One day last week, it might be Wed-
nesday, or even Friday,
A day not yet entirely dead,
A shortly-doomed-to-die day,
The Naiad who lay stretched in dream
Awoke and gave a shiver--
The Naiad who has charge of stream
And rivulet and river.
I had intended to write the whole of this article in verse, of which
the above is a shocking sample, but, on the whole, I think I will go
on in prose. When you have committed yourself to double rhymes, prose
is the easier medium. In verse it is more difficult to stick to your
subject, and as the subject in this case is a very important one and
deserves to be stuck to, I shall do the rest in prose.
Anyhow, the fact is that I have read a paragraph in one of the papers
about a proposed revival of rowing. Rowing, like other sports, has,
it seems, lain dormant for the past four years and a half. From the
moment in 1914 when war was declared it suffered a land-change;
shorts and zephyr and blazer and sweater were abandoned at once, and,
for the oarsman as for everybody else, khaki became the only wear.
Already trained by long discipline to obey, our oarsmen trooped to
the colours, and wherever hard fighting was to be done their shining
names are to be found on the muster-roll of fame. Some will return to
us, but for others there waited the _eternum exitium cymbæ_--a very
different craft from those to which they were accustomed, but they
accepted it with pride and without a murmur.
Bearing these things in mind, I went to Henley last week to interview
Father Thames. I found the veteran totally unchanged in his quarters
on the Temple Island, and immediately began the interview.
"Dull?" he said. "I believe you, my boy. But they tell me there's talk
of reviving the regatta. You tell them with my compliments not to be
in too great a hurry about it. Think of what Henley meant to the lads
who rowed. They hadn't learnt their skill in a day--no, nor in as many
days as go to a year."
"Do you then," I said, "consider the regatta only from the oarsman's
point of view?"
"Really," said the old gentleman, "there's no other. Not but what," he
added with a chuckle, "it gave them more pleasure to row their races
with lots of pretty faces to look on. Lor' bless you, I don't object
to 'em. It's the prettiest scene in the world when the sun shines as
it sometimes does. And that's enough talking for one afternoon." With
that he plunged, and nothing I did could bring him to the surface
again.
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