_Wiltstoken. A room in the Warren Lodge_
LYDIA _at her writing table_
LYDIA. O Past and Present, how ye do conflict
As here I sit writing my father's life!
The autumn woodland woos me from without
With whispering of leaves and dainty airs
To leave this fruitless haunting of the past.
My father was a very learned man.
I sometimes think I shall oldmaided be
Ere I unlearn the things he taught to me.
_Enter_ POLICEMAN
POLICEMAN. Asking your ladyship to pardon me
For this intrusion, might I be so bold
As ask a question of your people here
Concerning the Queen's peace?
LYDIA. My people here
Are but a footman and a simple maid;
And both have craved a holiday to join
Some local festival. But, sir, your helmet
Proclaims the Metropolitan Police.
POLICEMAN. Madam, it does; and I may now inform you
That what you term a local festival
Is a most hideous outrage 'gainst the law,
Which we to quell from London have come down:
In short, a prizefight. My sole purpose here
Is to inquire whether your ladyship
Any bad characters this afternoon
Has noted in the neighborhood.
LYDIA. No, none, sir.
I had not let my maid go forth to-day
Thought I the roads unsafe.
POLICEMAN. Fear nothing, madam:
The force protects the fair. My mission here
Is to wreak ultion for the broken law.
I wish your ladyship good afternoon.
LYDIA. Good afternoon. [_Exit_ POLICEMAN.
A prizefight! O my heart!
Cashel: hast thou deceived me? Can it be
Thou hast backslidden to the hateful calling
I asked thee to eschew?
O wretched maid,
Why didst thou flee from London to this place
To write thy father's life, whenas in town
Thou might'st have kept a guardian eye on him--
What's that? A flying footstep--
_Enter_ CASHEL
CASHEL. Sanctuary!
The law is on my track. What! Lydia here!
LYDIA. Ay: Lydia here. Hast thou done murder, then,
That in so horrible a guise thou comest?
CASHEL. Murder! I would I had. Yon cannibal
Hath forty thousand lives; and I have ta'en
But thousands thirty-nine. I tell thee, Lydia,
On the impenetrable sarcolobe
That holds his seedling brain these fists have pounded
By Shrewsb'ry clock an hour. This bruised grass
And caked mud adhering to my form
I have acquired in rolling on the sod
Clinched in his grip. This scanty reefer coat
For decency snatched up as fast I fled
When the police arrived, belongs to Mellish.
'Tis all too short; hence my display of rib
And forearm mother-naked. Be not wroth
Because I seem to wink at you: by Heaven,
'Twas Paradise that plugged me in the eye
Which I perforce keep closing. Pity me,
My training wasted and my blows unpaid,
Sans stakes, sans victory, sans everything
I had hoped to win. Oh, I could sit me down
And weep for bitterness.
LYDIA. Thou wretch, begone.
CASHEL. Begone!
LYDIA. I say begone. Oh, tiger's heart
Wrapped in a young man's hide, canst thou not live
In love with Nature and at peace with Man?
Must thou, although thy hands were never made
To blacken others' eyes, still batter at
The image of Divinity? I loathe thee.
Hence from my house and never see me more.
CASHEL. I go. The meanest lad on thy estate
Would not betray me thus. But 'tis no matter. [_He opens the door._
Ha! the police. I'm lost. [_He shuts the door again._
Now shalt thou see
My last fight fought. Exhausted as I am,
To capture me will cost the coppers dear.
Come one, come all!
LYDIA. Oh, hide thee, I implore:
I cannot see thee hunted down like this.
There is my room. Conceal thyself therein.
Quick, I command. [_He goes into the room._
With horror I foresee,
Lydia, that never lied, must lie for thee.
_Enter_ POLICEMAN, _with_ PARADISE _and_ MELLISH _in
custody_, BASHVILLE, _constable_s, _and others_
POLICEMAN. Keep back your bruised prisoner lest he shock
This wellbred lady's nerves. Your pardon, ma'am;
But have you seen by chance the other one?
In this direction he was seen to run.
LYDIA. A man came here anon with bloody hands
And aspect that did turn my soul to snow.
POLICEMAN. 'Twas he. What said he?
LYDIA. Begged for sanctuary.
I bade the man begone.
POLICEMAN. Most properly.
Saw you which way he went?
LYDIA. I cannot tell.
PARADISE. He seen me coming; and he done a bunk.
POLICEMAN. Peace, there. Excuse his damaged features, lady:
He's Paradise; and this one's Byron's trainer,
Mellish.
MELLISH. Injurious copper, in thy teeth
I hurl the lie. I am no trainer, I.
My father, a respected missionary,
Apprenticed me at fourteen years of age
T' the poetry writing. To these woods I came
With Nature to commune. My revery
Was by a sound of blows rudely dispelled.
Mindful of what my sainted parent taught,
I rushed to play the peacemaker, when lo!
These minions of the law laid hands on me.
BASHVILLE. A lovely woman, with distracted cries,
In most resplendent fashionable frock,
Approaches like a wounded antelope.
