INTRODUCTION
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 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 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 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 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. Mæterlinck’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 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 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