Cashel Byron's Profession: Chapter 15

Chapter 15

In the following month Cashel Byron, William Paradise, and Robert
Mellish appeared in the dock together, the first two for having been
principals in a prize-fight, and Mellish for having acted as bottle-
holder to Paradise. These offences were verbosely described in a
long indictment which had originally included the fourth man who had
been captured, but against whom the grand jury had refused to find a
true bill. The prisoners pleaded not guilty.

The defence was that the fight, the occurrence of which was
admitted, was not a prize-fight, but the outcome of an enmity which
had subsisted between the two men since one of them, at a public
exhibition at Islington, had attacked and bitten the other. In
support of this, it was shown that Byron had occupied a house at
Wiltstoken, and had lived there with Mellish, who had invited
Paradise to spend a holiday with him in the country. This accounted
for the presence of the three men at Wiltstoken on the day in
question. Words had arisen between Byron and Paradise on the subject
of the Islington affair; and they had at last agreed to settle the
dispute in the old English fashion. They had adjourned to a field,
and fought fairly and determinedly until interrupted by the police,
who were misled by appearances into the belief that the affair was a
prize-fight.

Prize-fighting was a brutal pastime, Cashel Byron's counsel said;
but a fair, stand-up fight between two unarmed men, though doubtless
technically a breach of the peace, had never been severely dealt
with by a British jury or a British judge; and the case would be
amply met by binding over the prisoners, who were now on the best of
terms with one another, to keep the peace for a reasonable period.
The sole evidence against this view of the case, he argued, was
police evidence; and the police were naturally reluctant to admit
that they had found a mare's nest. In proof that the fight had been
premeditated, and was a prize-fight, they alleged that it had taken
place within an enclosure formed with ropes and stakes. But where
were those ropes and stakes? They were not forthcoming; and he
(counsel) submitted that the reason was not, as had been suggested,
because they had been spirited away, for that was plainly
impossible; but because they had existed only in the excited
imagination of the posse of constables who had arrested the
prisoners.

Again, it had been urged that the prisoners were in fighting
costume. But cross-examination had elicited that fighting costume
meant practically no costume at all: the men had simply stripped in
order that their movements might be unembarrassed. It had been
proved that Paradise had been--well, in the traditional costume of
Paradise (roars of laughter) until the police borrowed a blanket to
put upon him.

That the constables had been guilty of gross exaggeration was shown
by their evidence as to the desperate injuries the combatants had
inflicted upon one another. Of Paradise in particular it had been
alleged that his features were obliterated. The jury had before them
in the dock the man whose features had been obliterated only a few
weeks previously. If that were true, where had the prisoner obtained
the unblemished lineaments which he was now, full of health and
good-humor, presenting to them? (Renewed laughter. Paradise grinning
in confusion.) It was said that these terrible injuries, the traces
of which had disappeared so miraculously, were inflicted by the
prisoner Byron, a young gentleman tenderly nurtured, and visibly
inferior in strength and hardihood to his herculean opponent.
Doubtless Byron had been emboldened by his skill in mimic combat to
try conclusions, under the very different conditions of real
fighting, with a man whose massive shoulders and determined cast of
features ought to have convinced him that such an enterprise was
nothing short of desperate. Fortunately the police had interfered
before he had suffered severely for his rashness. Yet it had been
alleged that he had actually worsted Paradise in the
encounter--obliterated his features. That was a fair sample of the
police evidence, which was throughout consistently incredible and at
variance with the dictates of common-sense.

Attention was then drawn to the honorable manner in which Byron had
come forward and given himself up to the police the moment he became
aware that they were in search of him. Paradise would, beyond a
doubt, have adopted the same course had he not been arrested at
once, and that, too, without the least effort at resistance on his
part. That was hardly the line of conduct that would have suggested
itself to two lawless prize-fighters.

An attempt had been made to prejudice the prisoner Byron by the
statement that he was a notorious professional bruiser. But no proof
of that was forthcoming; and if the fact were really notorious there
could be no difficulty in proving it. Such notoriety as Mr. Byron
enjoyed was due, as appeared from the evidence of Lord Worthington
and others, to his approaching marriage to a lady of distinction.
Was it credible that a highly connected gentleman in this enviable
position would engage in a prize-fight, risking disgrace and
personal disfigurement, for a sum of money that could be no object
to him, or for a glory that would appear to all his friends as
little better than infamy?

The whole of the evidence as to the character of the prisoners went
to show that they were men of unimpeachable integrity and
respectability. An impression unfavorable to Paradise might have
been created by the fact that he was a professional pugilist and a
man of hasty temper; but it had also transpired that he had on
several occasions rendered assistance to the police, thereby
employing his skill and strength in the interests of law and order.
As to his temper, it accounted for the quarrel which the
police--knowing his profession--had mistaken for a prize-fight.

Mellish was a trainer of athletes, and hence the witnesses to his
character were chiefly persons connected with sport; but they were
not the less worthy of credence on that account.