_Enter_ ADELAIDE GISBORNE
ADELAIDE. Where is my Cashel? Hath he been arrested?
POLICEMAN. I would I had thy Cashel by the collar:
He hath escaped me.
ADELAIDE. Praises be for ever!
LYDIA. Why dost thou call the missing man _thy_ Cashel?
ADELAIDE. He is mine only son.
ALL. Thy son!
ADELAIDE. My son.
LYDIA. I thought his mother hardly would have known him,
So crushed his countenance.
ADELAIDE. A ribald peer,
Lord Worthington by name, this morning came
With honeyed words beseeching me to mount
His four-in-hand, and to the country hie
To see some English sport. Being by nature
Frank as a child, I fell into the snare,
But took so long to dress that the design
Failed of its full effect; for not until
The final round we reached the horrid scene.
Be silent all; for now I do approach
My tragedy's catastrophe. Know, then,
That Heaven did bless me with an only son,
A boy devoted to his doting mother----
POLICEMAN. Hark! did you hear an oath from yonder room?
ADELAIDE. Respect a broken-hearted mother's grief,
And do not interrupt me in my scene.
Ten years ago my darling disappeared
(Ten dreary twelvemonths of continuous tears,
Tears that have left me prematurely aged;
For I am younger far than I appear).
Judge of my anguish when to-day I saw
Stripped to the waist, and fighting like a demon
With one who, whatsoe'er his humble virtues,
Was clearly not a gentleman, my son!
ALL. O strange event! O passing tearful tale!
ADELAIDE. I thank you from the bottom of my heart
For the reception you have given my woe;
And now I ask, where is my wretched son?
He must at once come home with me, and quit
A course of life that cannot be allowed.
_Enter_ CASHEL
CASHEL. Policeman: I do yield me to the law.
LYDIA. Oh, no.
ADELAIDE. My son!
CASHEL. My mother! Do not kiss me.
My visage is too sore.
POLICEMAN. The lady hid him.
This is a regular plant. You cannot be
Up to that sex. [_To_ CASHEL] You come along with me.
LYDIA. Fear not, my Cashel: I will bail thee out.
CASHEL. Never. I do embrace my doom with joy.
With Paradise in Pentonville or Portland
I shall feel safe: there are no mothers there.
ADELAIDE. Ungracious boy--
CASHEL. Constable: bear me hence.
MELLISH. Oh, let me sweetest reconcilement make
By calling to thy mind that moving song:--
[_Sings_] They say there is no other--
CASHEL. Forbear at once, or the next note of music
That falls upon thine ear shall clang in thunder
From the last trumpet.
ADELAIDE. A disgraceful threat
To level at this virtuous old man.
LYDIA. Oh, Cashel, if thou scorn'st thy mother thus,
How wilt thou treat thy wife?
CASHEL. There spake my fate:
I knew you would say that. Oh, mothers, mothers,
Would you but let your wretched sons alone
Life were worth living! Had I any choice
In this importunate relationship?
None. And until that high auspicious day
When the millennium on an orphaned world
Shall dawn, and man upon his fellow look,
Reckless of consanguinity, my mother
And I within the self-same hemisphere
Conjointly may not dwell.
ADELAIDE. Ungentlemanly!
CASHEL. I am no gentleman. I am a criminal,
Redhanded, baseborn--
ADELAIDE. Baseborn! Who dares say it?
Thou art the son and heir of Bingley Bumpkin
FitzAlgernon de Courcy Cashel Byron,
Sieur of Park Lane and Overlord of Dorset,
Who after three months' wedded happiness
Rashly fordid himself with prussic acid,
Leaving a tearstained note to testify
That having sweetly honeymooned with me,
He now could say, O Death, where is thy sting?
POLICEMAN. Sir: had I known your quality, this cop
I had averted; but it is too late.
The law's above us both.
_Enter_ LUCIAN, _with an Order in Council_
LUCIAN. Not so, policeman
I bear a message from The Throne itself
Of fullest amnesty for Byron's past.
Nay, more: of Dorset deputy lieutenant
He is proclaimed. Further, it is decreed,
In memory of his glorious victory
Over our country's foes at Islington,
The flag of England shall for ever bear
On azure field twelve swanlike spots of white;
And by an exercise of feudal right
Too long disused in this anarchic age
Our sovereign doth confer on him the hand
Of Miss Carew, Wiltstoken's wealthy heiress. [_General acclamation._
POLICEMAN. Was anything, sir, said about me?
LUCIAN. Thy faithful services are not forgot:
In future call thyself Inspector Smith. [_Renewed acclamation._
POLICEMAN. I thank you, sir. I thank you, gentlemen.
LUCIAN. My former opposition, valiant champion,
Was based on the supposed discrepancy
Betwixt your rank and Lydia's. Here's my hand.
BASHVILLE. And I do here unselfishly renounce
All my pretensions to my lady's favor. [_Sensation._
LYDIA. What, Bashville! didst thou love me?
