In between whiles the men are left almost entirely to themselves, and are free to seek what innocent diversion they please. The choice certainly is not very varied. Beyond paying a visit to the opposing crew, chatting with friends who have come to see the practices, or looking in at the local skittle alley, there is very little to do. But if they lack diversion themselves, they do not fail to cause great delight to the juvenile population of Barnes and Putney. It must be premised, for the benefit of all who are not habitués of Putney, that the crews always wear during their training the coat and cap of their University Boat Club, and flannel trousers. There are reasons which make this a very necessary and laudable practice; but in the juvenile mind it gives rise to the most uncompromising scorn, which finds various ways of expressing itself. “Take it off” is one of the most popular of these, and though it certainly suffers from a lack of originality, it appears to give great satisfaction. Another, more recondite, but perhaps ironical, is “Put it on.” “Where’s yer trousers?” “Go it, white legs!” “Who’s yer hatter?” and many similar cries, all testify to the joyous humour of the riverside youth.
Hardly less amusing are the comments of the crowd as the men pass through to their boat-house. “That’s Nickalls,” explains the well-informed gentleman as a Cambridge man goes by. Or, as the lightweight hurries past, “Don’t look as if ’e could do it,” remarks a bystander, “looks to want a day out at grass for them calves.” Or, “’Ere, I say, ’e’s eat a bit of beef in his day, I know,” as the heavy man comes in sight. It is a good-humoured crowd, and if the strong tobacco is a bit offensive when one’s not allowed to smoke oneself, things can’t be always as we should like them to be.
“’e’s eat a bit of beef in his day.”
“getting rid of fat.”
It is the custom for the Oxford crew to use the London Rowing Club boat-house, while the Cambridge men are accommodated at the Leander Club next door, and there is accordingly a good crowd in front of each at practice times, eager to see the men on whose prowess their own modest half-crowns are staked. Unfortunately, as some of my readers may have experienced, it is not always easy to find out the exact time when the crews are going out. In fact, the Captain is an autocrat on these occasions, who rules alike over crew, critics, and the general public without distinction of persons, and who shows a splendid indifference for the latter’s convenience. He launches the boat at all kinds of wondrous times, not shrinking from starting half-an-hour or more before the time he has arranged, and thus disappointing a number of would-be spectators. It is even said that he often chooses parts of the river for doing the hard work where there are no well-known landmarks, so that no clear “line” can be given to the outside public. This may be so. The workings of the Presidential mind are dark and mysterious. But I doubt if the convenience of the public has sufficient weight with him either one way or the other to influence his plans in that manner. And though perhaps this indifference may be carried too far, yet the idea which underlies it is a perfectly just one. The University Boat Race began as a private match, of a more or less impromptu character (those were the days when they rowed from Westminster to Putney in a huge Noah’s Ark of a boat, and stopped for beer and biscuits on the way down, and when, it is said, the Speaker of the House of Commons used to leave the chair to let the M.P.’s run out and see the start—but we digress). Then, by degrees, it attained to its present position of a great festive gathering of the many-headed, where only about one in every ten cares to glance at the race as it goes by. But, above all things, the race is, and has been, a purely sporting event. The British lion may put on his holiday suit and gamble to his heart’s content on the bank, but the sole concern of the Captain of either crew is to bring his men well up to the scratch, and have a thoroughly good, honest race. He has nothing to do with letting the spectators know the real state of the odds, or helping them to win their money.
It must be confessed that, in spite of the many pleasures indicated as belonging to this training, one gets very tired of it, just as one might tire of living in Arcadia, if, as is probable, there were no Club or Italian Opera there. It is with considerable joy, therefore, that one hails the approach of the race when it is still a week off; but this feeling is apt to be modified as the days draw on after that. “Funk,” of course, attacks everybody more or less; but its violence differs very widely in different men. Many of the most unlikely people are most liable to it; and it would probably astonish a good many people were I to say who is the “funkiest” oarsman before a race that I know. I mean by “funk,” not the under-estimating of one’s chances—for some of the most nervous men have a very shrewd idea of them—but the irrational excitement which keeps the brain constantly thinking of the impending race, and prevents the sufferer from sitting still or having any comfort, or, in the most serious cases, any sleep, for two or three days before it. It is a real malady, which is most distressing to those who are subject to it, but which, luckily, does not do any harm when once the race is begun.
Of the race itself there is very little to say, except one thing, that could not be said equally well of a hard game of football or a foot race across country. The exertion is, no doubt, considerably greater than is involved in either of these, but the physical sensations are very much the same, and anyone who has entered for any race at all knows the sort of feeling of desperate resolve which is the pleasure that racing gives. Except one thing, I said, and it is that thing which puts boat racing, in many people’s minds, far above any other form of sport. It is this, that while in a foot race a man can leave off as soon as he finds the exertion more than the prize is worth, and while in football a man may recover his breath in the scrimmage or justifiably leave the work for a moment to the others, in rowing every man knows that, by a single careless stroke, he may throw the whole boat into a confusion from which they often cannot recover for many hundred yards. Everyone is expected in a boat race, and in a University race as much as anywhere, to row his best and hardest every stroke he takes, and never to slack off at all. If it is considered desirable to save up for a spurt at the finish, the “stroke” will do that by putting in a few less strokes to the minute till the time comes. Every man behind him is bound in honesty to the rest to shove every stroke through “as if there were no hereafter”; and when the “hereafter” comes, as it does about Chiswick Eyot, he will have to rely on the thorough condition he is in to pull him through. It follows that the whole secret of a good crew is that each man rows hard because it would not be fair to his neighbours in the boat if he rowed lightly, not entirely because he wants to win the race. I do not want to disparage other sports in the least degree; pluck enters into them fully as much as into rowing. The difference lies in the incentive.
Boat races, of course, vary very much in the amount of excitement they afford; not differing in this from any other sort of contest. Of the last five races, that of ’91 was the most keenly contested, though the ’90 race runs it very close. Both of them were ding-dong struggles all the way, now one boat and then the other taking the lead, and neither of them were really won till the post was passed. Closer finishes have been known, though hardly beating these in point of excitement during the race itself. The well-known dead heat of ’77 is an instance; on which occasion legend hath it that the ancient umpire had been regaling himself hard by, and arrived on the scene as the boats shot by the post, too flustered to take any very accurate observations. However, as both crews were pretty confident that they had won, his decision displayed no small share of that low cunning that used to make a successful umpire.