More exciting action from the soon to be released Sherlock Holmes sequel, loosely based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Final Problem, in which Holmes confronts his arch-nemesis, Professor James Moriarty. No word yet on whether the movie will include an enactment of their famous “baritsu” encounter at Reichenbach Falls, though the smart money says “yes” …
He stopped – there was silence. The bell rang again. I was just about to suggest again that he should go and see who was at the outer door when – he leapt at me. And I was unprepared. He had me by the throat before I had even realised that danger threatened.
I am a women, but no weakling. I have always felt it my duty to keep my body in proper condition, trying to learn all that physical culture can teach me. I only recently had been having lessons in jiu-jitsu – the Japanese art of self defence. I had been diligently practicing a trick which was intended to be used when a frontal attack was made upon the throat. Even as, I dare say, he was thinking that I was already as good as done for, I tried that trick. His fingers released my throat and he was on the floor without, I fancy, understanding how he got there. I doubt if there ever was a more amazed man. When he began to realise what had happened he gasped up at me – he was still on the floor – “You … you …”
The above is quoted from the short story Mandragora, part of the Judith Lee detective series written between 1912-16 by Richard Marsh. Among the first protagonists of the still very popular lady detective genre, Judith Lee brought several unusual talents to her role as an amateur sleuth, including an almost uncanny ability to read lips and a willingness to physically apprehend evil-doers, thanks to her training in physical culture and jiujitsu. Certainly, she was among the first heroines in Western literature to have studied Eastern martial arts.
Several of Judith’s adventures are linked to from the Bunburyist website.
The origins of the combat-simulation game of paintball are usually traced back to the early 1980s, when air-powered paint pistols used by foresters to mark difficult-to-reach trees were adapted for sporting purposes. However, an interesting predecessor may be found in the practice of mock-duelling with wax bullets, dating right back to the very early 1900s.
A French medical doctor named de Villers is credited with the invention of the first pistols and wax balls used in “bloodless duelling”, a practice promoted circa 1905 by the Parisian Club de Pistolet:
THERE has been established in Paris a “School of Duelling,” which is frequented only by the elite, one prominent member being ex-President Casimir Perier. This remarkable academy is conducted by Dr. de Villers, and combats frequently take place there by way of practice. In these mimic duels wire masks are worn to protect the face and bullets made of wax are used, so that no injury may be sustained by the combatants. In all other respects, however, the conduct of the affair is carried through as on the “field of honour,” so that when the time comes — if it ever does come — for the scholars to take part in a serious duel they may acquit themselves with credit to themselves and disaster to their adversary — although this latter point is not of much importance.
Although initially intended as a form of simulation training for real pistol duels, wax bullet duelling was quickly adopted as a purely recreational sport in other countries. By 1909 it had been introduced to the Eastern United States, by members of the Carnegie Sword and Pistol Club and the New York Athletic Club:
Despite the leather protective garments, fencing masks with double-thick glass shields for the eyes and hand-guards built onto the pistols themselves, the new sport of “bloodless duelling” was not, in fact, invariably bloodless. Shooting enthusiast Walter Winans, an American resident in London, accidentally shot through the hand of fellow mock-duellist Gustave Voulquin while practicing the sport in Paris. Mr. Winan’s own account of the dangers of the sport is available here, and here is a report by a journalist who faced Winans in a similar duel.
Bartitsu Club member Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon was seemingly attracted to a variety of eccentric pastimes, including wax bullet duelling. He is shown to the right in this picture, posing with duelling equipment alongside Mr W. Bean and Captain MacDonnell:
Due warning: this review contains minor plot spoilers.
A Game of Shadows is afoot all over Europe in the blockbuster sequel to Guy Ritchie’s 2009 hit movie, Sherlock Holmes. The plot is very loosely based on events described (and, significantly, implied) in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story The Final Problem, in which Sherlock Holmes famously confronts his arch-nemesis, the diabolical criminal mastermind Professor James Moriarty.
