Black Ajax (8 page)

Save for one startled squeal, dear Harriet hadn't uttered a sound, but now, when I suggested we resume our romp, she spoke at some length, in terms which would have shamed a fishwife, and tried to rake me with her nails. I grabbed my
duds
and fled, pursued by abuse and flying crockery, leaving her to mourn her lost love, or her failure to
nap
his guv'nor's rent, more likely.

I toddled round to White's without delay, and sent my card in to Kangaroo Cooke. When he came down I drew him aside.

“I'd be obliged, colonel, if you would present my compliments to His Grace of Beaufort, and give him my assurance that he need feel no further anxiety over Lord Worcester's relations with a certain female person. A complete and final breach has taken place.”

Kangaroo looked like a cod with a moustache at the best of times, but now he fairly gaped, and demanded what the dooce I meant.

“Not another word, sir,” says I. “Pray deliver my message, and you may add that the matter has been managed with every discretion. Nothing will be heard from either party, and I believe that if His Grace renews his offer of colours to his lordship, it has every chance of acceptance.”

“Buckley,” says he, “what the devil have you been up to?”

“Let us say,” I told him, “that I have had a word with the young man, and that he now sees where his duty lies. No, sir, I cannot in honour say more. I am delighted to have been of service to His Grace. Good evening, colonel.”

I left him goggling, and as I'd expected young Harry Somerset removed himself from Town and the curiosity of the
ton
without delay, departing for the Army in Spain where, I'm happy to say, he distinguished himself as Wellington's galloper. I was less gratified, though, when Kangaroo buttonholed me on Piccadilly to tell me that His Grace of Beaufort sent his compliments, hoped to make my acquaintance at some convenient time, but regretted that this could not be for the present, owing to His Grace's many engagements. “Discretion, what?” says Kangaroo. “Never fret, he's damned obliged, I can tell you.”

Well he might be, but I thought it dam' shabby; I'd looked for a word of thanks from the Duke himself, at least, but I didn't know how things were done, then, and was suitably dumfounded when there arrived a note from the leading Society female of the day, the queen of the cream of the
ton
, the Countess of Jersey, enclosing (I couldn't credit my senses, and it fluttered from my trembling fingers to the floor) a voucher for Almack's.

You can't conceive what that meant, so I'll tell you. Almack's was the holy of holies of the polite world, the innermost circle of the Upper
Ten Thousand, the pinnacle of Society, where only the favoured few could hope for admission. Why, ambassadors, generals, chaps with titles and pedigrees a yard long fairly clamoured and intrigued and toadied to be let in, and grovelled for a nod from the female dragons who ruled beneath its famous chandeliers. This was the club where Wellington himself was turned away for being improperly dressed, hang it all, not above one in fifty of the exclusive Guardees could cross the threshold – and mere Captain Flashman, late of the 23rd Lights, had a voucher. It was beyond belief.

Plainly Beaufort, God bless him, had hit on the finest (and least noticeable) way of rewarding me for my services, and had said a kind word to Lady Jersey, and she (as I learned later) had had me pointed out in the Park, and been pleased with the view. She was a remarkable creature, “Queen Sarah”, undisputed leader of the
Diamond Squad
though she was still in her twenties, devilish handsome and mistress of forty thousand pounds a year, but renowned as the most affected, talkative, and downright uncivil woman in England. Her word was law at Almack's, and while I dare say my looks and bearing had something to do with my being sent that heavenly, precious voucher, I don't doubt she'd also done it to spite some other hopeful.

I made my debut with Kangaroo doing the honours, leading me across that glittering floor to the charmed half-circle where Sarah sat, plumed and ridiculously regal, with her court of grand dames, many of 'em unexpectedly young and pretty, and bursting with blue blood. It was like being presented to the Empress of Russia. She stirred her fan and looked me up and down, icy cool.

“I am told that they call you Mad Buck, Mr Flashman,” drawls she. “I wonder why?”

“I am told that they call your ladyship Sweet Sally, marm,” says I. “But I don't wonder at all.” And before she could wither me for this effrontery, I gave her my gallant grin. “There, marm – now you know why they call me Mad Buck.”

