Boxing
The art of smiting
Benny Green
ay a chain of domestic coincidences too farfetched to relate, there has fallen into my possession a slim volume called Donnelly's Self-Defence, published in 1897, Which not only gives a fascinating insight into pugilistic techniques of the later nineteenth century, but also sheds light on a most curious sequence of literary events with which the slim volume itself has never before been connected. The Donnelly of the book's title was Ned Donnelly, self-styled Professor of the Noble Art, who, in his preface, goes to some lengths to assure his readers of his cultural bona fides: At the early age of seventeen my young enthusiasm for the fistic art had already led me to commence the study of boxing, but I did not actually experience the hardships, dangers and toils of the ring until 1864, when in my twentieth year, I was matched for the first time, trained carefully at Barnet, met in the Open ring and there defeated Styles, of Padiington.
After his retirement from the hardships, dangers and toils of the ring, Donnelly became a boxing teacher, and his frontispiece tells us that his gymnasium Was at 18 Panton Street, just round the corner from the Haymarket Theatre. One of the anxieties uppermost in Donnelly's mind when he wrote his book appears to have been that its theme might give readers the wrong impression; so, being a man of some perspicuity and determined to convey to the public the bourgeoise respectability of tlie gym in Panton Street, he hit on the simple device of printing the names of his more illustrious subscribers, Which, as they included three peers of the realm, an Honourable and six commissioned officers, could not fail to achieve the desired effect of diocesan rectitude.
In the light of this elevated social climate of Donnelly's establishment, it is not surprising that intellectuals were occasionally drawn there, or that Donnelly should sometimes impress them with the nuances of his own slightly overripe style. This varied from the conventional sporting Journalese of the period:
We do not mean to infer that the veteran did not rub out a chalk or two in the wind up, but he certainly never got on terms with his adversary.
to neo-biblical euphemism:
Even the Jews did not wholly eschew the art Of smiting, while the descendants of the Tribes Who settled in England have contributed many of the most brilliant boxers to the roll of fame.
to cosmic simile: A good left-hand counter to the face opens a Specious firmament to the bewildered eyes, Wherein you discover more new planets in a second than the most distinguished astronomer ever observed in a lifetime.
But wether you attended Donnelly's Pugilistic crammer to savour the efficacy of his technical advice or the prose-style in which he rendered it, the towering summit remained the Amateur Boxing Association Championships. At the start of his manual Donnelly boasts with justifiable pride that already he has taught two ABA champions, and even fifteen years before the publication of the book, when there had sauntered into the Panton Street gym an Irish dilettante called Pakenham Beatty, this obsession with the championships had already become a fact of life. Beatty was so keen to master the noble art that he even took a friend along for company, a fellow-dilletante so poor that Beatty was obliged to pay his fees. In 1883, these two literary dabblers, encouraged by what skills Donnelly had managed to teach them, entered for the ABA championships at Lillie Bridge, in both the Middle and Heavyweight divisions, only to be rejected on grounds of insufficient experience.
While Beatty, undeterred by this setback, continued his studies under Donnelly, his penniless friend decided to attempt a sublimation of those pugilistic instincts so cruelly frustrated by the committee at Lillie Bridge, and in this attempt did what any other young hungry thinker of the period would have done; he started to write a novel. Doggedly he completed it, and then proceeded to use it as an instrument of persecution for every publisher's reader in London, all of whom committed it to oblivion, from where in time it found its way into the hand of Robert Louis Stevenson, who delivered the following analysis of the book's composition: Charles Reade. 1 part
Henry James, or some kindred author, badly assimilated 1 part Disraeli (perhaps unconsciously) part Struggling, overlaid original talent I parts Blooming gaseous folly I part In time the manuscript was consigned with ten thousand others to the dusty bottom cupboards of bohemia, where it continued to make a banquet for the town mice long after its owner had abandoned any plans for becoming either a professional novelist or the next heavyweight champion.
And that, by all the laws of probability, is what should have happened also to Donnelly's primer. How it ever survived in so pristine a condition long enough to fall into my hands is past all comprehension. And yet now, when I read his instructions on how to slip a right-hand cross-counter, or block a hook-hit to the body, I am strangely moved. Through the comically stylised drawings which illustrate Donnelly's text, of those innocuous and slightly paunchy gentlemen with their rampant braces and their chortling walrus moustaches, there comes wafting a faint musky odour of that fascination we must always feel when confronted by the likeness of a type which social change has rendered extinct. We may smile at Donnelly's imagery and wonder at his homilies about little men thrashing bullies in public places. But at the end of it all we still have no clear idea of what Donnelly must have been like. There is no photograph or sketch in the primer, and no other contemporary evidence seems to have survived. And yet a man who could call boxing the art of smiting, and liken a dazed fighter to the Astronomer-Royal, must surely have been
worth knowing?
Fortunately, literary vanity has yet again saved a deserving case from oblivion. Or rather, two deserving cases, for Beatty as well as his old mentor Donnelly, is still at home to callers, even though the exigencies of art have divided the two men. While Beatty, masquerading as Chichester Erskine, wanders forever now through the rarified atmosphere of one Victorian novel, Donnelly becomes Ned Skene in another, where he enjoys an eternity in which to taste the delights of his beloved prize-ring. For although Beatty's friend suffered a most spectacularly unsuccessful novel-writing career, his gifts in other directions ensured that every word he wrote would survive. The two novels are Love Among the Artists and Cashel Byron's Profession; Donnelly's penniless pupil was Bernard Shaw.
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