An American at Oxford

by John Corbin

To my untutored mind the hospitality of English boating seemed a pure generosity. It made me uncomfortable at first, with the sense that I could never repay it; but I soon got over this, and basked in it as in the sun. The eightsmen devote their afternoons to coaching you because there are seats to be filled in the torpid and in the eight; they speak decently because they find that in the long run decency is more effective; and they hold the wine because they wish to honor the sport in which they have chosen to stake their reputations as athletes. In a word, where in America we row by all that is self-sacrificing and loyal, in England the welfare of boating is made to depend upon its attractiveness as a recreation and a sport; if it were not enjoyable to the normal man, nothing could force fellows into it.

The relationship of the autumn tubbing and its incidental sociability to the welfare of the sport in the college and in the university seems remote enough to the American mind, for out of the score of fellows who are tubbed only three or four, on an average, go farther in the sport. Yet it is typical of the whole; and it will help us in following the English boating season. Throughout the year there are two converging currents of activity in boating. On the one hand, the tubs in the autumn term develop men for the torpids, which come on during the winter term; and the torpids develop men for the summer eights. On the other hand, the 'varsity trials in the autumn term develop men for the 'varsity eight, which trains and races in the winter term; and the 'varsity oarsmen, like the men who have prospered in tubs and torpids, end the season in the eights of their respective colleges. The goal of both the novice and the veteran is thus the college eight.

The torpid is, so to speak, the understudy to the college eight. In order to give full swing to the new men, no member of the eight of the year before is allowed to row in it; and the leading colleges man two torpids—sometimes even three. The training here is much more serious than in the tubs; wine, spirits, and tobacco are out of order. The races, which are conducted like the celebrated May Eights, are rowed in midwinter—in the second of the three Oxford terms—under leaden skies, and sometimes with snow piled up along the towing-path. On the barges, instead of the crowds of ladies, gayly dressed and bent on a week of social enjoyment, one finds knots of loyal partisans who are keen on the afternoon's sport. The towing-path, too, is not so crowded as in May Week; but nothing could surpass the din of pistols and rattles and shouting that accompanies the races. If the men in the torpid do not learn how to row the stroke to the finish under the excitement of a race, it is not for the lack of coaching and experience. When the torpids break training, there are many ceremonies to signalize the return to the flesh-pots: one hardly realizes that the weeks of sport and comradeship have all gone to the filling of a place or two in the college eight.

All this time, while the tubs and torpids have been training up new men, the 'Varsity Boat Club, whose home is on the shore of the Isis opposite the row of college barges, has also, so to speak, been doing its tubbing. The new men for the 'varsity are chiefly those who have come to the front in the May Eights of the previous year—oars of two or three seasons' standing; though occasionally men are taken directly from the Eton eight, which enters yearly for the Ladies' Plate at Henley. The new men will number ten or a dozen; and early in the autumn they are taken out in tubs. They are soon joined by as many of last year's blues as are left in Oxford. The lot is divided into two eights, as evenly matched as possible, which are coached separately. These are called the Trial Eights, or 'Varsity Trials. To "get one's trials" is no mean honor. It is the sine qua non of membership to the Leander—admittedly the foremost boating club of the world. Toward the end of the first term there is a race of two and a half miles between the two trial eights at Moulsford, where the Thames is wide enough to permit the two boats to race abreast. Of the men who row in the trials the best ten or a dozen are selected to train for the 'varsity during the winter term.

Of the training of the 'varsity eight it is not necessary to speak here at length. The signal fact is that the men are so well schooled in the stroke, and so accustomed to racing, that a season of eight weeks at Oxford and at Putney is enough to fit them to go over the four miles and a quarter between Putney and Mortlake with the best possible results. The race takes place in March, just after the close of the winter term.

The series of races I have mentioned gives some idea of the scheme and scope of English boating, but it is by no means exhaustive. The strength of the boating spirit gives rise to no end of casual and incidental races. Chief among these are the coxswainless fours, which take place about the middle of the autumn term, while the trials are on the river. The crews are from the four or five chief boating colleges, and are made up largely from the men in the 'varsity trials. The races have no relation that I could discover to the 'varsity race; the only point is to find which college has the best four, and it is characteristic that merely for the sport of it the training of the 'varsity trials is interrupted.

After the 'varsity race the members of the crew rest during what remains of the Easter vacation, and then take their places in the boats of their respective colleges. Here they are joined by the other trials men, the remaining members of last year's college eight, and the two or three men who have come up from the torpids. Now begins the liveliest season in boating. Every afternoon the river is clogged with eights rowing to Iffley or to Sandford, and the towing-path swarms with enthusiasts. The course in the May bumping races is a mile and a quarter long—the same as the course of the torpids—and the crews race over it every day for a week, with the exception of an intervening Sunday, each going up a place or down a place in the procession daily according as it bumps or is bumped. These races, from the point of view of the expert oarsman, are far less important than the 'varsity race; yet socially they are far more prominent, and the enthusiasm they arouse among the undergraduates is incomparable. The vitality of Oxford is in the colleges: the university organizations are the flowers of a very sturdy root and branch.

THE LAST DAY OF THE BUMPING RACES OF THE SUMMER EIGHTS (1895)