After amusing himself in this way for about a fortnight, in which he became accustomed to his diet, the absence of domestic comforts, and the discipline of regular hours, he commenced his regular walking exercise, which at first was about ten or twelve miles a day, increasing to eighteen or twenty. At first he was strongly disinclined to march such distances, so I took to filling my pockets with pebbles, and when he proved laggard I would pelt his shins severely, which stimulated him to pursue me, vowing revenge, but never able to overtake me. Twice a day, morning and evening, he ran quarter of a mile at the top of his speed, and in consequence of these exercises and the physic his weight was reduced, after five weeks, to fourteen stone and nine pounds. This being still too heavy by a stone and more, I commenced his sweats, walking him under heavy loads of clothing and putting him to lie between feather mattresses. In this way, and with such purges and emetics as were necessary, he was further reduced, over four weeks, to thirteen stone and five pounds, which I determined to be his pitch of condition, beyond which he could not go without weakening.
He was under my care eleven weeks at Ury, from early July until a few days before his second bout with Molineaux in September, with two intervals of a week apiece in which I took him on a course of strong exercise in the Highlands. We walked sixty miles to Mar Lodge, in two days, and I was satisfied that he could have walked as far again without distress. He continued his regular exercises with zest in the splendid surroundings, and I believe his strength and wind were more improved by these Highland journeys than by any other part of his training.
Besides his regular exercise at Ury he was frequently engaged in other rural pursuits, ploughing, pulling carts, and felling trees, which he greatly enjoyed. Of pugilistic practice he had as much as seemed necessary, which was little enough, for once in condition his speed and science were beyond improvement. His hands were truly remarkable, the knuckles having hardened by long use into a sort of carapace with which he could strike the knotted bark from a mature ash tree, which he did once negligently during one of our walks. I forbade any repetition of this extraordinary feat in case of injury. We sparred with the gloves occasionally, and on visits to Stonehaven he gave lessons to the local youths, with whom he became a firm favourite.
On this head I feel bound to own that during our near three months together I conceived an increasing affection for him. He bore my tyranny with great good humour, pebbles and all, and his conduct and demeanour were proof that, contrary to mistaken opinion, professional pugilists are, with a few exceptions, among the most gentle, modest, and good-natured of men. It may be that this becoming tolerance springs from the knowledge of their prowess, or, as I have heard it ventured, that vice and ill feeling have been beaten out of them and remain on the ground with their blood. It is a matter for conjecture, but whatever the cause I can assert that in my experience, “the better the miller, the better the man,” and point to Gully, Gregson, Jackson, Mendoza, Jones, Pearce, and many others to establish my case.
Cribb conducted himself with much propriety in Scotland, and showed his humane and charitable disposition on various occasions. I remember, when walking on Union Street in Aberdeen, he was accosted by an old woman in great distress. Her story affected him, and the emotions of his heart became evident in the muscles of his face. He gave her all the silver he had in his pocket, and was rewarded with: “God bless your honour, y'are surely not an orn'ary mon!” She spoke truer than she knew.
Sir, I have allowed myself to be carried beyond the scope of your inquiries. It remains for me to say only that when the period of his training was complete, Cribb was, by his own admission, in the best condition of his life, enjoying good spirits, and confident of success. He weighed thirteen stone and six pounds.
I remain, sir,
Your obedient servant,
Allardice of Ury
I'd ha' given the world and every single thing in it, to be by his side when he met Cribb again. That's the lasting sorrow o' my life, sir, and I know it's a selfish one, but what I told Bob Gregson was gospel true: I'd made Tom Molineaux, so far as a trainer ever can make a fighter (for the man must have it within him), and I wanted to share in his glory. That's only human vanity, course it is – but not vanity alone. Truth was I'd put such heart and soul into training him for Copthorn, so much hard graft and hope, so much of my own self, if you follow me, that 'twas almost as if we'd become one, Tom and I. And I knew, when we was choused out o' the fight by those dastard villains, that we'd come again a second time and take what was rightly ours – and 'twould ha' been my knee he rested on, and my hands to rub his flanks and ease his limbs, and my fingers to staunch and close the cuts and anoint the grazes, and my words in his ear when he'd fibbed the Champion of England into a blind bloody hulk in the third round … but, lo! I was not there, sir, not in his corner, nor within the outer ring, even, but perched on a farm cart where I'd paid a bob for a view, among all the chawbacons who'd never heard o' Pad Jones. That's sinful pride, ain't it, though? But you understand my feelings, I know.
I'd no one to blame but myself, mind. 'Twas I threw in my hand and left him, at Bedford, I think it was. Bob Gregson has told you how and why. Bill Richmond had sworn that there would be an end to Tom's slack ways, that he would buckle to training and leave off the daffy and doxies and stuffing and riotous living that had so spoiled his condition afore Copthorn – but he did not keep his word, sir. I would have had Tom back at the Nag and Blower, under my eye, training hard, but Bill it was who said we must take to the road with him. I was dead against it, sir, but Bill needed the dibs, and was sure the country air must benefit Tom, and what should hinder my keeping him in trim on tour as easy as in Town?
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 g
lass, 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 corpora
tions 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.”