SPORTS AND ATHLETICS
Rowing--Dame Hooper’s--Southey at Balliol--Cox’s six-oared crew--The
riverside barmaid--Sailing-boats--Statutes against
games--Bell-ringing--Hearne and gymnasia--Horses and
badger-baiting--Cock-fights and prize-fights--Paniotti’s Fencing
Academy--Old-time “bug-shooters”--Skating in Christ Church
meadows--Cricket and the Bullingdon Club--Walking tours.
It would be impossible to live in Oxford and be healthy--except perhaps in
the summer term, if we are lucky enough to have any sun--without taking
exercise. It has long been a matter of wonder how those men keep fit who,
with the excuse of “having a heart” neither row, play soccer, rugger,
hockey, or any other of the strenuous games which keep the average
Undergraduate sound in wind and limb. As a matter of fact they don’t. For
the “heart-y” gentlemen almost invariably take as many week-ends out of
Oxford as possible, and in most cases retire comfortably and ingloriously
to the paternal establishment and maternal care long before term is over.
The others, the normal people, the devotees of bone and muscle, the
“muddied oafs and flannelled fools”--(which is the only mistake Mr Kipling
ever made)--are never ill, at least from climatic effects. They may strain
something, or even break a few bones, but that cannot be put down to the
Oxford weather. The best doctors on earth, or rather the best
preventatives against illness--and there is a great difference--are the
river, the football and hunting fields, and the boxing ring, and as we
find these things to be true to-day so in old times, when wigs and ruffles
were somewhat of a handicap to the taking of hard exercise, these
remedies against the Oxford climate were adopted with almost the same
keenness. The word almost is used advisedly because the percentage of
“bloods” who did nothing strenuous was far larger, and the possibilities
in things sporting were not nearly so great. We have changed all that, and
can afford a smile of condescension when, seated on the alleviating
pontius in a “Rough” eight, with its simple-looking sliding seat, its
hair-thick outer shell and its wonderful travelling possibilities, we
think of the heavy gigs and six-oared boats into which our predecessors
“tumbled,” clad in catskin caps and leather trousers.
Nevertheless the river was just as popular then though for quite different
reasons. There were no rowing Blues to be had in those days; no presidents
of boat clubs--no boat clubs even. There was only Dame Hooper’s--an
odd-looking, tumble-down, shed-like place, where the gownsmen blarneyed
the old lady and hired out skiffs, gigs, cutters, and canoes. Unlike our
togger men who, like strange hairy creatures from another planet,
hatlessly converge from all parts of the town through the Broad Walk to
the Barges, emitting yards of muscular leg for all the world to view in
amusement and admiration, the eighteenth-century wet-bobs went down to the
river in square--or, as they called it, trencher--and gown. But Dame
Hooper was old, unskittish, and trustworthy, and so they threw off their
academical garb in her shed and arrayed themselves in the trousers,
jackets, and caps which were then the thing. It might well be thought that
these were a great hindrance to correct ’varsity swinging. But they did
not worry their heads about that--there was no boat race to be taken into
agitated consideration--and it has been left for 1911 to pour out its
bleeding heart in vehement controversy anent the true ’varsity style as
opposed to the new fangled Belgian method. In those days the motto was air
and exercise. Now, dare it be said, the river is a business, a
profession, to which are consecrated all the waking moments, and many of
those which we should like to dedicate to bed, of our whole university
careers.
Southey, who was, oddly enough, a Balliol man, said that he only learned
two things at Oxford--to swim and to row. After he went down he wrote the
following description of the river:--
“A number of pleasure boats were gliding in all directions upon this clear
and rapid stream; some with spread sails; in others the caps and tassels
of the students formed a curious contrast with their employment at the
oar. Many of the smaller boats had only a single person in each; and in
some of these he sat face forward, leaning back as in a chair, and plying
with both hands a double-bladed oar in alternate strokes, so that his
motion was like the path of a serpent. One of these canoes is, I am
assured, so exceedingly light, that a man can carry it; but few persons
are skilful or venturous enough to use it.”[8]
It would be well worth while to watch the face of one of these timid
canoers if we could bring him down to the barges to-day to one of the
“rag” regattas and show him scores of “venturous persons” who not only
dispense with paddles, but dash about in a Canadian canoe with a punt
pole.
