TOM BLAKE AGAIN
_(James Orlebar Cloyster’s narrative continued)_
Hatton’s Club boys took kindly to my course of instruction. For a
couple of months, indeed, it seemed that another golden age of the
noble art was approaching, and that the rejuvenation of boxing would
occur, beginning at Carnation Hall, Lambeth.
Then the thing collapsed like a punctured tyre.
At first, of course, they fought a little shy. But when I had them up
in line, and had shown them what a large proportion of an eight-ounce
glove is padding, they grew more at ease. To be asked suddenly to fight
three rounds with one of your friends before an audience, also of your
friends, is embarrassing. One feels hot and uncomfortable. Hatton’s
boys jibbed nervously. As a preliminary measure, therefore, I drilled
them in a class at foot-work and the left lead. They found the exercise
exhilarating. If this was the idea, they seemed to say, let the thing
go on. Then I showed them how to be highly scientific with a punch
ball. Finally, I sparred lightly with them myself.
In the rough they were impossible boxers. After their initial distrust
had evaporated under my gentle handling of them, they forgot all I had
taught them about position and guards. They bored in, heads down and
arms going like semicircular pistons. Once or twice I had to stop them.
They were easily steadied. They hastened to adopt a certain snakiness
of attack instead of the frontal method which had left them so exposed.
They began to cultivate a kind of negative style. They were
tremendously impressed by the superiority of science over strength.
I am not sure that I did not harp rather too much on the scientific
note. Perhaps if I had referred to it less, the ultimate disaster would
not have been quite so appalling. On the other hand, I had not the
slightest suspicion that they would so exaggerate my meaning when I was
remarking on the worth of science, how it “tells,” and how it causes
the meagre stripling to play fast and loose with huge, brawny
ruffians—no cowards, mark you—and hairy as to their chests.
But the weeds at Hatton’s Club were fascinated by my homilies on
science. The simplicity of the thing appealed to them irresistibly.
They caught at the expression, “Science,” and regarded it as the “Hey
Presto!” of a friendly conjurer who could so arrange matters for them
that powerful opponents would fall flat, involuntarily, at the sight of
their technically correct attitude.
I did not like to destroy their illusions. Had I said to them, “Look
here, science is no practical use to you unless you’ve got low-bridged,
snub noses, protruding temples, nostrils like the tubes of a
vacuum-cleaner, stomach muscles like motor-car wheels, hands like legs
of mutton, and biceps like transatlantic cables”—had I said that, they
would have voted boxing a fraud, and gone away to quarrel over a game
of backgammon, which was precisely what I wished to avoid.
So I let them go on with their tapping and feinting and side-slipping.
To make it worse they overheard Sidney Price trying to pay me a
compliment. Price was the insurance clerk who had attached himself to
Hatton and had proved himself to be of real service in many ways. He
was an honest man, but he could not box. He came down to the hall one
night after I had given four or five lessons, to watch the boys spar.
Of course, to the uninitiated eye it did seem as though they were neat
in their work. The sight was very different from the absurd exhibition
which Price had seen on the night I started with them. He might easily
have said, if he was determined to compliment me, that they had
“improved,” “progressed,” or something equally adequate and innocuous.
But no. The man must needs be effusive, positively gushing. He came to
me in transports. “Wonderful!” he said. “Wonderful!”
“What’s wonderful?” I said, a shade irritably.
“Their style,” he said loudly, so that they could all hear, “their
style. It’s their style that astonishes me.”
I hustled him away as soon as I could, but the mischief was done.
Style ran through Hatton’s Club boys like an epidemic. Carnation Hall
fairly buzzed with style. An apology for a blow which landed on your
chest with the delicacy of an Agag among butterflies was extolled to
the skies because it was a stylish blow. When Alf Joblin, a recruit,
sent Walter Greenway sprawling with a random swing on the mark, there
was a pained shudder. Not only Walter Greenway, but the whole club
explained to Alf that the swing was a bad swing, an awful violation of
style, practically a crime. By the time they had finished explaining,
Alf was dazed; and when invited by Walter to repeat the hit with a view
to his being further impressed with its want of style, did so in such
half-hearted fashion that Walter had time to step stylishly aside and
show Alf how futile it is to be unscientific.
To the club this episode was decently buried in an unremembered past.
To me, however, it was significant, though I did not imagine it would
ever have the tremendous sequel which was brought about by the coming
of Thomas Blake.
