sports and games may be classified as natural and artificial. running, jumping, and swimming, for example, are natural sports, though, to be sure, much artifice is required to assure in them especial excellence. in these simple instances it is merely directed to avoid waste of energy. boxing is one of the artificial sports, and has never been, like wrestling, anything else. in the far distant past the primitive man, with no weapon handy, no doubt clutched and hugged and clawed at his immediate enemies, just as children, who are invariably primitive until they are taught “better,” clutch and claw to-day. that natural and instinctive grasping and hugging was the forefather of subtle and tricky wrestling, whether greek, roman, or north-country english, but as far as we can discover the earliest use of fisticuffs was for sport alone. it may seem natural to hit a man you hate, but it is only second nature, and any one but a trained boxer is apt to seize him by the throat. the employment of fists as weapons of offence and of arms for shields developed from the sport. as such, too, it is very effectual, especially when combined with a knowledge of wrestling, but only when the enemy is of similar mind. i am informed by a former honorary secretary of the oxford university boxing club, who from this point of view ruthlessly criticised a former book of mine on the subject, and who has spent many years in close contact with uncivilisation, that boxing is of extremely little value against a man with a broken bottle or a spanner—let alone an armed cannibal.
the praises of boxing as a practical means of self-defence have been, perhaps, too loudly sung. a boy at school may earn for himself a certain reputation, may establish a funk amongst his fellows owing to his quickness and agility with or without the gloves; but in practice he seldom has a chance of employing his xx skill against his enemies. on the other hand, a small boy who comes in contact for the first time with another’s skill (or even brutality) receiving a blow in the face, invariably cries, “beastly cad!” because a blow in the face hurts him.
you have to accept this convention of sportsmanlike warfare, like others, before you can make it work. and the love of fair play of which we have heard so much in the past is quite artificial too. it is not really inherent in human nature. like other moralities it has to be taught, and it is very seldom taught with success. let us say, not unreasonably, that you begin to take an interest in boxing as a boy. you hear about various fights—at least you do nowadays, and you want to imitate the fighters, just as in the same way but at a different moment you want to be an engine-driver, or an airman, or the principal boy in robinson crusoe, when your young attention is drawn to such occupations. when i was a small boy (if, in order to illustrate a point, a short excursion into autobiography may be forgiven me), the last flicker of the prize-ring had, so to put it, just expired, and glove-fighting was not then perhaps a pretty business. a curiosity which, not being skilled in the science and practice of psycho-analysis, i can only ascribe to spontaneous generation, and the fact that tom sayers once invested my mother, then a little girl, with his champion’s belt at a village fair—this curiosity impelled me to desire, from a railway bookstall, the purchase on my behalf of a shilling book called the art of self-defence, by one ned donelly. it was, i believe, the very first work of its peculiar and spurious kind—that is, a handbook with or without merit (this one had several, notably that of brevity), written by a sporting reporter and inscribed by the pugilist. i had some difficulty in getting that gift, but when i did i devoured the book from gray paper cover to cover. i knew it almost all by heart once. i remember now that ned donelly said he had fought under the auspices of nat langham, and i wondered what auspices meant, and i wonder now if ned donelly knew. later, in the mid-nineties, rodney stone appeared in the pages of “the strand magazine,” and sir arthur conan doyle, whilst admitting that rascality was known in xxi connection with the prize-ring, yet showed how the great tradition of the british love of fair play in the face of the most reprehensible practices maintained itself. all literature which touched the subject, all conversation with elder persons led me to believe that this desire of fair play was inseparable from the british composition (though seldom found outside these islands), and that if one had a quarrel at school an adjournment was immediately made to some secret trysting-place, where boys formed a ring, a timekeeper and referee were appointed, and you and your opponent nobly contended until one—the one who was in the wrong, of course—gave in.