BASHVILLE. Madam: yes.
'Tis said: now let me leave immediately.
LYDIA. In taking, Bashville, this most tasteful course
You are but acting as a gentleman
In the like case would act. I fully grant
Your perfect right to make a declaration
Which flatters me and honors your ambition.
Prior attachment bids me firmly say
That whilst my Cashel lives, and polyandry
Rests foreign to the British social scheme,
Your love is hopeless; still, your services,
Made zealous by disinterested passion,
Would greatly add to my domestic comfort;
And if----
CASHEL. Excuse me. I have other views.
I've noted in this man such aptitude
For art and exercise in his defence
That I prognosticate for him a future
More glorious than my past. Henceforth I dub him
The Admirable Bashville, Byron's Novice;
And to the utmost of my mended fortunes
Will back him 'gainst the world at ten stone six.
ALL. Hail, Byron's Novice, champion that shall be!
BASHVILLE. Must I renounce my lovely lady's service,
And mar the face of man?
CASHEL. 'Tis Fate's decree.
For know, rash youth, that in this star crost world
Fate drives us all to find our chiefest good
In what we _can_, and not in what we _would_.
POLICEMAN. A post-horn--hark!
CASHEL. What noise of wheels is this?
LORD WORTHINGTON _drives upon the scene in his four-in-hand_,
_and descends_
ADELAIDE. Perfidious peer!
LORD WORTHINGTON. Sweet Adelaide----
ADELAIDE. Forbear,
Audacious one: my name is Mrs. Byron.
LORD WORTHINGTON. Oh, change that title for the sweeter one
Of Lady Worthington.
CASHEL. Unhappy man,
You know not what you do.
LYDIA. Nay, 'tis a match
Of most auspicious promise. Dear Lord Worthington,
You tear from us our mother-in-law--
CASHEL. Ha! true.
LYDIA.--but we will make the sacrifice. She blushes:
At least she very prettily produces
Blushing's effect.
ADELAIDE. My lord: I do accept you. [_They embrace. Rejoicings._
CASHEL [_aside_]. It wrings my heart to see my noble backer
Lay waste his future thus. The world's a chessboard,
And we the merest pawns in fist of Fate.
[_Aloud._] And now, my friends, gentle and simple both,
Our scene draws to a close. In lawful course
As Dorset's deputy lieutenant I
Do pardon all concerned this afternoon
In the late gross and brutal exhibition
Of miscalled sport.
LYDIA [_throwing herself into his arms_]. Your boats
are burnt at last.
CASHEL. This is the face that burnt a thousand boats,
And ravished Cashel Byron from the ring.
But to conclude. Let William Paradise
Devote himself to science, and acquire,
By studying the player's speech in Hamlet,
A more refined address. You, Robert Mellish,
To the Blue Anchor hostelry attend him;
Assuage his hurts, and bid Bill Richardson
Limit his access to the fatal tap.
Now mount we on my backer's four-in-hand,
And to St. George's Church, whose portico
Hanover Square shuts off from Conduit Street,
Repair we all. Strike up the wedding march;
And, Mellish, let thy melodies trill forth
Broad o'er the wold as fast we bowl along.
Give me the post-horn. Loose the flowing rein;
And up to London drive with might and main. [_Exeunt._
NOTE ON MODERN PRIZEFIGHTING
In 1882, when this book was written, prizefighting seemed to be dying
out. Sparring matches with boxing gloves, under the Queensberry rules,
kept pugilism faintly alive; but it was not popular, because the public,
which cares only for the excitement of a strenuous fight, believed then
that the boxing glove made sparring as harmless a contest of pure skill
as a fencing match with buttoned foils. This delusion was supported by
the limitation of the sparring match to boxing. In the prize-ring under
the old rules a combatant might trip, hold, or throw his antagonist; so
that each round finished either with a knockdown blow, which, except
when it is really a liedown blow, is much commoner in fiction than it
was in the ring, or with a visible body-to-body struggle ending in a
fall. In a sparring match all that happens is that a man with a watch in
his hand cries out "Time!" whereupon the two champions prosaically stop
sparring and sit down for a minute's rest and refreshment. The
unaccustomed and inexpert spectator in those days did not appreciate the
severity of the exertion or the risk of getting hurt: he underrated them
as ignorantly as he would have overrated the more dramatically obvious
terrors of a prizefight. Consequently the interest in the annual
sparrings for the Queensberry Championships was confined to the few
amateurs who had some critical knowledge of the game of boxing, and to
the survivors of the generation for which the fight between Sayers and
Heenan had been described in The Times as solemnly as the University
Boat Race. In short, pugilism was out of fashion because the police had
suppressed the only form of it which fascinated the public by its
undissembled pugnacity.
All that was needed to rehabilitate it was the discovery that the glove
fight is a more trying and dangerous form of contest than the old
knuckle fight. Nobody knew that then: everybody knows it, or ought to
know it, now. And, accordingly, pugilism is more prosperous to-day than
it has ever been before.
