In my second volume I published a long account of the gluttony at the Lord Mayors' banquets in London, and especially of the bestial conduct of the most celebrated mayor that the city of London ever had-Sir Robert Fowler.
In the last chapter of this volume I shall tell how the English objected to this and tried to get my books stopped in France through the police.
I have no wish to denigrate the English. When I returned to London in '80-'81, they were kinder to me than the Americans were when I went to New York with an established reputation in 1914. Many individual Englishmen, in the thirty-odd years I spent in London, became dear friends of mine: and one in especial-Ernest Beckett, Lord Grimthorpe-I shall have much to tell about later. He was the best friend, except Professor Smith of Lawrence, that I have met on this earthly pilgrimage, but some Englishmen and English women, too, are friends of mine to this hour. Still, I am resolved, as one of God's spies, to tell the exact truth about them as I see it.
I don't know how I became a member of the National Sporting Club, but I was always greatly interested in athletics. I may here say a word about perfect physical condition to convince the athlete that I know what I am talking about. From thirty to forty in London I had a professional to box with me for half an hour every morning. When I was perfectly fit, my hand used to strike before I consciously saw the opening: as soon as I saw the opening before I struck I knew I was out of condition. The unconscious action should be quicker than the conscious.
In the late eighties and early nineties, I went to the Sporting Club a couple of times a week. Just as I found that my idea of a good dinner was not shared by those who partook of the Lord Mayors' banquets, so I found that my idea of fair play was not that of the majority of the Sporting Club in London.
I remember well one evening in which two lightweights, boys apparently of twenty or twenty-three, were boxing. In the third or fourth round, one of them caught a heavy blow on the chin and staggered about the ring, grasping at the ropes, and missing them, fell down. The referee began the solemn:
"One-two-three-," but before the fatal ten had been announced, the boy had staggered to his feet, only immediately to be knocked down again. I happened to be sitting just below the judge. I got up in my excitement and said, "Oh, please, won't you stop the fight! He has no chance: he may be severely injured by the next blow; please stop it!"
"I have no right to," replied the judge; and a moment later the cry went up,
"Knock him out, knock him out!" The victor struck the boy a heavy blow and laid him out on the floor for much more than the count of ten. I couldn't help crying out, "Disgraceful, shameless cruelty." A certain lord near me jumped up and cried, "I don't know you, Sir, and don't want to, but keep your opinions to yourself. We want to see a fight to a finish here and not to be interrupted in the middle by your childish opinions."
I could not help laughing: his indignation was so intense and so sincere. "Vae victis," I said; "'woe to the beaten, woe to the unsuccessful' should be the motto of Englishmen."
"And a damned good motto, too," exclaimed another man.
Evidently I was at variance with the feeling of the whole club. I spoke to the secretary and got him to take me outside and introduce me to the beaten boy.
He was pretty badly hurt but full of courage.
"How did you come to get in the way of that blow on the chin?" I asked.
"I haven't had any work for some time," he said to me, "and I have to keep a mother and sister. I hadn't much to eat this last week so I looked upon this fight as a blessing: it would give me ten shillings even if I were beaten; and if I won I might get ten pounds out of it. If you haven't eaten anything for a couple of days," he went on, "you get light and swimmy-like in the head, and so I got it on the chin-a rare jolt; after that I didn't know much what happened till they helped me out here and gave me a whisky and soda. But now I am going off with ten bob and one of them will get me a beefsteak and then I shall feel better."
I was charmed by the boy's high-spirited pluck, so I said, "Take a ten pound note, too, and make up your mind that you will win the next fight by keeping your chin tucked into your chest: it isn't well to shove it out too much in the open."
"Thank you, Sir," he said laughing, "I'll do my best."
I give this incident simply to expose the dreadful cruelty of the average wellbred Englishman. There is a curious want of chivalry in them, and no compassion for the under-dog. I remember two remarkable incidents exemplifying this that may find a place here.