It could have cost me my voucher then and there, and for a moment she was at a loss how to take it – and then, d'ye know, she absolutely blushed with pleasure and laughed like a schoolgirl. Fact was, for all her airs she had no notion of proper behaviour, and was so used to being toadied that a saucy compliment from a devil-may-care soldier
took her unawares. I believe she decided that I was a “character”, and might be indulged, so while others were given their formal name or title, I was “Buck” to her thereafter, and she, the toploftiest tabby of them all, was well pleased to be “Lady Sal”, but to me alone. I offered her no other familiarity, I may say; she wasn't that sort.

So that was how I arrived “on the Town”, and came to mingle with the upper crust, was welcomed from Almack's and Boodle's to Bob's Chophouse and Fishmonger's Hall,
^*
received the nods from White's window and had my own stool and tankard in Cribb's Crib, and while never aspiring to be a Tulip, much less a Swell (for I dressed plain and expensive, a la Brummell, to impress Sweet Sally and the drawing-room mamas), was known as a regular out-and-outer, a Corinthian of the sporting sort, a flower of the Fancy who would
fib
with peer or pug … and best of all, I danced with 'Lishy Paget under the chandeliers, all those old country dances that she loved, Gathering Peasecods and Scotch reels, which were all the crack then, before the waltz came in …'Lishy of the flashing eyes and chestnut hair, dancing in a dream through those few golden years until she was taken from me, so young and lovely still, and full of life … and what did Society or Almack's or any of it matter then … ?

Damn your eyes, if I choose to grow maudlin in my cups it's not your place to sigh like a flatulent sow. Your own fault for pressing booze on me … come along, man, fill up. No doubt you feel you've been the soul of patience, listening to my social triumphs – and if you still think I've been telling
rappers
you may go to Almack's and look at their books, blast your impudence. It's in King Street, but I believe they call it Wilkins' or some such name nowadays; gone to the dogs, I dare say, like everything else.

Now, since I've educated you in the ways of that world of my long-lost youth, as a needful eye-opener, I'll tell you what you wish to know of Black Tom Molineaux, and how he brought the prize ring
a fame and lustre it had never known before, and mayn't again. Aye, he did that … he and one other. Tom Cribb of Bristol.

You'll have heard that after Broughton, who was the first true Champion nigh on a century ago, the Ring fell into disrepute. All kinds of sharps and ruffians came in, crosses were fought, and decent folk stayed clear of it. Two men rescued it, Dick Humphries and Dan Mendoza, splendid fibbers and straight – tho' there were those that said it was wonderful how Mendoza would come to life after the Jews had cried up the odds on his opponent. But they were my boyhood heroes, those two, Danny especially, for he was the first fighter to get up on his toes and move. Gentleman Jackson did for him, by ruffianing that had nothing genteel about it, and in their wake came three of the best that ever stepped up to the scratch: Hen Pearce, the Game Chicken; John Gully, who became an M.P. after Reform and is a name on the turf nowadays; Jem Belcher, who was the living spit of Boney and might ha' reigned forever if he hadn't lost an eye playing rackets.

Their battles, and Jackson's setting up his pugilistic academy, raised boxing to the heights and made it the first sport in England, patronised by royalty, talked of in every club and ken and cottage and great house from John o' Groats to the Land's End. The world of fashion took it to its bosom, why, even the Almack's tabbies murmured the odds on Maddox and Dutch Sam behind their fans, and admired the prints of Gregson, the Lancashire Giant, although only the faster Quality females attended the mills. No one could call himself a Corinthian who hadn't taken Jackson's lessons or sparred with the leading pugs, the noblest in the land sponsored the top men and backed 'em with fortunes, whenever a good mill was mooted the whole Town would be agog over the two men, their weights, their conditions, their records, who was training 'em, what were the odds, when would the
office
be given – for it was outside the law, you know – damme, I even heard Pearce and Gully coupled with David and Goliath in a sermon at St Margaret's. The whole nation was united in the Fancy, and took pride in it as showing the best and bravest of Old England.

The war had much to do with that, you know. Well, 'twas natural enough to compare the mills with the sterner battles abroad and see in the pugs the stuff that had held the French at bay so many years. I remember Clarence, our late king, holding forth for the hundredth
time about the set-to between Gully and Pearce, which fell in the same month as Trafalgar.

