manners and a social turn count for as much in it as they do elsewhere.” The novel was finished in 1883, and three years later was published in book form. When the publisher inferred from the book that Shaw was a formidable boxer, he said Shaw laughed and replied, “I know the moves, just as I know the moves in chess.”
St. Patrick’s Day of 1883, a Saturday, was a day that would confound future scholars who studied the worldly Shaw, a man not seen as one likely to risk himself in a sporting contest. In what may have been a flourish of Irish bravado, Shaw and Beatty entered a national amateur boxing competition. Wrote Beatty, referring to himself:
Old Plantagenet into training must get
Drink later, eat steaks that are raw
The Shaw’s nose has kist the tip of his fist
(And you won’t like it, George Bernard Shaw)
They signed up for the annual Queensberry Amateur Boxing Championships far enough ahead of time so that their names could be printed in the large official program. The Queensberry Challenge Cup was not just a local tournament, but a public, advertised competition at the sprawling Lillie Bridge Grounds, the home of London’s major sporting events and fairs. The Amateur Boxing Association, the sport’s first governing body, had been formed in Britain in 1880, only three years earlier. P. Beatty, London, was listed in the lightweight and middleweight division. G.B. Shaw, London, was entered as a middleweight and a heavyweight. (A heavyweight in those days could be any weight, and boxers often changed weight divisions, depending on their opponents.) “I dont call no man a fighting man what aint been in the ring,” says Ned Skene, the coach (based on Donnelly) in Shaw’s novel. “You’re a sparrer, and a clever, pretty sparrer; but sparring aint the real thing. Some day, please God, we’ll make up a little match for you.”
The competition would have been about a year and a half after Shaw first joined Donnelly’s gym. Shaw had seen other amateurs injured and knocked out and had suffered injury himself. It is not entirely clear, but the record indicates that neither actually got in the ring that day. One version holds that Beatty was so nervous that Donnelly gave him a stiff dose of brandy before entering the ring, the effect being to paralyze him. The official ruling could have been that they did not have enough fights under their belts, or they may not have fought simply because their names were not drawn. The last tantalizing possibility is that one or both of them fought and lost, then sat in the stands to watch the winning match, as boxers often do. In any event, Shaw wrote the winners’ names on his official program, in the neat script that he had perfected as a teenage land agent in Dublin.
The raw drama of the ring in all its color, excitement and controversy had captured Shaw’s imagination. “Pugilism,” he said, “became one of my subjects.”
In 1901, Shaw added a preface to his novel in which he expressed surprise that the book had survived so long. He continued to follow prizefights from afar, but he was generally disgusted with the gamblers and the quality of the people who had taken over the sport and felt that his fictional, highly moral Cashel, his ultimate man of action, would never be equaled. Shaw moved on with his life and began writing plays, many of which were peppered with references to pugilism and boxing. Spirited idioms and commentary on the sport would also appear in his letters, books, prefaces and newspaper articles, and as stage directions and dialogue.
Only with Paquito, his old friend and sparring partner, did Gully Belcher Shaw discuss old times in the ring.
It would be another two decades before boxing became important to him again.
A woodcut by William Nicholson (1872-1949) in An Almanac of Twelve Sports, published in 1898 by William Heinemann, with words by Rudyard Kipling (Bridgeman Art Library).
G.B.S. in 1880 (Shaw Festival).
Shaw at Hammersmith Terrace, London, 1891, photograph by Emery Walker (Dan H. Laurence Collection, University of Guelph Library Archives).
Chapter 3
Big Sissy Reads
“There is little to suggest the gladiator in this mild, quiet-spoken, blue-eyed individual as he talks of tennis, golf, books — Wells, Tennyson and Omar Khayam are among his favorite authors.”
BRIAN BELL, REPORTER
Brian Bell didn’t know he was going to change someone’s life when he drove up to the Adirondacks, the most northerly place he’d ever been in New York or any other state. He was just glad to get out of New York City and away from the desk on a sweltering summer day. Bell had covered news stories since he was in knee pants, when, at age ten, he mailed clips to The State, the largest newspaper in his native South Carolina. Later, he had covered the Scopes “Monkey” Trial — in fact, had broken so many scoops on that trial that he had become something of a legend in the news business. Today was a new assignment, however, and his first sports assignment for the Associated Press.
On this summer day in 1926, Bell was en route to visit Gene Tunney, “The Fighting Marine” from Greenwich Village who was training to battle Jack Dempsey for the world heavyweight championship, the biggest prize in sports. No one knew much about Tunney, a city boy from a poor Irish family whose background reflected the changing demographics of a country moving toward urbanization. At 29, Tunney had fought 74 professional fights and lost only once, to Harry Greb, “the Pittsburgh Windmill.” It was a fight so murderous that viewers at ringside were splattered in red, Greb’s gloves were soggy, and the canvas was soaked in Tunney’s blood. The fighter-Marine defeated Greb three times in return bouts and fought him once to a draw.
“Just go up to Tunney’s training camp and look around for the usual stuff and give it a feature touch, for the most part,” said his boss and good friend, Alan Gould, the wire service’s sports editor. “Get a little something of the personality.” It didn’t matter, said Gould, that Bell had never been to a training camp and had never met the boxer; Bell was one of the best feature writers in the business, and he’d know what to do when he got there.
In the summer of 1926, there was no better job for a reporter than covering sports. The appetite of the nation’s newspapers for sports news had quadrupled since the Great War. The readers’ thirst for the minutest details of every aspect of a celebrity’s life was insatiable, and sports fans knew more about their heroes than they knew about members of their own families. Personal magnetism, charisma, youthful vitality and the will to win, also the hallmarks of a growing business culture, became imperative in sports. Millions of spectators were crowding into stadiums and onto golf courses, and sports champions became heroes overnight: Bobby Jones in golf, Bill Tilden in tennis, Babe Ruth in baseball, Red Grange in football, Earle Sande in horse racing. In the era called the Golden Age of Sports, boxing was king, drawing the most in money and spectators. Jack Dempsey made more money in one fight than Babe Ruth earned in a year, and he had twice defended his title as heavyweight champion in million-dollar gates. An estimated 12 million Americans watched boxing matches or fought in neighborhood gyms and athletic contests. Reporters vied for scoops, and major newspapers featured columnists with colorful prose meant to sway and titillate the public, as well as sell newspapers.
In London, even the playwright Bernard Shaw occasionally wrote columns on sports, sometimes taking aim at sportswriters themselves. “The time is evidently very near when journalists will have
