Chapter IX The Dogs of War
The renowned Mr. Fogo, with the modesty of a man really great, arrived at Sheepstor in a butcher’s trap from Plymouth. He brought a box of humble dimensions, studded with brass nails; while for the rest, a very large umbrella, two walking-sticks and a cape of London pattern completed his outfit.
Reuben Shillabeer walked as far as Sheep’s Tor Bridge, and the two notable men met there and shook hands before numerous admiring spectators. Then the sporting butcher, who had driven Mr. Fogo from Plymouth, proceeded to Reuben’s familiar inn, while ‘Frosty-face’ and the ‘Dumpling’ made triumphal entry into the village together. The contrast between them could scarcely have been more abrupt. Shillabeer ambled with immense strides and heaving shoulders, like a bear on its hind legs, and his great, gentle face, set in its tawny fringe of hair, smiled out upon the world with unusual animation as he shortened his gait, crooked his knees somewhat and gave his arm to his friend. The notable Fogo was a good foot shorter than Reuben—a thin, brisk, clean-shaved man with eyes like a hawk, under very heavy brows, now quite white. His nose was sharp and thin; his mouth, a slit; his hair was still thick and white as snow. Fogo numbered seventy years, yet bore himself as straight and brisk as a youth. He was agile, thin and wiry; but a certain asperity of countenance, which had won him his nickname in the past, was now smoothed away by the modelling of time, and Mr. Fogo’s face, though keen, might be called amiable; though exceedingly wide-awake, revealed no acerbity of expression. His glance took in the situation swiftly.
“Crikey!” he said. “And you live here among all these trees and mountains and rocks! But I daresay, now, there’s pretty fishing in this river.”
“Trout—nought else. And ’tisn’t the season for ’em. But a fisherman still, I see—eh? What a man! Not a day older, I warrant. And how did they serve you at Plymouth?”
“I’ve no fault to find with Plymouth,” said Mr. Fogo. “They done me a treat there, and we had a pretty sporting house and a nice set-to in the new way with the mufflers. I got my boy through, but he’d have lost if I hadn’t been there. And now let me cast my eye over you, ‘Dumpling.’ The same man; but gone in the hams, I see. You big ’uns—’tis always that way. Your frames can’t carry the load of fat. And so your lady has passed away to a better land. But that’s old history.”
“No, it isn’t, Fogo,” declared Mr. Shillabeer, his animation perishing. “’Twill never be old history so long as I bide in the vale; and I hope you’ll have a good tell about her many a time afore you leave me. But not to-day. We’ll talk about her in private—you and me—over a drop of something special.”
“’Twas the weather killed her, I doubt,” hazarded Mr. Fogo. “You couldn’t expect a London woman to stand so much fresh air as you’ve got down here. Why—Good Lord!—you breathe nought with a smell to it from year to year! There’s not a homely whiff of liquor or fried fish strikes the nose—not so much as the pleasant odour of brewing, or them smells that touch the beak Covent Garden way. Nought for miles and miles—unless it’s pigs; and that I don’t like, and never shall.”
“Our air will make you terrible hungry, however,” promised Mr. Shillabeer; “and by the same token we’d better get on our way, for there’s a goose with apple sauce and some pretty stuffing to welcome you.”
That evening a very large gathering assembled in the public bar of ‘The Corner House,’ and the men of Standing were introduced each in turn to Mr. Fogo. He had changed his attire and produced from the box of many nails a rusty brown coat, a shirt with a frill and black knee-breeches. Thus attired, he suggested some pettifogging attorney from the beginning of the century. He sat by the fire, smoked a clay and conducted himself with the utmost affability. He was, in fact, no greater than common men while ordinary subjects were under discussion. Only when the Prize Ring began to be talked about, did the aquiline and historic Fogo soar to his true altitudes and silence all listeners before the torrent of his discourse.
The visitor drank gin and not much of that. He was somewhat silent at first until Reuben explained his many-sided greatness; then, when the company a little realised the man they had among them, he began to talk.
