by Frank Harris
The story was told to me by one who had heard Baird tell it. A little later, I believe, Baird died, still a young man, but a dreadful specimen of the evil great wealth can work on a common nature!
A little later I was to meet a much better specimen of the prize-fighter than Slavin, certainly the best character I ever saw in the ring. One day news came to the Sporting Club that Peter Jackson, the colored man, was coming over to London and was spoiling for a fight. I heard from the secretary that Slavin was very eager to meet Mm, and accordingly they soon met.
I soon got to know Peter Jackson personally and liked his quiet and modest ways. I asked him one day who would win.
"It is a tricky game," he said, "but I don't intend to let Slavin beat me, if I can help it. He is rather a brute. You know I taught him boxing in Australia: one day something or other I said offended him, and he struck me in the face, and we had a set-to. They parted us pretty quickly. But I am not afraid of Slavin and I don't like him, and frankly I don't think he has any chance of beating me."
Charlie Mitchell sized up the fight clearly beforehand. "Slavin," he said, "is a real fighter, and if he starts in at once to mix it, he may get the better of Jackson; but if he boxes with him for the first rounds, he is sure to be beaten;
Jackson is about the best boxer I have ever seen-a really fine performer, both in defense and in attack."
The fight bore out Mitchell's prediction to the letter. Slavin boxed the first three or four rounds, and Jackson outboxed him from beginning to end.
About the fourth round, Slavin rushed in and struck Jackson heavily about the heart. The round was clearly Slavin's, but the bell saved Jackson.
When they came out again, Slavin tried the same rushing tactics, but Jackson avoided him and kept hitting him in the face and on the chin; and in this round Slavin palpably weakened. From that time on Jackson hit him almost as he wished, and the fight ended pretty quickly with Slavin's complete defeat.
Peter Jackson told me afterwards that the punch which he had got from Slavin over the heart was the heaviest he had ever had in his life.
The colored man, Peter Jackson, like Corbett, was very much of a gentleman: he told me he always hated to knock anyone out, and thought the referee should stop the fight when the complete superiority of one fighter was established. I have said nothing in these memoirs of mine about Corbett, but he was a splendid specimen, and I always believed that his defeat by Fitzsimmons, good as Fitzsimmons was, was due rather to a chance blow, which caught him on the spleen, than to any superiority. Still Fitzsimmons was a marvelous fighter; considering that he never weighed more than one hundred and sixty pounds, the most extraordinary fighter ever seen. It mustn't be forgotten, however, that he had a longer reach than most of the big ones, and blacksmith's fists at the end of enormous arms; he seemed to be built for the ring.
I should perhaps say one word here to explain certain defeats in the prizering that are not sufficiently understood. A young man-and prizefighters should be very young-after training hard for some time and getting into perfect condition, is very apt to discontinue all exercise when the fight is over, and so put on a great deal of fat very quickly. He has been keeping himself fit by the most strenuous exercise, which has developed his appetite as well as his muscles. When he stops training, his appetite continues and immediately fat accumulates, and it accumulates not only round the intestines and abdomen, but round all the muscles, and especially round the main muscle of all, the heart.
It is comparatively easy to take off abdominal fat, but it is extremely difficult and extremely painful to take off fat that has accumulated round the heart.
In fact, the moment a man begins seriously to train for this purpose, any prolonged exercise exhausts him and he feels very ill. The heart, lacking its accustomed support, sags, labors, and the man feels faint and sick. For a couple of months, at any rate, the athlete must go on exercising under a constant cloud of sickness and weakness that is apt to bring him to despair.
But if be continues, the fat will come off and in a certain tune, say six months, he will begin to feel fit and well and strong again, and increasingly fit and strong as time goes on; though in my opinion he will never be quite as good again as he was before the fat accumulated round the heart.
The case of Paget Tomlinson, the famous hurdler, occurs to me. A great natural runner, he had stopped exercising for a year or so, but was called out when Oxford and Cambridge had to meet Harvard and Yale; and though he was still, as he thought, very fit, the clock told him at the beginning of his training that he was nothing like so good as he had been a year or two before.
But he trained as a man of brain does train, with perfect method and desperate resolution. He brought himself down to pounds less than he had ever been at the varsity, and persevered through the feeling of disease and sickness, but still the clock would not be conciliated. He got to within half a second of his best tune, but could not improve it, and was beaten in the race some three yards by a younger man who had never been out of training.
Now, prize-fighting is a far severer test than a one-hundred-and-twenty yards' sprint over hurdles. How severe it is can be told in almost one sentence.
Sharkey and Jeffries had a memorable fight of one hour. In that hour it was found that Sharkey had lost thirteen pounds and Jeffries eleven pounds and a half. These men were both trained to the hour before they went into the ring, and the loss of weight alone shows how tremendous the exertion and strain must have been.