Since many other critics have already offered thorough reviews of the film as a whole, and since this is Bartitsu.org, this commentary will focus specifically on the movie’s martial arts content; Holmes’ fictional “baritsu” fighting style being taken as an analogue of E.W. Barton-Wright’s Bartitsu. For full disclosure, the Bartitsu Society donated copies of both volumes of the Bartitsu Compendium to the production team for the 2009 movie.
Game of Shadows offers no less than five significant hand-to-hand fight sequences, three being especially elaborate. All are expertly choreographed by a team led by fight director Richard Ryan (see our exclusive interview with Richard here). Sherlock Holmes is portrayed as an excellent combatant with a tachypsychic ability to virtually meditate in the midst of chaos. Holmes is never made to seem invulnerable, however; he takes plenty of damage during the course of the story. The fight scenes are also exceptionally well shot and edited for maximum impact and enjoyment; it really helps when the director (Ritchie) is also a martial arts enthusiast (Brazilian jujitsu and judo), with an enthusiast’s eye for technical detail.
Robert Downey, Jr. (Sherlock Holmes) is himself a passionate student of the martial arts, specifically Wing Chun kung fu. Stylistically, there is comparatively little to call between Wing Chun and the transitional London Prize Ring/early Queensberry Rules method of English boxing, which was likely what Conan Doyle had in mind for Holmes and which was incorporated into Bartitsu by Barton-Wright. Both styles emphasise linear punching with vertical fists and protecting the central line of the body via skillful defence, including both percussive blocks and deflective parries. The two styles are so technically similar that it has even been speculated that Wing Chun may have been influenced by bare-knuckle boxing via European travellers visiting China – an intriguing, but unprovable theory.
Holmes’ “baritsu” pugilism strikes a nice balance between Asian and European fisticuffs; his defence is more mobile than is typical of pure Wing Chun, including numerous ducks, while his strikes are more diverse than was legal in British boxing, including nukite (spear-hand) and tegatana (knife-hand) blows as well as orthodox punches. His tactic of distracting opponents with thrown objects, established in the first movie and reminiscent of Barton-Wright’s overcoat trick, makes a welcome return.
There is also considerable stylistic cross-over between the low kicks of Asian martial arts and those of savate, or la boxe Française, the French method of kickboxing. Although savate is never mentioned in the Holmes canon, it is absolutely plausible that that the polymathic detective should be familiar with this method of foot-fighting, which was widely popular in France during the late 19th century and had even been exhibited in London several times. It is worth noting that E.W. Barton-Wright carefully distinguished the style of kicking taught at his school from the orthodox techniques of la boxe Française. This is assumed to have been a reaction against the stylised, academic/gymnastic style that was then popular in middle-class Parisian salles de savate.
In Game of Shadows, Sherlock Holmes makes frequent use of low kicks blended with fisticuffs, including swinging/chopping kicks (the coups de pied bas of savate) to the shin against two separate opponents and stamping front thrust kicks to the thighs of various other enemies. At least once, he also employs a skipping side kick (savate’s chasse median) to spectacular effect. Both pugilism (augmented by atemi-waza) and kicking are featured especially in the movie’s first fight sequence, in which Holmes is accosted by a group of four hired gangsters.
Perhaps the most overt stylistic nod to Bartitsu per se, however, takes place during the movie’s longest action set-piece, a furiously kinetic brawl (primarily) between Holmes and an acrobatic Cossack assassin, which rages throughout, out of and then back into an opulent and rather decadent gentlemen’s club. Even the athletic Holmes is just barely able to keep up with the Cossack’s parkourian agility, but the Great Detective’s triumph is assured by his inventive, high-impact close-combat via crook-handled umbrella, blended with wrenching jujitsu throws, locks and takedowns – the combined effect very strongly reminiscent of Barton-Wright’s classic essays on The New Art of Self Defence and Self Defence with a Walking Stick.