“The Fancy always felt you was unlike the rest,” said Shillabeer. “Even the papers took you serious. There was pugs and there was mugs; there was good sportsmen and bad ones, and there were plenty of all sorts else, but never more than one ‘Frosty-face.’”
Mr. Fogo nodded.
“I can’t deny it,” he said. “’Twas my all-roundness, I believe. Fight I couldn’t—not being built on the pattern of a fighting man, though the heart was in me; but I had a slice over my share of wits, and I’d forgot more about the P.R. than most people ever knew before I was half a century old.”
“You must understand,” said Shillabeer to his guests, “that Fogo always had letters stuck after his name, for all the world like other learned men. They was complimentary and given to him by the sporting Press of the kingdom.”
“Quite true,” said Fogo. “I was D.C.G., which stood for Deputy Commissary-General—the great Tom Oliver of course being C.-G. We had the handling of the stakes and ropes of the P.R. from the time that Oliver fought his last serious fight in 1821. He’s a fruiterer and greengrocer now in Chelsea, and a year or two older than me.”
“Then you was—what was it—P.L.P.R.—eh?” asked the ‘Dumpling.’
“I was and still am,” returned ‘Frosty-face,’ proudly. “P.L.P.R.—that’s ‘Poet Laureet of the Prize Ring.’ And it may interest these gentlemen here assembled to know that many and many a time my poems about the great fights was printed in the sporting papers afore most of those present was born or thought of.”
“I hope you’ve brought some along with you,” said Reuben.
“Certainly I have—a sheaf of ’em. I never travel without them,” returned the Londoner. “And when by good chance I find myself in a bar full of sportsmen of the real old sort, like to-night, I always say to myself, ‘not a man here but shall have a chance of buying one of the poems on the great fights, written by old ‘Frosty-faced Fogo.’”
“And you never fought yourself, Mr. Fogo?” asked David Bowden, who was of the company.
“Never in a serious way,” answered the veteran. “There wasn’t enough of me.”
“I can mind when you come very near a mill though,” declared Shillabeer. “’Twas after the fight between Tim Crawley and Burke, and the rain was coming down cats and dogs.”
Mr. Fogo lifted his hand.
“Let me tell the story, ‘Dumpling.’ Yes, ’twas in 1830 at East Barnet, and ‘the Deaf ‘Un,’ as Burke was called, had Master Tim’s shutters up in thirty-three rounds. Then, afore I’d pulled up the stakes, if that saucy chap, Tommy Roundhead, the trainer, didn’t come on me with a lot of his bunkum. I was on the losing side that day and not in the best temper; but I let him go a bit and then gave him some straight talk; and ‘Dumpling’ here will tell you that as a man of forty my tongue was as ready as my pen. Anyhow, I touched Roundhead on the raw and lashed him into such a proper passion that nothing would do but to settle it there and then in the old style. Tommy put down his five shillings and I covered it, though nobody knew ’twas the last two half-crowns I had in my fob at the time. But I was itching to have a slap at the beggar, and into the Ring I went and shouted for Roundhead. Raining, mind you, all the time—raining rivers, you might say. Well, up hops Roundhead, stripped to the buff and as thin as a dead frog; and when the people saw him in his skin and counted his ribs, they laughed fit to wake the churchyard. But thin though Tommy was, I knew right well that I was thinner. However, I cared nothing for that, and was just getting out of my togs, when some reporters and other chaps, having a respect for me as a poet and a man in a thousand, came between and wouldn’t hear of it.
“‘What about my five bob?’ I said. ‘D—— your five bob, “Frosty,”’ they said. ‘Here’s ten.’ And so, without ‘by your leave,’ they thrust me back into my clothes and dragged the arm out of my ’upper Benjamin’ in doing it. ’Twas just the world’s respect for me as a maker of verses, you might say, that kept me out of the Ring that day. So I soon had the true blue stakes up and went off with ’em; and the ropes and staples and beetle, and all the rest of it.”