I was one of those who went down the Seine to see a battle on an island in the river between Sullivan and Charlie Mitchell. While they were putting up the ropes, both the combatants stripped off, and it seemed to me a thousand to one on Sullivan. He must have been five feet eleven in height and was superbly made: the very model of a prize-fighter, though he had become far too fat and had put on a veritable paunch; still the power of him took the breath. For years he had toured America, offering any one five hundred dollars who would stay in the ring with him four rounds; but now he was grown fat and scant of breath, like Hamlet.
Charlie Mitchell, whom I knew very well, was an excellent prize-fighter in what we would call today the light heavyweight division. He was about five feet six. in height and very well made; was trained to the hour; and weighed one hundred and sixty pounds or one hundred and sixty-five against the two hundred that Sullivan weighed.
There had been a great deal of rain, and when the men had been in the ring for ten minutes, it was like a mud-puddle and as slippery as a butter-slide.
All through the first rounds, Charlie Mitchell, assured of his superior condition, kept away, forcing Sullivan to run after him again and again round the ring. About the fourth round, Sullivan stopped; he was puffing and blowing like a grampus. "Say, Charlie," he bellowed in his deep voice, "is this a prize-fight or a foot-race?"
Everyone burst out laughing. Sullivan had spoken needlessly. In the next round before he got his wind, Charlie met him and had a set-to in the middle of the ring: he ended it by slipping Sullivan's right and hitting him viciously in the stomach with the left, and then, crossing to the chin with his right, knocked the big champion down. "It seems to me it is a prizefight," said Mitchell coolly; but the heavy blow had taught Sullivan his lesson, and he fought more cautiously for the next half hour or so, till the referee said the fight was over as a draw.
It was curious to note how at once the English spectators changed their attitude and began to pay court to Mitchell.
On the way back to Paris everyone except myself seemed disgusted: the fight should have been fought to a finish, they said. What rot it was to spoil the day with a draw. We had seen some brilliant boxing, and I didn't think the day spoilt at all. It had taught me that Sullivan's day was over.
A little later when the news came through that he had been beaten by Jim Corbett at New Orleans in September, '92, I was not surprised. From all accounts, it was almost a replica of the fight which I had seen with Charlie Mitchell. The first rounds Corbett kept well out of reach, and the crowd jeered at him, while Sullivan kept calling out in his deep bass voice: "Come in and fight." About the third round Corbett went in to fight, and by the end of the fourth round it was seen that the great John Sullivan was beaten. How he ever lasted twenty-five rounds was a wonder! At the beginning of the twenty-first round, Sullivan made a last attempt to turn the tide and rushed at Corbett, but Corbett was too fast and managed to dodge nearly all his blows. This exertion of Sullivan was the last spurt: from that time on, Corbett kept hitting him as he pleased, and finally sent in a terrific right to the chin and Sullivan fell for the full count. On getting to his feet again, he staggered to the ropes, and said, "It is the old story: I am like the pitcher that went to the well once too often," and with the tears running down his face he added, "I have been beaten by a younger and better man, but I thank God he is an American."
John L. Sullivan was a remarkable character, for when he went home beaten and broken and met the treatment usually accorded in this world to the defeated, he gave up drinking and became a temperance lecturer. He made good, too, in this new role, and died fairly well off. In my poor opinion, with the solitary exception of Fitzsimmons, he was the best prizefighter I have ever seen, and surely at his best, the best prize-fighter in the history of the ring.
Some time later I went to see Slavin fight Jim Smith at Bruges. At first I was in Smith's camp and welcomed his supporters in the hotel at Bruges. Squire Baird, as he was called, was the principal backer of Smith. He was a millionaire, the result of three generations of Scotch ironmasters. I thought him one of the worst specimens of mankind I had ever seen: foul-mouthed, illiterate; he bragged continuously, but the whole gang did him honor for his wealth.
Next day after some difficulties the ring was pitched and the fight began. The two men seemed fairly well matched: Slavin, a little taller and lighter, but trained to the hour; Smith, strongly made and a good boxer, but clearly suffering from years of good London living. In the first round or two, Slavin took all care, though not afraid to mix it; but after the third round, the fight went all one way; it ended by Slavin knocking Smith down, which surprised the whole crowd of Smith's backers, and most of all, Baird, who kept shouting insults at Slavin from Smith's corner.