In fine, the charge would have been hard to believe even if
supported by the strongest evidence. But when there was no
evidence--when the police had failed to produce any of the
accessories of a prize-fight--when there were no ropes nor
posts--no written articles--no stakes nor stakeholders--no seconds
except the unfortunate man Mellish, whose mouth was closed by a law
which, in defiance of the obvious interests of justice, forbade a
prisoner to speak and clear himself--nothing, in fact, but the
fancies of constables who had, under cross-examination, not only
contradicted one another, but shown the most complete ignorance (a
highly creditable ignorance) of the nature and conditions of a
prize-fight; then counsel would venture to say confidently that the
theory of the prosecution, ingenious as it was, and ably as it had
been put forward, was absolutely and utterly untenable.

This, and much more argument of equal value, was delivered with
relish by a comparatively young barrister, whose spirits rose as he
felt the truth change and fade while he rearranged its attendant
circumstances. Cashel listened for some time anxiously. He flushed
and looked moody when his marriage was alluded to; but when the
whole defence was unrolled, he was awestruck, and stared at his
advocate as if he half feared that the earth would gape and swallow
such a reckless perverter of patent facts. Even the judge in the
city; and was eventually invited to represent a Dorsetshire
constituency in Parliament in the Radical interest. He was returned
by a large majority; and, having a loud voice and an easy manner, he
soon acquired some reputation both in and out of the House of
Commons by the popularity of his own views, and the extent of his
wife's information, which he retailed at second hand. He made his
maiden speech in the House unabashed the first night he sat there.
Indeed, he was afraid of nothing except burglars, big dogs, doctors,
dentists, and street-crossings. Whenever any accident occurred
through any of these he preserved the newspaper in which it was
reported, read it to Lydia very seriously, and repeated his favorite
assertion that the only place in which a man was safe was the ring.
As he objected to most field sports on the ground of inhumanity,
she, fearing that he would suffer in health and appearance from want
of systematic exercise, suggested that he should resume the practice
of boxing with gloves. But he was lazy in this matter, and had a
prejudice that boxing did not become a married man. His career as a
pugilist was closed by his marriage.

His admiration for his wife survived the ardor of his first love for
her, and she employed all her forethought not to disappoint his
reliance on her judgment. She led a busy life, and wrote some
learned monographs, as well as a work in which she denounced
education as practised in the universities and public schools. Her
children inherited her acuteness and refinement with their father's
robustness and aversion to study. They were precocious and impudent,
had no respect for Cashel, and showed any they had for their mother
principally by running to her when they were in difficulties. She
never punished nor scolded them; but she contrived to make their
misdeeds recoil naturally upon them so inevitably that they soon
acquired a lively moral sense which restrained them much more
effectually than the usual methods of securing order in the nursery.
Cashel treated them kindly for the purpose of conciliating them; and
when Lydia spoke of them to him in private, he seldom said more than
that the imps were too sharp for him, or that he was blest if he
didn't believe that they were born older than their father. Lydia
often thought so too; but the care of this troublesome family had
one advantage for her. It left her little time to think about
herself, or about the fact that when the illusion of her love passed
away Cashel fell in her estimation. But the children were a success;
and she soon came to regard him as one of them. When she had leisure
to consider the matter at all, which seldom occurred, it seemed to
her that, on the whole, she had chosen wisely.

Alice Goff, when she heard of Lydia's projected marriage, saw that
she must return to Wiltstoken, and forget her brief social splendor
as soon as possible. She therefore thanked Miss Carew for her
bounty, and begged to relinquish her post of companion. Lydia
assented, but managed to delay this sacrifice to a sense of duty and
necessity until a day early in winter, when Lucian gave way to a
hankering after smiled once or twice; and when he did so the jurymen
grinned, but recovered their solemnity suddenly when the bench
recollected itself and became grave again. Every one in court knew
that the police were right--that there had been a prize-fight--that
the betting on it had been recorded in all the sporting papers for
weeks beforehand--that Cashel was the most terrible fighting man of
the day, and that Paradise had not dared to propose a renewal of the
interrupted contest. And they listened with admiration and delight
while the advocate proved that these things were incredible and
nonsensical.

It remained for the judge to sweep away the defence, or to favor the
prisoners by countenancing it. Fortunately for them, he was an old
man; and could recall, not without regret, a time when the memory of
Cribb and Molyneux was yet green. He began his summing-up by telling
the jury that the police had failed to prove that the fight was a
prize-fight. After that, the public, by indulging in roars of
laughter whenever they could find a pretext for doing so without
being turned out of court, showed that they had ceased to regard the
trial seriously.

Finally the jury acquitted Mellish, and found Cashel and Paradise
guilty of a common assault. They were sentenced to two days'
imprisonment, and bound over to keep the peace for twelve months in
sureties of one hundred and fifty pounds each. The sureties were
forthcoming; and as the imprisonment was supposed to date from the
beginning of the sessions, the prisoners were at once released.

Back to chapter list of: Cashel Byron's Profession