And at that moment, so help me, Carter fainted! He did, sir, 'tis no word of a lie, swooning on Richmond's knee like a bride with the vapours! It seemed impossible, for he was a big, tough, active heavyweight, and such punishment as he'd taken from Trembling Tom wouldn't have hurt an infant. Richmond was in a fine frenzy, working at him while Gibbons plied the bottle, and Gregson, seeing victory snatched from his grasp, was near to tears, crying: “Jack, Jack, what's thee aboot, man? Git oop, git oop, lad! By God, if tha willna git oop for me, git oop for Lancashire!” He might as well have sung psalms to a dead horse. Carter lay like Ophelia through the call of “Time!”, and Tom, altogether played out and wheezing “Oh dear, oh dear!” was declared the winner.
What an uproar there was! “Universal dissatisfaction”, my colleague of The Times called it, and you may say he was right. They were waving hats and canes, shouting “Cross!” and “Sold!” and pelting the recumbent gladiator with coppers, while Gregson pleaded for the mill to continue, for Carter had opened his eyes and whispered “Stop a bit, stop a bit!” which gave hopes of revival. These were dashed when a little chap with a doctor's case scuttled through the ropes, whipped out a lancet and cup, and in a twinkling of an eye had bled Carter as neat as you please. That settled it, there was no continuing with the man's vein opened, the shouts of execration and disappointment redoubled, and the sporting peer who'd let Carter change in his chariot, flung out his clobber in disgust, crying: “Carter, you louse, take your miserable weeds and be damned to you!” They never discovered who the medicine-monger was; Gregson swore he was none of his.
Tom was paid his prize to an accompaniment of hissing and shouts of “Shame!” Ward bustled him away to a chaise, and that was the last view I ever had of the Milling Moor who had shone so briefly like a comet in the sporting sky, slumped with his ugly black face bowed and the fat heavy on his arms and body. Barclay nudged me and says: “Barely a mark on him, for all Carter's heroics, do you see?” It was so; even in his poor condition, terrified and shirking, he had gone twenty-five rounds with a mighty handy heavy man and still contrived to slip and stop most of the blows rained on him – and hardly struck back at all.
Well, as a fight it had been a disgrace, but it was also a mystery, and the Fancy couldn't fathom it. What the devil had been the matter with Molineaux? That was the great question – not whether Carter had sold the fight or not. It was past belief, and no accounting for it. How, it was asked, could the once brave and splendid competitor of the Champion have so degenerated? How, I was asked, “did the Hero become a cur”? What could have wrought the change in the Black Ajax, the all-but-conqueror of Cribb whose “dauntless courage had matched his wondrous skill”?
The popular view was that dissipation had so destroyed his powers that he knew he was no match for Carter, and was terrified in consequence. “Niggers have no bottom”, “Scratch a black and you'll find a coward”, that sort of talk. Joe Ward had the answer to that, though: “Tom were no coward. Cowards don't take what he took from Cribb. 'Sides, rum an' rogerin' may ruin a man's constitootion, but they never hurt his game that I heard on. No match for Carter? Bli'me, baked and boozed and breathless as he was, he could ha' done Carter wi' one hand, if so minded!” Then why, Joe, was he not so minded? Joe don't know; it beat him.
Barclay, who knew more of fighters and their condition than anyone, wouldn't credit that any amount of debauch could have turned a brave man into a poltroon, but there were those who wondered if Tom hadn't been mad all along, and been suffering from a fit. Others wagged their fat heads over the Unpredictability of Savage Natures, the Primitive Emotions of the Negro Race, and so forth. One chap said you never knew with niggers, look at cannibals, what?, but another reminded him, solemn as you like, that 'twas Carter who was supposed to have bit Molineaux, not t'other way round.
What do I think? Only this, that if he was queer in the attic, or a coward at bottom, it was uncommon odd that a year after the Carter mill Tom Molineaux should have fought one of the bravest battles of his life. His junketing had taken him by then to Scotland, you see, and there he met and beat Fuller, the Norfolk printer (another pupil of Richmond's, nota bene!). No, I wasn't there, but Joe Ward, who was, told me he'd never seen the like, for Tom, untrained, overblown, and in the poorest trim, had shown masterly science and style, and was game as a terrier, the very image of what he'd been against Cribb.
