It is hardly fair to expect Jack Dempsey to take literature very
seriously. How, for instance, can he afford to pay much attention to
George Bernard Shaw who declared just before the fight that Carpentier
could not lose and ought to be quoted at odds of fifty to one? From
the point of view of Dempsey, then, creative evolution, the superman
and all the rest, are the merest moonshine. He might well take the
position that since Mr. Shaw was so palpably wrong about the outcome of
the fight two days before it happened, it scarcely behooves anybody to
pay much attention to his predictions as to the fate of the world and
mankind two thousand years hence.
Whatever the reason, Jack Dempsey does not read George Bernard Shaw
much. But he has heard of him. When some reporter came to Dempsey a day
or so before the fight and told him that Shaw had fixed fifty to one
as the proper odds on Carpentier, the champion made no comment. The
newspaper gossiper, disappointed of his sensation, asked if Dempsey had
ever heard of Shaw and the fighter stoutly maintained that he had. The
examination went no further but it is fair to assume that Dempsey did
know the great British sporting writer. It was not remarkable that he
paid no attention to his prediction. Dempsey would not even be moved
much by a prediction from Hughie Fullerton.
In other words literature and life are things divorced in Dempsey’s
mind. He does read. The first time we ever saw Dempsey he discussed
books with not a little interest. He was not at his training quarters
when we arrived but his press agent showed us about--a singularly
reverential man this press agent. “This”, he said, and he seemed to
lower his voice, “is the bed where Jack Dempsey sleeps”. All the
Louises knew better beds and so did Lafayette even when a stranger in
a strange land. Washington himself fared better in the midst of war.
Nor can it be said that there was anything very compelling about the
room in which Dempsey slept. It had air but not much distinction. There
were just two pictures on the wall. One represented a heavy surf upon
an indeterminate but rather rockbound coast and the other showed a lady
asleep with cupids hovering about her bed. Although the thought is
erotic the artist had removed all that in the execution.
Much more striking was the fact that upon a chair beside the bed of
Dempsey lay a couple of books and a magazine. It was not +The Bookman+
but “Photo Play”. The books were “The Czar’s Spy” by William Le Queux,
“The Spoilers” by Rex Beach, and at least one other western novel which
we have unfortunately forgotten. It was, as we remember it, the Luck
of the Lazy Something or Other. The press agent said that Jack read
quite a little and pointed to the reading light which had been strung
over his bed. He then went on to show us the clothes closet and the
bureau of the champion to prove that he was no slave to fashion. We can
testify that only one pair of shoes in the room had grey suède tops.
Then we saw the kitchen and were done.
There had been awe in the tones of the conductor from the beginning.
“Jack’s going to have roast lamb for dinner to-night”, he announced in
an awful hush. Even as we went out he could not resist lowering his
voice a little as he said, “This is the hat rack. This is where the
champion puts his hat”. We had gone only fifty yards away from the
house when a big brown limousine drew up. “That”, said the press agent,
and this time we feared that he was going to die, “is Jack Dempsey
himself”.
The preparation had been so similar to the first act of “Enter Madame”
that we expected temperament and gesture from the star. He put us
wholly at ease by being much more frightened than anyone in the
visiting party. As somebody has said somewhere, “Any mouse can make
this elephant squeal”. Jack Dempsey is decidedly a timid man and we
found later that he was a gentle one. He answered, “Yes sir” and “No
sir” at first. If we had his back and shoulders we’d have a civil word
for no man. By and by he grew a little more at ease and somebody
asked him what he read. He was not particularly strong on the names of
books and he always forgot the author, which detracts somewhat from
this article as a guide for readers. There were almost three hundred
books at his disposal, since his training quarters had once been an
aviation camp. These were the books of the fliers. Practically all the
popular novelists and short story writers were represented. We remember
seeing several titles by Mary Roberts Rinehart, Irvin Cobb, Zane Grey,
Rupert Hughes, and Rex Beach. Older books were scarce. The only one we
noticed was “A Tale of Two Cities”. This Dempsey had not read. Perhaps
Jack Kearns advised against it on account of the possible disturbing
psychological effects of the chapter with all the counting.
Dempsey said he had devoted most of his time to western novels. When
questioned he admitted that he did not altogether surrender himself to
them. “I was a cowboy once for a while”, he said. “There’s a lot of
hoakum in those books”. But when pressed as to what he really liked his
face did light up and he even remembered the name of the book. “There
was one book I’ve been reading”, he burst out; “it’s a fine book. It’s
called ‘The Czar’s Spy’.”
“Perhaps”, suggested Ruth Hale of the visiting party, “a grand duke
would say there was a lot of hoakum in that.”
Dempsey was not to be deterred by any such higher criticism. Never
having been a grand duke, he did not worry about the accuracy of
the story. It was in a field far apart from life. That we gathered
was his idea of the proper field for fiction. In life Dempsey is a
stern realist. It is only in reading that he is romantic. A more
impressionable man would have been disturbed by the air of secrecy
which surrounded the camp of Carpentier. That never worried Dempsey.
