Knuckles and Gloves

And Jefferies tried again and again to batter his way through Johnson’s guard and failed. He feinted and hit, but he was too slow; and each time his glove went out with all his power behind it, the black ducked or side-stepped, getting away from danger with an agility which was astonishing in so big a man. And Jefferies knew now that he could not beat him. He was desperate, and made mad-bull rushes without avail. In the tenth round one eye was so swollen that he could not see from it, and Johnson hit him again and again. A man less strong would have been knocked out long before. Jefferies went slowly and painfully to his corner at the end of the eleventh round, his great chest convulsed with his hard breathing, his face haggard. He tried his best, but he was now hopelessly weak, and by now he had lost a good deal of blood. He was terribly punished in the thirteenth round, but he took his gruel without flinching. Three hard blows sent him staggering just before time was called. And Johnson was still fresh and strong, boxing calmly and well. The fifteenth round was the last. Jefferies staggered up from his corner and Johnson went straight up to him and knocked him down with a long straight left. Very slowly, very painfully, Jefferies rose, only getting to his feet at the tenth second. Then the black hit him again, and again he went down. This time he was utterly dazed. With all the will in the world he couldn’t rise in time; and the ten seconds were gone at the moment when he, after a dreadful struggle, had risen to his knees.

It wasn’t until April of 1915, that Jack Johnson ceased to be Champion of the World. He was then knocked out at Havana by Jess Willard (who stood 6 feet 6 inches and weighed 17 stone) in twenty-six rounds. No interest whatever was taken in this contest in England for, bearing the date in mind, obvious reasons. Also, the encounter was not seriously considered on sporting grounds. Willard was subsequently beaten very easily by Dempsey in three rounds.

CHAPTER VIII
GEORGES CARPENTIER AND BOMBARDIER WELLS

Bombardier Wells has a most peculiar record. The chart of his successes and failures is like conventionalised lightning. He began with success and then failed miserably: then up again to the top of the tree and down again to the bottom of the ladder. His career, his temperament, the state of his nerves, have been more widely and more portentously discussed than the weight of Tom Sayers, the muscle of Tom Cribb, or the reach of Peter Jackson.

One school maintains that Wells is a first-rate boxer, another that he is a bad boxer. It all depends upon what you mean by boxing. If boxing is a game as golf is a game, an almost theoretical attack and defence, the rudest expression of which is what we call an “Exhibition”—then Wells is a first-rater. But if boxing is the translation into rude and rough sport of a quite practical defence and offence, whereby one man disables another (but confined within rules which are unlikely to be obeyed in a very serious affair, any more than the Geneva Convention is obeyed in very serious wars)—if, within these rules boxing means the real conflict between two men whose strength and endurance as well as skill are supremely tested—then Wells is, on the whole, a bad boxer.

The explanation of Wells is extremely simple: he is a scientific boxer who does not really like fighting.

When we talk of a “natural fighter” we mean a man who, however good-natured—and good nature has nothing to do with it—enjoys bashing people and is willing to run the risk of being bashed. He may be skilful too, though that is beside the point. Wells has been called a coward—which is frankly absurd. He has never provided any evidence of cowardice. He does, no doubt, “know the meaning of fear”: the bravest men always do. The “man who does not know what fear is” clearly is a very useful man indeed, but he is not so brave as the man who knows all about it, is indeed afraid, but keeps his fear in hand. In this sort of discussion too sharp a line is usually drawn between brave men and cowards: too sharp a line is usually drawn in any discussion about primitive qualities. I don’t suppose that Wells enjoys being hurt any more than I do, but his difficulty lies in the fact, that he gets no enjoyment from hurting—or, let us say rather, winning physical domination over—other people. A boxer to be a good boxer must have the instinct for bashing. This may not be a highly civilised instinct, it may (for all I know) be highly reprehensible, but it is present in successful pugilists, and they can’t get on without it.

Wells was born in 1889, and as a soldier and amateur won the Championship of all India by beating Private Clohessey in 1909. Two years later he won the English Heavy-weight Championship by knocking out Iron Hague at the National Sporting Club in six rounds. Wells was one of the names mentioned as a “White Hope” at the time when England, Australia, and America were being ransacked for a champion to beat Johnson. The match was actually arranged, but it was very wisely stopped by order of the Home Office. There was, as already said, a great deal too much “feeling” associated with the proposed contest which had nothing at all to do with the sport of boxing. It is impossible to say how any fight that never took place would have gone, and retrospective surmise is fairly unprofitable: but so far as we can judge from the two men’s respective records, there seems to be no doubt that Johnson would have won quickly and with the utmost ease.

The two most interesting encounters in Wells’s career were those with Georges Carpentier. The Frenchman’s record will be described in more detail later: it is enough to say for the present that he was the first French boxer of the highest order, the first to make us realise that boxing was not the sole prerogative of the English-speaking races.

The first encounter took place at the Ghent Exhibition, on June 1st, 1913. Wells stands 6 feet 3 inches, and his weight is generally in the neighbourhood of 13 stone. Carpentier is half an inch under six feet, and in those days was probably little more than a middle-weight, if that. On this occasion he fought, if not at home, at least near home: and there was a big crowd present of colliers from Lens, just over the border, amongst whom he had been born and bred.

Natural advantage was with the Bombardier. Three and a half inches is a great “pull” in height, and he had a corresponding superiority in reach. So it was plain to Carpentier and his advisers that he must do his utmost to get close to his man and to keep there. Wells, on the other hand, under-rated his opponent. Like most Englishmen at the time he could not understand how a Frenchman could be a real boxer. It seemed to be against the settled order of nature.