How, then, do I explain his shocking display against Carter? An “off day”? No, that won't do. Oh, we know that every fighter has 'em, but they don't run blubbing round the ring squealing “Help, murder!”, do they? Well, I can't account for it – but I'll tell you Pad Jones's opinion, when I put the matter to him. He didn't see the fight, but he knew Tom better, perhaps, than any man in England, and it was his belief that Tom was playing the fool!
“And letting folk think he was the poorest kind of craven?” says I. “Come, Pad, what man in his right mind would do such a thing?”
“Tom would,” says Pad.
“Never! What, for twenty-six rounds, while the whole Fancy shouted its disgust and contempt of him? Why in God's name should he do such a thing?”
“Mebbe to show his disgust and contempt o' them,” says Pad.
“Oh, come, that's doing it too rich altogether! What cause had he to harbour any such feelings? No, no, Pad, that won't do!”
You've met Jones – well, you know his trick of talking sideways, with that little smile, and all of a sudden he'll level those grey eyes at you, straight and steady? So he did now.
“He did not like us, Mr Egan. He did not believe we treated him fair. Nor did we, sir. We robbed him o' the Championship of England, and we abused and insulted and made mock of him when he was doing his best and showing us milling as good as any. Oh, I know – none better! – what an ugly customer he could be, with his bragging and bounce and nigger airs, and the offence he gave with his insolence and carrying on and all o' that. He was a great ignorant babby, and a brute, if you like, and the Lord knows I had my bellyful of him and don't excuse his faults – but he was a stranger in a strange land, and the Fancy at his fights was never what you'd call even-handed, were they? Natural enough … but we could ha' been kinder.”
Well, some of this I'd thought myself, as you'll know from my Boxiana, where I opine that Tom had to contend with a prejudiced multitude, whose hostility was as great a hazard to him as his opponent's prowess, that he knew his unpopularity, and that it could not help but depress him. “Still,” I told Pad, “if he felt himself badly used, I can't for the life of me see what good it did him to play the frightened lunatic in the mill against Carter! You say he was showing his contempt of the onlookers? Well, then, he failed, for they didn't know it!”
“Tom did, though,” says Pad.
“And much good it can have done him! Why, all he did was make a fool of himself – aye, and of the fight game!”
Pad gave his little smile, looking sideways. “Ain't that just what I've been saying, Mr Egan?” says he.
So there you have the philosophy of Paddington Jones, my dear sir, and you must make of it what you will. I've told you all I can of Molineaux, for as I said, I never saw him again after Banbury, and heard only snatches from time to time, few of them pleasant. Exhibitions, sparring matches in the provinces, a mill in some godforsaken spot now and then, a brawl or two, but always, alas, a downward course. My stars, what a waste that was! What folly! There never was a pugilist with greater gifts, or one who squandered them so foolishly. He could have risen to the heights … why, for a moment he did. But there were two fighters he never could beat. One was Tom Cribb, and t'other was Tom Molineaux.
I ain't proud o' what I did to Tom after the fight at Thistleton Gap. I mean leaving him, and the ca. sa., and having him spunged up, and making the Carter match, and all o' that. But I ain't wearing mourning for it, neither, and I guess I'd do it again, given the time over. I was crazy mad, and hated him something vicious for what he'd done. Not for the money we owed Tom Belcher, t
hat was nothing, just an excuse to do him spite. No, I hated him for the pain and disappointment, for all the hopes he'd spoiled, for the way he'd had the prize in his grasp and threw it away. He could ha' been the Champion, the black Champion of England! He threw it clear away.
I used to dream 'bout that Championship, long ago, when I was a young miller, and thought myself a prime chicken. But I soon saw 'twould never be, for me, and time passed – and then came Tom, and when Buck Flashman and Pad Jones showed me what was in him, oh, ten times what there ever was in me, or any other fighter I ever saw, black or white … then I dreamed again, and knew such a burning ambition as I'd never felt for myself – to see him cock o' the Fancy, Champion of England, and pay back all those years and sneers and see their pride humbled and their insults thrown back in their teeth, and a black man, not a half-human like me, but a real black man take their precious jewel away from them! Their Championship, their game that they set such store by! Mister, I could ha' died happy then, knowing they'd had to eat the crow I'd etten all my life, and bowed and smiled and looked real civil while I et it, damn them all!
Guess you think the Championship of England ain't worth that much hate? Mister, you don't know the English. Guess you think I must be dicked in the nob to feel the bitterness I feel? Mister, you ain't a nigger … and you never been a slave.
