Читать книгу Pugilistica онлайн

264 страница из 296

The behaviour of the subject of this memoir was the admiration of all present: it was unassuming and manly in the extreme. In a word, Neat proved a good fighter, and was thought, before he met with Spring, to be superior to any boxer on the list. He retired from the ring without any prominent marks; nevertheless, he received many heavy blows.

Bristol, in the person of Neat, now claimed the championship. Although its hero bore his blushing honours with becoming modesty, and publicly asserted, at the Castle Tavern, Holborn, on the Thursday after the fight, that he took no merit to himself in having defeated Hickman. “The Gas-light Man,” said Neat, “was over-weighted; but I think he can beat all the twelve stone men on the list. He is, I am convinced, one of the gamest men in the kingdom; and, although I have been a great deal chaffed about as a nobody, I will fight any man in London to-morrow morning for £100 a-side of my own money.”

The result of this mill was a pretty “cleaning out” of the Londoners, who returned to town with “pockets to let.” Nevertheless, there was little grumbling, all uniting in the opinion that Hickman was entitled to praise, doing all that he could to win. The news arrived in London by pigeon about half past three o’clock in the afternoon. It is impossible to describe the anxiety of the great crowds of persons which surrounded all the sporting houses in the metropolis to learn the event. In Bristol it was the same, and the editor of the Gazette of that place thus describes it:—“Such was the intense feeling excited in this city, that the streets were crowded as if an election contest was at its height, all inquiring the result, which was known here about seven o’clock.” The following sentences were exhibited by a boy on a board in the road:—