Once safely settled in the boat, there follows a period of five or six weeks of mixed pleasure and pain, for every crew, however good, must pass through periods of demoralization when for a few days they cease to improve, and periods of joy when they realize that, after all, they have some chance of turning out well.
For the last three weeks of this Henley practice the Eight is in strict training ; but training for Eton boys is no great hardship. The days of " hard steak and a harder hen " are over. The Eton boy is always fit, and the chief point he has to observe is regularity.
His meals are much the same as usual—break fast at eight, lunch at two, a light tea at five, supper together at eight in the evening, and bed at ten. There is no need to pull him out of bed in the morning, as at the Universities, for he has to go to school every morning at seven o'clock ; he does not usually smoke—or, at any rate, is not supposed to by the rules of the school, and it is rarely that this rule is broken—and he does not indulge in large unwholesome dinners, after the manner of many undergraduates.
Every evening at six o'clock he goes down to the river, and is probably tubbed in a gig-pair before rowing down the Datchet reach in the Eight. About twice a week the crew rows a full racing course, and is taken in for the last three minutes by a scratch crew, which goes by the name of "duffers," composed of five or six Old Etonians and masters, and one or two Eton boys, who are kept in training as spare men. The crew is coached from a horse by one of the masters—of late years Mr. de Havilland, who is certainly as keen for his crew to win as any boy in the school.
For the last five years the crew has taken a house at Henley for the days of the regatta, and gone to Henley by train the afternoon before the races. Though much wiser, this departure from Eton is not as impressive as in older days, when the crew used to drive to Henley for each day's racing ; when, filled with pride and shyness, the young oarsman used to issue from his tutor's, wearing for the first time his light-blue coat and white cap, and walk to Mr. Donaldson's or Dr. Warre's house, where waited the brake which was to convey the crew, with the cheers of the crowd, along the hot, dusty road to Henley. In 1891, the last year that this drive was taken, the crew, before the final of the Ladies' Plate, had to drive no less than seventy-five miles in three days.
They were only beaten by a few feet, and there is little doubt that but for this most tiring drive they would have won. Once at Henley, all is pleasure. No crew is more popular, none more cheered, as it paddles down the course to the starting-point and as it arrives first at the winning post. The scene of enthusiasm, not only among Etonians, but among the whole rowing world, when an Eton crew wins the Ladies' Plate after a lapse of several years, is past description.
After Henley come House Fours ; and then the list of Upper Boat choices is made up by the Captain of the Boats. The captain, by this means, appoints his successor for the following year, for he arranges these choices in order of merit, just as Lower Boat choices are arranged, and the highest choice remaining at Eton till the next year becomes captain. Thus the power of the captain is absolute ; he can appoint whomever he likes to be his successor, and it is seldom that the choice falls on the wrong boy. Besides being the sole authority in these matters, the captain has to arrange all the money matters of the E.C.B.C. ; over five hundred pounds pass through his hands in a year, and this gives an extra responsibility to his post. Of course all his accounts are carefully audited by one of the masters, and the experience gained, not only in looking after money, but also in arranging dates of races, in choosing and in captaining his crew, and in judging disputed points, is well worth all the trouble and worry entailed.
Our Eton Lower Boy has now reached the position of Captain of the Boats, and here I will leave him to go on either to Oxford or Cambridge and represent his University at Putney. A few words, however, may still be added.
There is a great difference between teaching a boy of sixteen and a man of twenty to row, and this difference lies in the fact that it is much easier, and perhaps even more important, to teach your boy to row in good form. By good form, I mean the power to use all his strength directly in making the boat move so that no energy is wasted in making the body pass through the extraordinary contortions and antics often seen in an inferior college crew.