Now Wells was weak in the body, and he knew it. He could see that Carpentier was strong, and soon found him a hard hitter, and as he kept on attacking the body, the Englishman propped him off with long straight lefts. And for a time he kept at a distance, and Carpentier, misjudging the extra reach of his opponent lowered his guard. Then Wells sent in a hard blow at long range and all but beat him. A hard blow, perfectly timed, but not quite hard enough. Carpentier tumbled forward and remained down for nine seconds. But Carpentier really loves fighting for fighting’s sake, or did then. He had been all but knocked out, but he had in a superlative degree the will-to-go-on. And Wells, as had happened before, as happened afterwards too, failed to follow up his advantage with hot but reasoned haste. Having put in a good blow he was always rather prone to stand aside, so to speak, and admire its effects; thus allowing those effects to pass off. So it was now. It is true that he had decidedly the better of the second round, leading off with a splendid strong and long straight left: but he failed to bustle and worry Carpentier, and the Frenchman, as the very seconds went by, recovered. And in the third round Carpentier was himself again. Wells was utterly astonished. He had quite forgotten that the stunning force of a punch on the jaw passes very quickly: and he allowed himself to be flustered and confused, and he showed plainly that he was puzzled. He forgot to box and hit wildly and wide of his mark. And now Carpentier had got back nearly all the strength that had been beaten out of him in the first round. He sent in a vicious right to the jaw which shook Wells. When a blow on the “point” has done damage short of knocking a man down, he generally gives the fact away by an involuntary tapping of his right foot upon the floor. It is like a strong electric shock which, communicated first to the brain, runs instantly through the whole nervous system. So the spectators could see that Wells had been more than “touched.” And then the fourth round began and Wells was careless and in his turn lowered his guard: and Carpentier’s right hand whipped across over the shoulder to the English champion’s jaw, whilst an instant later his left came, bent, with his weight behind it, to the stomach. And—that was all. Wells was counted out, and, as well they might, the colliers from Lens wildly yelled their triumph.

This encounter, pricking as it did the bubble of an age-old tradition, yet had very little effect on the admirers of the Bombardier. Or rather it was, perhaps, that they refused to believe that the Champion of England (however little that title may mean) could be really beaten by any one across the Channel. They regarded the final knock-out as an accident. After all, Wells had all but won at the very outset, and for some inscrutable reason he had given the fight away, first by lack of energy and then from sheer carelessness. This would surely have taught him a lesson?

There followed after the affair at Ghent three contests in which Wells proved eminently successful. He knocked out Packey Mahoney in thirteen rounds at the National Sporting Club, after receiving early in the fight two very hard right-handers in the body which made him visibly squirm. That was one of Wells’s chief defects—he showed when he was hurt. But it was interesting to be shown that, because it was not supposed that he could stand two such blows on the body. Yet he recovered from them gradually and did not, this time, forget his boxing.

The next fight was a very unequal affair with Pat O’Keefe, Middle-weight Champion of England, and subsequently winner outright of the Lonsdale Belt. O’Keefe was a fine, fair boxer, but he was giving a couple of stone, and Wells’s head was right over him. He boxed with the utmost pluck and gave the heavy-weight a lot of trouble before finally he was quite worn out and sent down beaten in the fifteenth round.

Then Wells knocked out Gunner Moir quite easily in five rounds, thus turning the tables, for Moir had knocked out the Bombardier more by good luck than by sound judgment two years before.

And then at last on December 5th, 1913, six months after his defeat at Ghent, the return match with Carpentier was arranged and took place at the National Sporting Club.

Of course, if you regard sport only from a competitive standpoint, this affair will seem to you a sheer disaster. It was England against France, and France decisively won. It is only human nature, I suppose, which sticks the national labels so prominently on to an event of this kind, but it seems unnecessary and rather a pity. There was really no England and no France in the matter, but two boxers called respectively Carpentier and Wells, who met in a roped ring to hit each other with padded fists for the ludicrously excessive stakes of £300 a side and a purse of £3000. And now that we are more used to the idea of Frenchmen boxing than we were in those days, the international habit of thought has largely, and fortunately, dropped into the background of our minds.

It is worth mentioning that members at the National Sporting Club that night paid for their guests’ seats five, ten, and as many as fifteen guineas. One onlooker, just before the men entered the ring for the big contest of the evening, left the hall.

“I’ll be back presently,” he said to a friend, “when they’ve settled down. I don’t want to see all the preliminaries and hand-shaking.” So he left his fifteen-guinea seat and went into another part of the club. On his return he found that it was all over. Rather an expensive drink, in fact.

The contest had lasted precisely seventy-three seconds.

It was a dismal affair, and brief as the test was there was no possible doubt but that Carpentier was Wells’s master. Both the men were extremely well-trained. Wells was in excellent health and could make no excuse on that score. At the very outset the Frenchman went straight for his man and planted a good left at his body before he knew the round had begun. Then he came in close and vigorously attacked him with a succession of short half-arm blows. He danced away for a moment and was at Wells again. The Englishman was entirely flabbergasted. His presence of mind was all gone. He sank his left in a futile attempt to guard his body, but Carpentier’s right was past it in a flash, whilst his left followed instantly to Wells’s nose. Wells tucked away his stomach and took a step back. Carpentier reached the body again, nevertheless; and as they went apart for a moment it was seen that Wells was stupefied—more by the very speed of the onslaught, spectators said, than by punishment. Which is as may be. Carpentier hit to hurt, and it is exceedingly unlikely that he failed. But it was again the science of boxing which deserted Wells. He seemed to be paralysed. He did nothing: no long left came out to keep the Frenchman away. He wouldn’t be kept away. A great lot of nonsense has been talked about his actual hypnotic power or that of his ebullient manager, M. Descamps. But the reason why Carpentier won victories in those days and has won others and greater ones since, is simply that he is an extremely good boxer with any amount of fighting spirit—the love of fighting, the sheer intention to win. That form of will-power does communicate itself to an opponent in the ring and with disastrous results, if he be a man of less vitality.

Then Carpentier moved forward again and swung left followed by right hard upon Wells’s jaw. Then left and right at the body. Both blows landed on the mark—and it was all over. Wells reeled for an instant and then sank forward. At the call of Four he rolled over on to his back. He tried to draw up his knees, but he was completely knocked out, paralysed, and done. And—for those who like the national labels—the Champion of England lay beaten at the feet of the Champion of France, without having struck a single blow.

