George Wilkes, who was buried yesterday, was one of the few human “links” which connect the New York of to-day with “old New York”–the New York of the old time pugilists, sports and criminals. Wilkes was himself a mixture of two men, the “tough” and the “gentleman,” and passed through all stages of these opposite characters durin’ his eventful career. Like Fernando Wood, he began in low life, but constantly aspired to high life, though, unlike Fernando Wood, he never attained to the latter.
He had probably more fights, legal and personal, on his hands at one period than any other man, except, perhaps, Jim Fisk. And of all the men he had dealin’s with the only one he was really afraid of was Marcus Cicero Stanley.
This Stanley was at one time a reporter on Wilkes’ paper the Police Gazette, and although he got a very little salary Stanley laid the foundation of his fortune in this reportin’. For through it he got acquainted with all sorts of secrets about all sorts of men, Wilkes himself included, which he did not hesitate to threaten to use, and would have used had his demands, whatever they were at the time, not been acceded to. Stanley had, in the slang, “Wilkes down fine,” knew everythin’ about him, and it was Wilkes’ knowledge of this that always kept Wilkes civil to M. C. Stanley.
Yet it was indirectly through Stanley that Wilkes got the hardest blow of his life in his quarrel with John Chamberlain. A more dramatic and more bitter quarrel than this never took place. Wilkes and Chamberlain started out as the warmest friends. Chamberlain was much elated by the friendship of Wilkes, and welcomed him with open arms and “open house” to his club house at Long Branch, in the early days of Monmouth Park.
At this time it was Wilkes, not Chamberlain, who really “ran” John Chamberlain’s club house at Long Branch. Wilkes lived at the club house, kept his horses there and held a sort of court there. And every night, at Chamberlain’s superb suppers, George Wilkes would be found seated at the head of the table dispensin’, with the air of the host, the hospitalities of the place, while John Chamberlain himself sat by his side, or sometimes at the opposite end of the table, laughin’ at all of Wilkes’ jokes, applaudin’ all Wilkes’ speeches and echoin’ all Wilkes’ sentiments.
This was the first act of the drama. The second act was the misunderstandin’ about the French mutuels. Then came the third act with Wilkes’ attack on Chamberlain in his paper and the avowed determination to drive John Chamberlain out of the country. Then was played the fourth act, and a tremendously “strong” fourth act it was, in which John Chamberlain published his fearful attack, in pamphlet form, against Wilkes and Stanley. And it was through one of Stanley’s men, one of the very few men that Stanley put any confidence in, that John Chamberlain got the “points” which he published against Wilkes. Stanley, in this matter, really kept faith with Wilkes, and really wondered how Chamberlain had got up his case against Wilkes, but it was really through Stanley’s own man that John was enabled to pour the red hot shot against Wilkes so effectually that in the fifth and last act George Wilkes retired from the fight worsted. This is perhaps the only case in which an out and out professional gambler got ahead of an out and out newspaper man, and newspaper proprietor.
Wilkes began life in “the Bloody Sixth,” and was a sort of combined dandy and bruiser. He got intimate with all the pugilists and sports of the day, and was a friend of Hyer, Heenan, Cusick, Phelan and Billy Mulligan. Mulligan once saved Wilkes’ life in a fight, or rather a secret attack, in which Wilkes, goin’ home late one night, was set upon by a lot of roughs, who were determined to wipe him out. The attempt was vigorous and might have been successful, had not Mulligan made his appearance on the scene and fought like a tiger for Wilkes’ defense.
As it was, the two men had all they could do to escape alive, and Wilkes was for a while unable to leave his house, durin’ which period of sickness the big bully Mulligan nursed Wilkes as tenderly as if he and Wilkes both had been women. Wilkes never forgot this and later on, when Mulligan got into bad odor, at the risk of great personal unpopularity, defended his defender. But just as in John Chamberlain’s case afterwards, the two bosom friends, Wilkes and Mulligan, quarreled and wound up enemies of the most bitter kind. Wilkes could never love or hate by halves. Like “Guy Livingston,” he was “thorough.”
After all, George Wilkes, spite his brilliancy, his notoriety and his money, lived and died a disappointed man. He suffered three separate checks in his career, from none of which he ever fully recovered.
The first disappointment did him honor, but nearly broke his heart. There was a beautiful young lady he became acquainted with, as a young man, while still handsome. He worshiped this young lady, and she seemed to reciprocate his attachment. The lady had some aspirations for the stage, and it was settled between the two that after marriage she should go on the stage and Wilkes should act as her press man and her manager, a character in which he probably would have made a “hit,” alike for the lady and himself, but the smallpox broke out in the city and Wilkes foolishly neglected to be vaccinated. He did not see the necessity and he did not like to disfigure his arm. He caught the scourge and was “marked for life.” He keenly felt his disfigurement and felt that the young lady felt it, too. He offered to release her from the pledge made to him when in health and good looks, and the woman took him at his word and broke off her engagement. Instead of thankin’ heaven, as he ought to have done, that he was rid of so worthless a piece of female flesh, and had found her out before marriage, instead of after it, Wilkes grieved deeply over the affair and never fully recovered from the shock.
Wilkes’ second disappointment was of a literary character. As he got along in years he studied hard and finally wrote a really original and thoughtful book about Shakespeare and his works. This work ought to have made a lastin’ reputation for its author, but somehow it didn’t. It fell from the press almost stillborn, and Wilkes’ literary and intellectual ambition received a death blow.
His third grade disappointment was political. He had been a great “Grant” man and Ulysses was not generally ungrateful. But in Wilkes’ case he was. His warm advocate never got a favor from him. Wilkes loved Mexico and wanted to go there as United States minister, so as to indulge his social aspirations. But he failed to receive that or any other appointment from the Grant administration, and his political hopes, like his literary aspirations and his early love dreams, were blighted.
Well, after an eventful, stormy, bitter, brilliant, erratic, bad and good life, the friend of alike pugilist and Presidents, the sportsman and the scholar, the politician and the author, the untirin’ friend, the relentless foe, George Wilkes is dead. “After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.”
[Editor’s notes: Wilkes was the editor of the National Police Gazette during its greatest period, the late 1840s-1850s, when its writers knew more about the doings of professional criminals than police detectives; and when the paper called out corrupt public officials. Combined with his ally, firebrand Mike Walsh, the two kept New York lively.
Though disappointed in his first love, Wilkes did marry. He had two adopted children, a son and daughter. Typically, Wilkes fell out with his son, and wrote him out of his will.
A lover of sports, the noted trotter “George Wilkes” was named in his honor.
During the last decade of his life, it was Wilkes’ misfortune to be confused with master forger George Wade Wilkes–the exact sort of character that was once targeted by the National Police Gazette.]
