crew presents a ragged appearance as a whole; but a second glance
shows that every back swings in one piece from the hips, and that the
apparent raggedness is due to the fact that the men on the bow side
swing in one line, while those on the stroke side swing in another
parallel line. They sway together with absolute rhythm and ease, and
the boat is set on a rigidly even keel. Our coach looks them over
critically, especially his three college-mates, one of whom at least
he hopes will be chosen for the 'varsity eight. No doubt he aimed at a
blue himself two years ago, when he came up; but blues are not for
every man, even of those who row well and strongly. He watches them
until they are indistinguishable amid the myriad craft in the
distance. "It's jolly fine weather," he concludes pleasantly, with a
familiar glance at the sky, which you are at liberty to follow. "Come
forward. Ready--paddle!" We are presently in the barge again with the
other fellows. A repetition of this experience after half an hour
ends the day's work.
When I tried for the freshman crew in America, I was put with seven
other unfortunates into a huge clinker barge, in charge of the
sophomore coxswain. On the first day I was told to mind the angle on
my oar. On the second day I was told to keep my eyes in the boat, damn
me! On the third day, the sophomore coxswain wrought himself into a
fury, and swore at me for not keeping the proper angle. When I glanced
out at my blade he yelled, "Damn you, eyes in the boat!" This upset me
so that I forgot thereafter to keep a flat back at the finish of the
stroke. When we touched the float he jumped out, looked at my back,
brought his boot against it sharply, and told me that there was no use
in trying to row unless I could hold a flat back and swing my body
between my knees. That night I sat on a dictionary with my feet
against the footboard and tried to follow these injunctions, until my
back seemed torn into fillets, but it would not come flat. I never
went down to the river again, and it was two years before I summoned
courage to try another sport. The bullyragging sophomore coxswain I
came to know very well in later years, and found him as courteous and
good-hearted as any man. To this day, if I mention our first meeting,
he looks shy, and says he doesn't remember it. He says that the flat
back is a discarded fetish in Harvard boating circles, that even
before the advent of Mr. Lehmann cursing and kicking were largely
abandoned; and moreover (_fortissimo_) that the freshman crew he
helped to curse and kick into shape was the only one in ten years that
won.
After a fortnight's tubbing in pair-oars, the better candidates are
tubbed daily in fours, and the autumn races are on the horizon. At the
end of another week the boats are finally made up, and the crews
settle down to the task of "getting together." Each of the fours has
at least one seasoned oarsman to steady it, and is coached from the
coxswain's seat by a member of the college eight. Sometimes, if the
November floods are not too high, the coach runs or bicycles along the
towing-path, where he can see the stroke in profile. If a coach swears
at his men, there is sure to have been provocation. His favorite
figure of speech is sarcasm. At the end of a heart-breaking burst he
will say, "Now, men, get ready to _row_," or, "I say, fellows, wake
up; _can't you make a difference?_" The remark of one coach is now a
tradition--"All but four of you men are rowing badly, and they're
rowing damned badly!" This convention of sarcasm is by no means old.
One of the notable personages in Eights' Week is a little man who is
pointed out to you as the Last of the Swearing Coaches. _Tempora
mutantur._ Perhaps my friend the ex-coxswain is in line for a similar
distinction.
When the fours are once settled in their tubs, the stroke begins to go
much better, and the daily paddle is extended so as to be a real test
of strength and endurance for the new men, and for the man from the
torpid a brisk practice spin. Even at this stage very few of the new
men are "given the hoof;" the patience of the coachers is monumental.
[Illustration: THE COLLEGE BARGES: TUBBING IN NOVEMBER FLOODS]
The tubbing season is brought to an end with a race between the fours.
Where there are half a dozen fours in training, two heats of three
boats each are rowed the first day, and the finals between the best
two crews on the following day. The method of conducting these races
is characteristic of boating on the Isis and the Cam. As the river is
too narrow to row abreast, the crews start a definite distance apart,
and row to three flags a mile or so up the river, which are exactly as
far apart as the boats were at starting. At each of these flags an
eightsman is stationed. In the races I saw they flourished huge
dueling pistols, and when the appropriate crew passed the flag, the
appropriate man let off his pistol. The crew that is first welcomed
with a pistol-shot wins. These races are less exciting than the
bumping races; yet they have a picturesque quality of their own, and
they settle the question of superiority with much less rowing. The
members of the winning four get each a pretty enough prize to remember
the race by, and the torpidsman at stroke holds the "Junior fours cup"
for the year.
The crowning event of the season of tubbing is a wine, to which are
invited all boating-men in college, and the representative athletes in
other sports. In Balliol it is called the "Morrison wine," as the
races are called "Morrison fours," in honor of an old Balliol man, a
'varsity oar and coach, who established the fund for the prizes. The
most curious thing about this affair is that it is not given, as it
would be in America, at the expense of the college, or even of the men
who have been tubbed, but at the expense of those who are finally
chosen to row in the races.