CHAPTER IX
JOE BECKETT AND BOMBARDIER WELLS

At the time of writing this chapter, Joe Beckett is the Heavy-weight Champion of England, and has been ever since the contest described below when, on February 27th, 1919, he first met Bombardier Wells. He is not a very good champion. His skill is not of the first order, and he has neither the height nor weight to supply his deficiencies. Carpentier disposed of him in a round, because Carpentier is incomparably the better boxer. Wells is also a better boxer so far as skill—one might almost say “mere” skill—goes, but as some one said of him once, “He’s too bally refined,” which is a better description of the Bombardier than most loose generalisations. He is too bally (and I might dare also to add—“blinking”) refined, both in his style of boxing and in his appearance. The old-time pug-faced bruiser is dying out, not only because men no longer fight with their bare knuckles, but because their skill is so much greater in defence than it used to be, that a broken nose is a comparatively rare accident; and modern surgery can make a job of the worst battered faces. Your opponent aims chiefly for those places which are most susceptible to temporary but overwhelming effect—the jaw and the mark. The most terrific blows on either spot do not produce disfigurement. What is known as a “thick ear” is common enough still—many amateurs have it: but Wells has managed to avoid even that. His profile might easily be called Greek—at all events by some one who had once seen a photograph of Praxitéles’ Hermes and had rather forgotten it. Even Carpentier, whose personal appearance is discussed much as a good-looking actor’s, and by the same sort of people, looks, at close quarters, more of a bruiser than does Wells.

Punch chose to be amusing on this subject not long before the war, satirising the old and new methods of the manner in which celebrities of the ring were photographed. In one drawing you see the old bruiser, a doughty ruffian, stripped to the waist, with a flattened nose, beetle-browed, with a long aggressive chin, piggy eyes and short-cropped hair; in the other you have a smiling young man dressed in the last palpitating extremity of fashion, with longish hair brushed back from a somewhat noble brow, whilst beside him a beautiful young woman smiles into a baby’s cot. The source of Mr. Punch’s inspiration was not far to seek.

In the old days a boxer was portrayed at his job just as actors and actresses were, because his job it was that interested people. And like actors and actresses he is still photographed at his job. But to-day just as you will see in the illustrated papers photographs of theatrical people playing quite irrelevant games of golf or making hay which has nothing to do with the point, so you will see photographs of feather-weight champions dandling purely inapposite infants. It is an age when people like to assure themselves (for some inscrutable reason) that show-people are just exactly like people who are not on show.

For good or for ill, boxing has become more and more a matter of exact science in which the quick use of brains has, to some extent, superseded purely physical qualities. And a new type of professional boxer has therefore been evolved. Nevertheless, it is worth observing here that the most important quality of all for success in the ring remains unchanged from the very dawn of fist-fighting, a quality possessed by Tom Johnson, by Jem Belcher, by Tom Spring, Sayers, Fitzsimmons, Carpentier—what we call “character.”

Now Joe Beckett (to continue for a moment this unseemly discussion of other men’s personal appearance) is in the old tradition of English champions. He “looks a bruiser.” This is largely due, no doubt, to much rough and tumble fighting in his youth, when he travelled with a booth, which is still (as it has been in the past) a first-rate school for a hardy young bruiser. In this way he won a great many contests, which have never been recorded, and then began a regular career of no particular distinction in 1914. In the following year he retired after fighting Pat O’Keefe for eight rounds. In 1917 he was knocked out also in eight rounds by Frank Goddard, on whom, however, he had his revenge in two rounds two years later. He lost on points to Dick Smith, who was once a policeman and amateur champion, after a contest of twenty rounds. Indeed the people who beat Beckett were better known and better boxers than the people whom he beat. But all this time he was improving as a boxer and getting fitter and stronger.

When he entered the ring at the Holborn Stadium with Bombardier Wells he was, as they say, a picture. He was in perfect, buoyant health; a mass of loose, easy, supple muscle slid and rolled under his bronzed and shining skin, he was obviously eager and ready for a good fight.

Wells led off with his academic straight left, and landed lightly. Joe Beckett dodged the next blow, came close in and sent in a hot right-hander with a bent and vigorous arm to the body. Wells doubled up and went down. On his rising Beckett went for him again, put another right on the body and followed it quickly with a severe punch rather high on the jaw which knocked Wells down again for a count of nine. Beckett ought to have beaten him then, but Wells boxed with great pluck and covered himself with care. During the rest of that round he never took another blow, and, after a rest, came up for the second fully recovered. Beckett rushed at him clumsily, trying to get close, and Wells used his long reach with much skill and promptitude, propping him off, hitting him with his clean and sure straight left, moving quickly on his feet, so that, try as he would, Beckett failed to come to close quarters. Just at the end of the round Wells gave his man a really hard blow on the chin which made Beckett exceedingly glad to hear the bell which announced time. And in the third round, too, Wells kept his opponent at a distance, boxing brilliantly, and adding up points in his own favour. In the fourth Wells was really happy. He had suppressed Beckett, he thought; and sent a hard right-hander to the jaw which would have staggered less hard a man. But Beckett is very strong, and replied with a couple of body-blows, without, however, doing any damage to speak of. Again it was Wells’s round. He had quite forgotten the beginning of the fight and how nearly he had been beaten then. He was acutely conscious of being the better boxer, and consequently underrated Beckett’s strength and persistence. At the start of the fifth round he was not prepared for the rush with which his antagonist came for him, so that Beckett got quite close to him before he could think about propping him away. Right and left came Beckett’s gloves with a will into Wells’s slim body, and then a short jolting blow went upwards to his jaw, and Wells went down. He was up again very quickly, not seriously hurt, and Beckett darted in again. This time Wells was ready and did his utmost to use his long reach. But Beckett’s greater strength and his willingness to run a little risk told in his favour. He was fighting hard, but not wildly or foolishly; he ducked under the long arm and began to punish Wells severely about the body. Another blow on the head sent Wells to the ground for nine seconds. Wells rose feeling dazed and helpless, he tried to cover his jaw, but Beckett darted in and sent in a hard right over his shoulder to the point, and Wells was knocked out. And the Championship of England again changed hands.

A return match was arranged a year later, and on May 20th, 1920, this pair fought again for the Championship at Olympia. Beckett in the meantime had been summarily knocked out by Carpentier, but had himself knocked out Frank Goddard in two rounds, Eddie McGoorty in seventeen, and Dick Smith in five. He had become more confident, more adept. He was not a great boxer, is not now, and is never likely to be. But he had improved. Nor had Wells been idle. He had knocked out Jack Curphey in two rounds, Harry Reeves in four, Paul Journee, the Frenchman, in thirteen, and Eddie McGoorty in sixteen. This last was a terrific fight, but McGoorty was quite out of training. Wells had also beaten Arthur Townley, who retired at the end of the ninth round.

