John L. Sullivan, by R. F. Dibble.
The Roar of the Crowd, by James J. Corbett.
The most diverting biography of the year is that of John L. Sullivan, the man who shared with Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson the widest popularity of all Americans of their times. Mr. R. F. Dibble does not tell us so much about John L. as a personality, but what he tells of him as a pugilist and drunkard is amusing and amazing, inspiring and instructive. John L. Sullivan and Jean de Reszke were the two artists on whom America concentrated its attention during the closing years of the nineteenth century. They had no superiors or peers until Mr. Corbett and Sig. Caruso came along and dislodged them, the one aided by alcohol, the other by anni domini. Their contemporaries will always believe they had no equals and should posterity perpetuate that belief, perhaps it will not be far wrong. If the anti-alcohol league needed a tract to further its cause—but now that it has the law, it does not need it—one could be made from Mr. Dibble’s book. Never was the downfall of a great figure so directly traceable to rum as John L. Sullivan’s and there are few more striking examples of the efficacity of grace than that furnished by his abstinence and reform. Regrettably that saving visitation did not come to him until alcohol had wrought his ruin physically, and in a smaller measure spiritually.
John L. Sullivan was the greatest pugilist of his time—perhaps of all times. He has been called a brute, but he was not, because he had a sense of humour; he has been called a moron, but he did not deserve it because he refused to run for Congress; it has been alleged that he was tough, but his reverence for the ideal of womanhood contradicted the slander. He was a strange combination: proud that he was Irish and fearful lest people should not know that he was a Bostonian. He had the same reverence for the city of his birth that his biographer has, and his sincerity was less doubtful; for it will occur to some that Mr. Dibble had his tongue in his cheek when he penned this sentence: “And this Boston, the Hub of the Universe, the source of everything excellent in American manners and customs, the originator of all moral and literary endeavours, became unwittingly, but most appropriately, the cradle of modern pugilism.” Most Bostonians are likely to find “Hub of the Universe” somewhat intemperate and will think that he should have said hub of the U. S. A. In any event, they were proud of John L. Sullivan, justly so, for as his friend Theodore Roosevelt said: “Old John has many excellent qualities, including a high degree of self-respect ... he never threw a fight ... he has been the most effective temperance lecturer I have ever known of,” and he might have added that he possessed supremely a quality that all men are one in admiring: courage.
Some of Mr. Dibble’s descriptions of the champion’s early battles are nearly as thrilling as movie reels; some of the narrative of chance encounters, such as with the bully of Mount Clemens, are most picturesque; and occasionally quotations of the master’s own words give spice and substance to the descriptions: “The longest scrap I ever had went about twenty minutes, and that fellow was on the floor most of the time. I was never learned to box. I learned myself from watching other boxers. My style of boxing is perfectly oracular—no, I mean original—with me.” As all devotees of the art of self-defence know, John L.’s first great fight was with Paddy Ryan and what Mr. Dibble has to say about it is interesting, particularly the part about Ryan’s explanation of his defeat. “The defeated champion burst into print with a series of statements which insisted that his rupture and his truss had so crippled him that he was unable to fight with his customary ferocity.” If Dr. John A. Bodine, one time surgeon in New York, were still alive, he would be able to say that a similar statement would be true if Sullivan had made it about his bout with Corbett. There can be little doubt, I believe, that Sullivan’s trainers made him enter that contest without a truss. And though alcohol had conditioned the weakness of the abdominal muscles which promoted the hernia, the immediate cause of the champion’s fall was due to a condition that should have been remedied surgically.
Now that the technique of the art known as self-defence has become elaborate and complicated, it is interesting to hear what it was for the champion of champions: “His technique was simplicity itself: he merely kept hammering with ruthless atavistic ferocity at his opponents until the opponents became insensible.” In view of the legend, current for a while at least, that John L. had first learned to fight by whipping his father, “atavistic” does not seem to be particularly a felicitous adjective. It is a small matter, but Mr. Dibble is not perhaps as careful of his adjectives as an Instructor in the Department of English in the University of Columbia should be. Laborious search would have provided a more appropriate epithet than “cutest” for Charlie Mitchell.
It is sincerely to be hoped that some of John L.’s retorts and remarks were not of staircase engendering. Take for instance the following anecdote:
A policeman, surrounded by an enthusiastic audience, said to him: “You are drunk, you are under arrest.” “That ain’t true,” snapped John, “but even if it was I’ll be sober to-morrow while you’ll be a damn fool all your life.” It must occur even to his greatest admirer on reading this tale that he may have heard the retort on the stage where it has been bandied about for generations. However, it is quite true that he may have stopped in the middle of a fight when he was urged by a bloodthirsty creature in the audience to “go in and mop up” his adversary. According to the story, he stepped to the front of the platform, raised his hand and said: “Gentlemen, this affair to-night is just a friendly set-to. Some day I may oblige you by killing a man.” The vernacular may not be Sullivan’s, but the sentiment likely is.
The distressing part of the book is the account of his contest with John Barleycorn. No one who has not himself a thirst for strong drink, or who has not lived and laboured with those who had it and succumbed to it, will be touched by it. But all drunkards, potential and actual, and all doctors who have witnessed the devastating results of the intemperate use of alcohol will sympathise with John L. and will venerate him for the fight he finally made and the battle he won. Had he been able to exercise a similar control of his appetite for food, he might still be the living example of reformation. Apparently there were plenty of friends to tell him that he drank too much, but no one dared run the risk of making an enemy of him by telling him that he ate too much, and so he went on adding to his avoirdupois until Fat Men’s Club elected him to membership and even called him to office. This offended him enormously and hurt him deeply, for even after he went far beyond three hundred pounds, he was unwilling to admit that any one was justified in calling him fat.
He was proud of his strength which was colossal and of his oratory which was Lilliputian. But if his biographer is to be trusted, and I think he is, his speeches were often reflective of common sense, or perhaps it might better be said of common experience: “This talk of tainted money is all rot. In all my years of wild spending I never heard of nobody refusing to take the money of John L. Of all the money I gave to churches, schools and other charities, I can’t remember a single cent being flopped back to me because it was earned by biffing some unlucky chap on the jaw. There is no such thing as tainted money, and I have handled about every kind there is. The preacher’s hadn’t ought to object to it. They ought to be on the level in their professions just like us prize fighters always is. If any of you here has got what you think is tainted cash in your pockets, just drop it in my hat before you pass out. I thank you one and all very kindly, yours truly, John L. Sullivan.” Preachers, moralists, uplifters, will find food for reflection in these words.
Mr. Dibble’s biography is, as I said in the beginning, interesting and diverting, but he would have been well advised had some one suggested to him that he delete the epilogue; it is neither worthy of his scholarship nor of his sensibility.