From Benevento to Naples (Part 3)

The third and final part of our fencing tour of Naples features many of the people introduced in part two, with the additions of notable Neapolitan journalists Vittorio Argento and Enrico Casella, some of whose articles I have translated for this blog in the past.

In addition to Ferruccio's observation of the large number of beggars in the streets of Naples, the last portion of the article in particular, while unrelated to fencing, serves as a poignant reminder of the great economic disparity between the northern and southern parts of Italy which still lingers today.

It also demonstrates the highly skewed perspective offered by sporting magazines like the Gazzetta dello Sport. Ferruccio and his fencing friends were undoubtedly all very wealthy men, with time for leisure and the means to travel wherever they liked, at a whim, to attend exclusive sporting clubs and social events. Not only that, but at the beginning of the 1910s literacy rates in many parts of Southern Italy were still under 50%, especially so for women, making the audience for articles such as these a very select portion of Italy's population.¹

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From Benevento to Naples

III.

A great idea; before returning to Benevento, where my affairs and bills are calling me, I thought it would be good, in order to make your Gazzetta dello Sport more well-known and popular, to penetrate various fencing halls not only as your Benevento correspondent, but as a man of arms for your newspaper, and with that said, I pulled from my trunk a fencing jacket, canvas pants, and my little 'service' sword, which had been sleeping peacefully for months and months.

You can easily understand how excellent a result this decision of mine has yielded if you consider that I made sure it was very clear that the armiger of the Gazzetta dello Sport would only cross blades with gentlemen of the 'Order of Subscribers'.

Once this decision was made, it goes without saying that I had to work like a dog. Incidentally, I do not know why people use this expression when dogs are known for spending the whole day…lounging about.

It was Maestro Galimi Lacaria, whom I believe I spoke to you about in my previous correspondences, who first obliged me with a sword bout in Cerchione's hall.

Galimi is a clean, elegant, and very correct fencer: a gentleman fencer.

Felice Galimi Lacaria, c. 1913.
Source: byterfly.eu

Then I 'went at it' with Maestro De Simone, whom I can assert with complete certainty has become much stronger than he was years ago at the Mantua tournament, and then again with Captain Pinelli who, like a good wine when bottled, improves with age.

I had a sabre bout with Marquis Mastelloni, a fencer with a good eye and a firm parry, and endured a sword bout with Mr. Vittorio Argento, fencing editor of Napoli-Sport.

'Press versus press,' I said as I came on guard.

Vittorio Argento, an excellent writer on fencing matters, from his ever-sound judgement and that competence which his eyes exude, as evident as the nose of Cyrano de Bergerac, he is also a fencer of uncommon strength, from his wide, flying, and somewhat irregular game, perhaps carried out more by intuition and personal conviction than by an assimilation of lessons, but enough to bewilder even the oldest sly foxes of the piste. With the utmost ease he touches and takes the blade from any position, and I assure you that once he has launched into action, his final thrust or remise rarely misses.

I freely admit that even my 'metal grinders', as your man Weysi called them when I was in Milan, had little effect with him; but I was nevertheless very pleased to have pitted myself against this opponent, because I have always liked when those who usually wield a pen when discussing matters of fencing can also wield a sword and a sabre.

For the record: recently in one of Greco's exhibitions, the closing sabre bout was reserved for him and Argento. Greco, who can serve as wonderful touchstone between the various opponents who are pitted against him, was still Greco, naturally, and there would be no reason for a parallel between him and the opponent; but I was told that Vittorio Argento had an 'edge' which many other fencers must have envied.

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To cut it short, I endured seven long bouts in less than three days, with different opponents, in various halls, and I can tell you that, for me, who for a long time has found himself in an auxiliary position, they were Herculean tasks.