The best way for the fighter, of course, is never to go out of training, strictly to limit what he drinks with his meals, and prevent himself ever going up more than a pound or two; but if he has put on weight, the best way of taking it off is not to go into physical training at once, but to begin by cutting out all drinking with his meals. Half an hour before a meal and two hours afterwards, he should drink nothing. In a month he will be lighter than he ever was, probably even than he was in his first training, and then he can begin by careful exercise and very careful feeding to increase his strength once more and get himself perfectly fit.
Perhaps I should say here too that unfortunately boxing has won such vogue in the last two or three decades that the influence of money has corrupted and degraded the prize-ring. No one can be a champion and be honest; it is almost unthinkable. Big money wants to bet on a certainty: a man cannot be as sure of winning as of losing; hence he will be a better instrument for making money on if he consents to lose than if he wanted to win. The fact is patent, obvious, corroborated by experience everywhere.
Is baseball honest? Is horse-racing honest? Ask a real prize-fighter: "Is prizefighting honest?" and he'll laugh in your face.
I have only written these recollections of prize-fighters to justify my opinion that the prize-fight is an evil, and boxing one of the lowest forms of athletics. I am very sorry that the French and Germans have taken it up as they have, but fortunately, in the last thirty years, the French have taken up every form of athletics with passionate enthusiasm. I remember thirty years ago seeing some regiments drilling near Toulon; someone had put up a rail about two feet six in height for the men to run and jump over. It was perfectly comic to see how most of the soldiers jumped with both feet together. At the request of the colonel, I went over and showed them how they should jump the rail, taking it in their stride. Thirty years later the ordinary French boy has learned how to jump and how to run, too, while at cycling he is probably as good as any.
The worst evil of boxing came through its increased popularity. As soon as it was taken up in America, the quick Irish-Americans found out that two blows were likely to be decisive; the first blow is an upward stroke catching the chin, which produces a shock on the vertebrae and often results in partial paralysis; the other is the blow on the spleen, which is spoken of as the blow in the pit of the stomach; but when the spleen is really hit, it turns the man sick and he has very little strength for the next ten or fifteen minutes, in spite of perfect training.
I remember one boy in London who had learned the chin blow perfectly; he used always to mix it, at half-arm's length, at about the third round and take whatever punishment he got smiling; but would suddenly flash out either left or right with an upper cut to the chin, which, even if it didn't catch the spot perfectly, was usually sufficient to decide the fight.
It is this knowledge of the weak parts of our frame that has made prizefighting so intolerably brutal. In my time at the National Sporting Club in London there were two or three old boxers who were still hangers-on at the club, whose heads were all knocked on one side, and faces distorted with partial paralysis, the dreadful debris of human savagery. Wrestling is a far better exercise than prize-fighting and far less likely to injure any of the contestants permanently.
I must not be taken to mean that brutality is chiefly or solely English and German; it is to be found also, though in a less degree, in France and the Latin countries, as well as in northern Europe. I remember once being horrified by seeing Salammbo on the films in France. I recalled that Flaubert represented the poor fellow being beaten almost to death by the crowd, including women.
The whole brutal exhibition was put on before one with an intense realism, and the crowd delighted in the appalling exhibition. I left the theatre thinking it would take a thousand years to civilize a French crowd; and an Italian crowd is no better, and a Spanish crowd is just as bad.
I am full of tolerance, I think, for all mortal weaknesses; I can easily forgive all the frailties of the flesh and all the sins of the spirit, with the sole exception of cruelty. Cruelty to man or beast, to rat or snake, seems to me the unforgivable sin, the one utterly loathsome and damnable crime that shows utter degradation, the devil in man.
Of course there are degrees even in this villainy; cruelty to animals adds cowardice to the diabolic.
In Rome once I stopped a peasant who was beating a horse unmercifully: and when I told him he ought to be ashamed of himself, he declared that he would beat the creature as he pleased because it had no soul; and this excuse was urged not once, but twenty times, in favor of sadic cruelties practiced on dogs and cats. Was it thoughtlessness or want of imagination or something brutal in man's nature? I often asked myself, but never found an answer.
During a winter spent in Spain I got to know and like the Premier, Canovas Del Castillo. I made him a proposal which I thought interesting; that he should send twenty or thirty of the masterpieces of the Prado Gallery in Madrid to London for the season, especially a dozen paintings of Velasquez, who was then very little known in England. He said at once that if the British government would reciprocate he would do it willingly: the pictures could easily be sent by special train, or on a special warship, or in two or three parcels, so as to diminish the risk of loss. He agreed with me that the international effect of such an exchange could only be inspiring.
When I returned to England I saw Lord Salisbury on the matter, but to my astonishment he held up his hands and wouldn't hear of it, "I am glad I have no power," he said, "it isn't within the range of my duties. You would have to go to the trustees of the National Gallery in order to get the permission, and I don't think they would consent." I sounded one or two of them, but found they all wanted to shelter themselves behind the impossible.
I only mention the matter here because it was one of the many pleasant talks that made me appreciate the Spanish Premier's mind and character. Talking to him once about bull-fighting, to my astonishment he agreed with me that the killing of the horses was shamefully brutal and mere torture.
