George Fraser - Black Ajax

Then again, I’ve seen times when he acted no more like a slave than you would. It’s no Banbury tale, sir, he could be head high and to old blazes with everyone, even royalty in the very flesh, when he’d strut like a gamecock and look down his great flat snout like any tulip, the sauciest nigger counter-coxcomb you ever saw, and dressed to the nines, oh, the slap-up black Corinthian, he was! They laughed at first – but I seen the day when they stopped laughing, and no error.

But here’s the thing, sir: even then, when he was in his high ropes, I could never fathom whether he was hoaxing or not, or queer in his attic, maybe. You could not tell what was stirring under that woolly top-knot, if anything was, or see behind those black glims, bright and bloodshot rotten as though he’d been all night on the mop – which he had been, often as not. If I had a guinea for every time I’ve seen him home, shot in the neck and castaway to Jericho, I’d be richer than Coutts, and that’s a fact.

Drink did for him – drink and skirt. I never seen his like when it came to the chippers, and didn’t they fancy him, just, for all his mug was more like an ape’s than a human’s, lips as fat as saveloys, his sneezer spread all over his cheeks, nob like a bullet, and coal-black ugly altogether. And not just the common punks and flash-mabs, neither, but your bang-up Cyprians, and Quality females, too, top o’ the ton with their own carriages and mansions up west. They could not get their fill of him. Made my stomach turn to think of it, him stinking the way they do.

I reckon they were curious to know how a black man would be, so to speak, and I doubt if they was disappointed, for a more prodigious well-armed jockey I never did see, and as a trainer I’ve cast an eye over more likely anatomies than a resurrectionist. But ’twasn’t only that; why, even the sight of him, sparring at the Fives Court, or walking in the Park, or best of all posing for that Italian statue-carver in Ryder Street, was enough to turn the best-bred of ’em into flash-tails, for bar his clock he was Apollo come to life, the finest, strongest, bravest body of a man you ever clapped eyes on. That was beauty, sir, “ebony perfection in the artist’s eye”, Lord Byron said.

Oh, if you could ha’ seen him that day at Copthorn when he came dancing out to meet Cribb! That was the day, sir, the day of the Black Ajax, the Milling Moor in all his glory, shoulders like a Guardee and the waist of an opera-girl, trained to a hair with those great sleek muscles a-ripple under a skin that shone like a sloe, and light as thistledown on the breeze. That was Tom, my Tom, for just an hour or so.

There will never come another like him, sir, I can tell you. I saw him on the peak, tip-top high, and I saw him in the gutter. I saw him rich and famous, and I saw him scorched and forgotten. Why, I saw him shake the Prince Regent’s own hand, sir, and clink his glass of iced champagne punch while the noblest in the land clapped his shoulder all smiles – and I saw him face down in rags in a farmyard sty with the gapeseeds crowing each time he shot the cat, puking his innards out, so fat and used up he was.

A sad end to a sad story, you say? Well, I don’t know about that, sir. I been in the Fancy man and boy for more’n fifty years, and they reckon I fought more mills than any boxer that ever came to scratch, and I lent a knee and held the bottle for as many more again. I was lightweight champion of All England. I stood up to the great Jem Belcher longer than any other did, giving him two stone, when he had both eyes, too! I’ve sparred with every champion of England since Mendoza – Humphries, Jackson, the Game Chicken, Gully, Cribb, and the rest of ’em. Nothing in Paddington Jones’s record to think shame of, you may say … but I never had a day like Copthorn, sir, and I don’t know many milling coves that did. He had that day, though, Black Tom Molineaux of America. The greatest day in the history of the game, a turn-up that they’ll talk about as long as there’s a prize ring. No, sir, I can’t say his was a sad story, however it ended, not with that day in it.

I knew him as well as anyone in his life, I suppose. I trained him, and taught him, and seconded him, and nursed him (and cursed him, I dare say), and was as close to him as a man could be. But as I said, I never knew his mind, or what he thought truly of us, or of the Fancy, or of London that he came to a great black simpleton and yet was talk o’ the Town afore all was done, or of England that cheered and jeered him, and loved and hated him – oh, and feared him, too … what Tom Molineaux thought of all of that, sir, I can’t say. Who knows what’s in a black man’s head?

Did I say drink and wenches did for him? Well, that’s gospel, sure enough, but when I think back on him I reckon pride did for him, too. I may not have known his mind, but I’ll lay all the mint sauce in the Bank to a sow’s baby that he had pride in him for a belted earl, born slave and all though he was. You smile, sir? Well, I’ve said my say, and I tell you, he was a proud man, and paid for it.

What’s that, sir? Was he the best ? Ah, well, now it’s my turn to smile. I’ll put it this ways: Mendoza was no faster, Belcher was no cleverer, and Ikey Bittoon the Jew never hit no harder, to which last I can testify, having had three ribs stove in by him. In fine, sir, Tom Molineaux was as good as ever twanged – but the best ? Bless you, there’s no such creature, let the wiseacres say what they will. Why, sir? Because somewhere, and the good Lord only knows where, but somewhere, sir, there’s always one better. Course there is.

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