Biography

Frans Sircksen. (ca. 1670-ca. 1766) (aka. Cirx or Cirkz)

Boswell's fencing master in Utrecht. The identification is tentative - Boswell gave his name as Cirx or Cirkz, and the editors of Boswell in Holland conjectures that he was in fact a Frans Dirxen. The evidence is, that in 1740 the Utrecht Town Council gave permission to one Frans Dirxen, drum-major of the regiment then occupying the garrison, to give lessons in fencing.¹ Presumably, the fencing master's father, an Italian, had himself been the fencing master to William III (1650-1702), King of England and Prince of Orange.

GC66 seems to have identifed the fencing master, with much greater certainty, as Frans Sircksen. (GC66, p. 116) Presumably it's still the same drum master previously named, only with the name spelled differently.

Life with James Boswell:

Dirxen (or Cirkz) is first mentioned in one of Boswell's Dutch themes, tentatively dated ca. February 20, 1764, in which Boswell describes how he goes "every morning to a fencing-master. He is ninety-four yeras old. His father taught William III, Prince of Orange, to fence. He was an Italian." On June 15, 1764, Boswell "took cordial farewell of old Fencer Cirx and bid him live till he was past one hundred". In a letter dated January 27, 1767, Robert Brown informed Boswell of the death of "the old fencing master", who was "touched with [Boswell's] remembrance of him, but died suddenly soon after [Brown] communicated the contents of [Boswell's] letter relative to him".²

This article was last updated at January 28 2008 12:02:18 CET

Other links of possible interest