How far this result was foreseen by the author of the Queensberry Rules,
which superseded those of the old prize-ring, will probably never be
known. There is no doubt that they served their immediate turn
admirably. That turn was, the keeping alive of boxing in the teeth of
the law against prizefighting. Magistrates believed, as the public
believed, that when men's knuckles were muffled in padded gloves; when
they were forbidden to wrestle or hold one another; when the duration of
a round was fixed by the clock, and the number of rounds limited to what
seems (to those who have never tried) to be easily within the limits of
ordinary endurance; and when the traditional interval for rest between
the rounds was doubled, that then indeed violence must be checkmated, so
that the worst the boxers could do was to "spar for points" before three
gentlemanly members of the Stock Exchange, who would carefully note the
said points on an examination paper at the ring side, awarding marks
only for skill and elegance, and sternly discountenancing the claims of
brute force. It may be that both the author of the rules and the
"judges" who administered them in the earlier days really believed all
this; for, as far as I know, the limit of an amateur pugilist's romantic
credulity has never yet been reached and probably never will. But if so,
their good intentions were upset by the operation of a single new rule.
Thus.
In the old prize-ring a round had no fixed duration. It was terminated
by the fall of one of the combatants (in practice usually both of them),
and was followed by an interval of half a minute for recuperation. The
practical effect of this was that a combatant could always get a respite
of half a minute whenever he wanted it by pretending to be knocked down:
"finding the earth the safest place," as the old phrase went. For this
the Marquess of Queensberry substituted a rule that a round with the
gloves should last a specified time, usually three or four minutes, and
that a combatant who did not stand up to his opponent continuously
during that time (ten seconds being allowed for rising in the event of a
knock-down) lost the battle. That unobtrusively slipped-in ten seconds
limit has produced the modern glove fight. Its practical effect is that
a man dazed by a blow or a fall for, say, twelve seconds, which would
not have mattered in an old-fashioned fight with its thirty seconds
interval,[1] has under the Queensberry rules either to lose or else
stagger to his feet in a helpless condition and be eagerly battered into
insensibility by his opponent before he can recover his powers of
self-defence. The notion that such a battery cannot be inflicted with
boxing gloves is only entertained by people who have never used them or
seen them used. I may say that I have myself received, in an accident, a
blow in the face, involving two macadamized holes in it, more violent
than the most formidable pugilist could have given me with his bare
knuckles. This blow did not stun or disable me even momentarily. On the
other hand, I have seen a man knocked quite silly by a tap from the most
luxurious sort of boxing glove made, wielded by a quite unathletic
literary man sparring for the first time in his life. The human jaw,
like the human elbow, is provided, as every boxer knows, with a "funny
bone"; and the pugilist who is lucky enough to jar that funny bone with
a blow practically has his opponent at his mercy for at least ten
seconds. Such a blow is called a "knock-out." The funny bone and the
ten-seconds rule explain the development of Queensberry sparring into
the modern knocking-out match or glove fight.
[1] In a treatise on boxing by Captain Edgeworth Johnstone,
just published, I read, "In the days of the prize-ring, fights lasted
for hours; and the knock-out blow was unknown." This statement is a
little too sweeping. The blow was known well enough. A veteran
prizefighter once described to me his first experience of its curious
effect on the senses. Only, as he had thirty seconds to recover in
instead of ten, it did not end the battle. The thirty seconds made the
knock-out so unlikely that the old pugilists regarded it as a rare
accident, not worth trying for. The glove fighter tries for nothing
else. Nevertheless knock-outs, and very dramatic ones too (Mace by King,
for example), did occur in the prize-ring from time to time. Captain
Edgeworth Johnstone's treatise is noteworthy in comparison with the
earlier Badminton handbook of sparring by Mr. E. B. Michell (one of the
Queensberry champions) as throwing over the old teaching of prize-ring
boxing with mufflers, and going in frankly for glove fighting, or, to
put it classically, cestus boxing.
This development got its first impulse from the discovery by sparring
competitors that the only way in which a boxer, however skilful, could
make sure of a verdict in his favor, was by knocking his opponent out.
This will be easily understood by any one who remembers the pugilistic
Bench of those days. The "judges" at the competitions were invariably
ex-champions: that is, men who had themselves won former competitions.