G. V. Cox told us that in 1790 there were no races, but that “men went to
Nuneham for occasional parties in six-oared boats (eight-oared boats were
then unknown), but these boats belonged to the boat people; the crew was a
mixed crew got up for the day, and the dresses worn anything but uniform.
I belonged to a crew of five, who were, I think, the first distinguished
by a peculiar (and what would now be thought a ridiculous) dress, viz., a
green leather cap, with a jacket and trousers of nankeen!”[9]
There are many recent boat club presidents who proudly show souvenirs of
love passages with every barmaid from Folly Bridge to Abingdon, and up the
Cher to Water Eaton. The fair damsels of the Cherwell Hotel are indeed the
sole reasons why hordes of Undergraduates punt out there to lunch on
Sundays, when they might just as easily, and far less expensively, take
luncheon baskets with them--as they do if their people are up! But there
is nothing original in all this. The same touch of old Adam existed in the
coffee-house period, as is shown by the following lines:--
“We visit Sandford next and there
Beckley provides accustomed fare
Of eels and perch and brown beef-steak....
Whilst Hebe-like his daughter waits,
Froths our full bumpers, changes plates.
The pretty handmaid’s anxious toils
Meanwhile our mutual praise beguiles,
Whilst she, delighted, blushing sees
The bill o’erpaid and pockets fees
Supplied for ribbon or for lace
To deck her bonnet or her face.”
To-day Hebe has become _blasé_ and cannot blush with any readiness, nor is
she so anxious in her toils. The chaste salute and the overpaid bill are
features of our own time, and will remain, from generation to generation,
as long as Oxford is a university, and there are hotels on the Cher. The
same poet goes on to describe the way in which he was taught to sail by a
friend who was already an expert.
“At Folly Bridge we hoist the sail,
And briskly scud before the gale
To Iffley--where our course awhile
Detain--its locks and Saxon pile
Affording pause; to recommend
The Hobby-horse unto my friend.
Our light-built galley; ours I say
Since Warren bears an equal sway
In her command; as first, in cost
The half he shared; himself a host
Whether he plies the limber oar
Or tows the vessel from the shore;
Or strains the main sheet tight astern
Close to the wind; of him I learn
Patient to wait the time exact
When jib and foresail should be back’d
To bring her round; or mark the strain
The boat on gunwale can sustain
Without aught danger of upsetting,
Or giving both her mates a wetting.”[10]
[Illustration: NORTH VIEW OF FRIAR BACON’S STUDY AT OXFORD.]
A glance at the statutes shows that the river was almost the only form of
athletics then permissible, for the prohibited sports included “every kind
of game in which money is concerned, such as dibs, dice, cards, cricketing
in private grounds or gardens of the townspeople ... every kind of game or
exercise from which danger, injury, or inconvenience might arise to other
people, such as hunting of beasts with any sort of dogs, ferrets, nets or
toils, also any use or carrying of muskets, cross-bows, or falchions;
neither rope-dancers nor actors, nor shows of gladiators are to be
permitted without especial sanction; moreover, the scholars are not to
play at football, nor with cudgels, either among themselves or with the
townsfolk, a practice from which the most perilous contentions have
arisen.”
During the earlier half of the century, bell ringing was a form of
amusement--and exercise--which was very largely indulged in. At any hour
of the day it was the custom to go up into the belfry and practice, with
such zest that the ringer sometimes fell from sheer exhaustion. Hearne was
known to take a keen interest in the matches which were sometimes
arranged between different peals of bells, while Antony Wood, some years
before, had joined with his mother and brothers in subscribing towards the
foundation of the Merton bells and, as Wordsworth says, “though they were
not satisfactory to the ‘curious and critical hearer,’ he plucked at them
often with some of his fellow-collegians for recreation sake.” Later on,
however, this practice was generally voted boring and even vulgar, and the
more “aristocratic door bell and knocker ringing” succeeded it. Hearne
himself was pleased to countenance bell-ringing, yet when a proposal was
afoot to found “an academy of exercise in the university such as riding
the great horse, fencing, etc.,” he would not hear of it or entertain the
idea for a moment. “I think,” said he, “’twould have utterly obstructed
all true learning.”
Horses, in spite of Hearne, were popular among Dons and Undergraduates.