What I might call the cochranisation of boxing has now for some time past enabled vast crowds of people to watch, in comfort, altogether too great a number of championship fights. The popular excitement about these contests, or the majority of them, is largely artificial—almost as artificial as the reputations of the “champions” themselves, the result, that is to say, of purely commercial advertisement. Of course, the case of Bombardier Wells is singular. Long ago, before the war, he had his hold upon the popular imagination (if such a thing exists), because he was tall, and good-looking, and “temperamental.”

As for his methods, a friend of mine who used to judge Army Competitions in India, and who saw the All India Championship of 1909, used to say that he never knew a boxer who so persistently stuck to the plan of campaign that he had previously thought out as did Bombardier Wells. Perhaps that is the secret of his mercurial career: perhaps he always has a plan of campaign and sticks to it—successfully or not, according to the plan of his antagonist. Wells’s antagonists have a disconcerting way of doing something fresh and unexpected, and the plan is liable to be a hindrance. The most crafty boxer may have a plan which he prefers, but he is able at an instant’s notice to substitute an alternative scheme suited especially to the caprice of the man he desires to beat. Carpentier does that. Wells, as already said, likes scientific boxing just as other people like golf, and he is apt to be disconcerted by fierce sloggers just as a golfer would be disconcerted (I imagine) by some one who invented and employed some explosive device for driving little white balls much farther away than can be done with the implements at present in use. Circumstances or the advice of friends pushed Wells—in the first instance possibly without any special desire of his own—into the professional ring. And people still flock to see him there, or at all events they did so in 1920, chiefly because the ring was, for him, so strikingly inappropriate a setting.

Beckett, on the other hand, takes naturally to fighting. He is not nearly such a “good boxer,” his style is not so finished as Wells’s, his footwork, though variable, is not so adept. But he knows how to smash people, and I should say (intending no libel upon a gallant as well as a successful bruiser) likes doing it.

The majority of people who came to Olympia to watch the second fight between those men probably wanted Wells to win, for the inadequate reason that he looked so much less like a boxer than his adversary. They were disappointed. Wells began better than usual, for he seemed ready to fight: but his own science was at fault in that he accepted Beckett’s invitation to bouts of in-fighting, when he ought to have done his utmost to keep his man at long range. Beckett accepted the situation comfortably, and sent in some hard punches to the body and a left swing to the head. During the last minute of the round Wells did succeed in keeping him away and landed a succession of fine straight lefts; but these were not hard blows, nor did Wells attempt to follow them up. Joe Beckett was imperturbable and dogged, but very cautious too. He kept his left shoulder well up to protect his jaw from Wells’s right, and when he did hit he hit hard. There was no sting, no spring, no potency in Wells’s hitting. And he was careless. He gave Beckett an excellent opening in the second round, which the new champion used admirably with a hooked left, sending Wells down for seven seconds. And he kept on pushing his way in for the rest of that round, once leaving himself unguarded in his turn and inviting the blow with which Wells, if he had put his weight into it, might well have knocked him out. But the blow was too high and not hard enough. The third round was the last. Beckett gave his man a hard left, and Wells broke ground, somewhat staggered. They came together and for half a minute or more there was a really fine rally, Beckett hit the harder all the time, and presently with a swinging left to the body and a beautifully clean and true right hook to the jaw he knocked Wells out.

CHAPTER X
GEORGES CARPENTIER AND JEFF SMITH

If an unnecessary fuss has been made about those affairs of other boxers which have nothing whatever to do with boxing, there is some excuse in Carpentier’s case, if only because he is the first Frenchman to achieve real distinction in the sport.

Georges Carpentier was born at Lens, in the Pas de Calais, in January of 1894. His father was a collier, and the boy, directly he was old enough (which probably meant long before he was old enough), followed his father underground and worked as a pit-boy, earning his five francs a week. At about this time a jovial little man whose face is now as familiar as Carpentier’s, François Descamps by name, was managing a gymnasium in the town. It was at this time that a wave of athleticism was passing over Northern France, and the boys of Lens, Carpentier amongst them, used to regard this gymnasium as their chief amusement after work hours. Amongst other exercises, Descamps encouraged a certain amount of boxing—“English” boxing. La Savate had practically died out, and the days when “Charlemagne” the Frenchman, “kicked out” Jerry Driscoll, the ex-sailor (amongst whose pupils have been some of the best of the English amateurs) were unlikely to return. Still, though boxing was at this time a popular enough show in Paris, few Frenchmen themselves actually boxed, and Descamps was, in providing gloves at his gymnasium, rather in advance of his time.

Descamps forbade the use of these gloves by boys whom he had not yet taught, and when one evening he caught young Carpentier thrashing a much bigger boy with them and by the light of nature, he rated him soundly: but he kept an eye on him. He was a natural fighter. It soon became apparent that he must fight; the inward urging was there, insistent and never for long to be denied. And the boy, all untaught, could defend himself.

Before very long Descamps, who interviewed the child’s parents, overcame their natural scepticism by paying them the weekly five francs the lad had been earning at the mine, and undertook his training as an athlete, sending him out into the fresh air instead of into the pit, teaching him all he himself knew about the science of fisticuffs. Mr. F. H. Lucas, the author of From Pit-Boy to Champion Boxer, makes it plain that if ever there was an authentic instance of a fairy godfather stepping into a boy’s life and changing it in a day from gloom to unalloyed delight, it is the instance of Descamps and Carpentier. The young Frenchman had an unique opportunity of succeeding well, for he was by Descamps’s interference enabled to follow the pursuit he liked best from his boyhood onwards; and underwent, owing to that fact, a unique training, adapted as it was to that end and to that end alone.

It is unnecessary to trace Carpentier’s career from the time he won his first success against an American boxer in a travelling booth and became “Champion” of France at 7 stone 2 lb., and at the age of fourteen, until he beat the Heavy-weight Champion of England, when he was but nineteen and no more than a middle-weight.