Now the judicial faculty, if it is not altogether a legal fiction, is at
all events pretty rare even among men whose ordinary pursuits tend to
cultivate it, and to train them in dispassionateness. Among pugilists it
is quite certainly very often non-existent. The average pugilist is a
violent partisan, who seldom witnesses a hot encounter without getting
much more excited than the combatants themselves. Further, he is usually
filled with a local patriotism which makes him, if a Londoner, deem it a
duty to disparage a provincial, and, if a provincial, to support a
provincial at all hazards against a cockney. He has, besides, personal
favorites on whose success he bets wildly. On great occasions like the
annual competitions, he is less judicial and more convivial after dinner
(when the finals are sparred) than before it. Being seldom a fine boxer,
he often regards skill and style as a reflection on his own
deficiencies, and applauds all verdicts given for "game" alone. When he
is a technically good boxer, he is all the less likely to be a good
critic, as Providence seldom lavishes two rare gifts on the same
individual. Even if we take the sanguine and patriotic view that when
you appoint such a man a judge, and thus stop his betting, you may
depend on his sense of honor and responsibility to neutralize all the
other disqualifications, they are sure to be exhibited most extremely by
the audience before which he has to deliver his verdict. Now it takes a
good deal of strength of mind to give an unpopular verdict; and this
strength of mind is not necessarily associated with the bodily hardihood
of the champion boxer. Consequently, when the strength of mind is not
forthcoming, the audience becomes the judge, and the popular competitor
gets the verdict. And the shortest way to the heart of a big audience is
to stick to your man; stop his blows bravely with your nose and return
them with interest; cover yourself and him with your own gore; and
outlast him in a hearty punching match.
It was under these circumstances that the competitors for sparring
championships concluded that they had better decide the bouts themselves
by knocking their opponents out, and waste no time in cultivating a
skill and style for which they got little credit, and which actually set
some of the judges against them. The public instantly began to take an
interest in the sport. And so, by a pretty rapid evolution, the
dexterities which the boxing glove and the Queensberry rules were
supposed to substitute for the old brutalities of Sayers and Heenan were
really abolished by them.
Let me describe the process as I saw it myself. Twenty years ago a poet
friend of mine, who, like all poets, delighted in combats, insisted on
my sharing his interest in pugilism, and took me about to all the boxing
competitions of the day. I was nothing loth; for, my own share of
original sin apart, any one with a sense of comedy must find the arts of
self-defence delightful (for a time) through their pedantry, their
quackery, and their action and reaction between amateur romantic
illusion and professional eye to business.
The fencing world, as Moliere well knew, is perhaps a more exquisite
example of a fool's paradise than the boxing world; but it is too
restricted and expensive to allow play for popular character in a
non-duelling country, as the boxing world (formerly called quite
appropriately "the Fancy") does. At all events, it was the boxing world
that came under my notice; and as I was amused and sceptically
observant, whilst the true amateurs about me were, for the most part,
merely excited and duped, my evidence may have a certain value when the
question comes up again for legislative consideration, as it assuredly
will some day.
The first competitions I attended were at the beginning of the eighties,
at Lillie Bridge, for the Queensberry championships. There were but few
competitors, including a fair number of gentlemen; and the style of
boxing aimed at was the "science" bequeathed from the old prize-ring by
Ned Donnelly, a pupil of Nat Langham. Langham had once defeated Sayers,
and thereby taught him the tactics by which he defeated Heenan. There
was as yet no special technique of glove fighting: the traditions and
influence of the old ring were unquestioned and supreme; and they
distinctly made for brains, skill, quickness, and mobility, as against
brute violence, not at all on moral grounds, but because experience had
proved that giants did not succeed in the ring under the old rules, and
that crafty middle-weights did.
This did not last long. The spectators did not want to see skill
defeating violence: they wanted to see violence drawing blood and
pounding its way to a savage and exciting victory in the shortest
possible time (the old prizefight usually dragged on for hours, and was
ended by exhaustion rather than by victory). So did most of the judges.
And the public and the judges naturally had their wish; for the
competitors, as I have already explained, soon discovered that the only
way to make sure of a favorable verdict was to "knock out" their
adversary. All pretence of sparring "for points": that is, for marks on
an examination paper filled up by the judges, and representing nothing
but impracticable academic pedantry in its last ditch, was dropped; and
the competitions became frank fights, with abundance of blood drawn, and
"knock-outs" always imminent. Needless to add, the glove fight soon
began to pay. The select and thinly attended spars on the turf at Lillie
Bridge gave way to crowded exhibitions on the hard boards of St. James's
Hall. These were organized by the Boxing Association; and to them the
provinces, notably Birmingham, sent up a new race of boxers whose sole
aim was to knock their opponent insensible by a right-hand blow on the
jaw, knowing well that no Birmingham man could depend on a verdict
before a London audience for any less undeniable achievement.
The final step was taken by an American pugilist. He threw off the last
shred of the old hypocrisy of the gloved hand by challenging the whole
world to produce a man who could stand before him for a specified time
without being knocked out. His brief but glorious career completely
re-established pugilism by giving a world-wide advertisement to the fact
that the boxing glove spares nothing but the public conscience, and that
as much ferocity, bloodshed, pain, and risk of serious injury or death
can be enjoyed at a glove fight as at an old-fashioned prizefight,
whilst the strain on the combatants is much greater. It is true that
these horrors are greatly exaggerated by the popular imagination, and
that if boxing were really as dangerous as bicycling, a good many of its
heroes would give it up from simple fright; but this only means that
there is a maximum of damage to the spectator by demoralization,
combined with the minimum of deterrent risk to the poor scrapper in the
ring.
