Captain Barclay felt so confident that he could walk ninety miles in twenty-one hours and a half, that he again matched himself for 5,000 guineas. In his training to perform this feat he went one hundred and ten miles in nineteen hours, notwithstanding it rained nearly the whole of the time. This performance may be deemed the greatest on record, being at the rate of upwards of one hundred and thirty-five miles in twenty-four hours.
On the 10th of November, 1801, he started to perform the above match, between York and Hull. The space of ground was a measured mile, and on each side of the road a number of lamps were placed. The Captain was dressed in a flannel shirt, flannel trowsers, and nightcap, lambs’-wool stockings, and thick soled leather shoes. He proceeded till he had gone seventy miles, scarcely varying in regularly performing each round of two miles in twenty-five minutes and a half, taking refreshment at different periods. He commenced at twelve o’clock at night, and performed the whole distance by twenty-two minutes four seconds past eight o’clock on Tuesday evening, being one hour, seven minutes, and fifty-six seconds within the specified time. He could have continued for several hours longer if necessary.
In December the Captain did one hundred miles in nineteen hours, over the worst road in the kingdom. Exclusive of stoppages, the distance was performed in seventeen hours and a half, or at the rate of about five miles and three-quarters each hour on the average.
As an additional instance of the Captain’s strength, he performed a most laborious undertaking, merely for his amusement, in August, 1808. Visiting at Colonel Murray Farquharson’s house in Aberdeenshire, he went out at five in the morning to enjoy the sport of grouse shooting, when he travelled at least thirty miles. He returned to the Colonel’s house by five in the afternoon, and after dinner set off for Ury, a distance of sixty miles, which he walked in eleven hours, without stopping once to refresh. He attended to his ordinary business at home, and in the afternoon walked to Laurencekirk, sixteen miles, where he danced at a ball during the night, and returned to Ury by seven in the morning. He did not yet return to bed, but occupied the day in partridge shooting. He had thus travelled not less than one hundred and thirty miles, supposing him to have gone only eight miles in the course of the day’s shooting at home, and also danced at Laurencekirk, without sleeping, or having been in bed for two nights and nearly three days.
In October, 1808, Captain Barclay made a match with Mr. Webster, a gentleman of great celebrity in the sporting world, by which Captain Barclay engaged himself to go on foot a thousand miles in a thousand successive hours, at the rate of a mile in each and every hour, for a bet of 1,000 guineas, to be performed at Newmarket Heath, and to start on the following 1st of June. In the intermediate time the Captain was in training by Mr. Smith, of Owston, in Yorkshire. To enter into a detail of his matchless performance would be tiresome; suffice to say, he started at twelve o’clock at night on Thursday, the 1st of June, 1809, in good health and high spirits. His dress from the commencement varied with the weather. Sometimes he wore a flannel jacket, sometimes a loose great coat, with strong shoes, and two pairs of coarse stockings, the outer pair boot stockings without feet, to keep his legs dry. He walked in a sort of lounging gait, without any apparent extraordinary exertion, scarcely raising his feet two inches above the ground. During a great part of the time the weather was very rainy, but he felt no inconvenience from it. Indeed, wet weather was favourable to his exertions, as, during dry weather, he found it necessary to have a water-cart to go over the ground to keep it cool, and prevent it becoming too hard. Towards the conclusion of the performance, it was said, Captain Barclay suffered much from a spasmodic affection of his legs, so that he could not walk a mile in less than twenty minutes; he, however, ate and drank well, and bets were two to one and five to two on his completing his journey within the time prescribed. About eight days before he finished, the sinews of his right leg became much better, and he continued to pursue his task in high spirits; consequently bets were ten to one in his favour, in London, at Tattersall’s, and other sporting circles.
On Wednesday, July the 12th, Captain Barclay completed his arduous undertaking. He had till four p.m. to finish his task, but he performed the last mile by a quarter of an hour after three in perfect ease and great spirits, amidst an immense crowd of spectators. The influx of company had so much increased on Sunday, it was recommended that the ground should be roped in. To this, however, Captain Barclay objected, saying he did not like such parade. The crowd, however, became so great on Monday, and he had experienced so much interruption, that he was prevailed upon to allow this precaution to be taken. For the last two days he appeared in higher spirits, and performed his last mile with apparently more ease and in a shorter time than he had done for some days past.
With the change of weather he had thrown off his loose great coat, which he wore during the rainy period, and walked in a flannel jacket. He also put on shoes thicker than any which he had used in any previous part of his performance. When asked how he meant to act after he had finished his feat, he said he should that night take a good sound sleep, but that he must have himself awaked twice or thrice in the night to avoid the danger of a too sudden transition from almost constant exertion to a state of long repose. One hundred guineas to one, and indeed any odds whatever, were offered on Wednesday morning; but so strong was the confidence in his success that no bets could be obtained. The multitude who resorted to the scene of action in the course of the concluding days was unprecedented. Not a bed could be procured on Tuesday night at Newmarket, Cambridge, Bury, or any of the towns or villages in the vicinity, and every horse and vehicle were engaged. Among the nobility and gentry who witnessed the conclusion of this extraordinary performance were the Dukes of Argyle and St. Alban’s; Earls Grosvenor, Besborough, and Jersey; Lords Foley, and Somerville; Sir John Lade, Sir F. Standish, etc. The aggregate of the bets is supposed to have amounted to £100,000.
Captain Barclay, as noticed in our memoir of Cribb, gave his training experience to the world in a modest publication. His papers upon agriculture in various magazines published in England and Scotland, were remarkable for their sound sense, plainness, and practical knowledge. That the severity of his athletic feats did not prematurely wear out the animal machine may be inferred from the fact that he enjoyed a green and active old age at Ury, near Stonehaven, Kincardineshire, his patrimonial estate, until his 79th year, respected as strongly in private circles for his kind and gentlemanly demeanour as celebrated for his public exploits, sporting and athletic.
GEORGE STEPHENSON, M.P.—1801.
It would indeed be the ignorance which casts away pearls were we to pass unnoticed an illustration of manhood identified with the practice of pugilism, wherein the honoured name of the greatest engineering genius of an engineering age was the prime actor. George Stephenson, therefore, the practical originator of the locomotive, the creator of railways as we now see them, the constructor of the most complete, permanent, and stupendous works on mainland, coast, and sea, that an age of wonders has seen, finds a place in Pugilistica. The facts and text of the narrative of this episode in the early life of George Stephenson are from Smiles’s “Lives of George and Robert Stephenson,” p. 80, edit. 1864. We may observe that George Stephenson (born June 9, 1781) would be twenty years of age in 1801.