Carpentier’s success was by no means uniform. He got some severe thrashings both from English boxers and Frenchmen—generally owing to the fact that he gave away weight and especially years at an age when youth is on the windward side of achievement. It is a wonder that the boy was not discouraged, but his pluck was unconquerable, and Descamps a sympathetic and astute manager. Again and again when it became apparent in a contest that nothing could save Carpentier from a knock-out, Descamps would give in for him, directing one of the seconds to throw a towel into the ring. His avoidance of the actual fact of a knock-out no doubt saved the boy much discouragement, and it looked better, and still looks better, in a formal printed record of what he has done. Of course, Descamps was not always able to gauge the right moment for surrender, and it happened at least once in those early days that Carpentier was knocked out just like any other boxer with no fairy godfather to supervise his defeats.

In 1912 he had a very hard fight with Frank Klaus the American, who at that time claimed the World’s Middle-weight Championship. This encounter took place at Dieppe, and the American was nearly beaten early in the fight, falling from a terrific blow on the jaw. But he recovered, and his much longer experience came to his aid. In the end he gave Carpentier a severe drubbing for several rounds until, to save him, Descamps entered the ring: whereupon the referee gave Klaus the verdict. But throughout this contest the Frenchman was working hard, fighting all the time, never discouraged by punishment, showing what he had always shown, a perfectly unalterable, irreducible courage.

The same sort of thing happened in his fight with another American, Papke. This time Carpentier had to reduce his weight, which is the worst possible thing a boy, still growing and with no superfluous flesh, can do. He began the fight weak, was severely hammered and finally had an eye closed. Again Descamps intervened, this time in the eighteenth round, to save him the technical knock-out.

Regarded dispassionately, this sort of thing is excellent “business,” and does not, as far as one can see, do much harm to sport. If Tommy Burns was the first man who made boxing a matter of sound commerce, one may call Carpentier, or more strictly his manager and mentor, Descamps, the first Boxing Business Magnate. Between them they had made a literally large fortune before Carpentier was twenty.

One of his hardest, longest, and best fights was with Jeff Smith, a hardy American who was a shade lighter, shorter, and with less reach than Carpentier. This combat took place at the end of 1913, not a month after the Frenchman had beaten Wells, for the second time, at the National Sporting Club.

On this occasion Carpentier boxed indifferently in the early rounds, and seemed not to take the occasion seriously. His was the first blow, and it was a good one, which drew blood from the American’s nose. Smith grunted and shook his head, and put in a left in reply. It was clear that he wanted the Frenchman at close quarters, and he kept coming in close and hammering away at the body. Carpentier made a perfunctory effort to keep him at arm’s length, but seemed after a while to be willing to fight Smith on his own terms. He caught the American a very hard smack on the eye, which swelled up so that he was thenceforward half-blinded. Smith even in the third round was a good deal marked, and not one of the spectators imagined for a moment that he could possibly last out the full twenty rounds. In the next round Carpentier boxed very much as he pleased. They exchanged body-blow and upper-cut on the head, but the latter was the more severe, and it was the Frenchman’s. Smith kept on trying to “bring the right across” at close quarters, but Carpentier always protected himself. He seemed to be waiting for a safe opportunity for knocking his opponent out, and did little in the fourth round. Smith kept on leading, though without much effect, but scored more points nevertheless.

After a while Smith began to get into serious trouble, and he held to avoid punishment. This is against the strict rules, and should be regarded as such; but, humanly speaking, when you are getting a very bad time, the instinct to hold your man’s arms to prevent him from hitting you is very strong. If you have the strength it is, of course, much more efficacious to hit him and stop the punishment in that way: but when your strength is going, as Smith’s was, you are prone to follow blind instinct, rules or no rules. Just after this he managed to put in a good upper-cut, but got a hard “one-two” in return—a left instantly followed by right, straight, taking him in the middle of the face. And then Smith woke up, having got what is called his second wind. Throughout the seventh round he gave Carpentier a really bad time. Two fierce blows, left and right, made the Frenchman rock where he stood, and his counters were well guarded or avoided altogether. Carpentier boxed better in the eighth round, but there was no power in his blows, and the French onlookers began to look very glum. For his part, Carpentier wished that he had trained better. He was not himself: the fire seemed to be dead in him. He was feeling desperate: there was no pleasure in this fight. Smith kept on getting under his long arms and hitting him hard at close quarters, hammering away at his stomach. And Carpentier grew weaker and more wild, and wasted his remaining strength on futile swings which clove the empty air. Another hard blow on the jaw and Carpentier staggered. It was all he could do to hold up. He replied with one of his vain and foolish swings, sent with all his remaining power whizzing through the air and missing Jeff Smith by feet. This effort sent Carpentier hard to the floor by the momentum of its own wasted force. It is true that Smith failed to follow up his advantage when the Frenchman rose, but even so the round was decisively in his favour.

The tenth round found Smith strong and hearty, boxing with sturdy vigour if not remarkable skill. Carpentier had recovered a little by now, and, exasperated by Smith’s coolness, rallied vigorously and rained left-handers on his opponent, so that the American was forced to “cover up” with his gloves on either side of his face and his elbows tucked in. Carpentier’s round, but no serious damage done. And the next was much the same, and Smith clinched a good deal, though Carpentier’s hitting was far from strong. Smith’s defence was admirable when he was not holding, but his vigour of attack had been in abeyance for a little while. In the twelfth round he woke up, and drove his right to the Frenchman’s mouth, drawing much blood, and went on attacking. In the fourteenth round Carpentier seemed quite done. He tried once or twice to swing in the hope of knocking his man out, but his blows were weak and Smith was cautious. The American was still the more marked and obviously damaged of the two; but Carpentier looked woebegone and ill. He, too, had a split lip which bled profusely. Just at the end of the round Carpentier did at last manage to put in a right cross-counter which had some strength in it, but before he could follow it up time was called, and Smith had his minute in which to recover.

It was about this time that Descamps declared that Carpentier had smashed his hand at the very beginning of the fight. It may be taken as a fairly safe rule that when a man’s backers make this type of observation during the progress of a contest, they think he is going to lose it. When he has actually lost, they invariably say something of the kind. A smashed hand—a family trouble—an acute attack of indigestion—these excuses and all their manifold variations serve their dear old turn, and are promptly disbelieved at large as soon as they are uttered. It is possible that Carpentier may have sprained a thumb slightly, but it could not have been more than that. The vigour that his hitting lacked was, on that occasion, constitutional. He was not in first-rate condition.

