Black Ajax (26 page)

Fine talk, sir, and all gammon. We had not been on the road a week when the great black simpleton was at his tricks again, lushy drunk and skirt-smit, gorging as he pleased, and a stone heavier. I'll not weary you wi' the tale of it, save to say that it got worse wi' each town we visited: Tom the idol o' the mob, grinning like an actor, swallowing flattery and liquor by the gallon, ogling the drabs, and abed until noon. I reasoned with him, sir, I begged him, but 'twas no go. His reply was ever the same:

“Ah whupped Cribb once, Ah whup him agin. By'n' by, Ah train down good, like Ah did befo'. Git my weight below fo'teen – but, Pad, ain't no sense to doin' it
now
. You want me trained
off
an' weak?”

“I want ye fit to fight Rimmer,” says I, for that match had been made, “and that you'll not be, the way you go on!”

“Oh, pore ole Pad!” cries he, grinning and cuffing at me in play. “All a-worrited 'cos Ah's 'joyin' maself! Why, Rimmer ain't but a Johnny Raw! Ah trim him up wi' one hand – an'
then
we get ready for Massa Cribb, ho-ho, fee-fie-fo-fum! An' if Ah has me a li'l fun wi' the gals, whut's to matter? Had me plenny 'fore Copthorn, din't Ah – an' Ah was in's goodish trim as Cribb, weren't Ah?”

“Aye – and lost, blast your black ignorance!” cries I. “If ye'd ha' heeded me ye'd ha' been a stone lighter and a foot faster, and had him beat in twenty minutes! And been Champion this moment – wi'
Cribb
beggin' for the return!” But 'twas like arguing wi' a kid, sir, a great heedless babby.

Only once I thought to win him to a better course, and that was after Jem Belcher's funeral. Poor Jem had been as good as the best, but the loss of his peeper put paid to that, and he'd been only the ghost of his self since Cribb beat him the second time. They reckon his health was broke by the month he spent in
limbo
at Horsemonger Lane after that mill, which the beaks held to be a breach o' the peace, and clapped him up. Consequently he grew morose, and business at his crib in Frith Street fell away, folk being disinclined to take their wets from a blue-devilled landlord. They say he died of an ulcer on the liver, but I reckon 'twas an ulcer o' the heart. He was only thirty years old.

We were bound to leave off our tour and come to Town to see him
laid away, for all the Fancy turned out, pugs and amateurs. We three rode with Gregson and Ikey Bittoon in the second coach – four coaches there were, one of 'em glass, a mute wi' a plume o' black feathers before the hearse, and such a crush at Mary-le-Bone we could not have come to the grave if Big Bob and Bittoon had not cleared a path, Ikey heaving the files aside crying “Make vay, you heathens!” and blubbing like a skirt. He was not alone, sir; many a pug piped his eye to see such a Champion as Jem filled in at last. He was Jack Slack's grandson, sir, did you know?
^*

Tom was quite knocked over, and wept floods, not that he'd known Jem long, but the occasion was such as he was not accustomed to, and it being so solemn put him in awe. “Po' feller, po' ole feller!” he kept saying, and asked me how Jem had come to
hop the twig
so young. I told him it came of not keeping himself in trim, what with daffy and late hours and not minding exercise and diet, and Tom's eyes fair started from his head.

“Pad,” says he, “ 'tis a warnin',” and vowed to live clean henceforth, which he did for the rest o' that Sunday, and went to evening service at St Martin's, too. We were to go down to the country again on the Tuesday, and on the Monday night what does he do but get raging lushy and picked a fight wi' Jack Power for calling him a chimbley-sweep, and they hammered each other half round Leicester Square before Jack cried enough, and then my bold Tom goes off to the theatre wi'
four
bits o'
Haymarket ware
on his arms, that damned Janey Perkins foremost, and came home in a hurdle half-naked, laughing and bragging how he'd pestered all four, and Janey twice.

I as near threw in my hand then and there, but was prevailed on by Richmond to stay wi' him, and so we set off on our travels again, with Tom promising reformation, and swearing I was the only trainer for him. And I'd ha' stood by him, sir, if only Richmond had backed me, but I soon saw his interest was in the takings from Tom's sparring
and wrestling shows, while his man went to the devil. “All in good time, Pad,” he would say to my protests. “Once he's done Rimmer we'll have the
gelt
to tide us over, and ye can set to work in earnest. Let him be just now, can't ye? Naggin' can't but distemper him.'

