Where Art Meets Arms. The World of J.D. Aylward
The private library of Rambler Press has just welcomed a new treasure: a first edition of The House of Angelo (1953) by J.D. Aylward, hand-bound in half-leather with artisanal care, the kind of craftsmanship that immediately evokes respect for its subject matter. Holding this volume — a beautifully researched and lovingly written account of Britain’s most famous fencing dynasty — is more than acquiring a rare book. It is an invitation into the world of a man whose curious mind and passion for swordsmanship helped shape the early foundations of historical fencing research. And yet, despite his contributions, J.D. Aylward remains a surprisingly shadowy figure to most modern enthusiasts of Historical European Martial Arts.
James Devine Aylward, born in 1870, was a man of many lives: painter, collector, banker, fencing historian, friend to literary figures, and passionate motorcar enthusiast. Unlike the more frequently cited Alfred Hutton or Egerton Castle, Aylward did not seek fame as a teacher or demonstrator of swordplay. Instead, he followed a quieter path, one defined by careful scholarship, archival curiosity, and a lifelong love for the art and history of fencing. His journey into this niche world began remarkably early. At just fourteen he began collecting swords, and by seventeen he was fencing — pursuits that would remain with him across nearly nine decades.
Yet before the world knew Aylward as a fencing scholar, it knew him as an artist. In the 1890s he built a promising career as a painter, exhibiting widely in Liverpool and London. Thirty-three works hung in the Walker Art Gallery, and fifteen more at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters. Fate intervened in 1914: with the outbreak of the First World War, the art market collapsed. Forced to rebuild his life, Aylward entered the world of finance and became a banker at Lloyds in London. It was there, in an unexpected twist of cultural history, that he befriended T.S. Eliot. Their correspondence — playful, humorous, and at times delightfully eccentric — reveals Aylward not only as a disciplined researcher but as a man of wit and wide intellectual appetite.
Even as he worked at the bank, his fascination with the sword endured. The 1920s and 1930s saw Aylward weave himself into Britain’s fencing world, particularly in Liverpool and Manchester, where he encountered Professor Wladimar Michael Zaaloff, a former Imperial Russian cavalry instructor who established a thriving fencing scene in the North of England. Aylward, though older than most practitioners around him, continued fencing and studying technique, bridging late-Victorian sword-collecting culture with the academic fencing tradition that flourished between the wars.
His life, however, was not all archives and salles. He was also a motoring enthusiast, a member of the Bugatti Owners’ Club, and the owner of a stunning 1932 Aston Martin. He wrote enthusiastically about motor rallies and attended club gatherings, a gentleman scholar equally at home discussing blade geometries or engine performance. Only in 1941, under wartime constraints, did he trade the car for a bicycle — yet even this became a source of adventure, as he proudly cycled long distances across hilly countryside well into his seventies.
It was in his later years that Aylward truly found his scholarly voice. Beginning around the age of seventy-three, he published a series of articles in Notes and Queries, each exploring forgotten corners of fencing history, martial tradition, and military craftsmanship. His books soon followed: The Small-Sword in England (1945), The House of Angelo (1953), and The English Master of Arms (1956) remain among the most important early texts documenting British swordsmanship. Long before digitized archives, he traced genealogies of fencing masters, studied fencing manuals and military treatises, and preserved stories and facts that might otherwise have disappeared. In doing so, he quietly provided future scholars — and modern HEMA researchers — with an invaluable foundation.
His contributions were recognized during his lifetime. He became a founding member of the British Academy of Fencing in 1949, later receiving honorary distinctions. And remarkably, even into his eighties, he continued to visit Zaaloff for gentle fencing lessons — until a doctor urged him to stop. In a letter from 1957, written with equal parts resignation and humour, he notes receiving “mild lessons to see how much I have forgotten,” a sentiment that reveals a heart still longing to fence even as the body aged.
J.D. Aylward passed away in 1966, leaving behind not just books but a legacy of curiosity, dedication, and passion that helped preserve Britain’s fencing heritage. His work bridged centuries, linking the art of the smallsword, the discipline of classical fencing, and the emerging interest in reconstructing historical martial systems. Modern HEMA practitioners who study British smallsword, the Angelo lineage, or early fencing culture — whether they realize it or not — stand on the shoulders of Aylward’s scholarship.
Now, as The House of Angelo takes its place on the shelves of Rambler Press, hand-bound in stately half-leather like a relic of an era when scholarship and craftsmanship walked hand-in-hand, it serves not only as a historical artifact but as a reminder of the man who wrote it: a collector of swords, a lover of art and literature, a gentleman fencer, and one of the early keepers of Europe’s martial past. Rediscovering Aylward is more than paying respect to an author; it is reclaiming a thread of fencing history that might otherwise fade. With every page turned, every insight reconsidered, and every connection renewed, we help ensure that his legacy — like the martial traditions he studied — continues to inspire those who take up the sword today.