it wasn’t until i wished to have a fair, stand-up fight with another boy—with a succession of other boys—that i found a somewhat serious flaw in the great tradition, and that at one of the “recognised” public schools. the other boy might or might not stand up straight in front, but half a dozen other boys would invariably hang on behind—me. in the end i managed to bring off two fair fights, one with another boy of like mind who, cold-blooded and conversational, walked with me to a secluded field; the other by means of a ruse. i had challenged this adversary again and again. with derision, he refused to fight me. once i attacked him in public, but was very soon made to see sense, as well as stars, for he hit me at his own convenience whilst his partisans held my arms. the merits of the quarrel i entirely forget. you may be sure that they were trivial. i will readily admit that both of us were horrible little beasts (though i admit it the more readily of him) in the certain knowledge that boys of our age, excepting those who happen to read this, almost always are. so i waited my opportunity, and one evening i caught my enemy alone reading a paper on a notice-board. i came behind him with stealth, and i kicked him hard, and i then ran away. and he did exactly what i had, rather confidently, expected him to do. he thought me an arrant coward, and he followed fast. i led him to a safe and secluded passage, well lit, at the top of some stairs where there was just room for a close encounter. we should not be interrupted by any one. i waited for him to get on a level xxii with me. i have seldom enjoyed anything so much as the next two minutes or so. i hated that boy very much. the score against him was a long one. moralists (who are always dishonest in their methods of propaganda) tell us that revenge turns to gall and bitterness.... oh, does it? the sheer physical delight in thrashing some one i hated, some one rather bigger and heavier than myself, too, which made it all the better, has lived on in sweet retrospect. there was no “hearty handshake” or anything pretty of that sort. it was simple, downright bashing, and it was delicious. and, not to please the moralist but to record a fact, the air really was cleared. we did shake hands afterwards, and all rancour was gone—at least from me: and for ever after we were quite, though perhaps coldly, civil to each other, and my late adversary is now a lieutenant-colonel, d.s.o., and i think (but am not sure) c.m.g.
the love of fair play, then, where hate is involved, needs a great deal of teaching. i am not trying, in the instance quoted above, to make a case for myself as a lover of fair play in those days. the difference between my enemy and me was chiefly a difference in vanity. he was content to annoy me without risk of hurt or chance of glory. i was ready to stake a bit in order that my victory should be complete for my own smug self-satisfaction. he was the practical fellow: i was the sentimentalist.
boxing of a kind is the earliest artificial sport of which we have any record, and the earliest record, and from the literary point of view, the best of all time is, though we are not concerned with it here, greek.
as far as can be discovered there is no tale of any boxing between the gradually debased sport of the ancients and the institution of the british prize-ring early in the eighteenth century. and it was not until a hundred years or more later that boxing began to take its place as a topic in polite letters. under that head it is difficult to include boxiana, or sketches of antient and modern xxiii pugilism, from the days of the renowned broughton and slack to the championship of crib. this was written by pierce egan, the inventor of “tom and jerry,” and dedicated to captain barclay, the famous trainer of pugilists. the first volume was published in 1818. egan, like many later writers, was often upon the defensive, and was ever upon the alert to find excuses for the noble art. he constantly drew attention to the fact that, whilst italians used stilettos and frenchmen engaged in duels à la mort, the briton has the good sense to settle a dispute with his fists. egan frankly disliked refinement, but he does recognise in boxing something better than refinement.
the same point of view is implicit in m. m?terlinck’s discussion of modern boxing.1
“... synthetic, irresistible, unimprovable blows. as soon as one of them touches the adversary, the fight is ended, to the complete satisfaction of the conqueror, who triumphs so incontestably, and with no dangerous hurt to the conquered, who is simply reduced to impotence and unconsciousness during the time needed for all ill-will to evaporate.”
to return to pierce egan, blackwood’s magazine for march, 1820, goes in (if the prevalent metaphor of precisely a hundred years later may be allowed) off the deep end in reviewing boxiana:—
“it is sufficient justification of pugilism to say—mr. egan is its historian.... he has all the eloquence and feeling of a percy—all the classical grace and inventive ingenuity of a warton—all the enthusiasm and zeal of a headley—all the acuteness and vigour of a ritson—all the learning and wit of an ellis—all the delicacy and discernment of a campbell; and, at the same time, his style is perfectly his own, and likely to remain so, for it is as inimitable xxiv as it is excellent. the man who has not read boxiana is ignorant of the power of the english language.”
if ever responsible overstatement reached the border-line of sheer dementia it is here. but for the sake of politeness, let us content ourselves with saying, further, that the reviewer’s enthusiasm got the better of his judgment. what matters to us now is that pierce egan made a record of the old prize ring which is invaluable. so that we are not concerned so much with his literary distinction as with his accuracy as a chronicler, and, as other records of contemporary events are either scarce, or, as in some cases, totally lacking, it is not easy to check his accounts.
from internal evidence, we know at the first glance at boxiana that we must be careful; for egan shouts his praises of almost all pugilists upon the same note. and all of them cannot have been as good as all that! this author was a passionate admirer of the noble art and of the men who followed it, and it is his joyous zeal (apart from the matters of fact which he tells us) that make him worth reading. for the rest we must regard him as we are, nowadays, prone to regard most historians, and make such allowance as we see fit for inevitable exaggerations. that, on one occasion at least, he was deliberately inaccurate, we shall see later on.
