THE SPORT OF ROWING “The tideway amateur clubs [including Thames and London Rowing Clubs], then in the heyday of their power, were not slow to profit by his example. Some years later the Universities, Cambridge under the influence of Mr. Muttlebury, followed suit.”763 Bourne’s Chronology was: 1879 Hanlan 1880 Tideway clubs 1886 Cambridge Blue Boat via Muttlebury The correct chronology was: 1870s Tideway clubs 1879 Hanlan 1882 Jesus via Fairbairn 1884 Thames via Fairbairn 1886 Cambridge Blue Boat via Fairbairn 1888 Leander via Muttlebury 1889 Oxford via Nickalls, Holland 1898 Back to Cambridge via Fletcher It was only decades after Steve Fairbairn had returned from Australia to England in 1904 to become coach of Jesus College that he began to receive some of the credit he deserved for the University long- slide revolution he had started in 1882, but until 1991 when Geoffrey Page wrote Hear the Boat Sing, The History of the Thames Rowing Club, the significance of his role early on had not been fully recognized. By attacking the status quo, Steve was to become famous . . . and infamous . . . for the impact that he would eventually have on British rowing, but all too few have fully realized that it was Steve Fairbairn who actually ushered in the Golden Age of English rowing in the first place. S.D. Muttlebury, a truly extraordinary oarsman, a celebrity in his day, later a stockbroker and Honorable Treasurer of the Islington War Pensions, has become an asterisk in rowing history in comparison to Steve Fairbairn. 763 Bourne, Textbook, p. 136 But Muttle may have achieved immortality in another way. There is a family legend that he once met Mark Twain on one of the author’s trips to Great Britain and that the author was quite taken by Muttlebury’s unusual last name. It is also said that they rowed together and, on his departure, Twain told him he would soon write a book about him. And so the story goes that Muttlebury became Huckleberry, and his oar became Finn.764 Eton Rules! Interestingly, every single amateur oarsman, coach and historian mentioned in this chapter was an Etonian with the sole exceptions of W.B. Woodgate, Rudie Lehmann, Australian Steve Fairbairn, Clifton old boy R.P.P. Rowe and Geoffrey Page of St. Paul’s. No single institution in the history of rowing, perhaps in the history of sport, has ever had a more dominating influence than Eton College. “Sir William Gladstone, former President, Christ Church Boat Club: “The school provided 312 of 848 Oxford and Cambridge Blues between 1863 and 1920.”765 Richard Burnell:766 “It is incontro- vertible that for some forty years Eton had a very near monopoly in the Ladies’ Plate at Henley, and consequently, so far as the Universities were concerned, it was really the Eton material that counted in the Boat Race. “As an Etonian, I make no apology for my pride in her record on the river.”767 764 http://www.online-literature.com/twain/ 765 Qtd. by Parkhouse, supplement 766 See Chapter 17. 767 Burnell, Swing, p. 27 202
