Knuckles and Gloves. Bohun Lynch
joy in a fight for its own sake, the violent exercise, the sense of personal contest which is more manifest in fisticuffs than in any other sport.
“Dosta,” says Jasper Petulengro, “we’ll now go to the tents and put on the gloves; and I’ll try to make you feel what a sweet thing it is to be alive, brother!”
The following is his account of the crowd at a prize-fight, the encounter itself being dismissed in a few lines:—
“I think I now see them upon the bowling-green, the men of renown, amidst hundreds of people with no renown at all, who gaze upon them with timid wonder. Fame, after all, is a glorious thing, though it last only for a day. There’s Cribb, the Champion of England, and perhaps the best man in England: there he is with his huge, massive figure, and a face wonderfully like that of a lion. There is Belcher, the younger … the most scientific pugilist who ever entered a ring. … Crosses him, what a contrast! Grim, savage Skelton, who has a civil word for nobody and a hard blow for anybody—hard! one blow, given with the proper play of his athletic arm, will unsense a giant. Yonder individual, who strolls about with his hands behind him, supporting his brown coat lappets, undersized, and also looks anything but what he is, is the King of the Lightweights, so-called—Randall! the terrible Randall, who has Irish blood in his veins: not the better for that, nor the worse; not far from him is his last antagonist, Ned Turner, who, though beaten by him, still thinks himself as good a man, in which he is, perhaps, right, for it was a near thing; and a better ‘shentleman,’ in which he is quite right, for he is a Welshman. … There was—what! shall I name the last? Ay, why not? I believe that thou art the last of all that strong family still above the sod, where may’st thou long continue—true species of English stuff, Tom of Bedford—sharp as Winter, kind as Spring.
“Hail to thee, Tom of Bedford. … Hail to thee, six-foot Englishman of the brown eye, worthy to have carried a six-foot bow at Flodden, where England’s yeomen triumphed over Scotland’s king, his clans and chivalry. Hail to thee, last of England’s bruisers, after all the many victories which thou hast achieved—true English victories, unbought by yellow gold. …”
Borrow wrote of the Prize-Ring in its decline and of its best days from a greater distance than did Egan, and his perspective is therefore truer. Still we do learn a great deal from Boxiana of the old giants; whilst contemporary engravings, some of which will be found here, give us, more or less faithfully, the attitudes of the fighters. Whether the artists observed the same fidelity in regard to the muscular development of the principals we must decide from our own experience. It is often said that if men were to train themselves to this herculean scale they would be so muscle-bound as to be almost immobile.
At the beginning of Volume III. of Boxiana, Egan tells us of the extraordinary physique of the fighter.
“The frames, in general, of the boxers are materially different, in point of appearance, from most other men; and they are also formed to endure punishment in a very severe degree. … The eyes of the pugilists are always small; but their necks are very fine and large; their arms are also muscular and athletic, with strong, well-turned shoulders. In general, the chests of the Boxers are expanded; and some of their backs and loins not only exhibit an unusual degree of strength, but a great portion of anatomical beauty. The hips, thighs, and legs of a few of the pugilists are very much to be admired for their symmetry, and there is likewise a peculiar ‘sort of a something’ about the head of a boxer, which tends to give him character.”
And he adds a footnote: “The old Fanciers, or ‘good judges,’ prefer those of a snipe appearance.”—(An appearance which obviously could not long have been maintained!)
Of scientific boxing, as we understand it, there was comparatively little; though in the hey-day of the Prize-Ring (roughly speaking, the first quarter of the nineteenth century) the foundations of the exact science were well laid. However, the chief qualifications for a good pugilist were strength and courage, even as they are to-day. But, besides hitting, the fighters might close and wrestle, and many a hard battle was lost by a good boxer whose strength was worn out by repeated falls, falls made the more damaging when a hulking opponent threw himself, as at one time he was allowed to do, on top of him.
The other principal differences between old and modern boxing were these: it was one of a man’s first considerations to hit his antagonist hard about the eyes, so that they swelled up and he could not see. Men strong and otherwise unhurt were often beaten like that. Secondly, bare knuckles, in hard repeated contact with hard heads, were apt to be “knocked up” after a time. The use of gloves, though it probably makes a knock-out easier and quicker, obviates these two difficulties. However, even with the heavy “pudden” of an eight-ounce glove, the danger to the striker, though much lessened, is not entirely avoided, and I once put out two knuckles of my left, at the same time breaking a bone at the back of my hand in contact with an opponent’s elbow with which he guarded his ribs. This sort of accident is very rare.
The chief interest in the fights described by Pierce Egan and by others lies in their records of magnificent courage, for—there is really no way out of it—the old Prize-Ring was, by the prevalent standards of to-day, a somewhat brutal institution. Horrible cruelty was seen and enjoyed, not as a rule the cruelty of the two men engaged, fair or foul as may have been their methods, but of their backers and seconds, who, with their money on the issue, allowed a beaten man, sorely hurt, to go on fighting on the off-chance of his winning by a lucky blow. Sometimes their optimism was, within the limits of its intention, justified, and an all but beaten man did win. Really, that sort of thing happens more often in modern boxing, especially amateur boxing, to-day, than it did in the Prize-Ring, and this is due, not to the callousness of referees, but to their perspicacity. A thoroughly experienced referee understands exactly how much a man can endure, particularly when he has seen the individual in question box before. He knows that he is not nearly so much hurt and “done” as he looks, or rather as the average spectator thinks he looks; and he gives him his chance. And, suddenly, to the wild surprise of every one, except, perhaps, the referee, he puts in a “lucky” blow and knocks out an opponent who had hitherto been “all over” him.
On the other hand, a backer sometimes did withdraw his man in the most humane fashion when he had been badly punished, and very often to the deep resentment of the boxer himself, who, left to his own devices, would have fought on so long as his weakening legs would obey his iron will.
One more word upon the subject of “brutality” may be forgiven me. Again and again has it been said, but never too emphatically, how seldom it is that the men themselves were to blame. It is the hangers-on, the parasites, the vermin of sport, outside the ring, the field, the racecourse, who never risked nor meant to risk a broken nose or a thick ear, who are out for money and for money alone, by fair means for choice (as being on the whole the better policy), but by foul means readily enough rather than not at all—these are the men who bring every institution upon which they batten into bad repute. Certainly the broken ranks of this army were occasionally recruited from the less successful or the more dissipated but quite genuine fighters, just as the hired bully is not unknown amongst the boxers of to-day. But the real villain, the man who gets the money out of rascality, does so, if possible, with a whole skin.
The Prize-Ring served its turn. For nearly a hundred years—that is, roughly, from 1740 to 1840—it was a genuine expression of English life. Right or wrong as may have been the methods used, it was spontaneous. After that, if we except individual encounters, it was forced, laboured, and in vain. The spontaneity was gone. In his Preface to Cashel Byron’s Profession, Mr. Shaw tells us that pugilism was supposed to have died of its own blackguardism: whereas “it lived by its blackguardism and died of its intolerable tediousness.”
That is very true, but it must be remembered that the tediousness sprang very largely from the blackguardism—that is to say, towards the end of the bare-knuckle era the men used to stand off from each other, doing as little damage as possible and earning their money as easily as might be. Moreover, men who fought a “cross” were, particularly in the latter half of the nineteenth century, seldom good enough actors to appear beaten with any degree of plausibility, when they could, in