Soon afterwards, the crowd of Smith's supporters, drawing the ropes loose, made the way to Smith's corner a sort of lane. Smith stood by his own chair awaiting Slavin's onslaught, and Slavin with rare courage went over to him.
As he entered the lane, blows were showered upon him from Smith's supporters, but he nevertheless went through to Smith and knocked him down in his own corner.
The fight was over and ought to have been given to Slavin then and there, but Baird and his gang were not finished with. They raised a cry of "Police" and dragged Smith out of the ring and began sponging him and attending to him, thus giving him time to recover, if recovery were possible. Slavin sat in his corner quietly waiting. When Smith came in again to the ring, Slavin again had to go over to his corner to fight him, and now one of Baird's gang used a knuckle duster, and as Slavin passed, struck him heavily on the ear, cutting him so that the blood poured down his neck and shoulders; but he went on to Smith's corner in spite of a hail of blows from the spectators, and again knocked Smith down. At this the referee, to the surprise of every one, gave the fight as a draw.
Turning to the referee, Slavin exclaimed: "I have come thirteen thousand miles to have a fair fight, and you give it as a draw when the man for three rounds hasn't dared to leave his corner. Look how his supporters hit me and treated me; why in the very first round he wrestled me and shoved his boot nails into my legs"-and he pulled up his short drawers and showed his bleeding thigh. "I didn't even protest," he went on, "I could beat the fellow with one hand. How dare you give it as a draw? There is only one man in the ring!"
The referee replied, "I did it to save you from the brutes on the other side."
"Nonsense," cried Slavin, "turn them all in; I'll take on the whole damned crew." Never was there more splendid Irish courage.
At a word from Baird, his crew ran round to Slavin's corner as if to attack him, but Slavin walked to his chair, paying no more attention to them than if they had been a pack of Sunday school children, and not one dared now to lay a hand on him.
Baird's money had queered the whole fight!
But even before Slavin had spoken, I had left Smith's side and gone across to Slavin's corner, and when Baird came to me afterwards, I took no notice of him and wouldn't speak to him.
I returned to the Sporting Club and told the story and insisted that Squire Baird should be turned out of the club as a disgrace, not only to English sport, but to humanity. And I believe he was turned out. A word of mine about him stuck, I believe: remembering he was a product of Scotch ironmasters and Puritans, I said that the iron had entered into his soul.
A little later a story went about London of his conduct to his mistress, a woman of good breeding, which did him no good. He had bought her, it appeared, and one night he came home with his usual set of drunken prizefighters and cab-drivers; and when they were all drunk, he rang the bell and sent the maid up for Mrs. L… The maid came down and said her mistress was in bed. Baird said, "If she doesn't come down, I will go up and fetch her down in her shift." Whereupon the lady had to come down and witness some of the drunken orgy. Next morning she packed up and told Baird she was going to leave him. He went out and in half an hour came back and tried in his rough way to get her to stay. When she wouldn't stay, he took a ball of paper out of his pocket and threw it at her face. She told him what a cur he was to strike a woman; he cried, "Look at it, you fool, before you talk." When she picked it up, she found the ball of paper was made of fifty notes for a thousand pounds each.
The story was told to me by one who had heard Baird tell it. A little later, I believe, Baird died, still a young man, but a dreadful specimen of the evil great wealth can work on a common nature!
A little later I was to meet a much better specimen of the prize-fighter than Slavin, certainly the best character I ever saw in the ring. One day news came to the Sporting Club that Peter Jackson, the colored man, was coming over to London and was spoiling for a fight. I heard from the secretary that Slavin was very eager to meet Mm, and accordingly they soon met.
I soon got to know Peter Jackson personally and liked his quiet and modest ways. I asked him one day who would win.