Tom could ha' done it. If he'd had half my will, half o' the fire that was in my guts, sure, he could ha' done it! But he did not. Well, you know why, by now, and what's the use to talk o' that? Maybe you think I was wrong to feel such spite at him. See here, mister, if he'd done his best, if he'd worked, if he'd trained, if he'd tried a lick, godammit! – d'ye think I'd ha' blamed him for getting beat by that son-of-a-bitch Cribb? No, sir! I'd ha' given him the shirt off o' my back! I'd ha' stood by him, and loved him like a son! But when he got beat as should never ha' got beat, but for his own jackass cussedness – and then turns and blames me … well, then, I'd ha' seen Tom Molineaux in Hell! I get the shakes and the fury just to think on it, even now.
I made the Carter match to pay him out, sure. I hoped Carter'd whip him, maybe learn him sense – maybe even hoped Tom might still come again 'gainst Cribb, I don't know. Well, I was paid out myself for my spite, worse'n I could have 'magined. I hoped to see him beat, but I took no pleasure to see him shamed – to see a black man shamed. That was the awfullest thing, to see him blubber and whine and run white-livered from a man that wasn't fit to tie his laces. Pad Jones figures he did it a-purpose. I don't see that, but I don't know, and I don't dam' well care. I was sickened, and cursed the day I ever saw him, wanted to forget all 'bout him.
But 'twas not to be. I was down in Scotland next year; there was some good mills there in '14, and there was a boy, Fred Fuller, had been a pupil of mine, I'd brought him forward at the Fives Court, taken him on tour to Yorkshire, good heavy man – well, he was in Scotland then, and when I heard he had a match, I thought to go to see it. Mister, when I learned his adversary was Tom, I dropped the notion. I had no wish to see him – and yet, all that day of the mill, which was at Paisley, no distance from Glasgow, where I was, I found my thoughts turning to it, I knew not why. The talk was of nothing else; every amateur in Scotland had gone, the Paisley road was a-throng with folk at first light, and they say there was a hundred carriages about the ring. “No, I'll not go!” I said. “Likely 'twill be another such disgrace as his fight with Carter.” So I stayed in the town, and thought: “Damnation, I wish I was there!”
That night I heard the sheriff had stopped the mill in the fourth round. Hoping to learn more, I hung on a group of swells in a sporting ken on the High Street, and their talk was all of the science on both sides, and how Tom had fibbed well at the head with his left, until Fuller had planted him a desperate ribber, at which Joe Ward, who was seconding Fuller, had called out in fun that if he hit so hard the fight would be over too soon. “Then the damned sheriff and his damned constables broke the ring!” says the swell. “So the mill was o'er sooner than Ward thought, and a damned shame!”
“How did Molineaux shape?” asks one.
“Oh, quite famously, but too stout by stones, and short o' puff !”
“But not of conceit!” cries another. “Why, the black villain swaggers up to the sheriff, bold as brass, and told him if he had known they were to be interrupted, he'd have finished off Fuller in quick time! Well, the mill's to go forward on Tuesday, so we shall see if he makes good his boast!”
Mister, I could ha' laughed aloud. There was no good reason why I should 'bate my enmity to Tom one bit – but when I heard that, I could just see him, full o' bounce and sass, fronting that sheriff, and crying something like: “Why, m'lawd, ifn yo' lawdship had jes' told me you was a-comin', Ah'd ha' had this white pug laid out all cold! Say, m'lawd, cain't we have jes' one mo' round? Ah's five to four fav'rite – you cud git yo'self some o' that Molineaux money, why don't ye?” Aye, something like that. I'd heard it before.
I was there on Tuesday, and I'm right glad I was. Oh, Tom was in worse shape, even, than against Carter, and Fuller was no milling fool. I thought to speak to him 'forehand, but kept back after all, for when I saw Tom I still had no mind to be noticed by him, as would have happened if I'd spoke to Fuller.
So I just watched, and wished Pad Jones could ha' been at my side. Tom was full o' flesh and gasping to be heard in London, he was ever so slow on his pins, and when he struck I knew his power was gone, his guard was clumsy and he took hits that he'd ha' stopped or slipped with his eyes shut three years back. But, mister, one thing had not gone, and that was his spirit. Anyone thought Tom Molineaux lacked game and bottom was proved wrong that day; he was too weak to put Fuller down, and Fuller, hard and fast and clever as he was, with a grave-digger right, could not knock Tom off his legs. There never was a set-to like it, for it lasted above an hour with but one half-minute's rest in all that time! It's the truth – they fought but two rounds, the first of twenty-eight minutes, the second of forty, such a thing as was never known in a prize-fight, and the two men hammer and tongs all through.