I cannot claim that your Benevento correspondent left too good an impression as a fencer. Certainly if my place had been taken by Weysi, Balossi, Galbiati, Tiboldi, Carabelli, Mossotti,² or someone else, things would have gone better; but on this sublunar planet you have to know how to be satisfied or resign yourself, and even the most beautiful girl on earth cannot give more than she has.

When it was the seventh day of my sojourn in Naples, I felt the need to rest, just like good Lord felt many years ago...in the time of the world's creation, so I went wandering here and there through this vast and noisy metropolis, which would be so beautiful if not for the plague of three thousand carriages and their coachmen, as bothersome and insistent as flies and as arrogant as the genuine professional beggars here who, in numbers ten times greater than the coachmen, scour every road, every street corner, every café, every theatre, day and night, at all hours.

So it was that, while idling about with Maestro Cerchione, I had the pleasure to again see Edoardo Casella, a distinguished amateur foilist, whom I had seen at the Palermo tournament—and so it was that, while idling about, I had the pleasure to be introduced for the first time to his brother,

Source: gallica.fr

Enrico Casella.

Enrico Casella—very well-known for his sporting articles and for organising Le Figaro's first tournament in Paris—was with Miceli, the Baron of San Giuseppe, Baron Anzani, Dusmet, and other very talented amateurs of the Neapolitan fencing tradition, whose flag he held high for many years, with the pen and the sword, in the French capital, where he took up permanent residence.

Enrico Casella, who was in Naples for just a few days, is the one who recently played a very important and likeable role in the Dreyfus affair.

Tall, elegant, a speaker endowed with a wholly Southern accent and wholly Parisian wit, he is the model sportsman in the loosest sense of the word.

After Cerchione introduced me—and I told him that I was your correspondent—Enrico Casella was drawn by me to talk about fencing and sport in general, and his words flowed as easily and rapidly as water from a swollen creek, and in less than half an hour he was rattling on—lucidly—about so many sport-related projects that, if it had been possible for me to record them on a dictaphone, I would have no difficulty sending you at least a dozen excellent articles for the various columns of the Gazzetta dello Sport.

But there was one thing that I aimed to do when talking with Enrico Casella, and it was to encourage him to send me some of his writings, from Paris, for your newspaper—in short, to make him one of your correspondents; and, God willing, when I left him I took with me an almost formal promise.

Are you pleased with my work, or will you dare ask for more and better?

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When I had achieved this unexpected success, I 'turned my prow' towards Benevento; but to have a little bit of fun and rest my eyes in the still dense greenery of these lands blessed by nature but not by the farmers—who barely feel the sting of progress and who still break up dirt clods with the plow of Virgil—I thought to follow the road through Cancello, Arienzo, Montesarchio, Benevento, as picturesque as any other.

The journey from Naples to Cancello is half an hour by train; then a one-horse carriage, which in less than half an hour leads to Arienzo, where you leave the carriage for a prehistoric stagecoach with two horses as thin as temporary government employees, with which you bounce along directly to Benevento.

While in Arienzo, a pleasant, pretty, and modern town of over 4,000 inhabitants, as the carriage was being sheltered in the depot and the stagecoach horses were prepared and harnessed with that slowness which these regions are typically known for, I thought of going to get a cup of coffee.

And on seeing in the piazza a shop bearing the heavy sign 'Café del Genio'³, I headed there, looking forward to the delight of my mocha or my Puerto Rican coffee, at the owner's pleasure.

But the single hall, which served both as an entrance and the rest of it, I found deserted. And do you want to know what furniture adorned it? A double bed with a red quilt covered in stains; a rickety kitchen table; in one corner, a brick fireplace with two burners and above this, hanging on nails, three frying pans, a skimmer, and a coppino (a ladle); against the wall in front of the bed, a large maple cupboard which the flies had slowly but surely varnished with small, shiny black dots; on the ground, a small tub of water; next to the bed, a chest of drawers, with exquisite wood perforations owing to the brilliant nocturnal work of a friendly woodworm; four chairs dangling from the walls like four hanged men; six chickens pecking around and under the bed, where towered a vase as large as Pandora's, but which certainly wasn't the real one—and nothing else.

