Martin D V Holt 1881 - 1956

The news of Martin Holt's death at the end of October brought back to older fencers memories of the most colourful personality, with Cosmo Duff-Gordon perhaps, we épéeists in this country have had.

Epée fencing, despite his great success at it, was only one of Holt's interests in sport. He took it up more or less as a side-line; it always seemed as though it were a huge joke with him—and yet for twenty-five years no British National Team of which he was unable to be a member—and business calls often claimed him first—could be regarded as being at full strength.

His first appearance as a British International—only a year or two after he began to fence—was at the Grande Samaine at Paris in 1906, the year before I first knew him. For latter-day fencers to appreciate the sensation of his first appearance, and how he became known to fencers abroad as ''Ce terrible 'Olt", I must describe his style. It was a style  entirely of his own creation. There was a time, I remember, when he worked hard with Mimiague at the old Sword Club in the Strand, before the Olympic Games of 1908, but he was essentially an individualist who learned little from any maitre d'armes.

He came on guard with his knees well flexed and his body square to the front, facing his opponent. His disengaged arm, the left, dangled loosely down his side and his sword-arm was outstretched somewhere in the direction of cover-point (assuming his opponent to be the bowler at cricket—a game incidentally, of which Martin was very fond). The point of his weapon was within an inch of, and sometimes resting on the ground.

He always refused the blade, he never lunged, he seldom parried, and his procedure was to move up and down the piste with short steps and to score his hits with 'stops' on the hand, wrist or forearm. In the days of one-hit épée fencing, without second or subsequent chances, the psychological effect of such a style upon an opponent was devastating. One really felt one was engaged in a duel.

Purists may have thought this was not fencing at all. All I can say is that on two occasions he reached the final pool of the Epée Individual in the Olympic Games, and on two occasions was in the team which won the Olympic silver medals. In domestic competitions he was Amateur Champion twice, and was very near being so on several other occasions.

To complete this portrait for those who did not know him in his prime as a fencer, I recall that he was favoured with extreme good looks, was a fine figure of a man and was invariably immaculately turned out.

His friends were not misled by certain brusqueness in his manner: he was, in truth, a loveable individual. Personally I always thought that foreigners who wanted a living example of the perfect milord anglais, need never have looked further than Martin Holt.

L.V.F.