The “Female Student,” writing a letter to _The Student_, summed up the
tastes of a Master of Arts as consisting of “the college-hall, the
common-room, the coffee-house, and now and then a ride to the
Gog-magog-hills.” The now and then was probably accounted for by the
expensiveness attaching to the hobby. There were, however, several
stable-keepers at the time who, starting with a diminutive capital,
retired after a very few years in the business with large fortunes. G. V.
Cox, the member of the crew in nankeen trousers, says that it was quite a
usual thing “for a gentleman (the Oxford tradesman’s designation of a
member of the university) to ride a match against time to London and back
again to Oxford (108 miles) in twelve hours or less with, of course,
relays of horses at regular intervals. In one instance this was done in
eight hours and forty-five minutes.... Betting was, no doubt, the first
and chief motive; a foolish vanity the second; the third cause was the
absence at that time in the university of a better mode of proving pluck
and taming down the animal spirits of non-reading youngsters.... Hunting
then, as now, was an expensive amusement, only to be enjoyed by the few,
and by them only for a part of the year; racing had not then been thought
of ... but a gentleman need not learn to ride like a jockey.”[11]
Sir Erasmus Philipps must, therefore, have been a monied man, for in 1720,
when he was a Fellow-commoner of Pembroke, his outdoor sports took the
form of fox-hunting, attending cock-fights and horse-races, and riding to
Woodstock, Godstow, and Nuneham. Many of the horse-races took place on
Port Meadow. Terrae Filius, referring to “that famous apartment by idle
wits and buffoons nick-named Golgotha, _i.e._, the place of Sculls or
Heads of Colleges and Halls where they meet and debate upon all
extraordinary affairs which occur within the precincts of their
jurisdiction,” says that “this room of state or academical council chamber
is adorn’d with a fine pourtrait of her late Majesty Queen Anne, which was
presented to this assembly by a jolly fox-hunter in the neighbourhood, out
of the tender regard which he bore to her pious memory, and to the
reverend Sculls of the university, who preside there; for which
benefaction they have admitted him into their company, and allow him the
honour to smoak a pipe with them twice a week.”
In one of the papers of _The Loiterer_ the writer described how Dr
Villars, Mr Sensitive, and himself went for a country walk and talk to Joe
Pullen’s Tree. “As soon as we had reached this elevated situation, and
cast our eyes over the well-known view, a general silence took place for
some minutes. It was indeed a day for meditation. The sun emerging by fits
and starts from the grey fleckered clouds which overspread the whole
atmosphere, illuminated the projecting points of Magdalen and Merton
Towers, and shot its lengthened gleams across the pastures and meads,
which extend themselves in a long level to the north of the city, while
the woody hills of Wytham, rising boldly from behind a flat country, threw
over the whole background a broad mass of dark shadows broken only here
and there by a white sail, whose almost imperceptible motion just marked
the various turns and windings of the river.... A large party of very
dashing men rode by, mounted on cropt ponies, and followed by no
inconsiderable number of Tarriers. Of all sorts, sizes, and colours; and
as they did not ride very fast, and talked rather loud, we easily
discovered that the object of this grand cavalcade had been a
badger-baiting on Bullingdon Green; in the event of which combat they
seemed greatly interested, and were settling the merits of their different
dogs with great clamour, and not without some altercation.” The solemn
statutes did not seem to worry those optimistic sportsmen overmuch on that
glorious summer day.
Bull-baiting and cock-fighting, both, in their time, exceedingly popular
at the university were strongly put down by the authorities. One gathers
that it was usual at these affairs to start a free fight after the show,
in which the town and gown partisans did their best to kill or maim each
other for life. All things duly considered, therefore, it was, perhaps, a
wise step on the part of the Dons to forbid such affairs. Dr Rawlinson
made a regretful reference to one of these pitched battles: “A great
disturbance between the scholars of the university and the townsmen of
Heddington at a bull-baiting, at which some scholars were beaten.”