A warlike atmosphere seemed to waken in the peaceful bar of ‘The Corner House.’ The youths imagined themselves engaged in terrific trials of strength; their elders pictured the joy of playing spectators’ parts. Mr. Fogo told story after story, and it seemed with few exceptions that the heroes of the ring, tricky though they might be in battle, were men of simple probity and honourable spirit. His great hero was ‘Bendigo,’ William Thompson of Nottingham, a Champion of England.
“And ‘Bendy’s’ going strong yet,” said Mr. Fogo. “After his last fight with Paddock, about ten year ago now—a bad fight too—‘Bendy’ won on a foul; after that he got converted, as they say, and took to preaching. He’s at it yet and does pretty well, I believe.”
“‘Bendy’ with a white choker! What a wonder!” declared Mr. Shillabeer.
“Yes—he met a noble lord last time he was in London,” continued Mr. Fogo. “And his lordship recognised him for all his pulpit toggery. ‘Good Gad!’ says his lordship, ‘’tis “Bendy”! And what’s your little game now, my bold hero?’ ‘Not a little game at all, my lord,’ says ‘Bendigo’—always ready with a word he was. ‘I’m fighting Satan, and I’m going to beat him. Behold, my lord, the victory shall be mine,’ he says in his best preaching voice. ‘I hope so, “Bendy,”’ answers his lordship; ’but pray have a care that you fight Beelzebub fairer than you did Ben Gaunt, or I may change my side!’ Not that ‘Bendigo’ ever fought unfair; but he had to be clever with a giant like Gaunt; and he had to go down—else he’d have stood no chance at all with such a heavy man.”
“One of three at a birth ‘Bendy’ was,” concluded the ‘Dumpling.’ “I never knew one of triplets to do any good in the world before.”
At this juncture in the conversation Bartley Crocker entered the bar. He had not heard of the celebrity, but soon, despite his own cares, found himself as interested as the others. The talk of battle inflamed him and, to the delight of the guests assembled, a thing most of them frankly desired actually happened within the hour.
David scowled into Bartley’s eyes presently, and the younger, who was quite willing to pick a quarrel with this man of all men, walked across the bar and stood close to him.
“Is there any reason why you should pull your face crooked at sight of me, David Bowden?” he asked.
Something of the truth between these two was known. Therefore all kept silence.
“’Twas scorn of you made me do it. A chap who could kiss a girl, without asking if he might, be a coward.”
“Bah! that’s the matter—eh? Because I kissed your sister!”
“Yes; and if you think ’twas a decent man’s act, it only shows you’re not decent. Shame on you—low-minded chap that you are!”
“Not decent, because I kissed a pretty girl? D’you mean that?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Did Rhoda tell you?”
“Yes, she did—when I axed her what ailed her.”
“Well, hear this. You’re a narrow-minded, canting fool; and if women understood you better, you wouldn’t have won Madge Stanbury.”
“Don’t you name her, or I’ll knock your two eyes into one!”
“Do it!” answered Bartley; “and if that’ll help you to start, so much the better.”
As he spoke and with infinite quickness he raised his hand and pulled David’s nose. A second later they were in the sawdust together.
The huge Shillabeer pulled them apart, like a man separates a pair of terriers. Then Simon Snell, Ernest Maunder and Timothy Mattacott held Bartley, while, single-handed, the ‘Dumpling’ restrained young Bowden. Immense excitement marked the moment. Only Mr. Fogo puffed his long clay and showed no emotion. A senseless babel choked the air, and then Shillabeer’s heavy voice shouted down the rest and he made himself heard.
“I won’t have it!” he said. “I’m ashamed that you grown-up chaps can sink to temper like this and disgrace yourselves and me and the company. Strangers present too! If you want to fight, then fight in a decent and gentlemanly way—not like two dogs over a bone.”
“I do want to fight,” said Bartley. “I want nothing better in this world than to give that man the damnedest hiding ever a man had.”