there was a delightful simplicity about the old boxing matches. the men fought to a finish; that is, until one or other of them failed to come up to the scratch, chalked in the mid-ring, or until the seconds or backers gave in for them, which last does not appear to have happened very often. a round ended with a knock-down or a fall from wrestling, and half a minute only was allowed for rest and recovery.
one of the illustrations in this book is taken from a print of the original rules governing prize-fights, “as agreed by several gentlemen at broughton’s amphitheatre, tottenham court road, august, 16th, 1743.”
these rules were as follows:—
i.—that a square of a yard be chalked in the middle of the xxv stage; and on each fresh set-to after a fall, or being from the rails, each second is to bring his man to the side of the square, and place him opposite to the other, and until they are fairly set-to at the lines, it shall not be lawful for one to strike at the other.
the ring
rules
to be observed in all battles on the stage
i. that a square of a yard be chalked in the middle of the stage; and on every fresh set-to after a fall, or being parted from the rails, each second is to bring his man to the side of the square, and place him opposite to the other, and till they are fairly set-to at the lines, it shall not be lawful for one to strike at the other.
ii. that, in order to prevent any disputes, the time a man lies after a fall, if the second does not bring his man to the side of the square, within the space of half a minute, he shall be deemed a beaten man.
iii. that in every main battle, no person whatever shall be upon the stage, except the principals and their seconds; the same rule to be observed in bye-battles, except that in the latter, mr. broughton is allowed to be upon the stage to keep decorum, and to assist gentlemen in getting to their places, provided always he does not interfere in the battle; and whoever pretends to infringe these rules to be turned immediately out of the house. every body is to quit the stage as soon as the champions are stripped, before the set-to.
iv. that no champion be deemed beaten, unless he fails coming up to the line in the limited time, or that his own second declares him beaten. no second is to be allowed to ask his man’s adversary any questions, or advise him to give out.
v. that in bye-battles, the winning man to have two-thirds of the money given, which shall be publicly divided upon the stage, notwithstanding any private agreements to the contrary.
vi. that to prevent disputes, in every main battle the principals shall, on coming on the stage, choose from among the gentlemen present two umpires, who shall absolutely decide all disputes that may arise about the battle; and if the two umpires cannot agree, the said umpires to choose a third, who is to determine it.
vii. that no person is to hit his adversary when he is down, or seize him by the ham, the breeches, or any part below the waist: a man on his knees to be reckoned down.
as agreed by several gentlemen at broughton’s amphitheatre, tottenham court road, august 16, 1743.
reproduced by permission of “the field.”
ii.—that, in order to prevent any disputes, the time a man lies after a fall, if the second does not bring his man to the side of the square, within the space of half a minute, he shall be deemed a beaten man.
iii.—that in every main battle, no person whatever shall be upon the stage, except the principals and their seconds; the same rule to be observed in bye-battles, except that in the latter mr. broughton is allowed to be upon the stage to keep decorum, and to assist gentlemen in getting to their places, provided always he does not interfere in the battle; and whoever pretends to infringe these rules to be turned immediately out of the house. everybody is to quit the stage as soon as the champions are stripped, before the set-to.
iv.—that no champion be deemed beaten, unless he fails coming up to the line in the limited time, or that his own second declares him beaten. no second is to be allowed to ask his man’s adversary any questions, or advise him to give out.
v.—that in bye-battles, the winning man have two-thirds of the money given, which shall be publicly divided upon the stage, notwithstanding private agreements to the contrary.
vi.—that to prevent disputes, in every main battle the principals shall, on coming to the stage, choose from among the gentlemen present two umpires, who shall absolutely decide all disputes that may arise about the battle; and if the two umpires cannot agree, the said umpires to choose a third, who is to determine it.
vii.—that no person is to hit his adversary when he is down, or seize him by the ham, the breeches, or any part below the waist; a man on his knees to be reckoned down.
it will be seen that all contingencies are by no means covered by these regulations, but in those days far more was left to the xxvi judgment and discretion of the umpires and the referee. spectators, even “interested” onlookers who had plunged on the event, were usually willing to abide by their decisions; and, as a general thing, though there was more elbow-room for rascality than in later times, the men fought fairly. anyhow, egan says that they did.
whether the death of bare-knuckle fighting is to be mourned is not a question to be dealt with in the first chapter. as george borrow observed very many years ago, “these are not the days of pugilism,” and without attempting any discussion of the rights and wrongs of the general problem, we may yet read the annals of the ring and draw our own conclusions from particular instances. the “days of pugilism” are unlikely to return.
it is not, indeed, until we come to george borrow that we find the praises of boxing sung as a sport, as an outlet for energy, as pure good fun. it is true that, being borrow, he tells us in romany rye of a character who regarded it “as a great defence against popery.” but borrow, when he left popery alone, had a splendid, “elizabethan” and full-blooded view of life, whether he was concerned with the pleasures of milling or the “genial and gladdening power of good ale, the true and proper drink of englishmen.”