Both men were sorry for themselves. Smith’s eye was quite closed, his opponent was bleeding severely from his cut lip. For a time their efforts were about equal. Carpentier kept trying to knock his man out, Smith defended himself. The spectators could not understand the Frenchman. All the time or almost all the time, he had fought like a man both weak and desperate. And then, quite suddenly, in the sixteenth round there was a change.

I have said that Carpentier is a real fighter: he has the spirit and instinct for bashing, for going on against odds. He was weak, and for a long time he had plainly shown it. And yet somewhere in him there was a reserve of power and an unconquerable will.

To the utter astonishment of the onlookers and of Jeff Smith himself, Carpentier sprang out of his corner for the sixteenth round as though he were beginning a fresh contest. He positively hurled himself across the ring at his antagonist. He landed at once, with a half-arm blow on the head, and blow after blow, mainly with the left, pounded the unfortunate American. Smith was completely taken aback and could only clinch to save himself. It was all that he could do to withstand this slaughtering attack and remain upright.

There was a great uproar amongst the crowd. Yells of delight greeted this great awakening of the Frenchman: and when the next round began every one thought that Smith must soon fall. Carpentier went for him again with animal ferocity. He leapt about the ring after him, sending in blow after murderous blow. Smith reeled and gasped and staggered and backed away after each shattering, smashing right had landed, but he still stood up and fought him like a man. It was a fine show of pluck. The man was badly hurt. Plenty of boxers would have dropped for a rest and even would have allowed themselves to be counted out, but not Jeff Smith. He was, as they say, “for it,” and he knew that he was “for it.” But he would go through with it.

The uproar increased. The spectators wanted to have the fight stopped, but without avail. The fight went on. Smith staggered in, and more by good luck than any sort of management, contrived to land two pitiful blows. His legs were hopelessly weak—he could hardly see, and yet he managed to cover his jaw, and, try as he would, with all his renewal of vigour, Carpentier could do everything he liked with his man save knock him out. It is necessary to make this quite plain. Smith looked as though he must at any moment drop down and stay down from sheer exhaustion.

A minute’s rest. The last round.

Men are oddly and wonderfully made. Smith leapt from his chair just as his opponent had done a quarter of an hour before, strong, eager, ferocious. He tore across the ring at Carpentier, flung amazing blows at him, made desperate and frantic efforts to knock him out at the last minute. Carpentier was completely flabbergasted. He had never known anything like this to be possible. Smith’s recovery was marvellous, not less wonderful than that. And indeed Jeff Smith was within sight of victory throughout that desperate last round. He landed a right-hander with all his diminished strength, and the Frenchman crumpled up and fell forward to the boards. A little more might behind the blow, a shade more elasticity in the arm that sent the blow, and Carpentier must have been counted out. But that was the end. Carpentier rose just as the bell rang for time. And the referee gave the fight to him. The decision was not popular even among Frenchmen—which is surprising, but strengthening to one’s faith in human nature.

CHAPTER XI
JACK DEMPSEY AND GEORGES CARPENTIER

Carpentier served in the French Flying Corps during the war, but though four years or more were taken from the best of his boxing life, he did not forget how to box. During the “gap” he engaged in no recorded contests, but no doubt did a certain amount of sparring. He had gained weight and lost no ground when the war ended. During 1919 and 1920, he fought five times, knocking out five men, including Dick Smith, Joe Beckett, and Battling Levinsky. Meanwhile, in July, 1919, Jack Dempsey had knocked out Jess Willard in three rounds for the World’s Championship, and Carpentier challenged him.

“Jack Dempsey” is a nom de guerre, presumably taken (since there is as yet no copyright in names) from that older Jack Dempsey who began boxing in the early eighties, and lost the World’s Middle-weight title to Bob Fitzsimmons, who knocked him out in fifteen rounds in 1891.

The new Jack Dempsey was born in 1895, and his record shows that until the end of 1920 he had fought upwards of sixty contests, fifty-eight of which he won, mainly by knocking his opponents out in the first or second rounds. He weighs 13½ stone, and stands just a shade under 6 feet. That is to say, he was a stone and a half heavier than Carpentier; much longer in reach. Dempsey is a very miracle of strength and hardness.

It seemed an absurd match. If an animal analogy may be allowed, it was like a young leopard against a gorilla. There are, of course, innumerable accidents in boxing, chance blows and slight injuries which turn the tide of battle, an “off” day, a fault in training; but it may be laid down as a general rule that when character and strength are equal the man with the more skill wins, when skill and strength are equal, character wins, when character and skill are equal, strength wins. So it was now. Both Carpentier and Dempsey were natural fighters, both were scientific boxers, though Carpentier was more skilled than his opponent, both wanted to win, but Dempsey was immensely stronger than the Frenchman.

The contest took place at New Jersey, U.S.A., on July 2, 1921. A very small ring was used, no more than eighteen feet square. The number of rounds was limited to twelve, but it was recognised beyond the possibility of doubt that so many as twelve would not be required to settle the matter.

The moving pictures of the event show Carpentier sitting in his corner, nodding and smiling while his gloves are being put on. His grin is wide. Then with the suddenness of the camera’s own shutter, it ceases. For an instant the whole face is still, the mouth closes in thin-lipped anxiety, the eyes are set, and when you see the smile break out again you know that it is deliberate, not spontaneous. In fact Georges Carpentier was acutely nervous. Who, of his size and in his shoes, would not have been? You have but to glance at the man in the opposite corner, and you shake at the very thought of being in Carpentier’s shoes at that moment. Thirteen and a half stone may mean very little; it may mean a hulking fellow who can’t hit, let alone take punishment: it may mean a hulking fellow who can hit hard, but who can do nothing else. But the thirteen and a half stone of Dempsey meant a man in perfect condition, who could hit as few men can, who was extraordinarily hard and strong and almost impossible to hurt. Thirteen and a half stone of bone and muscle, not bone and muscle and fat. No fat at all. All hard stuff; not easy rippling muscle like Carpentier’s, but very solid and tough and extremely serviceable.