“And I’m the same,” said Bowden. He was now quite calm again. “I’m sorry I forgot myself in your bar, Mr. Shillabeer, but no man can say I hadn’t enough to make me. I’ll not talk big nor threaten, nor say what I’ll do to him, but I’ll fight him for all he’s worth—to-morrow if he likes.”
“Now you’re talking sense,” declared the innkeeper. “A fair fight no man can object to, and if it’s known in the proper quarters and not in the wrong ones, there ought to be a little money moving for both of you. How do they stand for a match, Fogo? Come forward, David, and let ‘Frosty-face’ have a look at you.”
“Let ’em shake hands first,” said Mr. Fogo.
“I’ll do so,” declared Bowden, “on the understanding that we’re to fight this side of Christmas.”
“The sooner the better,” retorted Crocker. Then they shook hands and Mr. Fogo’s glittering eyes inspected them.
“Weight as near as can be,” he said. “At least, I judge it without seeing your barrels. This man’s the younger, I suppose.”
He pointed to Bartley.
“I’m twenty-five,” said Mr. Crocker.
“Ay; and stand six feet—?”
“Five feet eleven and a half.”
“Weight eleven stone?”
“A bit less.”
Mr. Fogo nodded.
“You’ve got the reach, t’other chap’s got the powder.”
Then he examined David.
“Age?” he said.
“Twenty-eight.”
“Height?”
“Five foot nine.”
“Weight?”
“Eleven two, or thereabout.”
“Do either of you know anything of the art?”
“I don’t,” said Bartley.
“No more don’t I,” added Bowden.
Fogo looked them up and down carefully.
“There’s no reason on the surface why you shouldn’t fight a pretty mill.”
“How long can you stop with me, ‘Frosty’?” asked Mr. Shillabeer.
“Well, if there was a few yellow-boys2 in it, I might go as far as three weeks. I ought to see Tom King about something of the greatest importance before long; but I can write it. If these chaps will come to the scratch in three weeks, I’ll stop. And they both look hard and healthy; and as neither of ’em know anything, it may be a short fight.”
Much talk followed and, in the midst, the visitor rose, put down his pipe and left the bar.
Then up spoke Ernest Maunder in the majesty of the law.
“I warn you, souls,” he said, “that I can’t countenance this. If there’s to be fighting, you’ve got me against you, and to-morrow I shall lay information with the Justice of the Peace and get a warrant out.”
“I hope you’ll mind your own business,” said Crocker, warmly. “The man who spoils sport when Bowden and me meet, is like to get spoilt himself.”
“You won’t frighten me,” returned Ernest. “As a common man I’d give you best, Bartley; but in my blue and with right my side, you’ll find me an ugly customer, I warn you. Bowden here was daring me to be up and doing a bit ago. Well, you’ll soon see how ’tis if you try to plan to break the law and fight a prize fight in this parish! I know my business, and that you’ll find.”
“And I’m with you,” declared Mr. Moses. “Have no fear, Maunder. The Church and the State are both o’ your side, and let vicar but get wind of this and he’ll—”
“You keep out of it, Moses,” said Mr. Shillabeer, warmly. “We be very good friends and long may we remain so; but stick to your last, shoemaker, and if these full-grown men be pleased to settle their difference in the fine old way, ’tis very churlish in you to oppose it.”
“Well said, ‘Dumpling,’” shouted a young, odd-looking, hairy man with the uneuphonious name of Screech; “if Moses here don’t like fair play and nature’s weapons, let him keep out of it; but if he tries to interfere, never a boot do he make for me again.”
“Nor yet for me,” cried Bowden. “You’ll do well to go back on that, Mr. Moses, and keep away from the subject.”
“Nor yet for me,” echoed Timothy Mattacott, firmly. “I’m Maunder’s friend, as you all know, and hope to remain so. But if there’s to be the glad chance of a proper prize fight in this neighbourhood, I’m for it heart and soul.”
Mr. Fogo had returned and heard some of this conversation.
“If the gentleman’s a Jew,” he said, “he ought to take kindly to the sport. Some of the best boys as ever threw a beaver into the Ring were Israelites—only to name Mendoza and Dutch Sam and Barney Aaron, ‘the Star of the East.’”