Considering the tender years of most of the freshmen it is a matter for
great congratulation that they made such good stands against the
bullet-headed townees. They could not have done so but for the fact that
boxing was much followed among ’varsity men. They were to a large extent
keen patrons of the noble art of self-defence, and the chief instructors
about the year 1729 were none other than the celebrated Broughton and
Figg, who ran a saloon in London. The fact that this boxing academy was
far away from Oxford did not preclude the keenest pugilists from
journeying up to take lessons. Amhurst came across a crowd of
Undergraduates in an Oxford coffee-house one night just after Mendoza had
won a famous victory, and he was vastly entertained to hear their keenly
excited discussion of every lead and stop and hook and counter and to see
them turning and twisting their bodies in pugilistic attitudes in
illustration of the professional manner of planting each separate blow.
They seemed to know as much about the fight as if they had been present.
In December 1729 the Mayor of Oxford licensed a prize fight to be held in
the town. Crowds attended in the assurance of a good morning’s sport, but
at the last moment the Vice-Chancellor, a book-ridden, pompous, crusty old
curmudgeon, filled with the dignity of his office, appeared on the scene
and succeeded in putting a stop to it. It was a miracle that the assembled
multitude did not tear his robes off his back and put him in the ring to
stand up to one of the bruisers.
In spite of Hearne’s prognostication that the establishment of a fencing
academy would be the death of all true learning, an academy was started
some years later by a Greek of the name of Paniotti. He was “full of
sentiments of honour and courage, and of most independent spirit.” R. L.
Edgeworth was a keen pupil of Paniotti, and it was at his school that he
became friends with Sir James M‘Donald, who was “one of the greatest
scholars and mathematicians of his time.” Their friendship was of short
duration, however, as Sir James died at Rome some five years later.
Edgeworth has an interesting story about this fencing establishment. “Mr
L., a young gentleman of a noble family and of abilities, but of
overbearing manners, was our fellow pupil under Paniotti. At the same
school we met a young man of small fortune, and in a subordinate position
at Maudlin.
“He fenced in a regular way, and much better than Mr L., who, in revenge,
would sometimes take a stiff foil that our master used for parrying, and
pretending to fence, would thrust it with great violence against his
antagonist. The young man submitted for some time to this foul play, but
at last he appealed to Paniotti, and to such of his pupils as were
present. Paniotti, though he had expectancies from the patronage of the
father of his nobly-born pupil, yet without hesitation condemned his
conduct. One day, in defiance of L.’s bullying pride, I proposed to fence
with him, armed as he was with this unbending foil, on condition that he
should not thrust at my face; but at the very first opportunity he drove
the foil into my mouth. I went to the door, broke off the buttons of two
foils, turned the key in the lock, and offered one of these extemporaneous
swords to my antagonist, who very prudently declined the invitation. This
person afterwards showed through life an unprincipled and cowardly
disposition.”[12]
While on the subject of fighting it is interesting to note that there were
such things as ’varsity “bug-shooters” even in those times, whose keenness
was far greater than that of the majority of the O.U.O.T.C., who slack
through just sufficient drills to enable them to put in a fortnight’s
camping in summer. G. V. Cox says that there were “enrolled about five
hundred, commanded by Mr Coker of Bicester, formerly Fellow of New
College. Such indeed was the zeal and spirit called forth in those
stirring times by the threat of invasion that even clerical members did
not hesitate to join the ranks.... Some also of the most respectable of
the college servants were enrolled with their masters.... The dress or
uniform was of a very heavy character but also very imposing: a blue coat
(rather short but somewhat more than a jacket) faced with white duck
pantaloons, with a black leathern strap or garter below the knee, and
short black cloth gaiters. The headdress was also heavy; a beaver
round-headed hat surmounted by a formidable roll of bear-skin or something
of the kind.”[13]
Several years after the above incident in Paniotti’s fencing school, an
article appeared in _The Student_. It was a fantastic account of “Several
Public Buildings in Oxford never before described” and contained the
following:--
“The several gymnasia constructed for the exercise of our youth, and a
relaxation from their severer studies, are not so much frequented as
formerly, especially in the summer; our ingenious gownsmen having found
out several sports which conduce to the same end, such as battle-door and
shuttle-cock, swinging on the rope, etc., in their apartments; or, in the
fields, leap-frog, tag, hop-step-and-jump, and among the rest, skittles;
which last is a truly academical exercise, as it is founded on
arithmetical and geometrical principles.”
Skinner, the poet, who sailed his yacht down to Sandford and rowed in Dame
Hooper’s boats, seems to have been quite an all-round man.
