CHAPTER III.I MEET GOLIATH.
At the end of my first engagement in London and the provinces, I went to Germany for a holiday. Driving out one day at Aachen, I met a veritable giant. He was a quarryman, and he was engaged in loading stones. So huge and extraordinary was his appearance that my horse positively shied at him.
Imagine, if you can, this tremendous fellow: his head as huge and grotesque as that of any pantomime mask, with a nose the size of an ordinary fist. As for his own fist, it would have made more than three of mine, and when a five-shilling piece was placed beneath the ball of his finger, believe me, it was impossible to see it. So large were his boots that not only could I get both my feet into one, but I could turn entirely round inside. And yet, strangely enough, despite his immense limbs and body, he was not an extraordinarily tall man. A little more than six feet; six feet two-and-a-half inches, in fact, was his height. His chest measurement was about eighty inches and his weight 400lbs. He was not a fat man in proportion to his size. Quite the contrary. He was bony and muscular.
The thought occurred to me as soon as I saw him that to give him a part in a performance as a modern Goliath would be, from a popular point of view, eminently attractive. I asked him what wages he was earning. “Five marks a day,” he replied. It appeared that he was given nearly double the pay of an ordinary labourer because he could lift heavier weights and load the carts more quickly. I told him that if he liked to accept an engagement with me I would give him twenty marks a day, whether he worked or not. AGerman mark, as everyone knows, is equivalent to an English shilling. The giant quarry man could scarcely credit such good fortune, and eventually it was agreed that he should come to my house to talk the proposal over, and have his strength tested. When he came it was found that he could do nothing more than lift heavy weights from the floor. He had never put himself into training, and his exceptional proportions, which, under different circumstances, might have been turned to good account, were of no special use to him. However, it was settled that he should come with me, and I brought him to England.
Well do I remember our arrival at Charing Cross. The huge size of Goliath, whose real name, by the way, was Karl Westphal, attracted the most pronounced attention. It was impossible to think of taking a cab, for no cab would have held him, even if he had been able to get inside it. There was, therefore, nothing for it but to walk to my chambers, which were then in Rupert-street, Piccadilly. Thousands of people followed us the whole way, and Rupert-street was blocked. A giant, when you have got him, is rather like a white elephant. He is a rare creature, but it is difficult to know what to do with him. It would have been clearly unwise to let him go into the streets, and accordingly he had to be kept indoors. For seven or eight weeks I tried to train him, but he proved an idle fellow, and it became evident that nothing much could be done with him.
I had an engagement at that time at the Royal Music Hall, and a performance was arranged in which Goliath had to surprise me, lumbering after me across the stage, and trying to hold me in his grip.
We wrestled together, and it was his business to make himself the victor. Then, in order to finish me, he took a cannon, weighing 400lbs., and placing it on his broad shoulders, prepared to fire. In a moment or so I returned with the clubs. It was now the turn of the giant to show alarm, and gradually he had to retire, with the cannon still on his back, into a frame of refuge. I at once climbed to the top, and getting into a position above my antagonist, I lifted him, his refuge, and his cannon, with one finger, afew inches off the ground. During this part of the performance we fired the cannon, and the whole display was brought to a conclusion by placing my arm through a leathern belt which girt his waist, and carrying him at arm’s length off the stage.
What became of him after he left me I never heard. The last report was that he had carried off his own landlady, and that the two had started some sort of show together.
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Sandow