BEHIND THE SCENES IN CINEMA-LAND.
"Hand over your money!"
"Certainly, my good man. Now I don't want to be personal, but you've got the very face I want for my new film, 'The Bad man of Crimson Creek.' I'll give you fifty pounds a week for an exclusive contract. Can I tempt you?"
THE BOAT-RACE AGAIN.
In June, 1914, I took a house on the Thames, in order to make sure of a good view of the Boat-Race; then a man threw a bomb at Serajevo and ruined my plans. But now it is going to happen again. And instead of fighting with a vast crowd at Hammersmith Bridge I shall simply walk up into the bathroom and look out of the window. It is wonderful.
Yet meanwhile I have lost some of my illusions about this race. I have a boat myself; I myself have rowed all over the course in my boat. It is only ten feet long, but it is very, very heavy. Still, I have rowed in it all over the course—with ease. Yet people talk as if it was a marvellous thing for eight men to row a light boat over the same water. Why is that? It is because the ignorant land-lubber regards the river Thames as a pond; or else he regards it as a river flowing always to the sea. He forgets about the tide. The Boat-Race is rowed with the tide; they deliberately choose a moment when the tide is coming in, and hope nobody will notice; and nobody does notice. The tide runs about three miles an hour, sometimes more; if they just sat still in the boat they would reach Mortlake eventually, and the crowd would get a good look at them, instead of seeing them for ten seconds. The race ought to be rowed against the tide. Then it really would be a feat of strength; then it really would take ten years off their lives—perhaps more. Then perhaps small boys would drop things on them from the bridges, as they do on me. I wonder they don't try to do that now. There is a certain quiet satisfaction in dropping things on people, especially if they are labouring under Hammersmith Bridge against the tide, and I should imagine that the temptation to drop things on a University crew would be almost irresistible. It is not everyone who can look back and say, "In 1890 I hit the Oxford stroke in the stomach with a stone." As it is, though, I suppose they go too fast for that kind of thing.
But apart from the small boys on the bridges, the present system is most unsatisfactory for people who know "a man in the boat." Even in a football match it is possible for an aunt occasionally to distinguish her nephew and say, "Look, there is Edward." But if she says, "Look, there is Edward," meaning No. 5 in the Cambridge boat, you know she is imagining. All she sees is a vague splashing between two bowler-hats, or possibly the Oxford rudder moving at high speed through a horse's legs. If the race were rowed against the tide we should all get our money's worth; and the oars-men could then put more realism into their "After-the-Finish" attitudes. As it is, they roll about in the boat with a praiseworthy suggestion of fatigue, but nobody really believes they are tired—nobody at least who has rowed on the Thames with the tide.