was in the streets gaping at the excavations, where the water had entangled planks and masonry, s«j>«o< pipes and cables in inextricable confusion and examining the barricades with eager interest while their elders compared them with the barricades of the Commune.

Further Reading:
Flooding in Paris in 1910 – The Guardian
Photos of Paris Flood
Postcard collection of the Paris flood
Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910 by Jeffrey H. Jackson
The Knowledge of Water by Sarah Smith (fiction) ****!

Contrary to popular belief, Sherlock Holmes was rather a cutting-edge Victorian gentleman. Guy Ritchie’s version of Conan Doyle’s immortal sleuth does err on the side of too much physicality, but otherwise, Holmes was a fighter as well as a deducer. The sport in which he indulged was bartitsu (Doyle misspelled it as “baritsu”, though scholars have yet to deduce whether this was intentional), a style of martial arts devised by Edward Barton-Wright around 1898. Having spent the previous three years in Japan, Barton-Wright developed his method for self-defense from the various styles of jiu-jitsu, from boxing, from Swiss wrestling, from a French kick-boxing style named “Savate“, and the stick-fighting method created by Swiss master-at-arms, Pierre Vigny.

Barton-Wright spent the next four years promoting and developing this new sport (a portmanteau of jiu-jitsu and his own surname) in London by opening up a school devoted to bartitsu, holding public demonstrations, conducting interviews, and writing copious articles and a book expounding on the physical and mental benefits of the sport (this was the era of “Muscular Christianity”). The school, named The Bartitsu Academy of Arms and Physical Culture, but known informally as the Bartitsu Club, was located at #67b Shaftesbury Avenue in Soho. In an article for Sandow’s Magazine of Physical Culture vol. 6, (January 1901), journalist Mary Nugent described the Bartitsu Club as “… a huge subterranean hall, all glittering, white-tiled walls, and electric light, with ‘champions’ prowling around it like tigers.” Barton-Wright brought Japanese jiu-jitsu masters to train and fight at his club, and it soon became a hub of extreme physical culture. Nugent, however, also shared that despite Barton-Wright finding “their inclination to haggle over lesson prices ‘a little tiresome;, women were actually welcome to train at the Club. The memoir of another of the instructors, the Swiss wrestler Armand Cherpillod, includes a very cloak-and-dagger tale about his teaching a wealthy woman at the Club, only to later discover that she was a “plant” who was passing his wrestling tricks on to his opponents in forthcoming matches.

The fame of bartitsu and the Bartitsu Club grew quickly, and gentlemen as far abroad as India rapidly acquired the skills Barton-Wright wrote of in his books, interviews, and articles. Barton-Wright’s prowess became legendary, and his claims to have defeated seven men within three minutes during a public match caught the eye of the Prince of Wales, who ordered a personal demonstration. What made the sport so quickly popular was its relative ease of adoption; much of the moves involved ones own body and more likely, one’s cane or walking stick. Since the late Victorian/early Edwardian era was the heyday of the walking stick, the claim that a single gentleman, skilled in bartitsu, could beat away a band of ruffians armed with “cudgels, knives, shillelaghs, bonkers, batons, and even truncheons,” was immensely appealing. The combat was extremely simple to pick up, as it was remarkably similar to fencing:

First, as regards clothes : all that is required is a suit of flannels and a pair of shoes without heels; the masks should be of cane similar to the pattern used for single stick and well padded over the cheek. Gloves are not generally used to guard the hands as there is no need for them when a man is fairly proficient.

It is taken for granted that the reader is familiar with the ordinary attitudes adopted in fencing; that is, as regards position of the legs at ”the engage” and when lunging.

First Position.

“On guard”-~ Assume the position of the fencing engage but with the right hand raised slightly above the head, arm nearly straight, keeping the stick nearly horizontal point to the front, left arm hanging down behind and kept well out of the way.

Note: After making hits, guards and points always return to this position as soon as possible, and remember that all the positions described apply equally to the left hand as well as the right.

Guards.

Head,—Keeping the arm nearly straight hold the stick horizontally a few inches above the head, hand slightly forward, and well away to right to avoid being hit on the knuckles.

Face.—Drop point of stick over to the left hand and elbow nearly level, stick perpendicular and three or four inches away from the left cheek.

Face sideways.-Without changing position of the body move stick across to the right, so that it falls perpendicularly down close to right cheek, elbow well up.

Body.—Drop right hand and move stick across front of body keeping elbow level with the shoulder : let the stick fall perpendicularly close to left side.

Flank.—Move the hand across so as to let the stick similarly guard the right side; keep elbow, hand and shoulder level as possible.

Leg.—The leg is guarded simply by moving it back about 12 inches behind the left, retiring a pace, or bringing left foot back to right, both legs straight.

Rear guard.—Stand equally balanced on both feet, left foot about 18 inches in front of right, toes pointing to the front, right foot pointing to the right, holding the stick as before described, raise the right arm over the head so as to keep it a few inches above the forehead, point of the stick inclining forwards and downwards, left arm stretched out in front, back of the hand to the left, fingers extended.

Hits.

1. When making a hit at an opponent’s head, always keep the fingers uppermost, back of the hand underneath.

2. Care must be taken in making all hits, never to check the blow, but carry it through, i.e., disengage continually and then return immediately to the ” on guard;” if the blow is checked, you cannot be in time either to guard yourself or to make a riposte.

3. The hit is made by a sort of circular sweep of the arm, fingers uppermost, and for loose play and practice the blows dealt should be extremely light ; this is done by loosening the fingers slightly.
Head.—From ” on guard ” hit opponent’s head, follow through and return to ” on guard.”

Face.—Keeping stick horizontal hit left side of opponent’s head, either head, cheek or neck.

Face sideways.—Same as above but hit right side.
Body.~-Hit opponent’s body on right side.
Flank.—Hit opponent’s body on left side.

Leg.—Hit inside of opponent’s leg ; the most useful places are just above the ankle, inside of the knee and shin.

Points.

1. Points are made as in sword play, also by throwing the stick forward with the right hand and allowing it to run through the other, as the stick strikes the opponent both hands will be grasping the stick ; knuckles of left hand uppermost.

2. Points are made with the butt end of the stick at any part of the body, the most favorable places being at the throat and ribs.

3. For obvious reasons pointing is not resorted to in loose play as it is too dangerous, but it can be practiced when learning.

Unfortunately for Barton-Wright, bartitsu declined in popularity by 1903 and was actually eclipsed by jiu-jitsu, as taught by the Japanese martial artists he invited to England. Though bartitsu was adopted by women, jiu-jitsu was taken up by women and children with alacrity, and the former in particular were avid martial artists, as newspapers and periodicals expressed the need for unprotected women to arm themselves in case of assault. Indeed, after bartitsu’s decline, a woman, Mrs. Edith Garrud, established her own dojo, which became a haven for suffragettes, who took on the sport to defend themselves during their violent clashes with police (Tony Wolf has written a book on Mrs Garrud and the “jiujitsusuffragettes,” available here). After the closure of his school, Barton-Wright turned to physical therapy, and if not for the mention (though misspelled) of this short-lived fad by Conan Doyle, bartitsu would have remained a footnote in history. Today, the Bartitsu Society, founded in 2002, revives this long-forgotten sport, and combines historical martial arts with modern martial arts, making a complete and attractive bridge between us and our Victorian forebears!