As soon as I had entered, I unhooked one of the four chairs from the gallows and sat down comfortably, waiting for the owners, taking these notes undisturbed to kill time. After a good quarter of an hour I thought of going to take a seat in the stagecoach and, still undisturbed, I headed off.

However, when I was almost halfway across the piazza a dark-haired young lady, with her bulging breast 'to the wind'⁴ and in her arm a rosy young baby angrily gnawing at the breast, explained to me that coffee could be served to me at the opposite side of the piazza, there, behind a door with the word 'Club' written on it.

I set forth; I knocked with my hands and my feet three times; I waited five minutes—nobody came to open it, and I started thinking that maybe in Arienzo coffee is a luxury that is only displayed on signs.

What sacrifices the work of a correspondent demands!

And to think there are those who dare suggest that this wage is stolen!

Ferruccio.

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1 Gabriele Cappelli and Michelango Vasta, 'A "Silent Revolution": school reforms and Italy's educational gender gap in the Liberal Age (1861-1921),' Cliometrica 15 (2021): 203–229, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-020-00201-6.^↩
2 All prominent amateur fencers in the Milanese scene.^↩
3 The word genio can refer to both a genius or an engineers corps in the military.^↩
4 A pun on the word poppa, which can mean both a human breast or the stern of a ship.^↩

From Benevento to Naples (Part 2)

In this second part of our tour through the fencing halls of Naples, we are given a peek inside the storied halls of the Grand National Academy of Fencing, a title which, while still mostly aspirational in this period, does nevertheless reflect its centrality in the Neapolitan scene. We are also introduced to a young Edoardo De Simone, a loyal adherent to Parise's method who would later spend several years as an instructor at the Military Fencing Master's School in Rome.

At the end of the article the enthusiastic sporting activity of the 10th Bersaglieri regiment is contrasted with the entirely deserted fencing hall of a locally garrisoned infantry regiment, whose fencing master had been seconded to other more menial day-to-day tasks. This was a common complaint among Italian military masters at the time, frequently cited as one of the main reasons why many left the army not long after their mandatory service period had expired. As our author Ferruccio points out, the vibrancy of a regimental fencing hall depended not only on the enthusiasm of its fencing master, as whether or not they were allowed time to carry out what was ostensibly their primary role in the regiment was up to the whims of their superiors.

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From Naples

II.

The National Academy

If I am not boring you, I will continue my Parthenopean fencing review.

The first fencing circle that Saverio Cerchione took me to visit was the National Academy. He is at home there, because he sits on its technical committee.¹

The National Academy, an institution which your newspaper has already spoken about extensively, is the most aristocratic and luxurious meeting of fencers I know of. The salon of the Maddaloni Palace, in which the members do their daily and nightly training, is decorated in an astonishing splendour. The ceiling and walls bear very famous 16th century paintings. Six pairs can comfortably bout at the same time, and for invitational exhibitions there is another room, equally as rich and artistic, but large enough to contain just under a thousand spectators.

When I set foot in the training hall, to which all the city's masters are in turn called to lend their services, Franco Vega was bouting at foil with Filippo Salvati, and Maestro De Cugni with Marquis Mastelloni.

There have been too many occasions for the Gazzetta dello Sport to talk about Franco Vega to repeat here the praises of this prince elect of the sword, one of the most faithful and pure followers of the noble traditions of the Sicilian school.

It would be better for me to instead talk to you about his opponent, the magnificent fencer whose name, owing both to his innate modesty and his loathing of public tournaments, is not well known—as it should be—in the Italian fencing world.

I introduce to you:

Source: Museo UNASCI

Filippo Salvati

Young, of pleasing appearance, dark-haired, an intelligent eye, shapely body, correctly proportioned, average height. He possesses a truly rare balance of physical and intellectual faculties.

