Читать книгу Pugilistica онлайн

238 страница из 296

ssss1

At one period this weighty and hard-hitting specimen of the Bristol school bid fair to attain the topmost round of the ladder to pugilistic fame. Neat was born on the 11th of March, 1791, in Castle Street, of respectable hardworking parents, and was known to his townsmen for many years of his youth and manhood as a man of prodigious strength of arm, temperate habits, and extreme personal civility. A finer young fellow, “take him for all in all,” could not be met with in a day’s walk in a populous city. His height was five feet eleven inches and a half; his weight, in training, thirteen stone seven pounds. He had arrived at the age of twenty-seven before London heard of his provincial reputation, a fight with one Churchill, a maltster, weighing fourteen stone, being his only recorded battle. This was a somewhat curious affair. It was admitted that Churchill could not beat Neat, but the latter, for a trifling wager, offered to thrash Churchill “in ten minutes!” The cash was posted, and the combat came off, Churchill fighting with “yokel desperation.” Nevertheless, Neat lost his money by not hitting his opponent out of time in the ridiculously short space stipulated by the agreement. However, the powers displayed by Neat led to some conversation, in which a Bristol amateur offered to find 100 guineas for Neat, if he chose to meet Tom Oliver, then in the city on a sparring tour. Neat, who was as brave as he was powerful, closed with the offer.