"It is a tricky game," he said, "but I don't intend to let Slavin beat me, if I can help it. He is rather a brute. You know I taught him boxing in Australia: one day something or other I said offended him, and he struck me in the face, and we had a set-to. They parted us pretty quickly. But I am not afraid of Slavin and I don't like him, and frankly I don't think he has any chance of beating me."
Charlie Mitchell sized up the fight clearly beforehand. "Slavin," he said, "is a real fighter, and if he starts in at once to mix it, he may get the better of Jackson; but if he boxes with him for the first rounds, he is sure to be beaten;
Jackson is about the best boxer I have ever seen-a really fine performer, both in defense and in attack."
The fight bore out Mitchell's prediction to the letter. Slavin boxed the first three or four rounds, and Jackson outboxed him from beginning to end.
About the fourth round, Slavin rushed in and struck Jackson heavily about the heart. The round was clearly Slavin's, but the bell saved Jackson.
When they came out again, Slavin tried the same rushing tactics, but Jackson avoided him and kept hitting him in the face and on the chin; and in this round Slavin palpably weakened. From that time on Jackson hit him almost as he wished, and the fight ended pretty quickly with Slavin's complete defeat.
Peter Jackson told me afterwards that the punch which he had got from Slavin over the heart was the heaviest he had ever had in his life.
The colored man, Peter Jackson, like Corbett, was very much of a gentleman: he told me he always hated to knock anyone out, and thought the referee should stop the fight when the complete superiority of one fighter was established. I have said nothing in these memoirs of mine about Corbett, but he was a splendid specimen, and I always believed that his defeat by Fitzsimmons, good as Fitzsimmons was, was due rather to a chance blow, which caught him on the spleen, than to any superiority. Still Fitzsimmons was a marvelous fighter; considering that he never weighed more than one hundred and sixty pounds, the most extraordinary fighter ever seen. It mustn't be forgotten, however, that he had a longer reach than most of the big ones, and blacksmith's fists at the end of enormous arms; he seemed to be built for the ring.
I should perhaps say one word here to explain certain defeats in the prizering that are not sufficiently understood. A young man-and prizefighters should be very young-after training hard for some time and getting into perfect condition, is very apt to discontinue all exercise when the fight is over, and so put on a great deal of fat very quickly. He has been keeping himself fit by the most strenuous exercise, which has developed his appetite as well as his muscles. When he stops training, his appetite continues and immediately fat accumulates, and it accumulates not only round the intestines and abdomen, but round all the muscles, and especially round the main muscle of all, the heart.
It is comparatively easy to take off abdominal fat, but it is extremely difficult and extremely painful to take off fat that has accumulated round the heart.
In fact, the moment a man begins seriously to train for this purpose, any prolonged exercise exhausts him and he feels very ill. The heart, lacking its accustomed support, sags, labors, and the man feels faint and sick. For a couple of months, at any rate, the athlete must go on exercising under a constant cloud of sickness and weakness that is apt to bring him to despair.
But if be continues, the fat will come off and in a certain tune, say six months, he will begin to feel fit and well and strong again, and increasingly fit and strong as time goes on; though in my opinion he will never be quite as good again as he was before the fat accumulated round the heart.
The case of Paget Tomlinson, the famous hurdler, occurs to me. A great natural runner, he had stopped exercising for a year or so, but was called out when Oxford and Cambridge had to meet Harvard and Yale; and though he was still, as he thought, very fit, the clock told him at the beginning of his training that he was nothing like so good as he had been a year or two before.
But he trained as a man of brain does train, with perfect method and desperate resolution. He brought himself down to pounds less than he had ever been at the varsity, and persevered through the feeling of disease and sickness, but still the clock would not be conciliated. He got to within half a second of his best tune, but could not improve it, and was beaten in the race some three yards by a younger man who had never been out of training.
Now, prize-fighting is a far severer test than a one-hundred-and-twenty yards' sprint over hurdles. How severe it is can be told in almost one sentence.
Sharkey and Jeffries had a memorable fight of one hour. In that hour it was found that Sharkey had lost thirteen pounds and Jeffries eleven pounds and a half. These men were both trained to the hour before they went into the ring, and the loss of weight alone shows how tremendous the exertion and strain must have been.
