Part 6 (1/2)

Charley and I were always great friends; we had seen so much together, especially of what is called ”the world,” which I use in a different sense from that in which we were now to seek adventures. We had seen so much of its good and evil, its lights and shades, and had so many memories in common, that they formed the groundwork of a lasting friends.h.i.+p.

He was the only son of an almost too indulgent father, who was the very best example of an old English gentleman of his day you could ever meet. He also had seen a good deal of life, and was not unfamiliar with any of its varied aspects. He was intellectual and genial, and dispensed his hospitality with the most winning courtesy.

To me he was all kindness, and I have a grateful feeling of delight in being able in these few words to record my affectionate reverence for his memory. It was at his house in Pall Mall that I met John Leech and Percival Leigh.

But I digress as my mind goes back to these early dates, and unless I break away, Charley and I will not reach Newmarket in time for the first race. It happened that when we made this memorable visit I had an uncle living at The Priory at Royston, which was some five-and-twenty miles from Newmarket, where the big handicap, I think the Cesarewitch, was to be run the following day, or the next--I forget which.

But an interesting episode interrupted our journey to the Heath.

To our surprise, and no little to our delight, there was to be an important meeting of the ”Fancy” to witness a great prize-fight between Jack Bra.s.sy and Ben Caunt.

Ben Caunt was the greatest prize-fighter, both in stature and bulk, as well as in strength, I ever saw. He looked what he was--then or soon after--the champion of the world.

Bra.s.sy, too, was well made, and seemed every whit the man to meet Caunt. The two, indeed, were equally well made in form and shape, and as smooth cut as marble statues when they stripped for action.

The advertis.e.m.e.nts had announced that the contest was to come off at, ”or as near thereto as circ.u.mstances permitted” (circ.u.mstances here meaning the police), the village of Little Bury, near Saffron Walden.

At the little inn of the village some of the magnates of the Ring were to a.s.semble on the morning of the fight for an early breakfast, to which Charley and I had the good fortune to be invited by Jack Bra.s.sy's second, Peter Crawley, another noted pugilist of his day.

It was different weather from that we enjoyed in the early morning, for the rain was now pouring down in torrents, and we had a drive of no less than fifteen miles before us to the scene of action. Vehicles were few, and horses fewer. Nothing was to be had for love or money, as it seemed. But there was at last found one man who, if he had little love for the prize-ring, had much reverence for the golden coin that supported it. He was a Quaker. He had an old gig, and, I think, a still older horse, both of which I hired for the journey--the Quaker, of course, pretending that he had no idea of any meeting of the ”Fancy” whatever. Nor do I suppose he would know what that term implied.

If ever any man in the world did what young men are always told by good people to do--namely, to persevere--I am sure we did, Charley and I, with the Quaker's horse. Whether he suspected the mission on which we were bent, or was considering the danger of such a scene to his morals, I could not ascertain, but never did any animal show a greater reluctance to go anywhere except to his quiet home.

Your happiness at these great gatherings depended entirely upon the distance or proximity of the police. If they were pretty near, the landlord of the inn would hesitate about serving you, and if he did, would charge a far higher price in consequence of the supposed increased risk. He would never encourage a breach of the peace in defiance of the county magistrates, who were the authority to renew his licence at Brewster Sessions. So much, then, if the officers of justice were _near_.

If they happened to be absent--which, as I have said, occasionally occurred when a big thing was to come off--there was then a dominant feeling of social equality which you could never see manifested so strongly in any other place. A gentleman would think nothing of putting his fingers into your pockets and abstracting your money, and if you had the hardihood to resent the intrusion, would think less of putting his fist into your eyes.

We were by no means certain, as I learned, that our fight would come off after all, for it appeared the magistrates had given strict and specific instructions to the police that no combat was to take place in the county of Ess.e.x. Consequently the parties whose duty it was to make preparations had fled from that respectable county and gone away towards Six Mile Bottom, just in one of the corners of Cambridges.h.i.+re, as if the intention was that the dons of the University should have a look in. Constables slept more soundly in Cambridges.h.i.+re than in Ess.e.x. Moreover, the Ess.e.x magistrates would themselves have a moral right to witness the fight if it did not take place in their county.

Thus we set out for the rendezvous. Charley soon discovered that our steed was not accustomed to the whip, for instead of urging him forward it produced the contrary effect. However, we got along by slow degrees, and when we came up with the crowd--oh!

Such a scene I had never witnessed in my life, nor could have conceived it possible anywhere on this earth or anywhere out of that abyss the full description of which you will find in ”Paradise Lost.”

It was a procession of the blackguardism of all ages and of all countries under heaven. The s.e.xes were apparently in equal numbers and in equal degrees of ugliness and ferocity. There were faces flat for want of noses, and mouths ghastly for want of teeth; faces scarred, bruised, battered into every shape but what might be called human.

There were fighting-men of every species and variety--men whose profession it was to fight, and others whose brutal nature it was; there were women fighters, too, more deadly and dangerous than the men, because they added cruelty to their ferocity. Innumerable women there were who had lost the very nature of womanhood, and whose mouths were the mere outlet of oaths and filthy language. Their shrill clamours deafened our ears and subdued the deep voices of the men, whom they chaffed, reviled, shrieked at, yelled at, and swore at by way of _fun_.

Amidst this turbulent rabble rode several members of the peerage, and even Ministerial supporters of the ”n.o.ble art,” exchanging with the low wretches I have mentioned a word or two of chaff or an occasional laugh at the grotesque wit and humour which are never absent from an English crowd.

As we approached the famous scene, to which every one was looking with the most intense antic.i.p.ation, the crowd grew almost frenzied with expectancy, and yet the utmost good-humour prevailed. In this spirit we arrived at Bourne Bridge, and thence to the place of encounter was no great distance. It was a little field behind a public-house.

Every face was now white with excitement, except the faces of the combatants. They were firm set as iron itself. Trained to physical endurance, they were equally so in nerve and coolness of temperament, and could not have seemed more excited than if they were going to dinner instead of to one of the most terrible encounters I ever witnessed.

To those who have never seen an exhibition of this kind it was quite amazing to observe with what rapidity the ropes were fixed and the ring formed; nor were the men less prompt. Into the ring they stepped with their supporters, or seconds, and in almost an instant the princ.i.p.als had shaken hands, and were facing each other in what well might be deadly conflict. There were ill.u.s.trious members of all cla.s.ses a.s.sembled there, members probably of all professions, men who afterwards, as I know, became great in history, politics, law, literature, and religion; for it was a very great fight, and attracted all sorts and conditions from all places and positions. Nothing since that fight, except Tom Sayers and the ”Benicia Boy,” has attracted so goodly and so fas.h.i.+onable an audience and so fierce an a.s.sembly of blackguards.

But in the time of the latter battle the decadence of the Ring was manifest, and was the outcome of what is doubtless an increasing civilization. At the time of which I am now speaking the Prize Ring was one of our fas.h.i.+onable sports, supported by the wealthy of all cla.s.ses, and was supposed to contribute to the manliness of our race; consequently our distinguished warriors, as well as the members of our most gentle professions, loved a good old-fas.h.i.+oned English ”set-to,”

and n.o.body, as a rule, was the worse for it, although my poor brother Jack never recovered his half-crowns.

We had been advised to take our cus.h.i.+ons from the gig to sit upon, because the straw round the ring was soddened with the heavy rains, and I need not say we found it was a very wise precaution. The straw had been placed round the ring for the benefit of the _elite_, who occupied front seats.

The fight now began, and, I must repeat, I never saw anything like it.