What haunted Bill, you see, was the fear that if Tom was irked he might cast off and find another backer. So he indulged Tom, who became more wayward and insolent by the day. D'ye know, sir, I sometimes believed he was dicked in the nob, the way he went on, as though he were
trying
to ruin his self? And his moods, sir! Why, at Salisbury, where he was sparring wi' all comers for a shilling a time, a blacksmith who was the local terror challenged him to a reg'lar mill for a hundred guineas, which would ha' been the easiest of pickings – and what d'ye suppose Tom did? Locked his self in his room, sir, and would not come out, not for anything! And that against a man he could ha' eaten for supper!

But his drinking and dallying were too much, and at last I could brook no more of it. I had lost count o' the times I'd vowed to quit unless he came to heel, and each time he had played the simple darkie, ever so sorry and please to forgive him, and had wheedled and grinned me into staying, which God knows I wanted to do. But at Bedford, when he rolled in shot at dawn and spewing, wi' a hussy on his arm, and I pitched into him – well, sir, he was too sour and ugly to wheedle, but damned my eyes and told me I might stay or go to Hell as I pleased. Richmond said no word … so I went.

Gregson's told you how I thought twice about taking Rimmer in hand, but he ne'er guessed why I accepted. If the boy had had a pauper's chance against Tom, I'd not ha' touched him – what, go to work to smash what I'd been at such pains to build? Never at any price. But I figured I might bring him on sufficient to give Tom a run for his money (for he had the makings of a good heavy man, did young Rimmer) and scare him into sense, maybe. A foolish notion, you may say, but the truth was I wanted Tom to beat Cribb and take that title as I wanted salvation, whether I was in his corner or not. That was why I trained Rimmer.

Well, you know what came of it. Tom was fat, and Tom was sluggish wi' good living, and Tom fought at half-pace, and even so Tom made a damned promising chicken look like an old woman, damned if he
didn't! In eight rounds he never broke sweat, until the lad stung him, and then tore the heart out of him with such speed and vicious science – and he terrified that assembly, sir, and for all I know he terrified Cribb, too.

I was blowed if I knew what to make of it. It crossed my mind (as it had crossed it before) that perhaps he knew his business best, and I knew mine not at all, and he could go his own way and half-ruin his self wi' loose-living – and still fight like a Champion. He believed it, and for all that good sense told me different, I could not deny it, not after Copthorn, nor Moulsey Hurst neither. One thing only I was sure of: that if he trained only so much as to give him the wind and legs for twenty rounds, then the Cribb that I knew could not stand against him.

Perhaps Bill Richmond concluded the same, for by all I heard that summer he took no great pains wi' Tom, but was content to have Joe Ward and Abner Gray spar wi' him when they was touring the country, and when they returned to Town 'twas Tom Belcher and Bill Gibbons who saw to his training, such as it was. Cribb was in Barclay's hands in Scotland by then, and you may be sure the rumours flew thick and fast, but 'twas all gas and speculation; never was a mill so talked of, with so little news of the millers. More than once I thought to tool down to the Nag and Blower and offer my service again, but word reached me that I'd have no welcome home from Bill Richmond, so I let it be. But I was sorry, sir, aye, heart-sick sorry, and much regretted my leaving Tom at Bedford, yet consoled myself that I done my duty by him in his beginnings. I could not flatter myself that I had more to teach him, or that my knee would support him better than another when the time came.

I can't think why you should want to examine me
viva voce
. There's enough spice and colour in my written accounts, surely – you've read my
Boxiana
? Well, then! Points I may have overlooked? Well, I dare say; one can't set down every little thing. Points, eh? Let's see … oh, Dick Christian's bit of fun about Marriott and the farmer who wouldn't take a cheque – aye, that was a lark … no, I don't believe I ever recorded it. Very good, we'll come to it in due course … I'm your man, sir, fire away.

Cribb and Molineaux … Molineaux and Cribb … the Black Diamond versus the Black Ajax, for the second time. Gad, that was a mill that set the Fancy back on their heels … oh, better than the first fight, by far – and
that
had been a historic set-to, if you like. But the second match took our breath away, so sudden, so unexpected, not at all what we had imagined it would be. After the first encounter, no one supposed we should have such a drama again; well, we were out there.