“Was not one an echo of t'other?” says he. “Damme, I say it was! Could anyone doubt, who saw those two noble fellows at blows, that we were better men than the French or the Spaniards or the dam' Danes an' the rest o' that continental rabble? No, sir! Why, sir? 'Cos we learn from our cradles to fight like men, not like back-stabbin' dagoes or throat-slittin' Frogs. They have their stilettoes, we have our fists. We fight clean, sir, an' hard, an' don't cry quits while we can stand on our feet! Why, sir? 'Cos we're Englishmen, an' boxin's our game, an' makes us what we are, an' be damned to 'em!”

They cheered him to the echo, which encouraged the dear old muffin to recollections of his own pugilistic prowess.

“Man ain't a man till he's put his fists up, what? Why, I was a midshipman of fourteen, damned if I wasn't, an' this marine, fellow Moody, says: ‘King's letter-boy, are ye? Papa's little letter-boy, more like’. Did I sport me rank, hide behind me blood? No such thing. Would ha' thought shame. ‘Put 'em up,’ says I, an' off came our jackets, an' bigad, didn't we fib each other, just! Blacked his eye, an' he tapped m'
claret
, shook hands, best o' friends after. That's our way, damme – an' why we'll beat the beggars out o' sight! 'Cos o' the good old game, gives us bottom, makes us men, damned if it don't!”

Blowhard stuff, you'll say, in the vein of scribblers like Egan and Hazlitt and the rest who liken our pugs to Achilles and Hector and Nelson, and compare a mill for the Championship to Waterloo or the Nile – but strip away the bombast and you'll find a grain of truth. The schoolboy who feels bound to face up to the bully for his manhood's sake, and puts up his little fists when he
knows
he's beat and all hope's gone – well, when he sees the French bearskins coming over the hill, he remembers, and finds in himself something that holds him steady for longer than those Frenchmen. I know
I
did, and I wasn't alone.

You may laugh when I say that the spirit that brought Cribb to his feet, half-dead and blind with his own blood, was the same spirit that kept men at their guns at Trafalgar and held the gate at Hougoumont … well, wait till you've faced the likes of Cribb,
and
been in a battle, and then laugh all you've a mind to.

Speaking of Cribb brings me to Molineaux, for each was the making of the other. At the time I speak of, early in '10, a year had passed since Cribb had beaten Jem Belcher for the second time, and was undoubted Champion. There was no lack of first-class men, but he'd thrashed the best of 'em – Maddox, Belcher, Gregson, Bill Richmond the black, as well as second-raters like Tom Tough and Ikey Pigg – and the question was: where was a challenger to be found? There were those who thought Cribb invincible, not without cause, for even the wisest heads could not remember a fighter so designed by nature for his work, or blessed with so many virtues. Close on six feet and fourteen stone, strong as a bull, he could shift like an opera-dancer when he chose, and to see him in the ring was to understand why boxing is called the Art of Self-defence, for his style was to mill on the retreat, letting his man come to him – and then out would
flash
those terrible fists, so fast you could barely see 'em move. No one ever hit so hard, they said, but what endeared him to the Fancy, above all his speed and science and cleverness, was that he never knew when he was beat. Only one man, George Nicholls, had ever licked him, over fifty-two rounds when Cribb was younger, and even Nicholls himself could never tell how.

So Cribb was king, and like to remain so, on that spring evening when I toddled down to the old Nag and Fish for cricket and a
heavy wet
with some of the sporting men – Sefton and Craven were there, I remember, and Goddy Webster, Lady Holland's boy, who was Caro Lamb's prime favourite, and Moore the poet, and Monk Lewis, I think, and of course Bill Richmond himself. He'd been a slave in America, brought to England by some general or other, and a tip-top lightweight in his day, though near fifty when he met Cribb, who was stones heavier and stronger, and Bill had spent an hour and a half running away from him; now he was well retired, and
ale-draper
at the Nag and Fish, but was to the fore in all the Fancy's doings.

I was looking out near the wicket where Goddy Webster was batting when he said: “Man Friday, what?” and I saw this rum-looking cove at the edge of the field, apart from the other spectators. He was black as the ace o' spades, dressed like a scarecrow, with a bundle on a stick over his shoulder. After the game, Richmond, being a man of his own colour, went and spoke with him, and presently came into the
tap, grinning all over his face. We asked him what was up and he burst out laughing.

“See that black boy yonder? Come all the way f'm America, jes' to see me. Ye want to guess why, gen'men? He's a millin' cove, seemin'ly, wants I should make him a match.”