ROWING THE NECESSITY OF HAVING A BUTT.
Let me turn now to lighter matters, for there are lighter matters connected with rowing. And first let me insist on the necessity of having a butt in a crew. It appears strange at first sight that the system of training—that is to say, of diet, of early hours, of healthy exercise, and of perfect regularity in all things, which has so admirable an effect upon the condition of the body, should sometimes impair the powers of the mind, and absolutely shatter the temper. I have seen eight healthy, happy, even tempered young men go into training together for three weeks. They were all the best of friends. Tom had known Dick at school, and both had been inseparable from Harry ever since they had gone up to the University. With these three the other five were closely linked by a common pur suit and by common interests. Each one of them was a man of whom his friends could say, he was the easiest man to get on with you could possibly meet. Yet mark what happened. At the end of three weeks every man in that crew was the proud possessor of seven detested foes. They ate their food in morose silence ; they took no delight in the labour of the oar, and each one confided to his outside friends his lamentable opinions about the seven other members of the crew. Even now, though years have passed away, no one who rowed in that crew can look back without horror on those three terrible weeks. Why was this so ? The simple answer is this, that the crew in question did not number among its members a butt. I doubt if the importance of a butt in modern boat-racing has been properly recognized. Speaking from an experience of many years, I should affirm unhesi tatingly, if I did not remember what I have written in previous chapters, that in an ordinary crew, composed, as ordinary crews are, of men and not of angels, the position of butt is a far more impor tant and responsible one than that of stroke or No. 7. If you can find a good, stout, willing butt—
a butt who lends himself to nicknames, and has a temper as even as a billiard-table and as long as a tailor's bill—secure him at once and make him the nucleus of your crew. There may be diffi culties, of course, if he should happen to be a heavy weight without a notion of oarsmanship, but these defects can easily be mitigated by good coaching, and in any case they cannot be allowed to count against the supreme merit of keeping the rest of the crew in good temper. Salient character istics are apt to be a rock of offence to a training crew. To be a silent thinker does not give rise to happiness in the seven who watch you think. It is an even deadlier thing to be an eloquent gabbier or a dreary drawler. There is nothing an ordinary rowing man detests so much as windy eloquence, unless it be perhaps the miserable indolence which is known as slackness. The butt must therefore be neither silent, nor slack, nor a drawler. Nature will probably have saved him from being a thinker or an orator. He must be simply good-natured without affectation, and ready to allow tempers made stormy by rowing and training to break upon his broad back without flinching. Your true butt is always spoken of as " old " So-and-so, and, as a rule, he is a man of much sharper wits, with a far keener insight into character, than most of those who buffet or tease him. Among eminent butts may be named Mr. —, but on second thoughts I refrain.