“I’m not a Jew,” said Mr. Moses, “though I don’t blame you for thinking so.”
“Not with that name?”
“Not at all. My people are Devon all through.”
“Well,” said Fogo, “my humble custom is to make hay while the sun shines. We Cockney blokes learn that quite as quick as you Johnny Raws from the plough-tail; and as there’s a fight in the air, I’ll be so bold as to sell a few of my verses to them brave blades that would like to see what fighting was once.”
On his arm he carried fifty broadsheets, and now the old sportsman began to distribute them.
“Twopence each, gentlemen—all true and partickler with the names of the Fancy present: Mr. Jackson, Mr. Gully, Tom Cribb, Jem Burn, Tom Spring, and all the old originals. The poems go from the first fight that I ever saw between Hen Pearce, ‘the Game Chicken,’ and that poor, old, one-eyed lion, Jem Belcher, in 1805; to the great mill between Mr. Sayers and Mr. Heenan a year ago, when our man fought the Yankee with one hand and jolly near beat him at that. All out of my own head, gentlemen, and only twopence each!”
Mr. Fogo distributed his warlike verses in every direction; then when not a poem remained, he began to collect them again. But the company proved in very vein for these lays of blood. Both the future combatants made several purchases; Mr. Snell also patronised the poet, while Mattacott, Screech, and even Mr. Maunder himself, became possessed of ‘Frosty-face’s’ sanguine chronicles.
It being now closing time, the storm-laden air was cleared; the noisy company, with laughter and repetition of racy couplets from Mr. Fogo’s muse, retired, and at last the two old friends were left alone. Shillabeer shut up his bar and locked the house; ‘Frosty’ counted the contents of his pocket and gathered up the poems still unsold.
“I ought to share the booty with you, ‘Dumpling,’” he said, but his host scorned the thought.
“Hope you’ll be sold out long afore you go,” he returned. “And as to sharing, that’s nonsense. You’re a great man, and if you be going to stop along of me for three weeks, you’ll bring a lot of custom, for the people will come from far and near to see you.”
“Of course if you put it that way, I say no more, because you know best,” declared Fogo.
Presently they sat together over a final pipe.
“Now talk of the wife,” said Reuben.
Mr. Fogo obeyed, cast his acute countenance into a mould of melancholy, appeared to draw a film over his piercing eyes, ceased joyously to rattle the money in his breeches pocket, and shook his head sadly once or twice to catch the spirit of the theme.
“The biggest and the best woman I ever saw, or ever hope to see,” he began. “I picture her now—as a young, gay creature in her father’s shop at the corner of the Dials. Rabbits and caveys and birds he sold and him a sportsman to the marrow. Thirteen stone in her maiden days, they used to say, and very nearly six feet high—the wonder and the joy of the male sex. And ’twas left for you to win that rare female. And you did; and you was the envied of London, ‘Dumpling’—the envied of London.”
Mr. Shillabeer nodded, sighed heavily, and licked his lips at these picturesque words.
“It brings her back—so large as life—to hear you tell about her. ’Twas the weight she put on after marriage that killed her, ‘Frosty,’” he said. “You must see her grave in the burying-ground.”
“And take my hat off to it—so I will.”
“There’s room for me beside her, come my turn, Fogo.”
“Quite right—perfectly right. You couldn’t wait for the trump of Doom beside a better woman.”
Reuben next gave all details of his wife’s last illness, and the subject occupied him until midnight when conversation drifted from Mrs. Shillabeer to other matters. They talked until the peat fire sank to a red eye and the air grew cold. Then conversation waned and both heroes began to grow sleepy.
Mr. Shillabeer rose first and concluded the wide survey.
“Ah, ‘Frosty,’ the days we’ve seen!” he said.
“I’m with you,” answered the poet, also rising. “’Tis all summed up in that word and couldn’t be put better,—‘The days we’ve seen!’”
Notes
2 Sovereigns.