“If day prove only passing fair
I walk for exercise and air
Or for an hour skate,
For a large space of flooded ground
Which Christ Church gravel walks surround
Has solid froze of late.
“Here graceful gownsmen silent glide,
Or noisy louts on hobnails slide,
Whilst lads the confines keep
Exacting pence from every one
As payment due for labour done
As constantly they sweep.”
His touch of “side” is not unfunny--the graceful ’varsity man is a picture
of all culture, while the townee is a lout because he slides on vulgar
hobnails. On several of the bard’s sailing expeditions, after they had
dined chez Beckley, and duly tipped the girl,
“A game of quoits will oft our stay
Awhile at Sandford Inn delay;
Or rustic nine-pins; then once more
We hoist our sail, and tug the oar.”[14]
He must doubtless have looked down upon his fellow quill driver in _The
Student_ as several parts of a fool for thinking rustic nine-pins “a truly
academical exercise, as it is founded on arithmetical and geometrical
principles.”
Cricket and tennis were not of much account. The Lownger described his
going after dinner to tennis, returning in time for chapel
“From the Coffee House then I to Tennis away,
And at six I post back to my college to pray,”
while G. V. Cox, in his “Recollections,” remembered that “the game of
cricket was kept up chiefly by the young men from Winchester and Eton, and
was confined to the old Bullingdon Club, which was expensive and
exclusive. The members of it, however, with the exception of a few who
kept horses, did not mind walking to and fro.”[15]
As a rather less strenuous form of exercise than eighteenth-century
cricket many men kept themselves fit by walking. Wordsworth points out
that “in 1799 Daniel Wilson writes to his father, that very few days
passed when he did not walk for about an hour.” This exceedingly gentle
form of pedestrianism was only an end of century hobby. Earlier on men
seem to have been made of sterner stuff. The Greek Professor at Aberdeen,
Dr Thomas Blackwell, wrote to Warburton at Oxford in 1736 to beg him to
accompany Middleton and their common friend, Mr Gale, in a tour in
Scotland for two months in the summer during the long vacation. “In 1742
Tho. Townson started for a three years’ tour in France, Italy, Germany,
and Holland, with Dawkins, Drake, and Holdsworth. On his return from the
continent,” the quotation is from Christopher Wordsworth, “he resumed in
College (Magdalen) the arduous and respectable employment of tuition, in
which he had been engaged before he went abroad. William Wordsworth took
walking tours in France 1790-91 (at a time no less awfully interesting
than that which the country has now been passing through) before and after
taking his degree.” In the first instance he was accompanied by his
college friend Robert Jones, with about twenty pounds apiece in their
pockets. “Our coats which we had made light on purpose for that journey
are of the same piece,” he wrote, “and our manner of carrying our bundles
which is upon our heads, with each an oak stick in our hands, contributes
not a little to the general curiosity which we seem to excite.”
[Illustration: A DUCK HUNT.]
Had they but carried more money and travelled in luxury they would not
have been unlike the present-day Rhodes men, whose custom it is during
vacation to scour the ends of the earth.
Inter-college and inter-’varsity athletic meetings were undreamed of in
the eighteenth century. Because Georgian Oxford men could not boast
representative colours, however, is no proof that they were not sportsmen.
It would be impossible to find a set of men in any century more ready for
deeds of daring do. They rode straight and ate hearty. They broke rules
and defied statutes with a zest that suggests anarchism. In spite of wigs
and ruffles they sped like hares down back alleys and scaled the high
college walls like monkeys to avoid a conversation with the Proctors and
their bulldogs. They sallied forth in trencher and gown, the insignia of
their allegiance to _Alma mater_, and in sheer high spirits set themselves
to bring about a fight with the jeering townees. Back to back they fought
against all odds, recking little of bleeding noses and broken pates. If
they drank too freely and encouraged the toasts, the blame was not
entirely theirs. They did but follow the fashion of the times. Their
password was thoroughness. Whatever they did, they did with all their
might. If they rang bells, they made the air hideous until they fell
exhausted. If they collected knockers they stripped a whole street before
their energy waned. If they slacked they slacked superbly. Without any of
the advantages brought about by modern ideas and inventions, our
predecessors were sportsmen to the core and just as we to-day employ every
moment of our four years to the fullest advantage so did the men who trod
Oxford streets in wigs and laces when she was two centuries younger.