Even as interest in the first bout surpassed anything that had gone before, so with the second it was agreed that there had never been such excitement in the memory of man. Ossa was heaped on Pelion; the country was sated with boxing-mania, and it was
the
event of that year o' grace 1811! Aye, the year the Regency began – and who cared for that when the Championship of England was at stake, with black hands clutching at Britannia's crown? That was the summer when Wellington thrashed the French at Fuentes d'Onoro, and Soult was given his medicine at Albuhera, but neither action could compare with the Battle of Thistleton Gap! The massacre of the Mamelukes was small beer to Barclay's mysterious doings in the Highlands, and Cribb's correspondence with the
Edinburgh Evening Star
over the latter's protest at the sums being wagered on the fight (“Blush, oh Britain!”) quite knocked Bolivar and his Dagoes into the shade. The conquest of Java wasn't in it with a squib on the Moor's improving science, I can tell you.

I'm sure the wagers far exceeded the betting on Copthorn, and there were some dooced queer ones, like the London baker who backed Cribb with every blessed thing he owned – blunt, personal property, even the lease of his house, seventeen hundred quid's worth – or the two Corinthians whose stake was a new suit of duds, with linen, gloves, walking-stick, and a guinea in the pocket, for the winner.

Well, you may judge the frenzy from the to-do there was over the scene of the bout. You know how down the beaks were on mills, with bailiffs hounding 'em from one county to the next, fighters arrested, and all that rot – not for the Cribb–Molineaux return, though. Why, the corporations of our northern towns were fairly
bidding
for the bout to take place within their bounds, and half the sporting gentry in the shires were offering their private land! The patrons were leery, though, and fixed on Crown Point in Leicestershire, with the ring itself close by at Thistleton Gap, where three counties meet, Leicestershire, Rutland, and Lincolnshire, just to be safe. They needn't have fretted – every magistrate in Rutland was at the ringside, and such a turn-out of the Quality as never was seen: Young Q, Yarmouth, Pomfret, Baynton, Craven, Mellish, God knows who else, and every leading professional in the game, all come, horse, foot, and carriage for the battle of the century, a hundred miles from Town, and no railways in those days!

There wasn't a bed to be had in the three counties the night before; every one had been bespoke days ahead, and the hostelers of Leicester and Oakham and Stamford and Grantham rejoiced. The roads were black with people, thousands on thousands, and every kind of conveyance, on the morning of the fight, and in the press to get to the field no end of trees were broken down and hedges uprooted. It was stiffish country, much of it plough, but the weather was fine and warm which raised the hopes of those with their money on the Moor, who became an object of even greater fear and jealousy to the friends of the Champion.

Dick Christian and I were early on hand, Dick giving me a lift on his mare, and arrived in time for the altercation about where the ring should be. Molineaux's last two fights, with Cribb and Rimmer, had both been interrupted by the crowd breaking the outer ring, so this time there was to be a stage, twenty-five foot, which should serve to keep the mob at bay and give them a better view. They'd picked on a fine piece of stubble, but the farmer wanted fifty quid for it, and
wasn't about to accept a cheque. “Oi doan't know 'bout they fancy papers,” says he. “Fifty in me 'and, or foight summers else.”

“'Pon my word!” cries the commissary-general. “Ain't my sign manual good enough?”

“Good enough for 'ee, milord,” says Turvey, “but not for me. Oi doan't know 'ee, do Oi?”

They swore the cash wasn't to be had, in flimsies, it must be a signature to pay.

“Awright,” says the stout yeoman, “show me a name as Oi knows,” and old George Marriott was found, who knew him, and that was fine.

“Set to, and may the best man win!” cries Turvey, flourishing the cheque. “An' here's my paper as says the nigger'll draw first blood!”

So they set up the stage, with an inner ring to enclose the handlers and Swells (and your humble obedient of the Press) with another beyond for the vinegars. The assembly was now thousands strong, so the first ranks lay down, the next knelt, and the rest stood. Beyond them again were the vehicles of every description, and the horsemen, some astride and others, like Dick Christian, standing on their saddles like so many circus acrobats. I never saw a finer turn-out of the Fancy, from the peer of the realm on the box of his four-in-hand to the rustic in his clouted shoes, the Corinthian with his caped coat and eye-glass and the peasant chewing on his straw, the dandy cavalry officer on his bang-up bit of blood and Old Crocky smiling and nodding among the legs as they bawled their prices – that was sporting England, then, and where has it gone today?