"Why not stop it?" I asked. "The play of the chulos at first and putting in the banderillas is extremely fine and interesting with just sufficient danger to make it enthralling; and the killing of the bull with a sword thrust is such an extraordinary feat that every one would wish to have seen it; but the lancers, who on horseback torture the bull to attack the poor old horses and tear them to pieces, constitute a dreadful exhibition."
Canovas finally declared that he would try to stop that part of bullfighting; and he kept his word. Everyone remembers the result: the mob left the bullring hissing and shouting and went after the Premier, who had to take refuge in the Royal Palace and then flee out of the back door and get away from Madrid. The thing the Spanish populace most loved was the horrible cruelty and torturing of the poor, broken-down horses.
Before leaving this chapter on prize-fighting and cruelty, I wish to record the most tragic story I have ever heard or read of. When one thinks of tragedy, one recalls unconsciously the tragedy of Socrates, or the still more terrible tragedy of Jesus on the Cross; but once many years ago, while spending a holiday in Venice, an old Venetian told me a story which seemed to me more terrible than these. I have often wanted to use it and have been afraid to, and with the passing of the years the memory became a little vague. But the other day I came across the tale again, told at full length and in its proper historical setting.
It belongs to the time of the five months' siege of Venice by the Austrians, half a century ago now. The story is already passing into oblivion, even among Venetians, but it surely deserves to be revived today. Here it is, word for word:
"The Venetian commanders determined to sever the single link with the mainland, and to blow up the two-and-a-half miles of uniform roading-the work of the oppressors-which bridged the lagoon.
"For some reason the mine did not explode; whereupon a certain Agostino Stefani volunteered to row out in his sandolo and set the matter right.
"General Cosenza accepted the bold offer, and in the face of a double fire from the forts of Malghera and San Giuliano, Agostino set out in his light craft.
"He accomplished his task unscathed, but on the return passage over the wide unsheltered stretch of water, the sandolo was hit and sunk.
"Agostino was a strong swimmer, but the current was against him, and when a patrol boat at length picked him up, he was exhausted beyond power of articulation.
"Excited crowds on the bank watched his rescue, and suddenly, 'A spy! A spy!
A traitor!' was shouted. The reported capture of an Austrian was spread from mouth to mouth. Stones and execrations were hurled at the patrol boat, and suspicion seemed to fly with them and infect the crew, who threw the speechless man back into the water and struck at him with oars and stones.
He sank just before General Cosenza's aide-de-camp proclaimed his identity and told of his heroic courage."
What he must have thought before he sank, poor Agostino, with shouts of "Spione; spione; traditore!" sounding in his ears!
The benefactor of his fellows-a brave soldier if ever there was one- murdered by those he had fought for, and murdered as a spy and a traitor- "Spione! traditore!" ringing as a curse in his death-agony.
CHAPTER XIV
Queen Victoria and Prince edward
It is impossible to paint a complete picture of my time without saying something about Queen Victoria and Prince Edward, afterwards King Edward VII. In the preceding volume I have given some personal anecdotes about him and described how his introduction of cigarette smoking after lunch and dinner, immediately the last course was finished, put an end to the custom of heavy drinking which had been usual till his advent. As soon as the upper classes stopped guzzling, the middle classes followed suit, and ever since the revenue from drink has diminished in Britain in curious proportion to the increase of population.
Prince Edward reaped only a small part of the benefit of this change. He had a reputation for loose living and no one wished to think of him as a reformer.
Some few knew that he had all the social duties of a sovereign to perform and state to keep up on a small income and with no real power.
It was Edward who changed the traditional policy of Great Britain, which was one of friendly alliance with Germany, into a policy of antagonism to Germany and alliance with France. He was the founder of the Entente Cordiale between England and France, and accordingly the first cause, so to speak, of the World War. But in order to exhibit this
change of policy in its true light as a complete right-about-face, I must first speak of his mother, Queen Victoria, and describe her influence.
It is difficult to paint a pen portrait of Queen Victoria. First of all, it must be done chiefly from the outside, and secondly, she changed with the years in an astonishing degree. Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister of her early life, the guide and mentor of her first decisions as a monarch-in fact, the man who trained her-always spoke of her as eminently teachable and docile.
After she married Albert of Saxe-Gotha, she took her husband as mentor.
Her early English education was swallowed up in a German education. She had learnt German as a girl; but now, out of passionate love for her husband, she spoke nothing but German in her home; read chiefly German; took her ideas from her husband; saw life and men through his eyes. She did not love him merely; she grew to idolize him.
A story is told of her early married life which illustrates her devotion. I cannot say how it originated or who was the authority for it; but it became a tradition, one of those stories which are truer than truth, symbol as well as fact.
The husband and wife did not agree about a certain policy. Victoria, still English, was backed up by the Minister whom she was accustomed to trust: at length she said gently to her husband: