TheBoxing Biographies Newsletter Volume2 - No10 , 2nd May, 2008 www.boxingbiographies.com If you wish to receive future newsletters ( which includes the images ) please email the message “NEWS LETTER”
[email protected] The newsletter is also available as a word doc on request As always the full versions of these articles are on the website My Fighting Life BY GEORGES CARPENTIER 1920 CHAPTER I I BECOME DESCAMPS' PUPIL OUTSIDE my home in Paris many thousands of my countrymen shouted and roared and screamed; women tossed nosegays and blew kisses up to my windows. "Vive Carpentier! ' came from a mighty chorus of voices. Paris was still in an ecstasy of enthusiasm; my contest against Joe Beckett, so swift, sensational, dramatic, incredible, remained the wonder of the moment, and as I looked from my window on to the street below I shook and shivered. My father, a man of Northern France hard, stern, unemotional clutched the hand of my mother, whose eyes were streaming wet. Albert, also my two other brothers arid sister made a strange group. They were transfixed. Francois Descamps was pale; his ferret-like eyes blinked meaninglessly. Only my dog, Flip, now I come to think of it all understood for he gave himself over to howls of happiness. This day of unbounded joy so burnt itself into my mind that I shall remember it for all time. "Georges, mon ami," exclaimed my father, " no such moment did I ever think would come into our lives." And I understood. My life, as I look back upon it, has been a round of wonders.