Dempsey had left himself unshaven for several days, so that the skin of his face should not be tender, thereby gaining, besides, a horribly malign appearance. And he scowled, and when the two of them stood up he made Carpentier look a little man. Dempsey was not popular in America owing to his avoidance of military service during the war. Seeing him in the ring, unless the photographic films have lied, he looked the very incarnation of sullen rage and brute force. In private life he is an amiable man, fresh-faced and modest. He had much more than brute force: he was a skilled and terrific basher. Strength for strength, Dempsey could, as you might say, “eat” Carpentier.

And they gave rather the appearance of the child and the ogre in the ring. Carpentier seemed unable to defend himself against the shattering onslaught of the American, and there was much clinching in the first round. The smaller man greatly surprised the spectators by going in and fighting at once, instead of trying to keep away and let Dempsey tire himself, which seemed to be the obvious course to pursue. He had not the strength to stop the majority of Dempsey’s blows, especially the upper-cuts which came crashing through his guard. He tried the trick of boxing with his chin on the big man’s chest, but even so his body suffered the more. It was, as a matter of irrelevant fact, Carpentier who scored the first hits, a left on the face and an upper-cut with the right, neither of which had any effect at all. During a clinch the champion gave his opponent a dig in the stomach which reduced his strength immediately. This he followed by a hard, very short blow on the back of the head, given whilst Carpentier was holding close. From the position in which two men stand in a clinch, such a blow cannot be given with the whole weight of the body. The glove can travel only five or six inches, and the body’s weight cannot in that attitude be swung behind the arm. I have seen in clumsy boxing a man knocked clean out by a blow on the back of the head or neck by an ordinary full swing, aimed for the jaw, which the victim has protected by bringing his head forward, but not far enough forward. But a man of Dempsey’s strength can make the short blow a very serious one when frequently repeated: and he repeated it many times on Carpentier.

Next he landed on the Frenchman’s body with both hands. Emerging from a clinch Carpentier was seen to be bleeding from the nose. Then he swung hard at Dempsey’s jaw and missed it. He had done no damage at all yet.

The second round was the most interesting in a very short fight. Carpentier crouched and jumped in with a left and right which landed on the head, but did not hurt the American. Carpentier hit again and missed. They clinched, and Dempsey sent in some more body-blows, pulling his man about the ring as he pleased, so long as he held. Then Carpentier backed away, and for an instant Dempsey’s guard was down. The Frenchman halted in his retreat and shot a left hook in at the jaw. It was beautifully timed, a fine seizing of a small opportunity, a test of courage. And for Carpentier it was a great moment, a triumph of presence of mind: thought and action were wellnigh simultaneous. The blow seemed to shake Dempsey, and the huge crowd yelled with delight for the Frenchman, who immediately followed up his advantage. He had been hurt: he was weak, but he had taken his opportunity. That left was a hard blow, almost as hard as any he had ever struck. It was a wonderful chance: he had never thought he would be able to get in a blow like that, not after that first round. And now he would hit again, and he swung his right hand to Dempsey’s jaw with all his might. But there was just a shade of flurry about that blow, and Carpentier did a thing he had not done for years: he swung his hand in its natural position, instead of twisting it over a little in its passage so that the finger knuckles struck the jaw: and the natural position made the impact fall upon the thumb. It was a beginner’s mistake, but a frequent one when hot haste makes a man a little wild. Carpentier felt a sharp and agonising pain, but he struck again with his right, and this time he missed. Dempsey came forward and this time it was he who clinched, before attacking the French man’s body again with his half-arm blows. And so the round ended.

What had happened was this: the full weight of Carpentier’s blow falling on his thumb broke it and sprained his wrist. Dempsey shook his head and retired a step or two, and declared afterwards that he could not remember the blow. This is unlikely. He added that he might possibly have been caught when he was off his balance and so appeared to stagger. We may say for certain that the two blows, left and right combined, would have knocked any other man out. Certainly their effect upon the champion was trivial; though it is said that some one in his corner stretched out his hand for the smelling-salts, so as to be ready in case Dempsey came to his corner dazed.

The third round began, and Carpentier retreated as his opponent advanced on him. He knew too much now to attempt to “mix it,” he would keep away. His only chance lay in Dempsey’s tiring himself. He said afterwards that those two blows in the second were the best he could strike, and when he saw that they had failed he lost heart. “Dempsey gave me a blow, just afterwards, on the neck which seemed to daze me,” he said.

Well, there are various degrees of losing heart. Carpentier may have realised that his task was hopeless, but he meant to go on. He landed a right at very long range with no power behind it to speak of, and Dempsey clinched, before sending home several of his rib-shattering half-arm blows. Carpentier’s strength was going. These body-blows had hurt him severely, and their effect was sickening and lasting. Then Dempsey hit him a little higher, just under the heart, and the Frenchman’s knees gave. He was nearly down, but managed to keep on his legs until the end of the round. But he was looking ill as he went to his corner.

Directly the fourth round began the sullen giant crouched and attacked Carpentier with all his strength, driving him fast before him round the ring until he had him in a corner. Dempsey swung his right and Carpentier ducked inside it. They were close together, and he had to submit to a bout of in-fighting, trying to force his way out of the corner. But Dempsey got him close up against the ropes and sent in a very hot right to the jaw. Carpentier collapsed upon hands and knees. The ring, his antagonist, the faces peering at him from the level of the stage, were misty and vague. There was only one idea in his mind, only one thing that he could hear. He must get up somehow before the referee counted ten.... Four—five—(he was not done yet)—six—seven—(he must stay down as long as possible)—eight—nine. And at that Carpentier jumped up quickly and flung up his arms to guard against the inevitable rush. It was no good. He did not know his own weakness. Dempsey just pushed his arms aside, feinted with his left, and sent his right crashing to the heart. Again Carpentier fell, and this time he was counted out.