The best way for the fighter, of course, is never to go out of training, strictly to limit what he drinks with his meals, and prevent himself ever going up more than a pound or two; but if he has put on weight, the best way of taking it off is not to go into physical training at once, but to begin by cutting out all drinking with his meals. Half an hour before a meal and two hours afterwards, he should drink nothing. In a month he will be lighter than he ever was, probably even than he was in his first training, and then he can begin by careful exercise and very careful feeding to increase his strength once more and get himself perfectly fit.
Perhaps I should say here too that unfortunately boxing has won such vogue in the last two or three decades that the influence of money has corrupted and degraded the prize-ring. No one can be a champion and be honest; it is almost unthinkable. Big money wants to bet on a certainty: a man cannot be as sure of winning as of losing; hence he will be a better instrument for making money on if he consents to lose than if he wanted to win. The fact is patent, obvious, corroborated by experience everywhere.
Is baseball honest? Is horse-racing honest? Ask a real prize-fighter: "Is prizefighting honest?" and he'll laugh in your face.
I have only written these recollections of prize-fighters to justify my opinion that the prize-fight is an evil, and boxing one of the lowest forms of athletics. I am very sorry that the French and Germans have taken it up as they have, but fortunately, in the last thirty years, the French have taken up every form of athletics with passionate enthusiasm. I remember thirty years ago seeing some regiments drilling near Toulon; someone had put up a rail about two feet six in height for the men to run and jump over. It was perfectly comic to see how most of the soldiers jumped with both feet together. At the request of the colonel, I went over and showed them how they should jump the rail, taking it in their stride. Thirty years later the ordinary French boy has learned how to jump and how to run, too, while at cycling he is probably as good as any.
The worst evil of boxing came through its increased popularity. As soon as it was taken up in America, the quick Irish-Americans found out that two blows were likely to be decisive; the first blow is an upward stroke catching the chin, which produces a shock on the vertebrae and often results in partial paralysis; the other is the blow on the spleen, which is spoken of as the blow in the pit of the stomach; but when the spleen is really hit, it turns the man sick and he has very little strength for the next ten or fifteen minutes, in spite of perfect training.
I remember one boy in London who had learned the chin blow perfectly; he used always to mix it, at half-arm's length, at about the third round and take whatever punishment he got smiling; but would suddenly flash out either left or right with an upper cut to the chin, which, even if it didn't catch the spot perfectly, was usually sufficient to decide the fight.
It is this knowledge of the weak parts of our frame that has made prizefighting so intolerably brutal. In my time at the National Sporting Club in London there were two or three old boxers who were still hangers-on at the club, whose heads were all knocked on one side, and faces distorted with partial paralysis, the dreadful debris of human savagery. Wrestling is a far better exercise than prize-fighting and far less likely to injure any of the contestants permanently.
I must not be taken to mean that brutality is chiefly or solely English and German; it is to be found also, though in a less degree, in France and the Latin countries, as well as in northern Europe. I remember once being horrified by seeing Salammbo on the films in France. I recalled that Flaubert represented the poor fellow being beaten almost to death by the crowd, including women.
The whole brutal exhibition was put on before one with an intense realism, and the crowd delighted in the appalling exhibition. I left the theatre thinking it would take a thousand years to civilize a French crowd; and an Italian crowd is no better, and a Spanish crowd is just as bad.
I am full of tolerance, I think, for all mortal weaknesses; I can easily forgive all the frailties of the flesh and all the sins of the spirit, with the sole exception of cruelty. Cruelty to man or beast, to rat or snake, seems to me the unforgivable sin, the one utterly loathsome and damnable crime that shows utter degradation, the devil in man.
Of course there are degrees even in this villainy; cruelty to animals adds cowardice to the diabolic.
In Rome once I stopped a peasant who was beating a horse unmercifully: and when I told him he ought to be ashamed of himself, he declared that he would beat the creature as he pleased because it had no soul; and this excuse was urged not once, but twenty times, in favor of sadic cruelties practiced on dogs and cats. Was it thoughtlessness or want of imagination or something brutal in man's nature? I often asked myself, but never found an answer.