Fate never planned a coup so successfully. The psychology of Blake’s
arrival was perfect. The boxers of Carnation Hall had worked themselves
into a mental condition which I knew was as ridiculous as it was
dangerous. Their conceit and their imagination transformed the hall
into a kind of improved National Sporting Club. They went about with an
air of subdued but tremendous athleticism. They affected a sort of
self-conscious nonchalance. They adopted an odiously patronising
attitude towards the once popular game of backgammon. I daresay that
picture is not yet forgotten where a British general, a man of blood
and iron, is portrayed as playing with a baby, to the utter neglect of
a table full of important military dispatches. Well, the club boys, to
a boy, posed as generals of blood and iron when they condescended to
play backgammon. They did it, but they let you see that they did not
regard it as one of the serious things of life.
Also, knowing that each other’s hitting was so scientific as to be
harmless, they would sometimes deliberately put their eye in front of
their opponent’s stylish left, in the hope that the blow would raise a
bruise. It hardly ever did. But occasionally——! Oh, then you should
have seen the hero-with-the-quiet-smile look on their faces as they
lounged ostentatiously about the place. In a word, they were above
themselves. They sighed for fresh worlds to conquer. And Thomas Blake
supplied the long-felt want.
Personally, I did not see his actual arrival. I only saw his handiwork
after he had been a visitor awhile within the hall. But, to avoid
unnecessary verbiage and to avail myself of the privilege of an author,
I will set down, from the evidence of witnesses, the main points of the
episode as though I myself had been present at his entrance.
He did not strike them, I am informed, as a particularly big man. He
was a shade under average height. His shoulders seemed to them not so
much broad as “humpy.” He rolled straight in from the street on a wet
Saturday night at ten minutes to nine, asking for “free tea.”
I should mention that on certain Fridays Hatton gave a free meal to his
parishioners on the understanding that it was rigidly connected with a
Short Address. The preceding Friday had been such an occasion. The
placards announcing the tea were still clinging to the outer railings
of the hall.
When I said that Blake asked for free tea, I should have said, shouted
for free tea. He cast one decisive glance at Hatton’s placards, and
rolled up. He shot into the gate, up the steps, down the passage, and
through the door leading into the big corrugated-iron hall which I used
for my lessons. And all the time he kept shouting for free tea.
In the hall the members of my class were collected. Some were changing
their clothes; others, already changed, were tapping the punch-ball.
They knew that I always came punctually at nine o’clock, and they liked
to be ready for me. Amongst those present was Sidney Price.
Thomas Blake brought up short, hiccuping, in the midst of them. “Gimme
that free tea!” he said.
Sidney Price, whose moral fortitude has never been impeached, was the
first to handle the situation.
“My good man,” he said, “I am sorry to say you have made a mistake.”
“A mistake!” said Thomas, quickly taking him up. “A mistake! Oh! What
oh! My errer?”
“Quite so,” said Price, diplomatically; “an error.”
Thomas Blake sat down on the floor, fumbled for a short pipe, and said,
“Seems ter me I’m sick of errers. Sick of ’em! Made a bloomer this
mornin’—this way.” Here he took into his confidence the group which had
gathered uncertainly round him. “My wife’s brother, ’im wot’s a
postman, owes me arf a bloomin’ thick ’un. ’E’s a hard-working bloke,
and ter save ’im trouble I came down ’ere from Brentford, where my boat
lies, to catch ’im on ’is rounds. Lot of catchin’ ’e wanted, too—I
_don’t_ think. Tracked ’im by the knocks at last. And then, wot d’yer
think ’e said? Didn’t know nothing about no ruddy ’arf thick ’un, and
would I kindly cease to impede a public servant in the discharge of ’is
dooty. Otherwise—the perlice. That, mind you, was my own
brother-in-law. Oh, he’s a nice man, I _don’t_ think!”
Thomas Blake nodded his head as one who, though pained by the
hollowness of life, is resigned to it, and proceeded to doze.
The crowd gazed at him and murmured.
Sidney Price, however, stepped forward with authority.
“You’d better be going,” he said; and he gently jogged the recumbent
boatman’s elbow.
“Leave me be! I want my tea,” was the muttered and lyrical reply.
“Hook it!” said Price.
“Without my tea?” asked Blake, opening his eyes wide.
“It was yesterday,” explained Price, brusquely. “There isn’t any free
tea tonight.”
The effect was magical. A very sinister expression came over the face
of the prostrate one, and he slowly clambered to his feet.
“Ho!” he said, disengaging himself from his coat. “Ho. There ain’t no
free tea ternight, ain’t there? Bills stuck on them railings in errer,
I suppose. Another bloomin’ errer. Seems to me I’m sick of errers. Wot
I says is, ‘Come on, all of yer.’ I’m Tom Blake, I am. You can arst
them down at Brentford. Kind old Tom Blake, wot wouldn’t hurt a fly;
and I says, ‘Come on, all of yer,’ and I’ll knock yer insides through
yer backbones.”
