Ne’er see worse men, nor iller times
Than I and mine might be,
Though England then had prize-fighters—
Even reprobates like me.
[29] There were numerous pictorial representations of the battle both in England and America; some of them amusingly imaginative. The large, coloured engraving, published by Newbold, and its smaller American piracy, are faithful as to the men and the field of action. The object in view in these pictures—that of giving recognisable portraits of most of the pugilistic, and many of the sporting, and a few of the literary notabilities of the day, of course destroys all truthfulness or reality of grouping, as in so many works professing to represent great battles, festivals, or public commemorations. Our frontispiece, from a contemporary sketch, is less pretentious, and therefore more realistic and truthful.
[30] An allusion to “Gladstone claret;” cheap, thin French wines being admitted first at low duty in 1860.—Ed.
[31] Domus Savilliana—Saville House, on the north side of Leicester Square, where sparring exhibitions and bouts with the gloves were frequent in those days. See also Pugilistica, vol. i., page 19, for a notice of Saville House.—Ed.
[32] Cusick, Heenan’s trainer, and Jack Macdonald (still living, 1881).
[33] Harry Brunton, now host of the “Nag’s Head,” at Wood Green. Jemmy Welsh, late of the “Griffin,” Boro’.—Ed.