Directly we embarked for home I gave the parrot in charge of the butcher, telling him to look after it well, and promising to tip him a sovereign for his trouble when we arrived at Southampton. During the voyage I didn’t bother much about my purchase, beyond inquiring now and again as to the bird’s welfare.
The day before we were due to reach England, however, I went down to have a good look at it. Imagine my horror when I was greeted by it (in addition to its stock phrase “I love Marie”) with a perfect flood of the most awfully profane language it is possible to conceive.
The wretched bird simply turned the air blue with a string of full-blooded sailormen’s oaths, coupled with certain other phrases that, besides being profane, were shockingly indecent.
Naturally I was furiously angry, but the butcher vehemently protested that he was not to blame. The deck hands and stokers, he explained, were constantly at the bird, teaching it all manner of bad language while his back was turned.
Of course, to introduce the now hopelessly depraved parrot into a decent household was altogether out of the question, and in the end I turned bird and cage over to the butcher in lieu of the promised tip; an arrangement, I may add, with which he was well content.
CHAPTER VIII
MELBOURNE TO LONDON
The “Under the Earth” bar in Melbourne—A swimming challenge spoof—The Australian Vaudeville Association—My connection therewith—They present me with an Address—At Adelaide—A cheery send-off—I bring to London with me Charlie Griffin, the feather-weight Australian champion—Fix up a match at the London National Sporting Club—I train him myself during a pantomime engagement—He is beaten by Jim Driscoll—But afterwards defeats Joe Bowker—My fight at the National Sporting Club with “Apollo”—All the “pro.’s” present—A great night—I am beaten by “Apollo”—Congratulations all round—Only Mrs. “Carlton” does not approve—Other boxing and sporting yarns.
Our Australian cousins are fine sportsmen, and they dearly love a joke, even if it is against themselves. When I was performing in Melbourne in 1907 I became very chummy with Jack Trenby, at that time one of the best-known jockeys in Australia, and one day we got talking about swimming. I told him that I rather fancied myself that way, and that I used to swim the hundred yards in sixty-four seconds in the days when the record for the English Championship (held by J. H. Darbyshire) was only one-fifth of a second under the sixty-one seconds.