It was a cruel, bloody affair, for Fuller had a gift for the heavy nobbing return, and Tom played at the head as always. Oh, if Pad had only been there! For just now and then, and only for a moment, that big black hulk with his belly flopping o'er his britches, bleeding like a slaughtered ox and winded fit to die – just now and then, he'd lift on to his toes, and that left hand would go like a bolt o' lightning, smack-smack-smack and Fuller's head rocking on his shoulders! He was a game chicken, too, with his nose busted and one eye closed, and back he'd come for more. They rallied, retreated, closed, fought at half-arm and distance, and every second I thought Tom must go down dead beat, but still he milled away, until Fuller levelled him with a right upper-cut that should ha' killed him, but there he was again, at the call o' “Time!”, laughing out of a phiz that was dripping claret, telling Fuller his time was come.
That was the first round, and in the second – forty minutes, mind! – Fuller was bellows to mend and failing. Tom was done, but the slower pace was nuts to him, and the science that was still in him began to show as he shifted his body but not his weary feet, ducking and slipping like Jackson on the handkerchief, until Fuller was at a standstill.
Then Tom went for him. God knows, mister, where he found the strength, but he milled that man to death, left hand going like a repeater, hitting him away every time, 'til he had him cornered and ripe for the down-cut that would ha' finished him – and damme if that snake Joe Ward, stooped by the post, didn't clip Fuller's ankle and down he went. It saved Fuller, no error 'bout that, and Tom's second, an Irish galoot, yells “Foul!” I reckon Ward, who was up to every dodge, figured the Scotch people wouldn't know that one, when a second pulls down his man to save him from being laid away for keeps. But the umpire did, and gave the fight to Tom on a foul.
I didn't go to him. After all there was between us, I thought best not. I heard one man say it was a real “Molineaux mill”, on account of end
ing in dispute and ill-will, but another said that for his money the Scotch people had been lucky to see such a prime specimen of English prize-fighting. He was right there, and I left the ground with a heavy heart, to think o' that mighty miller that I'd helped to make, me and Pad, that should ha' been Champion, but gone to ruin now.
For he had fallen in with Abner Gray, that Tom Belcher and I had employed to spar wi' Tom years before, after Pad quit us. He was a no-account person, but convenient at that time, and lately had been around the provinces with exhibitions and piddly little matches at fairs, third-run things where they put in old beat pugs wi' a bellyful o' beer to get hammered by the local chawbacons. Abner was a scut and a leech, and Tom must ha' been a godsend to him, with his name and fame still sticking to him along wi' three extra stones o' fat, but I was sick to think o' him in such company. I heard of him now and then, in Scotland and the north country, but nothing of consequence, and I guessed he had given up the game.
About a year after the Fuller mill I was down to Scotland again, on behalf of George Cooper, who conducted a boxing school in Edinburgh. You mayn't know of him, but he was a pupil of Pad Jones's, and I'd had a hand in bringing him on a couple of years before when he'd been a novice. It was after I'd taken leave of Tom, and you might say 'twas “off wi' the old love, on wi' the new”, but that's the way o' the Fancy: one chicken goes to roost, so you find another. From the first Cooper had been as pretty a natural miller as ever you saw, another Mendoza for footwork, five foot ten, twelve stone, clever as a monkey, and fibbed hard two-handed; only one thing lacked, and that was strength o' body. He had no constitution. 'Twas the damnedest shame, but no amount o' work could better it; as Barclay used to say, he was one o' those who “trained off” 'stead of “on”. But he was so quick and full o' style that we must give him a run, for as Pad said: “He hits like a hammer, and is too fast to be hit his self.” So it proved in mills with Harry Lancaster and Bill Jay, but George went down to Tom Oliver, boxing him blind for six rounds and growing careless, when Tom nailed him. Now George was in Edinburgh, as I said, and when he wrote asking me to hold the ring in a match his gentry pupils were making for him, off I went north, for old times' sake. It was older times than I'd bargained for; his opponent was Tom Molineaux.