During a winter spent in Spain I got to know and like the Premier, Canovas Del Castillo. I made him a proposal which I thought interesting; that he should send twenty or thirty of the masterpieces of the Prado Gallery in Madrid to London for the season, especially a dozen paintings of Velasquez, who was then very little known in England. He said at once that if the British government would reciprocate he would do it willingly: the pictures could easily be sent by special train, or on a special warship, or in two or three parcels, so as to diminish the risk of loss. He agreed with me that the international effect of such an exchange could only be inspiring.
When I returned to England I saw Lord Salisbury on the matter, but to my astonishment he held up his hands and wouldn't hear of it, "I am glad I have no power," he said, "it isn't within the range of my duties. You would have to go to the trustees of the National Gallery in order to get the permission, and I don't think they would consent." I sounded one or two of them, but found they all wanted to shelter themselves behind the impossible.
I only mention the matter here because it was one of the many pleasant talks that made me appreciate the Spanish Premier's mind and character. Talking to him once about bull-fighting, to my astonishment he agreed with me that the killing of the horses was shamefully brutal and mere torture.
"Why not stop it?" I asked. "The play of the chulos at first and putting in the banderillas is extremely fine and interesting with just sufficient danger to make it enthralling; and the killing of the bull with a sword thrust is such an extraordinary feat that every one would wish to have seen it; but the lancers, who on horseback torture the bull to attack the poor old horses and tear them to pieces, constitute a dreadful exhibition."
Canovas finally declared that he would try to stop that part of bullfighting; and he kept his word. Everyone remembers the result: the mob left the bullring hissing and shouting and went after the Premier, who had to take refuge in the Royal Palace and then flee out of the back door and get away from Madrid. The thing the Spanish populace most loved was the horrible cruelty and torturing of the poor, broken-down horses.
Before leaving this chapter on prize-fighting and cruelty, I wish to record the most tragic story I have ever heard or read of. When one thinks of tragedy, one recalls unconsciously the tragedy of Socrates, or the still more terrible tragedy of Jesus on the Cross; but once many years ago, while spending a holiday in Venice, an old Venetian told me a story which seemed to me more terrible than these. I have often wanted to use it and have been afraid to, and with the passing of the years the memory became a little vague. But the other day I came across the tale again, told at full length and in its proper historical setting.
It belongs to the time of the five months' siege of Venice by the Austrians, half a century ago now. The story is already passing into oblivion, even among Venetians, but it surely deserves to be revived today. Here it is, word for word:
"The Venetian commanders determined to sever the single link with the mainland, and to blow up the two-and-a-half miles of uniform roading-the work of the oppressors-which bridged the lagoon.
"For some reason the mine did not explode; whereupon a certain Agostino Stefani volunteered to row out in his sandolo and set the matter right.
"General Cosenza accepted the bold offer, and in the face of a double fire from the forts of Malghera and San Giuliano, Agostino set out in his light craft.
"He accomplished his task unscathed, but on the return passage over the wide unsheltered stretch of water, the sandolo was hit and sunk.
"Agostino was a strong swimmer, but the current was against him, and when a patrol boat at length picked him up, he was exhausted beyond power of articulation.
"Excited crowds on the bank watched his rescue, and suddenly, 'A spy! A spy!
A traitor!' was shouted. The reported capture of an Austrian was spread from mouth to mouth. Stones and execrations were hurled at the patrol boat, and suspicion seemed to fly with them and infect the crew, who threw the speechless man back into the water and struck at him with oars and stones.
He sank just before General Cosenza's aide-de-camp proclaimed his identity and told of his heroic courage."
What he must have thought before he sank, poor Agostino, with shouts of "Spione; spione; traditore!" sounding in his ears!
The benefactor of his fellows-a brave soldier if ever there was one- murdered by those he had fought for, and murdered as a spy and a traitor- "Spione! traditore!" ringing as a curse in his death-agony.