His mastery of the blade, a marvellous fusion between the blade, arm, and legs make him—someone with a swift intuition of actions as well as the most obedient means of execution—one of the strongest amateurs I know, perhaps the strongest—and I've met a fair few.

His game is clear, indeed I would say pure: no abuse of the counter parry, no use of the disordinata; such knowledge of measure, firmness in the parry, and readiness in launching the riposte, whether simple or with feints, enough to marvel anyone who sees him—and baffle any opponent. Filippo Salvati's ripostes are bullets; bullets from a rifled barrel, of the latest model.

And what's very rare: the same applies for both sword as well as sabre.

I give this praise for Filippo Salvati all the more willingly inasmuch as I know he, like his valorous master Cerchione, is modest. Few know how to treat fencing, philosophically, like he does: for it alone, for the beauties within it, without any concern for the satisfaction it may give to one's self-esteem.

The other bout I mentioned was the one at foil between Maestro De Cugni, of the Royal Navy, and the amateur Marquis Mastelloni.

De Cugni—tall, elegant, courteous—is a fencer very worthy of note who, having been condemned to inaction for a couple of years at La Maddalena, where he was garrisoned, is now training here with all his energy—and this is enough to quickly bring honour to Neapolitan professionalism.

Marquis Mastelloni, aside from his bout with Maestro De Cugni, also fenced sabre with the amateur Bellucci.

Mastelloni, also educated by Cerchione, like Filippo Salvati, in rigorous artistic principles and full of good will and passion, and who was already a very good amateur, will soon take his place at the forefront of fencers, gifted as he is with excellent means.

I must also give equal praise to Mr. Giurato, another amateur whom I also admired in a bout at the National Academy. Cunning as a wolf and endowed with a great fencing intuition, Giurato is already a fencer whose glides can entangle his opponents.

And now, if I may, I lead my readers on a visit to the Arabian phoenix of military regiments, in a fencing sense.

The 10th Bersaglieri Regiment

It's a safe bet to say that this is the regiment that does the most fencing.

Is the credit for this due to Maestro Edoardo De Simone or to its commissioned and non-commissioned officers? Probably both one and the other. The fact is they all work with a rare persistence and with progress relative to that persistence.

Listen to what a small team of fencers and, note, good fencers the 10th Bersaglieri has.

In order of rank: Cav. Major Miozzi, a very challenging foilist, capable of provoking thought and study even in skilled fencers; Captain Aroldo Pinelli, too well known in the amateur fencing scene to need an introduction: still young, still energetic, and still an exquisite sabreur, it is by his example that a small cohort of his regimental companions are enthralled and encouraged towards the seductions of the art of arms; the blond Lieutenant Carpentiero, with his pale blue eyes and inexhaustible joviality, who days ago won first prize in the regimental sabre competition; lieutenants Pasquale De Ferrante, Luigi Giuliani, Pavia, Marullo, and De Donato, a remarkable sword and sabre fencer, and then the non-commissioned officers Bardelli, very talented, Biasiello, whom I have seen in various tournaments, Chiaria, and also Antonio Pappano, who aspires to get into the Master's School.

What more could you want?

There has been no shortage of work for Maestro De Simone, who has become rejuvenated and slimmer in marriage, and it's a good thing for him that he has such a passion for his art and such intelligence.

Edoardo De Simone, c. 1921.

In conclusion, the 10th Bersaglieri regiment and its instructor De Simone deserve, with respect to fencing, to be pointed out and held up as an example for others.

And to say that in this very city there is an infantry regiment (at a time in which the practice of fencing should be taken up with enthusiasm) whose fencing hall has just been closed because it is cluttered with various objects, and the master was permanently assigned to the non-commissioned officer's mess hall!

Ferruccio.

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1 The Academy's technical committee is in charge of the curriculum and the assessment of fencing master candidates.^↩