Can Ruskin Hall point proudly to a son who has achieved such fame as either of these ex-servitors?
CHAPTER VII
SPORTS AND ATHLETICS
Rowing—Dame Hooper’s—Southey at Balliol—Cox’s six-oared crew—The riverside barmaid—Sailing-boats—Statutes against games—Bell-ringing—Hearne and gymnasia—Horses and badger-baiting—Cock-fights and prize-fights—Paniotti’s Fencing Academy—Old-time “bug-shooters”—Skating in Christ Church meadows—Cricket and the Bullingdon Club—Walking tours.
It would be impossible to live in Oxford and be healthy—except perhaps in the summer term, if we are lucky enough to have any sun—without taking exercise. It has long been a matter of wonder how those men keep fit who, with the excuse of “having a heart” neither row, play soccer, rugger, hockey, or any other of the strenuous games which keep the average Undergraduate sound in wind and limb. As a matter of fact they don’t. For the “heart-y” gentlemen almost invariably take as many week-ends out of Oxford as possible, and in most cases retire comfortably and ingloriously to the paternal establishment and maternal care long before term is over. The others, the normal people, the devotees of bone and muscle, the “muddied oafs and flannelled fools”—(which is the only mistake Mr Kipling ever made)—are never ill, at least from climatic effects. They may strain something, or even break a few bones, but that cannot be put down to the Oxford weather. The best doctors on earth, or rather the best preventatives against illness—and there is a great difference—are the river, the football and hunting fields, and the boxing ring, and as we find these things to be true to-day so in old times, when wigs and ruffles were somewhat of a handicap to the taking of hard exercise, these remedies against the Oxford climate were adopted with almost the same keenness. The word almost is used advisedly because the percentage of “bloods” who did nothing strenuous was far larger, and the possibilities in things sporting were not nearly so great. We have changed all that, and can afford a smile of condescension when, seated on the alleviating pontius in a “Rough” eight, with its simple-looking sliding seat, its hair-thick outer shell and its wonderful travelling possibilities, we think of the heavy gigs and six-oared boats into which our predecessors “tumbled,” clad in catskin caps and leather trousers.
Nevertheless the river was just as popular then though for quite different reasons. There were no rowing Blues to be had in those days; no presidents of boat clubs—no boat clubs even. There was only Dame Hooper’s—an odd-looking, tumble-down, shed-like place, where the gownsmen blarneyed the old lady and hired out skiffs, gigs, cutters, and canoes. Unlike our togger men who, like strange hairy creatures from another planet, hatlessly converge from all parts of the town through the Broad Walk to the Barges, emitting yards of muscular leg for all the world to view in amusement and admiration, the eighteenth-century wet-bobs went down to the river in square—or, as they called it, trencher—and gown. But Dame Hooper was old, unskittish, and trustworthy, and so they threw off their academical garb in her shed and arrayed themselves in the trousers, jackets, and caps which were then the thing. It might well be thought that these were a great hindrance to correct ’varsity swinging. But they did not worry their heads about that—there was no boat race to be taken into agitated consideration—and it has been left for 1911 to pour out its bleeding heart in vehement controversy anent the true ’varsity style as opposed to the new fangled Belgian method. In those days the motto was air and exercise. Now, dare it be said, the river is a business, a profession, to which are consecrated all the waking moments, and many of those which we should like to dedicate to bed, of our whole university careers.
Southey, who was, oddly enough, a Balliol man, said that he only learned two things at Oxford—to swim and to row. After he went down he wrote the following description of the river:—
“A number of pleasure boats were gliding in all directions upon this clear and rapid stream; some with spread sails; in others the caps and tassels of the students formed a curious contrast with their employment at the oar. Many of the smaller boats had only a single person in each; and in some of these he sat face forward, leaning back as in a chair, and plying with both hands a double-bladed oar in alternate strokes, so that his motion was like the path of a serpent. One of these canoes is, I am assured, so exceedingly light, that a man can carry it; but few persons are skilful or venturous enough to use it.”[8]