CHAPTER XII
GEORGES CARPENTIER AND GEORGE COOK

After his defeat by Dempsey, Carpentier did not fight again until he met George Cook, the Australian, at the Albert Hall, on January 12th, 1922. In the World’s Championship contest he had been badly hurt: and a beating such as he had then might well have produced a lasting effect. It was, then, interesting to watch him to see if his previous downfall would manifestly alter his demeanour in the ring. But though it is not to be doubted that some of his behaviour arose from motives of policy, there was, genuinely, no sign of worry upon his boyish and almost preposterously unpugilistic face. Coming into the ring there was an elaborate nonchalance in the Frenchman’s mien which was intended to impress his opponent. With genial gravity Carpentier himself wound his bandages about his hands before drawing on his black gloves: and instead of remaining in his corner he moved his stool to a position in the ring more generally commanded by the spectators.

Cook is a man without any particular record in this country, though he was Heavy-weight Champion of Australia. By beating Carpentier he would have become Champion of Europe, and would, of course, have bounded into considerable fame. Wise after the event, large numbers of a critical public have observed that the result was for ever certain. But that is unfair to Cook, who showed himself to be a boxer by no means despicable, and who most emphatically had the better of one round out of the four. He was a stone heavier than his man, though this considerable difference was not plainly observable when they stripped. Cook was just a shade “beefy,” but he was strong and well. He looked across the ring with astonishment at the form of his antagonist: for Carpentier is—a Greek bronze, dark-skinned, beautifully proportioned, covered with easy, flowing muscle, a sight to stir the hearts of older athletes with vain regret.

The huge hall was full. Large numbers of women were present, both English and French, and these called to mind the amusing discussions in and out of newspapers, before the war, as to the propriety of admitting female spectators to “Gladiatorial displays.” Indeed in one Correspondence Column under the title, “Should Ladies Watch Boxing Contests?” an irascible old sportsman declared that the question did not arise, as no lady would do such a thing. Without entering at length into a question which is not widely interesting, I would ask what hope there was for a gentility which depends upon obedience to a perfectly trivial convention, involving no question of right or wrong, manners, or even what we usually mean by “decorum”? In those days of 1914, before war broke out, and when the “boxing boom” was at its height, a woman whom it is unnecessary to call a “lady,” old enough also to have recognised for what they were and to despise many transient correctitudes of fashion, observed: “If my daughter likes to go and see two nasty men with hairy chests knocking each other about, why shouldn’t she?” And, really, that is all there is to be said on the subject.

To return to what the ladies watched, rather than exploring the “quite niceness” of their watching it—a very desperate encounter was not expected: but, provided that he doesn’t knock his man out in the first fifty or sixty seconds, Carpentier is always worth seeing.

The first round was level. Cook boxed well, particularly at close quarters, and the Frenchman appeared hesitating and tentative in all his movements. Early in the next round Cook sent out a quick and tremendous swing which, with greater quickness, Carpentier avoided, dancing right away from it. Then, a little later, the same thing happened on Carpentier’s side. Throughout this round Cook succeeded for the most part in keeping close to his man and in dealing him out short but powerful punches on the back of the neck and head, in imitation of Dempsey, but without his power. From Cook these blows seemed to trouble his antagonist not at all. That was certainly Cook’s round. Whether the considerable margin of points in his favour was entirely due to Carpentier’s ringcraft is not certain. He was anxious to sum up the situation and thoroughly to take the measure of Cook before committing himself. It is quite possible that he deliberately gave something away in that round, being confident that his gift could do him no serious harm: but if he did so, I am inclined to suppose that he got more than he reckoned upon.

The third round was Carpentier’s in about the same degree as the second had been Cook’s. His hesitation had completely gone, and he did nothing without meaning to, and no intention of his was frustrated by his opponent. He knew all about Cook now. He was a powerful hitter at short range, a good in-fighter, and he was strong. But he was much the slower of the two.

When he has really settled to his work Carpentier crouches lightly and elegantly, with no rigid and inflexible guard, but both hands ready, both arms loose and lithe, to supply whatever need the next moment may demand. At the beginning of the fourth round Cook went for him with plenty of pluck and determination, and did his utmost to keep close. But Carpentier hit and got away, side-stepped, danced lightly on his toes, refusing to fight at close quarters. Every now and again a clinch seemed imminent, and the Frenchman darted away out of reach, leaving, as it were, a lightning blow behind him. Suddenly, as the Australian tried to force him into his own corner, he sent in a right to Cook’s jaw, through his guard, at very long range and with extraordinary dexterity. It was the kind of blow that could only be landed effectively by a boxer of the utmost possible skill. For one thing it was exquisitely timed, coming in not straight, but without the elbow being markedly bent, striking the right place, the glove turning over as it struck, and avoiding Cook’s guardian left with the most delicate precision. For another, few boxers could land any blow save a wide swing from the position Carpentier was in with sufficient weight behind it to do much damage. It was, on his part, a triumph of speed, of real boxing, not according to confining rules, but according to science applied to occasion with the utmost ingenuity and agility. It is worth going a long way to see a blow like that struck. No one should need the fantastic explanation of Carpentier’s or Descamps’s hypnotic powers if he will but watch the boxer with a quick and vigilant eye.

There have been, perhaps, better men of a less weight from the strictly scientific point of view, but as a skilled heavy-weight Carpentier is peerless. Unfortunately, as we know, science is not all that is needed in the ring, and Carpentier was utterly routed by Dempsey—a good boxer, but not nearly so good a boxer—because he was a positive phenomenon of size and strength.

That beautiful right was probably enough to beat Cook, who immediately fell forward. But Carpentier hit him again, bending to do so, just before he reached the floor. By the rules it was a fair blow, because the man was not technically “down”—neither glove nor knee quite touched the floor. It was, however, a very near thing. There was a good deal of excitement and uproar at the moment, and at least one highly competent judge fully believed the blow to have been a foul, and that the Frenchman should have been disqualified. But he was sitting immediately behind Carpentier and could not get a perfectly clear view.

Instantaneous photographs, displayed afterwards, show that Carpentier, by the narrowest possible margin, was on the right side. But it was an unfortunate ending to a most instructive encounter. For the question remains—did he strike deliberately, or was he overcome by the excitement of the moment, as so many other boxers, even of his experience, have been overcome before? Neither alternative leaves us with complete ease in retrospect: for to lose your head is bad boxing, while to take the uttermost advantage of the exact letter of the rule is, in such a case, questionable sportsmanship.