Sporting notions of present days and past

30 SPORTING NOTIONS
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who voted "aye" on the President proposing
that a West London Boxing Club should be
formed. We went, or endeavoured to go home,
those of us bound towards the East, in good
order, and, for mutual safety, proceeded, after
finishing with the Star and Garter, as well as the
44 Pall Mall section of the establishment. The
44 didn't do it, nor the Star and Garter, but the
devil of a fog was in it, and if we three, with one
or two others, spent a minute at the base of the
Duke of York's column, we were there circulating,
as the French say, an hour or two, or three at
the most. More deceptive fog has never fallen
to my portion. By hook and by crook we
worked to beyond Charing Cross and so to
Southampton Street, in dense darkness, making
for the old Welsh house, where they sold Edin-
burgh ale as made in Wales—the Bedford Head
in Maiden-Lane, kept by a direct descendant of the
crowned heads, also decapitated and deposed
Stuarts. I dare say you, old readers and new,
can place Rule's and the Bedford Head, the
latter, curiously enough, for years headquarters
of the West London Boxing Club. I give you
my word that up to Rule's the fog was so
thick that you could not cut it with a knife,
while at the Bedford Head all was clear above
up among the stars and in our alley.
The club's first practice quarters were at Nat
Langham's. I almost forget whether Nat was
alive then, or whether his namesake George
reigned in his stead at the pub. in St Martin's
Lane, but I remember that the saloon was very
small. You approached it through an avenue of
in- or out-of-work scrappers, most of whom had
no desire either for work or for scrapping, and
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