“can you box?” asks the old magistrate in lavengro. “i tell you what, my boy: i honour you.... boxing is, as you say, a noble art—a truly english art; may i never see the day when englishmen shall feel ashamed of it, or blacklegs and blackguards bring it into disgrace! i am a magistrate, and, of course, cannot patronise the thing very openly, yet i sometimes see a prize-fight.”
“all i have to say,” borrow continues later on in lavengro, “is, that the french still live on the other side of the water, and are still casting their eyes hitherward—and that in the days of pugilism it was no vain boast to say, that one englishman was a match for two of t’other race.”
xxvii
what would he have said had he lived to see a french champion? the two words, “boxing” and “frenchman,” within half a mile of each other, so to put it, made a stock joke in those days and for long after, even to within recent memory.
borrow had the true boxer’s joy in a fight for its own sake, the violent exercise, the sense of personal contest which is more manifest in fisticuffs than in any other sport.
“dosta,” says jasper petulengro, “we’ll now go to the tents and put on the gloves; and i’ll try to make you feel what a sweet thing it is to be alive, brother!”
the following is his account of the crowd at a prize-fight, the encounter itself being dismissed in a few lines:—
“i think i now see them upon the bowling-green, the men of renown, amidst hundreds of people with no renown at all, who gaze upon them with timid wonder. fame, after all, is a glorious thing, though it last only for a day. there’s cribb, the champion of england, and perhaps the best man in england: there he is with his huge, massive figure, and a face wonderfully like that of a lion. there is belcher, the younger ... the most scientific pugilist who ever entered a ring.... crosses him, what a contrast! grim, savage skelton, who has a civil word for nobody and a hard blow for anybody—hard! one blow, given with the proper play of his athletic arm, will unsense a giant. yonder individual, who strolls about with his hands behind him, supporting his brown coat lappets, undersized, and also looks anything but what he is, is the king of the lightweights, so-called—randall! the terrible randall, who has irish blood in his veins: not the better for that, nor the worse; not far from him is his last antagonist, ned turner, who, though beaten by him, still thinks himself as good a man, in which he is, perhaps, right, for it was a near thing; and a better xxviii ‘shentleman,’ in which he is quite right, for he is a welshman.... there was—what! shall i name the last? ay, why not? i believe that thou art the last of all that strong family still above the sod, where may’st thou long continue—true species of english stuff, tom of bedford—sharp as winter, kind as spring.
“hail to thee, tom of bedford.... hail to thee, six-foot englishman of the brown eye, worthy to have carried a six-foot bow at flodden, where england’s yeomen triumphed over scotland’s king, his clans and chivalry. hail to thee, last of england’s bruisers, after all the many victories which thou hast achieved—true english victories, unbought by yellow gold....”
borrow wrote of the prize-ring in its decline and of its best days from a greater distance than did egan, and his perspective is therefore truer. still we do learn a great deal from boxiana of the old giants; whilst contemporary engravings, some of which will be found here, give us, more or less faithfully, the attitudes of the fighters. whether the artists observed the same fidelity in regard to the muscular development of the principals we must decide from our own experience. it is often said that if men were to train themselves to this herculean scale they would be so muscle-bound as to be almost immobile.
at the beginning of volume iii. of boxiana, egan tells us of the extraordinary physique of the fighter.
“the frames, in general, of the boxers are materially different, in point of appearance, from most other men; and they are also formed to endure punishment in a very severe degree.... the eyes of the pugilists are always small; but their necks are very fine and large; their arms are also muscular and athletic, with strong, well-turned shoulders. in general, the chests of the boxers are expanded; and some of their backs and loins not only exhibit an unusual degree of strength, but a great portion of anatomical beauty. the hips, thighs, xxix and legs of a few of the pugilists are very much to be admired for their symmetry, and there is likewise a peculiar ‘sort of a something’ about the head of a boxer, which tends to give him character.”
and he adds a footnote: “the old fanciers, or ‘good judges,’ prefer those of a snipe appearance.”—(an appearance which obviously could not long have been maintained!)