Each of the film’s fight sequences highlights Holmes’ idiosyncratic melding of techniques from different fighting styles and his astounding powers of combative improvisation, both, again, aspects of Barton-Wright’s ideal of Bartitsu as a method of cross-training. On the subject of improvisation, Barton-Wright noted:
It is quite unnecessary to try and get your opponent into any particular position, as this system embraces every possible eventuality and your defence and counter-attack must be based entirely upon the actions of your opponent.
Several critics have complained that Holmes’ unique perceptive ability, which approaches a kind of psychic precognition, is over-used in this film. Dubbed “Holmes-o-vision” by Guy Ritchie and memorably debuted in the 2009 original, this cinematic device is, in fact, used three times during fight sequences, but is twice cleverly subverted in surprising and gratifying ways.
Finally, the less said about Holmes’ inevitable confrontation with the suavely menacing Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris) at Reichenbach Falls, the better; not because it’s anything less than superb, but because it would be churlish to even begin to give that game away. Suffice it to say that it’s not what you expect …
In all, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows simultaneously offers a terrific cinematic rendition of Holmes’ “baritsu” and, within the conventions of action choreography, a genuinely plausible representation of Barton-Wright’s Bartitsu.
Bravo!
In the same spirit, we offer what is possibly the only historical example of Bartitsu poetry – from the Western Times newspaper, Thursday 22nd of August, 1901:
Tony Wolf will be teaching an intensive introductory Bartitsu seminar, with the option of an ongoing six-week training course, among the many attractions of the new Forteza Fitness, Physical Culture & Martial Arts school in Ravenswood, Chicago (website forthcoming).
What is Bartitsu?
In the year 1899, Edward William Barton-Wright devised a system of cross-training between jujitsu, British boxing, kicking, wrestling and self defense with an umbrella or walking stick. Bartitsu was created so that the ladies and gentlemen of London could beat street gangsters and hooligans at their own dastardly game.
Promoted via magazine and newspaper articles, exhibitions, lectures and challenge matches, Barton-Wright’s School of Arms and Physical Culture quickly became a place to see and be seen. Famous actors, athletes and soldiers enrolled to learn the mysteries of Bartitsu.
After Barton-Wright’s school closed down under unknown circumstances in early 1902, Bartitsu was abandoned as a work in progress and almost forgotten throughout the 20th century … apart from a famous, cryptic reference in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Empty House”.
One hundred years later, the International Bartitsu Society was formed to research and then revive the “New Art of Self Defence”. The modern revival is an open-source, community-based effort to continue Barton-Wright’s radical cross-training experiments.
What will we learn?
The introductory seminar will begin with a discussion of the origins, loss and revival of Bartitsu. A series of warm-up exercises will then segue into drills and games exploring several of Barton-Wright’s fundamental principles of combat, especially the skills of manipulating an opponent’s balance and of tactical spontaneity.
We will then study a representative series of jujitsu and stick fighting sequences taken directly from Barton-Wright’s original system. Next, we’ll work on transitioning from set-play sequences into a more realistic freestyle format, referring to the principles explored earlier in the day, before a warm-down and Q&A session.
Participants who wish to follow through into the six-week, twelve lesson basic training course will find this seminar an excellent grounding in the art of Bartitsu.
Where?
Forteza Fitness, Physical Culture and Martial Arts
4437 N. Ravenswood
Chicago, IL
Patterned after a Victorian-era physical culture studio, Forteza features a 5000 square foot training area with brick walls and high timber ceiling. The training area is equipped with mats, weapons and a “gymuseum” of functional antique physical culture apparatus including Indian clubs, iron dumbbells and medicine balls, as well as rowing and weightlifting machines dating to the late 1800s.
When?
Sunday, January 22nd; 11.00 – 5.30 pm, with a half-hour lunch break.
How much?
$60.00 pays for your place in the introductory seminar and automatically deducts $25.00 from the cost of the optional 6-week basic training course.
What should I bring?
Comfortable workout clothing, packed lunch if you wish, and a drink bottle. We will have a limited number of training canes available for the stick fighting portion of the seminar, but participants are encouraged to bring their own sturdy hook-handled umbrella, walking stick and/or roughly 36″ hardwood dowel, with any edges smoothed away.
