It would be well worth while to watch the face of one of these timid canoers if we could bring him down to the barges to-day to one of the “rag” regattas and show him scores of “venturous persons” who not only dispense with paddles, but dash about in a Canadian canoe with a punt pole.

G. V. Cox told us that in 1790 there were no races, but that “men went to Nuneham for occasional parties in six-oared boats (eight-oared boats were then unknown), but these boats belonged to the boat people; the crew was a mixed crew got up for the day, and the dresses worn anything but uniform. I belonged to a crew of five, who were, I think, the first distinguished by a peculiar (and what would now be thought a ridiculous) dress, viz., a green leather cap, with a jacket and trousers of nankeen!”[9]

There are many recent boat club presidents who proudly show souvenirs of love passages with every barmaid from Folly Bridge to Abingdon, and up the Cher to Water Eaton. The fair damsels of the Cherwell Hotel are indeed the sole reasons why hordes of Undergraduates punt out there to lunch on Sundays, when they might just as easily, and far less expensively, take luncheon baskets with them—as they do if their people are up! But there is nothing original in all this. The same touch of old Adam existed in the coffee-house period, as is shown by the following lines:—

“We visit Sandford next and there
Beckley provides accustomed fare
Of eels and perch and brown beef-steak....
Whilst Hebe-like his daughter waits,
Froths our full bumpers, changes plates.
The pretty handmaid’s anxious toils
Meanwhile our mutual praise beguiles,
Whilst she, delighted, blushing sees
The bill o’erpaid and pockets fees
Supplied for ribbon or for lace
To deck her bonnet or her face.”

To-day Hebe has become blasé and cannot blush with any readiness, nor is she so anxious in her toils. The chaste salute and the overpaid bill are features of our own time, and will remain, from generation to generation, as long as Oxford is a university, and there are hotels on the Cher. The same poet goes on to describe the way in which he was taught to sail by a friend who was already an expert.

“At Folly Bridge we hoist the sail,
And briskly scud before the gale
To Iffley—where our course awhile
Detain—its locks and Saxon pile
Affording pause; to recommend
The Hobby-horse unto my friend.
Our light-built galley; ours I say
Since Warren bears an equal sway
In her command; as first, in cost
The half he shared; himself a host
Whether he plies the limber oar
Or tows the vessel from the shore;
Or strains the main sheet tight astern
Close to the wind; of him I learn
Patient to wait the time exact
When jib and foresail should be back’d
To bring her round; or mark the strain
The boat on gunwale can sustain
Without aught danger of upsetting,
Or giving both her mates a wetting.”[10]

[Larger Image]

North View of Friar Bacon’s Study at Oxford.

A glance at the statutes shows that the river was almost the only form of athletics then permissible, for the prohibited sports included “every kind of game in which money is concerned, such as dibs, dice, cards, cricketing in private grounds or gardens of the townspeople ... every kind of game or exercise from which danger, injury, or inconvenience might arise to other people, such as hunting of beasts with any sort of dogs, ferrets, nets or toils, also any use or carrying of muskets, cross-bows, or falchions; neither rope-dancers nor actors, nor shows of gladiators are to be permitted without especial sanction; moreover, the scholars are not to play at football, nor with cudgels, either among themselves or with the townsfolk, a practice from which the most perilous contentions have arisen.”