Poor scrapper, though, is hardly the word for a modern fashionable
American pugilist. To him the exploits of Cashel Byron will seem
ludicrously obscure and low-lived. The contests in which he engages are
like Handel Festivals: they take place in huge halls before enormous
audiences, with cinematographs hard at work recording the scene for
reproduction in London and elsewhere. The combatants divide thousands of
dollars of gate-money between them: indeed, if an impecunious English
curate were to go to America and challenge the premier pugilist, the
spectacle of a match between the Church and the Ring would attract a
colossal crowd; and the loser's share of the gate would be a fortune to
a curate--assuming that the curate would be the loser, which is by no
means a foregone conclusion. At all events, it would be well worth a
bruise or two. So my story of the Agricultural Hall, where William
Paradise sparred for half a guinea, and Cashel Byron stood out for ten
guineas, is no doubt read by the profession in America with amused
contempt. In 1882 it was, like most of my conceptions, a daring
anticipation of coming social developments, though to-day it seems as
far out of date as Slender pulling Sackerson's chain.
Of these latter-day commercial developments of glove fighting I know
nothing beyond what I gather from the newspapers. The banging matches of
the eighties, in which not one competitor in twenty either exhibited
artistic skill, or, in his efforts to knock out his adversary, succeeded
in anything but tiring and disappointing himself, were for the most part
tedious beyond human endurance. When, after wading through Boxiana and
the files of Bell's Life at the British Museum, I had written Cashel
Byron's Profession, I found I had exhausted the comedy of the subject;
and as a game of patience or solitaire was decidedly superior to an
average spar for a championship in point of excitement, I went no more
to the competitions. Since then six or seven generations of boxers have
passed into peaceful pursuits; and I have no doubt that my experience is
in some respects out of date. The National Sporting Club has arisen; and
though I have never attended its reunions, I take its record of three
pugilists slain as proving and enormous multiplication of contests,
since such accidents are very rare, and in fact do not happen to
reasonably healthy men. I am prepared to admit also that the
disappearance of the old prize-ring technique must by this time have
been compensated by the importation from America of a new glove-fighting
technique; for even in a knocking-out match, brains will try conclusions
with brawn, and finally establish a standard of skill; but I notice that
in the leading contests in America luck seems to be on the side of
brawn, and brain frequently finishes in a state of concussion, a loser
after performing miracles of "science." I use the word luck advisedly;
for one of the fascinations of boxing to the gambler (who is the main
pillar of the sporting world) is that it is a game of hardihood,
pugnacity and skill, all at the mercy of chance. The knock-out itself is
a pure chance. I have seen two powerful laborers batter one another's
jaws with all their might for several rounds apparently without giving
one another as much as a toothache. And I have seen a winning pugilist
collapse at a trifling knock landed by a fluke at the fatal angle. I
once asked an ancient prizefighter what a knock-out was like when it did
happen. He was a man of limited descriptive powers; so he simply pointed
to the heavens and said, "Up in a balloon." An amateur pugilist, with
greater command of language, told me that "all the milk in his head
suddenly boiled over." I am aware that some modern glove fighters of the
American school profess to have reduced the knock-out to a science. But
the results of the leading American combats conclusively discredit the
pretension. When a boxer so superior to his opponent in skill as to be
able practically to hit him where he pleases not only fails to knock him
out, but finally gets knocked out himself, it is clear that the
phenomenon is as complete a mystery pugilistically as it is
physiologically, though every pugilist and every doctor may pretend to
understand it. It is only fair to add that it has not been proved that
any permanent injury to the brain results from it. In any case the
brain, as English society is at present constituted, can hardly be
considered a vital organ.
This, to the best of my knowledge, is the technical history of the
modern revival of pugilism. It is only one more example of the fact that
legislators, like other people, must learn their business by their own
mistakes, and that the first attempts to suppress an evil by law
generally intensify it. Prizefighting, though often connived at, was
never legal. Even in its palmiest days prizefights were banished from
certain counties by hostile magistrates, just as they have been driven
from the United States and England to Belgium on certain occasions in
our own time. But as the exercise of sparring, conducted by a couple of
gentlemen with boxing gloves on, was regarded as part of a manly
physical education, a convention grew up by which it became practically
legal to make a citizen's nose bleed by a punch from the gloved fist,
and illegal to do the same thing with the naked knuckles. A code of
glove-fighting rules was drawn up by a prominent patron of pugilism; and
this code was practically legalized by the fact that even when a death
resulted from a contest under these rules the accessaries were not
punished. No question was raised as to whether the principals were paid
to fight for the amusement of the spectators, or whether a prize for the
winner was provided in stakes, share of the gate, or a belt with the
title of champion. These, the true criteria of prizefighting, were
ignored; and the sole issue raised was whether the famous dictum of Dr.
Watts, "Your little hands were never made, etc.," had been duly
considered by providing the said little hands with a larger hitting
surface, a longer range, and four ounces extra weight.