of scientific boxing, as we understand it, there was comparatively little; though in the hey-day of the prize-ring (roughly speaking, the first quarter of the nineteenth century) the foundations of the exact science were well laid. however, the chief qualifications for a good pugilist were strength and courage, even as they are to-day. but, besides hitting, the fighters might close and wrestle, and many a hard battle was lost by a good boxer whose strength was worn out by repeated falls, falls made the more damaging when a hulking opponent threw himself, as at one time he was allowed to do, on top of him.
the other principal differences between old and modern boxing were these: it was one of a man’s first considerations to hit his antagonist hard about the eyes, so that they swelled up and he could not see. men strong and otherwise unhurt were often beaten like that. secondly, bare knuckles, in hard repeated contact with hard heads, were apt to be “knocked up” after a time. the use of gloves, though it probably makes a knock-out easier and quicker, obviates these two difficulties. however, even with the heavy “pudden” of an eight-ounce glove, the danger to the striker, though much lessened, is not entirely avoided, and i once put out two knuckles of my left, at the same time breaking a bone at the back of my hand in contact with an opponent’s elbow with which he guarded his ribs. this sort of accident is very rare.
the chief interest in the fights described by pierce egan and by others lies in their records of magnificent courage, for—there is really no way out of it—the old prize-ring was, by the prevalent standards of to-day, a somewhat brutal institution. xxx horrible cruelty was seen and enjoyed, not as a rule the cruelty of the two men engaged, fair or foul as may have been their methods, but of their backers and seconds, who, with their money on the issue, allowed a beaten man, sorely hurt, to go on fighting on the off-chance of his winning by a lucky blow. sometimes their optimism was, within the limits of its intention, justified, and an all but beaten man did win. really, that sort of thing happens more often in modern boxing, especially amateur boxing, to-day, than it did in the prize-ring, and this is due, not to the callousness of referees, but to their perspicacity. a thoroughly experienced referee understands exactly how much a man can endure, particularly when he has seen the individual in question box before. he knows that he is not nearly so much hurt and “done” as he looks, or rather as the average spectator thinks he looks; and he gives him his chance. and, suddenly, to the wild surprise of every one, except, perhaps, the referee, he puts in a “lucky” blow and knocks out an opponent who had hitherto been “all over” him.
on the other hand, a backer sometimes did withdraw his man in the most humane fashion when he had been badly punished, and very often to the deep resentment of the boxer himself, who, left to his own devices, would have fought on so long as his weakening legs would obey his iron will.
one more word upon the subject of “brutality” may be forgiven me. again and again has it been said, but never too emphatically, how seldom it is that the men themselves were to blame. it is the hangers-on, the parasites, the vermin of sport, outside the ring, the field, the racecourse, who never risked nor meant to risk a broken nose or a thick ear, who are out for money and for money alone, by fair means for choice (as being on the whole the better policy), but by foul means readily enough rather than not at all—these are the men who bring every institution upon which they batten into bad repute. certainly the broken ranks of this army were occasionally recruited from the less successful or the more dissipated but quite genuine fighters, just as the hired bully is not unknown amongst the boxers of to-day. xxxi but the real villain, the man who gets the money out of rascality, does so, if possible, with a whole skin.
the prize-ring served its turn. for nearly a hundred years—that is, roughly, from 1740 to 1840—it was a genuine expression of english life. right or wrong as may have been the methods used, it was spontaneous. after that, if we except individual encounters, it was forced, laboured, and in vain. the spontaneity was gone. in his preface to cashel byron’s profession, mr. shaw tells us that pugilism was supposed to have died of its own blackguardism: whereas “it lived by its blackguardism and died of its intolerable tediousness.”
that is very true, but it must be remembered that the tediousness sprang very largely from the blackguardism—that is to say, towards the end of the bare-knuckle era the men used to stand off from each other, doing as little damage as possible and earning their money as easily as might be. moreover, men who fought a “cross” were, particularly in the latter half of the nineteenth century, seldom good enough actors to appear beaten with any degree of plausibility, when they could, in fact, have continued fighting: and the result was that they stood about the ring, sparring in a tentative fashion, wrestling now and again, and wasting time, waiting for an opportunity to fall with some show of reality.
thackeray, however, who, according to mr. shaw, loved a prize-fight as he loved a fool, appeared to think that the sport died of hypocritical respectability. there is, of course, plenty to be said upon both sides; and thackeray’s opinions will be more closely discussed in the chapter dealing with the fight between sayers and heenan.
of one disease or another, or of several complications, the prize-ring died, and from its dust arose the gradually improving sport of glove-fighting, the boxing of to-day.
the aim of this book is to cover the ground of bare-knuckle fighting and of modern professional boxing from the inception of the ring to the present day, by making notes upon a number of representative battles in their chronological order.