I’m in! How do I register?
Email us to pre-register – we will confirm your registration and send you a PayPal link. Alternatively, you can pay by cash or check on the day.
Thanks to Chris Amberger (The Secret History of the Sword) for unearthing the adventures of Steve Threefall, the adventurer-hero of Dashiell Hammett’s 1924 novelette “Nightmare Town”, whose fighting cane …
“… was thick and made of ebony, but heavy even for that wood, with a balanced weight that hinted at loaded ferrule and knob. Except for a space the breadth of a man’s hand in its middle, the stick was roughened, cut, and notched with the marks of hard use — marks that much careful polishing had failed to remove or conceal. The unscarred handsbreadth was of a softer black than the rest — as soft a black as the knob — as if it had known much contact with a human palm.”
As Threefall and his associate Roy Kamp take the night air after a poker game …
“Strolling thus, a dark doorway suddenly vomited men upon them.
Steve rocked back against a building front from a blow on his head, arms were round him, the burning edge of a knife blade ran down his left arm. He chopped his black stick up into a body, freeing himself from encircling grip. He used the moment’s respite this gave him to change his grasp on the stick; so that he held it now horizontal, his right hand grasping its middle, its lower half flat against his forearm, its upper half extending to the left.
He put his left side against the wall, and the black stick became a whirling black arm of the night. The knob darted down at a man’s head. The man threw an arm to fend the blow. Spinning back on its axis, the stick reversed — the ferruled end darted up under warding arm, hit jawbone with a click, and no sooner struck than slid forward, jabbing deep into throat. The owner of that jaw and throat turned his broad, thick-featured face to the sky, went backward out of the fight, and was lost to sight beneath the curbing.
Lower half of stick against forearm once again, Steve whirled in time to take the impact of a blackjack-swinging arm upon it. The stick spun sidewise with thud of knob on temple — spun back with loaded ferrule that missed opposite temple only because the first blow had brought its target down on knees. Steve saw suddenly that Kamp had gone down. He spun his stick and battered a passage to the thin man, kicked a head that bent over the prone, thin form, straddled it; and the ebony stick whirled swifter in his hand — spun as quarterstaves once spun in Sherwood Forest. Spun to the clicking tune of wood on bone, on metal weapons; to the duller rhythm of wood on flesh. Spun never in full circles, but always in short arcs — one end’s recovery from a blow adding velocity to the other’s stroke. Where an instant ago knob had swished from left to right, now weighted ferrule struck from right to left — struck under upthrown arms, over lowthrown arms — put into space a forty-inch sphere, whose radii were whirling black flails.
Behind his stick that had become a living part of him, Steve Threefall knew happiness — that rare happiness which only the expert ever finds — the joy in doing a thing that he can do supremely well. Blows he took — blows that shook him, staggered him — but he scarcely noticed them. His whole consciousness was in his right arm and the stick it spun. A revolver, tossed from a smashed hand, exploded ten feet over his head, a knife tinkled like a bell on the brick sidewalk, a man screamed as a stricken horse screams.
As abruptly as it had started, the fight stopped. Feet thudded away, forms vanished into the more complete darkness of a side street; and Steve was standing alone — alone except for the man stretched out between his feet and the other man who lay still in the gutter.”
Now that is how to write a fight scene! Stay tuned for more exciting excerpts from “Nightmare Town” …
Former Bartitsu Club instructor Yukio Tani, as caricatured by the artist George Cooke. Cooke compiled hundreds of renderings of Edwardian-era music hall stars during his affiliation with the Grand Theater of Varieties in Hanley, Worcestershire. His original albums are now part of the Victoria and Albert Museum collection in London.
Edith Garrud, former trainer of the English Suffragette movement’s Bodyguard Society, demonstrates a jujitsu wrist-lock on journalist Godfrey Winn during an interview for Woman Magazine. The interview took place on the occasion of her 94th birthday.