In short, then, what has happened has been the virtual legalization of
prizefighting under cover of the boxing glove. And this is exactly what
public opinion desires. We do not like fighting; but we like looking on
at fights: therefore we require a law which will punish the prizefighter
if he hits us, and secure us the protection of the police whilst we sit
in a comfortable hall and watch him hitting another prizefighter. And
that is just the law we have got at present.
Thus Cashel Byron's plea for a share of the legal toleration accorded to
the vivisector has been virtually granted since he made it. The
legalization of cruelty to domestic animals under cover of the
anesthetic is only the extreme instance of the same social phenomenon as
the legalization of prizefighting under cover of the boxing glove. The
same passion explains the fascination of both practices; and in both,
the professors--pugilists and physiologists alike--have to persuade the
Home Office that their pursuits are painless and beneficial. But there
is also between them the remarkable difference that the pugilist, who
has to suffer as much as he inflicts, wants his work to be as painless
and harmless as possible whilst persuading the public that it is
thrillingly dangerous and destructive, whilst the vivisector wants to
enjoy a total exemption from humane restrictions in his laboratory
whilst persuading the public that pain is unknown there. Consequently
the vivisector is not only crueller than the prizefighter, but, through
the pressure of public opinion, a much more resolute and uncompromising
liar. For this no one but a Pharisee will single him out for special
blame. All public men lie, as a matter of good taste, on subjects which
are considered serious (in England a serious occasion means simply an
occasion on which nobody tells the truth); and however illogical or
capricious the point of honor may be in man, it is too absurd to assume
that the doctors who, from among innumerable methods of research,
select that of tormenting animals hideously, will hesitate to come on a
platform and tell a soothing fib to prevent the public from punishing
them. No criminal is expected to plead guilty, or to refrain from
pleading not guilty with all the plausibility at his command. In
prizefighting such mendacity is not necessary: on the contrary, if a
famous pugilist were to assure the public that a blow delivered with a
boxing glove could do no injury and cause no pain, and the public
believed him, the sport would instantly lose its following. It is the
prizefighter's interest to abolish the real cruelties of the ring and to
exaggerate the imaginary cruelties of it. It is the vivisector's
interest to refine upon the cruelties of the laboratory, whilst
persuading the public that his victims pass into a delicious euthanasia
and leave behind them a row of bottles containing infallible cures for
all the diseases. Just so, too, does the trainer of performing animals
assure us that his dogs and cats and elephants and lions are taught
their senseless feats by pure kindness.
The public, as Julius Caesar remarked nearly 2000 years ago, believes on
the whole, just what it wants to believe. The laboring masses do not
believe the false excuses of the vivisector, because they know that the
vivisector experiments on hospital patients; and the masses belong to
the hospital patient class. The well-to-do people who do not go to
hospitals, and who think they benefit by the experiments made there,
believe the vivisectors' excuses, and angrily abuse and denounce the
anti-vivisectors. The people who "love animals," who keep pets, and
stick pins through butterflies, support the performing dog people, and
are sure that kindness will teach a horse to waltz. And the people who
enjoy a fight will persuade themselves that boxing gloves do not hurt,
and that sparring is an exercise which teaches self-control and
exercises all the muscles in the body more efficiently than any other.
My own view of prizefighting may be gathered from Cashel Byron's
Profession, and from the play written by me more than ten years later,
entitled Mrs. Warren's Profession. As long as society is so organized
that the destitute athlete and the destitute beauty are forced to choose
between underpaid drudgery as industrial producers, and comparative
self-respect, plenty, and popularity as prizefighters and mercenary
brides, licit or illicit, it is idle to affect virtuous indignation at
their expense. The word prostitute should either not be used at all, or
else applied impartially to all persons who do things for money that
they would not do if they had any other assured means of livelihood. The
evil caused by the prostitution of the Press and the Pulpit is so
gigantic that the prostitution of the prize-ring, which at least makes
no serious moral pretensions, is comparatively negligible by comparison.
Let us not forget, however, that the throwing of a hard word such as
prostitution does not help the persons thus vituperated out of their
difficulty. If the soldier and gladiator fight for money, if men and
women marry for money, if the journalist and novelist write for money,
and the parson preaches for money, it must be remembered that it is an
exceedingly difficult and doubtful thing for an individual to set up his
own scruples or fancies (he cannot himself be sure which they are)
against the demand of the community when it says, Do thus and thus, or
starve. It was easy for Ruskin to lay down the rule of dying rather than
doing unjustly; but death is a plain thing: justice a very obscure
thing. How is an ordinary man to draw the line between right and wrong
otherwise than by accepting public opinion on the subject; and what more
conclusive expression of sincere public opinion can there be than market
demand? Even when we repudiate that and fall back on our private
judgment, the matter gathers doubt instead of clearness. The popular
notion of morality and piety is to simply beg all the most important
questions in life for other people; but when these questions come home
to ourselves, we suddenly discover that the devil's advocate has a
stronger case than we thought: we remember that the way of righteousness
or death was the way of the Inquisition; that hell is paved, not with
bad intentions, but with good ones; that the deeper seers have suggested
that the way to save your soul is perhaps to give it away, casting your
spiritual bread on the waters, so to speak. No doubt, if you are a man
of genius, a Ruskin or an Ibsen, you can divine your way and finally
force your passage. If you have the conceit of fanaticism you can die a
martyr like Charles I. If you are a criminal, or a gentleman of
independent means, you can leave society out of the question and prey on
it. But if you are an ordinary person you take your bread as it comes to
you, doing whatever you can make most money by doing. And you are really
shewing yourself a disciplined citizen and acting with perfect social
propriety in so doing. Society may be, and generally is, grossly wrong
in its offer to you; and you may be, and generally are, grossly wrong
in supporting the existing political structure; but this only means, to
the successful modern prizefighter, that he must reform society before
he can reform himself. A conclusion which I recommend to the
consideration of those foolish misers of personal righteousness who
think they can dispose of social problems by bidding reformers of
society reform themselves first.