Sidney Price spoke again. His words were honeyed, but ineffectual.
“I’m honest old Tom, I am,” boomed Thomas Blake, “and I’m ready for the
lot of yer: you and yer free tea and yer errers.”
At this point Alf Joblin detached himself from the hovering crowd and
said to Price: “He must be cowed. I’ll knock sense into the drunken
brute.”
“Well,” said Price, “he’s got to go; but you won’t hurt him, Alf, will
you?”
“No,” said Alf, “I won’t hurt him. I’ll just make him look a fool. This
is where science comes in.”
“I’m honest old Tom,” droned the boatman.
“If you _will_ have it,” said Alf, with fine aposiopesis.
He squared up to him.
Now Alf Joblin, like the other pugilists of my class, habitually
refrained from delivering any sort of attack until he was well assured
that he had seen an orthodox opening. A large part of every round
between Hatton’s boys was devoted to stealthy circular movements,
signifying nothing. But Thomas Blake had not had the advantage of
scientific tuition. He came banging in with a sweeping right. Alf
stopped him with his left. Again Blake swung his right, and again he
took Alf’s stopping blow without a blink. Then he went straight in,
right and left in quick succession. The force of the right was broken
by Alf’s guard, but the left got home on the mark; and Alf Joblin’s
wind left him suddenly. He sat down on the floor.
To say that this tragedy in less than five seconds produced dismay
among the onlookers would be incorrect. They were not dismayed. They
were amused. They thought that Alf had laid himself open to chaff.
Whether he had slipped or lost his head they did not know. But as for
thinking that Alf with all his scientific knowledge was not more than a
match for this ignorant, intoxicated boatman, such a reflection never
entered their heads. What is more, each separate member of the audience
was convinced that he individually was the proper person to illustrate
the efficacy of style versus untutored savagery.
As soon, therefore, as Alf Joblin went writhing to the floor, and
Thomas Blake’s voice was raised afresh in a universal challenge, Walter
Greenway stepped briskly forward.
And as soon as Walter’s guard had been smashed down by a most
unconventional attack, and Walter himself had been knocked senseless by
a swing on the side of the jaw, Bill Shale leaped gaily forth to take
his place.
And so it happened that, when I entered the building at nine, it was as
though a devastating tornado had swept down every club boy, sparing
only Sidney Price, who was preparing miserably to meet his fate.
To me, standing in the doorway, the situation was plain at the first
glance. Only by a big effort could I prevent myself laughing outright.
It was impossible to check a grin. Thomas Blake saw me.
“Hullo!” I said; “what’s all this?”
He stared at me.
“’Ullo!” he said, “another of ’em, is it? I’m honest old Tom Blake, _I_
am, and wot I say is——”
“Why honest, Mr. Blake?” I interrupted.
“Call me a liar, then!” said he. “Go on. You do it. Call it me, then,
and let’s see.”
He began to shuffle towards me.
“Who pinched his father’s trousers, and popped them?” I inquired
genially.
He stopped and blinked.
“Eh?” he said weakly.
“And who,” I continued, “when sent with twopence to buy postage-stamps,
squandered it on beer?”
His jaw dropped, as it had dropped in Covent Garden. It must be very
unpleasant to have one’s past continually rising up to confront one.
“Look ’ere!” he said, a conciliatory note in his voice, “you and me’s
pals, mister, ain’t we? Say we’re pals. Of course we are. You and me
don’t want no fuss. Of course we don’t. Then look here: this is ’ow it
is. You come along with me and ’ave a drop.”
It did not seem likely that my class would require any instruction in
boxing that evening in addition to that which Mr. Blake had given them,
so I went with him.
Over the moisture, as he facetiously described it, he grew friendliness
itself. He did not ask after Kit, but gave his opinion of her
gratuitously. According to him, she was unkind to her relations. “Crool
’arsh,” he said. A girl, in fact, who made no allowances for a man, and
was over-prone to Sauce and the Nasty Snack.
We parted the best of friends.
“Any time you’re on the Cut,” he said, gripping my hand with painful
fervour, “you look out for Tom Blake, mister. Tom Blake of the
_Ashlade_ and _Lechton_. No ceremony. Jest drop in on me and the
missis. Goo’ night.”
At the moment of writing Tom Blake is rapidly acquiring an assured
position in the heart of the British poetry-loving public. This
incident in his career should interest his numerous admirers. The world
knows little of its greatest men.