He prepared himself and never thought up contingencies. He did not
even like to talk fight. None of us drew him out much about boxing.
Somebody told him that Jim Corbett had reported that when he first met
Carpentier he had been vastly tempted to make a feint at the Frenchman
to see whether or not he would fall into a proper attitude of defense.
“Yes”, giggled Dempsey, “and it would have been funny if Carp had
busted him one on the chin.” This seemed to him an extraordinarily
humorous conceit and he kept chuckling over it every now and then.
While he was in this good humor somebody sounded him out as to what
he would do if he lost; or rather the comment was made that an old
time fighter, once a champion, was now coming back to the ring and had
declared that he was as good as he ever was.
“Why shouldn’t he?” said Dempsey just a little sharply. “Nobody wants
to see a man that says he isn’t as good as he used to be.”
“Would you say that?” he was asked.
“Well”, said Dempsey, and this time he reflected a little, “it would
all depend on how I was fixed. If I needed the money I would. I’d use
all the old alibis.”
We liked that frankness and we liked Dempsey again when somebody wanted
to know how he could possibly say anything in the ring during the
fight to “get the goat of Carpentier”. “We ain’t nearly well enough
acquainted for that”, said Dempsey and we gathered that he was of the
opinion that you must know a man pretty well before you can insult
him. The champion is not a man to whom one would look for telling
rejoinders, though he has needed them often enough in the last year
and a half. Criticism has hurt him, for he is not insensitive. He is
merely inarticulate. This must have been the reason which prompted some
sporting writers to feel that he would come into the ring whipped and
down from the fact that he had been able to make no reply to all the
charges brought against him. It did not work out that way. Dempsey
did have a means of expression and he used it. There is no logic in
force and yet a man can say, “Is that so?” with his fists. Dempsey
said it. As the Freudians have it, fighting is his “escape”. Decidedly
he is a man with an inferiority complex. But for his boxing skill he
would need literature badly. As it is he does not need to read about
hairbreadth escapes. He has them, such as in the second round of the
fight on Boyle’s Thirty Acres. In summing up we can only add that as
yet literature has had no large effect upon the life of Jack Dempsey.
But what does Carpentier read? That we must confess was part of our
assignment. We have nothing to report. The challenger was in secret
training throughout. Evidently his trainers hoped to worry Dempsey
by not letting him know whether Carpentier was with Racine or Paul
de Kock. And all the time Dempsey was sticking to “The Czar’s Spy”
and worrying not at all. We don’t know then whether or not Carpentier
is interested in literature or influenced by it, but the drama has
made him. He is drama. No piece of acting was ever so perfect as the
tragedy which Carpentier played in Jersey City. We liked Dempsey but
no sooner had Carpentier come into the ring than we began to cheer him
and kept it up. The crowd cheered him when he took off his bath-robe,
when he was photographed, when he almost knocked Dempsey down, and when
he was himself knocked down. Leaving the ring a little later, he was
cheered as no other beaten fighter has ever been cheered in America.
We wish every young American playwright who is about to write a tragedy
had seen the fight. They would realize then that the school founded by
Eugene O’Neill is based on a misconception of the spirit of tragedy. It
does not lie in the fact that man is small and helpless in the hands of
fate which outclasses him in reach and in weight. The tragic fact is
that man is almost good enough to win in his inspired moments. He can
rock fate but he cannot down it. That is the pity of the struggle. But
come to think of it there is nothing so terribly sorrowful in tragedy
after all. Fate, like Jack Dempsey, wins the title; but the gesture
remains with man, the light heavyweight. As he goes down he hears no
slow toll of numbers. All that is drowned out by the cheering.
_William McFee_
William McFee was born, I believe, on his father’s ship. Most of his
life he has spent in ships as a sea-going engineer. He has shown me
the engine room of a fruit vessel with as much pride as the script of
a new novel. A strong man, and a bluff man, with a seaman’s sense of
humor and a book lover’s wisdom, he does not bemoan the vanished days
of sailing vessels. His romances are those of the swift modern ships,
of merchantman and transport. As an essayist and critic he is almost
as well known as for his novels. Now, he has left the sea, bought a
cottage at Westport, Connecticut, where he intends living with his
mother who has come from England to join him. But the last one hears
of him is sailing off with Captain David Bone, author of the “The
Brassbounder,” on the “Tuscania”. On that trip one can picture many a
chat such as the one described in the following essay. However, when he
does settle down in the New England country, he will doubtless dream of
the sea, and write his romances. Here is an Englishman who has firmly
adopted the ways of America. A quiet, deep-thinking man, William McFee,
with a personality that is sturdy, rather than magnetic, dependable
rather than fiery.