Practically, then, the question raised is whether fighting with gloves
shall be brought, like cockfighting, bear-baiting, and gloveless fist
fighting, explicitly under the ban of the law. I do not propose to argue
that question out here. But of two things I am certain. First, that
glove fighting is quite as fierce a sport as fist fighting. Second, that
if an application were made to the Borough Council of which I am a
member, to hire the Town Hall for a boxing competition, I should vote
against the applicants.
This second point being evidently the practical one, I had better give
my reason. Exhibition pugilism is essentially a branch of Art: that is
to say, it acts and attracts by propagating feeling. The feeling it
propagates is pugnacity. Sense of danger, dread of danger, impulse to
batter and destroy what threatens and opposes, triumphant delight in
succeeding: this is pugnacity, the great adversary of the social impulse
to live and let live; to establish our rights by shouldering our share
of the social burden; to face and examine danger instead of striking at
it; to understand everything to the point of pardoning (and righting)
everything; to conclude an amnesty with Nature wide enough to include
even those we know the worst of: namely, ourselves. If two men
quarrelled, and asked the Borough Council to lend them a room to fight
it out in with their fists, on the ground that a few minutes' hearty
punching of one another's heads would work off their bad blood and leave
them better friends, each desiring, not victory, but _satisfaction_, I
am not sure that I should not vote for compliance. But if a syndicate of
showmen came and said, Here we have two men who have no quarrel, but who
will, if you pay them, fight before your constituency and thereby make a
great propaganda of pugnacity in it, sharing the profits with us and
with you, I should indignantly oppose the proposition. And if the
majority were against me, I should try to persuade them to at least
impose the condition that the fight should be with naked fists under the
old rules, so that the combatants should, like Sayers and Langham,
depend on bunging up each other's eyes rather than, like the modern
knocker-out, giving one another concussion of the brain.
I may add, finally, that the present halting between the legal
toleration and suppression of commercial pugilism is much worse than the
extreme of either, because it takes away the healthy publicity and sense
of responsibility which legality and respectability give, without
suppressing the blackguardism which finds its opportunity in shady
pursuits. I use the term commercial advisedly. Put a stop to boxing for
money; and pugilism will give society no further trouble.
LONDON, 1901.
* * * * *
THREE PLAYS
BY BRIEUX
(Member of the French Academy)
MATERNITY
DAMAGED GOODS
THE THREE DAUGHTERS OF
MONSIEUR DUPONT
WITH PREFACE BY BERNARD SHAW
_Translated into English_
By Mrs. BERNARD SHAW, ST. JOHN HANKIN
and JOHN POLLOCK
_12mo. Cloth, price $1.50 net_
"In that kind of comedy," writes BERNARD SHAW, "which is so true to life
that we have to call it tragi-comedy, and which is not only an
entertainment but a history and a criticism of contemporary morals,
BRIEUX is incomparably the greatest writer France has produced since
Moliere."
The three plays in this volume are a first instalment into English of
the work of a man who has been admitted into the French Academy for his
splendid achievements, and who is recognized by the best thinkers in
Europe as one of the profoundest moral forces expressing itself as
literature to-day.
No earnest man or woman can read these plays without being deeply moved
and deeply touched. One of the plays was read by Brieux himself, at the
special invitation of the pastor, from the pulpit of a church in Geneva.
BERNARD SHAW'S PLAYS
The following Plays by Bernard Shaw are issued in separate volumes,
bound in stiff paper wrappers.
_Price 40 cents net per volume_
WIDOWERS' HOUSES
THE PHILANDERER
MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION
ARMS AND THE MAN
CANDIDA
YOU NEVER CAN TELL
THE ADMIRABLE BASHVILLE
THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE
CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA
CAPTAIN BRASSBOUND'S CONVERSION
MAN AND SUPERMAN
JOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND
MAJOR BARBARA
THE MAN OF DESTINY, AND HOW HE LIED TO HER HUSBAND
THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA
GETTING MARRIED
THE SHEWING-UP OF BLANCO POSNET
PRESS CUTTINGS
BRENTANO'S
Fifth Avenue and 27th Street New York