WHEN I hear grown-up people discussing the University Boat Race I smile
sadly and hold my peace. They may say what they like about the latest
Oxford trial, or the average weight per man of the Cambridge crew, but
deep in my heart there stays the conviction that they are making a
ludicrous mistake in speaking about the Boat Race at all. Once I knew
all about it, and even now I think I could put them right if I wished.
But what is the use of arguing with persons who, under the absurd pretext
of fairness, pretend to find praiseworthy features in both crews? Even
the smallest boy knew better than that in the days when the Boat Race was
really important. I will not say that there did not exist weaklings even
then, who wobbled between Oxford and Cambridge in an endeavour to
propitiate both factions. But they usually suffered the fate of wobblers
by having to join one side or the other, while still incurring the scorn
of both.
The Boat Race dawned upon us each year as a strange and bewildering
element in our social relationships. We would part one night on normal
terms, and the morrow would find us wearing strange favours, and
regarding our friends of yesterday with open and passionate dislike. For
the sake of a morsel of coloured ribbon old friendships would be
shattered and brother would meet brother with ingenious expressions of
contempt. There was no moderate course in the matter. A boy was either
vehemently Cambridge or intolerably Oxford, and it would have been easier
to account for the colour of his hair than to explain how he arrived at
his choice of a university. Some blind instinct, some subtle influence
felt, perhaps, in the dim, far-off nursery days may have determined this
weighty choice; but the whole problem was touched with the mystery that
inspired the great classical and modern snowball fights, when little boys
would pound each other almost into a state of unconsciousness for the
sake of a theory of education. Our interest in the Boat Race as a boat
race was small, and quite untroubled by any knowledge of the respective
merits of the crews. But we wore their colours in our buttonholes, and
the effect of these badges on our lives was anarchic. We saw blue.
It was my fate to drift, fatally and immutably Cambridge, into a school
that had a crushing Oxford majority. In these circumstances, the
light-blue ribbon became, for the small and devoted band that upheld the
Cambridge tradition of valour, the cause of endless but never conclusive
defeats, the symbol of a splendid martyrdom. Try as we might, we found
ourselves always in a minority, and, to add to our bitterness, these
years of luckless warfare coincided with a series of Cambridge defeats,
and we knew ourselves the supporters of a forlorn and discredited cause.
And yet, Fate having decreed that we should be Cambridge, we did not
falter before our hopeless task of convincing the majority that it was
made of baser stuff than we. We would arrive in the morning with our
colours stitched to our coats, and when, overwhelmed by numbers, we lost
our dear favours we would retire to a place apart, repair the loss from a
secret store of ribbon, and dash once more into the fray. The others
might be Oxford when they had a mind to, but we were Cambridge—Cambridge
all the time.
Our contests were always fierce, but only once so far as I remember did
they become really venomous. Some ingenious Cambridge mind had hit on
the idea of protecting his badge with a secret battery of pins, and there
ensued a series of real and desperate fights that threatened our clan
with physical extinction. The trouble passed as suddenly as it had
arisen; a mysterious rumour went round the clans that pins were bad form;
and there was a lull while Cambridge treated their black eyes and Oxford
put sticking-plaster on their torn fingers. Pleasanter to remember is
the famous retort of L—, an utterance so finely dramatic that even to-day
I cannot recall it without a thrill. Caught apart from his comrades, he
was surrounded by the Oxford rabble, and robbed of his colours. “You
aren’t Cambridge now,” said one of his assailants, mockingly. “Ah, but
the sky is Cambridge!” he replied, and indeed it was. We had our little
victories to dull the edge of our defeats.
And yet, probably, we of Cambridge were not altogether sorry when the
Boat Race was over, and the business might be forgotten for another
eleven months, for we had but little rest while the war of the ribbons
was in the air. If we sought to take a quiet walk round the quad, the
chance was that a boy, too small perhaps to keep a favour even for a
minute, but with a light-blue heart, would run up with tidings of some
comrade hardly beset in the cloisters, and the battle must be begun
again. These contests were sometimes the cause of temporary friendships,
for in the course of the tumult one would find oneself indebted to a
year-long enemy for the timely discomfiture of one’s opponent, who in his
turn might be, normally, one’s bosom companion. For no tie was sacred
enough to overcome this vernal madness of the Blues. If a fellow was
base enough to be Oxford, his presence in the world was unnecessary, his
society tabooed. And, as I have said, even brothers would bang each
other’s heads for the beauty of the Idea.
Then came a day when age and responsibility changed our views on a good
many things, and the Boat Race was not spared. Forgetful of the old
triumphs and the old despairs, we preferred to treat ourselves and life
in more sober terms, while smiling tolerantly at the little boys playing
their rough games beneath our feet. Leaning forward with hands eager to
clutch our manhood, we would not for worlds have compromised our new
position by taking an interest in such childish trifles as coloured
ribbons. So the game went on without us, and the measure of our loss is
the measure of the loss of the earth when the spring melts into summer.
To-day I hear persons discussing the Boat Race in railway-carriages, and
in face of their dispassionate judgments I ask myself whether they can
ever have sung for it and fought for it, and, let it be added, wept for
it, as I have done. In truth, I suppose they have; for boys do not
differ widely in these essential things. But these people do not fight;
they do not even wear the ribbon! While it is open to a man to ignore
the Boat Race altogether, I cannot understand his approaching the contest
in so miserable a spirit.