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.
[Illustration: THE LAST DAY OF THE BUMPING RACES OF THE SUMMER
EIGHTS (1895)]
The difference between American and English boating is that we lack
the root and branches of the college system. In a university of from
three to four thousand men there are, in addition to the 'varsity
crew, four class crews and perhaps a few scratch crews. In England,
each of the score of colleges, numbering on an average something like
one hundred and fifty men apiece, mans innumerable fours, one or more
eight-oared torpids, and the college eight. A simple calculation will
show that with us one man in fifty to seventy goes in for the sport,
while in England the proportion is one man in five to seven.
The difference in spirit is as great as the difference in numbers. In
America, the sole idea in athletics, as is proclaimed again and again,
is to beat the rival team. No concession is made to the comfort or
wholesomeness of the sport; men are induced to train by the excellent
if somewhat grandiose sentiment that they owe it to the university to
make every possible sacrifice of personal pleasure. Our class crews,
which have long ceased to represent any real class rivalry, are
maintained mainly in the hope of producing 'varsity material. The
result of these two systems is curiously at variance with the
intention. At Oxford, where rowing is very pleasant indeed, and where
for the greater part of the year the main interest centres in college
crews, the 'varsity reaches a high degree of perfection, and the
oarsmen, without quite being aware of the fact, represent their
university very creditably; while at Yale, and until recently at
Harvard, the subsidiary crews have been comparative failures in
producing material, and the 'varsity is in consequence somewhat in the
position of an exotic, being kept alive merely by the stimulus of
inter-varsity rivalry.
The recent improvement at Harvard is due to Mr. Rudolph C. Lehmann,
the celebrated Cambridge and Leander oar who coached the Harvard crews
of 1897 and 1898, in the sportsmanlike endeavor to stimulate a broader
and more expert interest in boating. His failure to bring either of
the crews to victory, which to so many of us signified the utter
failure of his mission, has had more than a sufficient compensation in
the fact that he established at Harvard something like the English
boating system. Anything strictly similar to the torpids and eights is
of course out of the question, because we have no social basis such as
the colleges afford for rivalry in boating; but the lack of colleges
has in a measure been remedied by creating a factitious rivalry
between improvised boating clubs, and the system of torpids and
eights has been crudely imitated in the so-called graded crews. A
season of preliminary racing has thus been established, on the basis
of which the candidates for the 'varsity crew are now selected, so
that instead of the nine months of slogging in the tank and on the
river, in which the more nervous and highly organized candidates were
likely to succumb and the stolid men to find a place in the boat, the
eight is made up as at Oxford of those who have shown to best
advantage in a series of spirited races. Crude as the new Harvard
system is as compared with the English system, it has already created
a true boating spirit, and has trained a large body of men in the
established stroke, placing the sport at Harvard on a sounder basis
than at any other American university. It has thus been of infinitely
more advantage, by the potentiality of an example, than any number of
victories at New London. To realize the full benefit of the system of
graded crews and preliminary races, it is only necessary to supersede
the arbitrary and meaningless division into clubs by organizations
after the manner of English colleges which shall represent something
definite in the general life of the university.
III
A LITTLE SCRIMMAGE WITH ENGLISH RUGBY
The relationship between the colleges and the university exists in a
greater or less degree in all sports. There is a series of matches
among the leading colleges in cricket, and a "cup tie" in Association
football. These sports are almost as popular as rowing, and have many
excellences which it would be pleasant to point out and profitable
perhaps to emulate; but it seems best to concentrate attention on the
sports which are best understood in America, such as Rugby football
and athletics. The workings of the college system may be most clearly
seen in them, and the spirit of English sportsmanship most
sympathetically appreciated.
The rivalry between the Association and the Rugby games has made
English football players quite unexpectedly sensitive to comparisons.
I had scarcely set foot upon a Rugby field when I was confronted with
the inevitable question as to English Rugby and American. I replied
that from a hasty judgment the English game seemed haphazard and
inconsequent. "We don't kill one another, if that's what you mean by
'inconsequent,'" my companion replied; and I soon found that a report
that two players had been killed in the Thanksgiving Day match of the
year before had never been contradicted in England. "That is the
sport," my friend continued, "which Caspar Whitney says, in his
'Sporting Pilgrimage,' has improved English Rugby off the face of the
earth!"
The many striking differences between English and American Rugby arise
out of the features of our game known as "possession of the ball" and
"interference." In the early days of the American game, many of the
most sacred English traditions were unknown, and the wording of the
English rules proved in practice so far from explicit that it was not
possible to discover what it meant, much less to enforce the rules.
