At Henley
By J. P. W. MALLALIEU, M.P.
WHEN the sun shines on it, and the sky is only softly clouded, and there is enough breeze to stir the(flags or cool spectators' foreheads, Henley Regatta comes near to Paradise for those who watch it. Across the river is Phyllis Court, its walls bright with flowers and its lawns shaded with umbrellas as bright as the flowers. Further along are the private launches, even, in days gone by, the college barges towed down from Oxford and moored against the bank. From the Berkshire side we can see dresses which, however gay, are no gayer than the blazers of the men. We can see couples sitting at ease and drinking tea between the races. We see it all without jealousy for posher Bucks. We know only that bright Bucks makes Berks feel brighter, and that the cool- ness of Bucks makes Berks feel very cool indeed.
On our side, too, we have our lawns and umbrellas in the general enclosure. There we, too, can sit in deck-chairs by the river's edge, listen to music from the Scots Guards and hear on loudspeakers what is happening to the crews before they come into view at the head of that wonderful straight stretch —made even straighter by the booms which mark the fairway. Sitting in our deck-chairs or standing upon the raised mounds behind, we can see the finishing-post without effort, and judge with our own eyes the half-length by which Leander beat Sydney Rowing Club in the final of the Grand. We get the maximum of excitement combined with the minimum of discomfort.
Further up the river on our Berkshire side there are no enclosures, no chance of being abreast at a breathless finish, no loudspeaker to tell you the times, no deck-chairs in which to sit easily. But, though you cannot hear the music of the Scots Guards, there is always the music from the fair if you want it; there are the signal stations along the river to tell you who is winning until you can see who's winning for yourself; there are wooden chairs to be hired for a shilling or two, and almost every five minutes, with a break for lunch and tea, there are boats speeding by and oarsmen sliding on their seats in seemingly effortless exertion. Above all there are the active rowing fans.
In the enclosures the rowing fans, though not silent, are immobile. Maybe their caps and blazers are a little faded. Maybe the whiteness of their flannels has turned to yellow with the years. But they all look simply splendid, and very dignified. The fans cfh the towpath are equally splendid, but much less dignified and far from immobile. They run like anything on the towpath all along that straight, shouting impre- cations or advice at their crew. Of course, above the general cheering and amid the intensity of their own exertion, the crew can hear nothing whatever except perhaps the yells of their cox. But still the advice from the bank pours out to them. " Come on, School ! Don't rush it ! Yes, that's better." The fans who are too old to run take to_ their bikes, and their. performance is the most-remarkable of all Henley. I am astonished how oarsmen in the Diamond Sculls or in the Silver Goblets, with no cox to steer them, yet manage to avoid • running into the boom or into their opponents.. Yet the oars- men's job is far easier than the bicyclists'. The oarsman can guide himself by the receding booms, but the bicyclist looks neither to front nor rear. He is permanently at eyes right, seeing nothing but his crew; and how he fails to mow down other spectators or ride himself into the .river I do not know. The only accident I saw was when one bicycle went smack into the jutting railings of the enclosure, and its rider was pitched clean over. But, in his enthusiasm to see the finish, the rider at once picked himself up and raced on across the enclosure without stopping to pay his admission fee.
• Are rowing fans funny ? Of course they are. All fans of all sports are funny, except the fans of cricket and football. (I am a fan of cricket and football.) But their activities add to the free and glorious pleasure of those who pass the enclosures and line the towpath beyond.
This 1year I went to Henley on the Thursday, and for several reasons it proved a bad choice of day. One reason was that just before I left the house a man arrived with a small strip of linoleum c.o.d., and I paid him £2 15s. When I arrived at Henley I found I had enough money for the car park fee but for little else. The general enclosure where I most wanted to go was 15s. each, so that was closed to us. However, we managed two wooden stools, and settled with them up the river. A second reason was that Thursday is only the second day, and the real excitement of the races seldom develops until the third and fourth. The last reason was that it rained. It rained all after- noon long. For four weeks the sun had shone almost fiercely. As recently as the previous Monday I had been almost stifled with heat on the Centre Court at Wimbledon: But on this day my small son shivered with cold at he sat on my knee.
Yet all of us enjoyed ourselves. We had, perhaps, different reasons for enjoying ourselves. My seven-year-old daughte'l, who is at a perverse age, would enjoy it because she saw several Cambridge crews. My six-year-old son, who likes himself to do only those things which seem like play, would enjoy seeing grown men doing something which seemed very , like work. My wife would enjoy not having to do the dishes, and I enjoyed thinking of Scottish Members of Parliament confined to barracks by a rush of Scottish Parliamentary business.
But we had common enjoyment, too. Because of the rain the crowd along the towpath was not thick enough for discomfort, and in spite of the rain the colours were not datnped enough to be joyless. Although from our position we could never tell which crew had won or lost, the almost constant succession of races excited not for the result but for the beauty of movement they revealed. In fact, though in some ways we saw Henley at its worst, it was in many ways more than good enough for us.
For me there was one special, additional pleasure about this year's regatta. When in 1839*the regatta was inaugurated, it was placed under the care 9f " judicious and respectable management." This " judicious and respectable management" decreed that no one even remotely connected with professional rowing could take part in it. As a result, a fourteen-year-old boy was barred from his school-crew because his father was a waterman. That fourteen-year-old boy was Ted Phelps, who later became the professional sculling champion of the world. In 1952 that old bar from a by-gone age was lifted, and a waterman himself competed in the Diamond Sculls - for the first time in history. That fact, for me, made Henley brighter and more gay than ever.
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