“No workman steel, no ponderous axes rung;
Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung.”
[222] Odds and Ends, 1872, p. 108: F. G. Lee’s Glimpses of the Supernatural, 1872, vol. ii. p. 207. The story there told of a sudden death at a club meeting, and a simultaneous appearance in Brasenose of a fiend dragging a man out of the window through the bars, is probably a mixture of two incidents, the death of a woman who had been given brandy out of a Brasenose window on Dec. 5, 1827, and the death of the President of the H. F. Club in 1834, which closed the career of that society, between which and the Phœnix there was no connection whatever. The story has now become a commonplace of fiction, to judge by the way in which it occurs dressed up in Maltese surroundings in Blackwood’s Magazine, Feb. 1891.
[223] Printed incorrectly in Blackwood’s Magazine, vol. liv. (1843).
The Eights.
Brasenose has started head boat since 1837, when the Eights records become complete:—
- *1839 (1 day)
- *1840 (9)
- 1841 (4)
- *1845 (6)
- *1846 (8)
- 1847 (7)
- *1852 (7)
- *1853 (8)
- *1854 (8)
- 1855 (7)
- *1865 (2)
- *1866 (7)
- *1867 (8)
- 1868 (2)
- *1876 (7)
- 1877 (2)
- *1889 (5)
- *1890 (6)
- *1891 (6)
* In these years it left off Head of the River.
In all 110 days; the next highest number being 63 (University). The boat has never held a lower position than ninth. Of the earlier years between 1815 and 1836, B.N.C. left off head at least in 1815, 1822, 1826, 1827.