One of the traditions favored a certain comparative mildness of
demeanor. The American players, on the contrary, favored a campaign of
personal assault for which the general rules of the English scrummage
lent marked facilities. It soon became necessary in America to line
the men up in loose order facing each other, and to forbid violent
personal contact until the actual running with the ball should begin.
This clearly made it necessary that the sides should in turn put the
ball in play, and consequently should alternately have possession of
it. Under this arrangement, each side is in turn organized on the
offensive and the defensive.
The upshot of this was that the forwards, who in the parent English
game have only an incidental connection with the running of the backs,
become a part of each successive play, opening up the way for the
progress of the ball. According to the English code, this made our
forwards off-side, so that the rule had to be changed to fit the new
practice. It then appeared that if the forwards could play ahead of
the ball, the backs could do so too; and here you have the second
great American feature. The result of "possession" of the ball and
"interference" is an elaborate and almost military code of tactics
unknown in the English game.
In the course of time I had unusual facilities for observing English
Rugby. During the Morrison wine which ended the season of tubbing on
the river, the captain of the Balliol fifteen threw his arms about me,
and besought me to play on the team. He had not a single
three-quarters, he said, who could get out of his own way running. I
pleaded an attack of rheumatism and ignorance of the game. He said it
did not matter. "And I'm half blind," I added. "So am I," he
interrupted, "but we'll both be all right in the morning." I said I
referred to the fact that I was very near-sighted; but he took all
excuses as a sign of resentment because he had failed to invite me to
breakfast in my freshman term; he appeared to think it his duty to
breakfast all possible candidates. Such are the courtesies of an
English captain, and such are the informalities of English training.
The next morning the captain wrote me that there was a match on
against Merton, and asked me to come out a quarter of an hour before
the rest for a little coaching. A quarter of an hour to learn to play
football! In spite of the captain's predictions of the night before, I
was not so sure that he was yet "all right;" so I went out to the
porter's lodge and scanned the bulletin board. My name stared me in
the face. I had scarcely time to take luncheon and don a pair of
football shorts.
The practice my coach gave me consisted in running the length of the
field three or four times, passing the ball back and forth as we went.
His instructions with regard to the game were equally simple. To keep
in proper position I had only to watch my Merton _vis-a-vis_ and take
a place symmetrical with his. When the enemy heeled the ball out of
the "scrummage" to their quarter-back, putting us for the moment on
the defensive, I was to watch my man, and, if the ball was passed to
him, to tackle him. If he passed it before I could tackle him I was
still to follow him, leaving the man who took the ball to be watched
by my neighbor, in order that I might be on hand if my man received it
again. An American back, when his side is on the defensive, is
expected to keep his eye on his _vis-a-vis_ while the ball is being
snapped back; but his main duty is to follow the ball. An English back
under similar circumstances is expected only to follow his man. If our
side happened to heel out the ball from the scrum and one of our
three-quarters began to run with it, we were on the offensive, and the
other three-quarters and I were to follow at his heels, so that when
he was about to be tackled--"collared," the English say--he could pass
it on to us. There is, as I have said, no such thing as combined
"interference" among the backs. A player who gets between the man with
the ball and the enemy's goal is rankly off-side. It is not to be
understood that the captain coached all this information into me. I
had to buttonhole him and pump it out word by word. Coaching of any
sort is all but unknown on English football fields. What there is
of the game is learned at school--or in the nursery!
[Illustration: AN ENGLISH RUGBY LINE-UP To the left of the scrum,
two half backs and six three-quarter backs face each other in
pairs]
When the opposing teams scattered over the field for the kick-off, I
noticed with satisfaction that there was not a spectator on the
grounds to embarrass me. It is so in almost all English college
games--the fellows are more than likely to have sports of their own
on, and anyway, what is the use in hanging round the fields where
other fellows are having all the fun?
On the kick-off, luckily, the ball did not come to my corner of the
field, for I could scarcely have seen it, much less caught it. Our
side returned the kick and the "scrum" formed. The nine forwards
gathered compactly in a semi-ellipse, bent their bodies together in a
horizontal plane, with their heads carefully tucked beneath the mass,
and leaned against the opposing mass of forwards, who were similarly
placed. When the two scrums were thoroughly compacted, the umpire
tossed the ball on the ground beneath the opposing sets of legs,
whereupon both sides began to struggle. The scrum in action looks like
a huge tortoise with a score of legs at each end, which by some
unaccountable freak of nature are struggling to walk in opposite
directions. The sight is certainly awe-inspiring, and it was several
days before I realized that it masked no abstrusely working tactics;
there is little, if anything, in it beyond the obvious grunting and
shoving.