“I can see him now as I saw him in ’84 walking down Holborn Hill,
towards Smithfield. He had on a scarlet coat worked in gold at the
buttonholes, ruffles and frill of fine lace, a small white stock, no
collar (they were not then invented), a looped hat with a broad black
band, buff knee-breeches and long silk strings, striped white silk
stockings, pumps and paste buckles; his waistcoat was pale blue satin,
sprigged with white. It was impossible to look on his fine ample chest,
his noble shoulders, his waist (if anything too small), his large but
not too large hips, his balustrade calf and beautifully turned but not
over delicate ankle, his firm foot and peculiarly small hand, without
thinking that nature had sent him on earth as a model. On he went at a
good five miles and a half an hour, the envy of all men and the
admiration of all women.”
Now, that is a discriminating portrait—a portrait which really helps
you to see that which the writer sets out to describe. After reading it
one can understand why even in reminiscent sporting descriptions of
those old days, amid all the Tonis and Bills and Jacks, it is always
Mr. John Jackson. He was the friend and instructor of Byron and of half
the bloods in town. Jackson it was who, in the heat of combat, seized
the Jew Mendoza by the hair, and so ensured that the pugs for ever
afterwards should be a close-cropped race. Inside you see the square
face of old Broughton, the supreme fighting man of the eighteenth
century, the man whose humble ambition it was to begin with the pivot
man of the Prussian Guard, and work his way through the regiment. He
had a chronicler, the good Captain Godfrey, who has written some
English which would take some beating. How about this passage?—
“He stops as regularly as the swordsman, and carries his blows truly in
the line; he steps not back distrusting of himself, to stop a blow, and
puddle in the return, with an arm unaided by his body, producing but
fly-flap blows. No! Broughton steps boldly and firmly in, bids a
welcome to the coming blow; receives it with his guardian arm; then,
with a general summons of his swelling muscles, and his firm body
seconding his arm, and supplying it with all its weight, pours the
pile-driving force upon his man.”
One would like a little more from the gallant Captain. Poor Broughton!
He fought once too often. “Why, damn you, you’re beat!” cried the Royal
Duke. “Not beat, your highness, but I can’t see my man!” cried the
blinded old hero. Alas, there is the tragedy of the ring as it is of
life! The wave of youth surges ever upwards, and the wave that went
before is swept sobbing on to the shingle. “Youth will be served,” said
the terse old pugs. But what so sad as the downfall of the old
champion! Wise Tom Spring—Tom of Bedford, as Borrow calls him—had the
wit to leave the ring unconquered in the prime of his fame. Cribb also
stood out as a champion. But Broughton, Slack, Belcher, and the
rest—their end was one common tragedy.
The latter days of the fighting men were often curious and unexpected,
though as a rule they were short-lived, for the alternation of the
excess of their normal existence and the asceticism of their training
undermined their constitution. Their popularity among both men and
women was their undoing, and the king of the ring went down at last
before that deadliest of light-weights, the microbe of tubercle, or
some equally fatal and perhaps less reputable bacillus. The crockiest
of spectators had a better chance of life than the magnificent young
athlete whom he had come to admire. Jem Belcher died at 30, Hooper at
31, Pearce, the Game Chicken, at 32, Turner at 35, Hudson at 38,
Randall, the Nonpareil, at 34. Occasionally, when they did reach mature
age, their lives took the strangest turns. Gully, as is well known,
became a wealthy man, and Member for Pontefract in the Reform
Parliament. Humphries developed into a successful coal merchant. Jack
Martin became a convinced teetotaller and vegetarian. Jem Ward, the
Black Diamond, developed considerable powers as an artist. Cribb,
Spring, Langan, and many others, were successful publicans. Strangest
of all, perhaps, was Broughton, who spent his old age haunting every
sale of old pictures and bric-a-brac. One who saw him has recorded his
impression of the silent old gentleman, clad in old-fashioned garb,
with his catalogue in his hand—Broughton, once the terror of England,
and now the harmless and gentle collector.
Many of them, as was but natural, died violent deaths, some by accident
and a few by their own hands. No man of the first class ever died in
the ring. The nearest approach to it was the singular and mournful fate
which befell Simon Byrne, the brave Irishman, who had the misfortune to
cause the death of his antagonist, Angus Mackay, and afterwards met his
own end at the hands of Deaf Burke. Neither Byrne nor Mackay could,
however, be said to be boxers of the very first rank. It certainly
would appear, if we may argue from the prize-ring, that the human
machine becomes more delicate and is more sensitive to jar or shock. In
the early days a fatal end to a fight was exceedingly rare. Gradually
such tragedies became rather more common, until now even with the
gloves they have shocked us by their frequency, and we feel that the
rude play of our forefathers is indeed too rough for a more highly
organized generation. Still, it may help us to clear our minds of cant
if we remember that within two or three years the hunting-field and the
steeple-chase claim more victims than the prize-ring has done in two
centuries.
Many of these men had served their country well with that strength and
courage which brought them fame. Cribb was, if I mistake not, in the
Royal Navy. So was the terrible dwarf Scroggins, all chest and
shoulders, whose springing hits for many a year carried all before them
until the canny Welshman, Ned Turner, stopped his career, only to be
stopped in turn by the brilliant Irishman, Jack Randall. Shaw, who
stood high among the heavy-weights, was cut to pieces by the French
Cuirassiers in the first charge at Waterloo. The brutal Berks died
greatly in the breach of Badajos. The lives of these men stood for
something, and that was just the one supreme thing which the times
called for—an unflinching endurance which could bear up against a world
in arms. Look at Jem Belcher—beautiful, heroic Jem, a manlier Byron—but
there, this is not an essay on the old prize-ring, and one man’s lore
is another man’s bore. Let us pass those three low-down, unjustifiable,
fascinating volumes, and on to nobler topics beyond!