"No Mahogany Launch" for Dartmouth Grew
Austen "Duke" Lake, Boston Sportswriter, Findsthe Christening at Mascoma Different—and Good Fun
rpHERE is SOMETHING dangerously Communistic about the way -1- Dartmouth has launched its new navy on Mascoma Pond, N. H., something that strikes at the very taproots of the college social system, sets a rebellious example and threatens the sanctity of a sport that has always been the gewgaw of quality classes, almost, I should say, the aristocracy. For Dartmouth has floated its boats from its own boathouse and has a competent coach, without spending a shilling.
"On the cheap!
"This is an impertinent violation of the college rowing code, which calls for a life of Oriental luxury amid lavish quarters, attended by house domestics, officers of protocol, and with summer estates that overlook pearling and sunkissed waters. At Harvard, for instance, it is said that a candidate for crew must first have his veins tapped for blood samples to determine the degree of gentility.
"I have heard of one freshman who, wishing to conceal his nouveau riche antecedents, privately underwent a blood transfusion from the arteries of an impoverished patrician, just before reporting to the Newell boathouse; only the fraud was detected when the blood samples were taken, because the blue corpuscles huddled up in one corner of the miscroscope slide and refused to mingle with the lad's natural red ones. So he was shooed away and made to play football.
"I do not believe all that I hear, but I know that Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia and the rest of the college crews are always shagged around the waters by mahogany launches filled with tutors, flunkies and male nurses, and that the lads are fed sweetbreads en casserole, filet mignons and venison haunches. There are always thermos flasks of egg-nog handy and trays of canapes and knitted cozies in case of a chill.
"Well then, here comes Dartmouth with a couple of secondhand shells with their bottoms patched, an abandoned ice house on the edge of a wilderness pond, and a tatterdemalion squad of candidates in corduroy breeches. And they go to barefaced rowing, aheaving and ayanking on their hoehandles like ragamuffins on a raft. O ho! They do, do they?
"It was a stirring sight to see the Dartmouth lads swarm out of their tumbledown shanty, which was shored up on one side to keep it from pancaking down on their skulls. There was a swaying sag in the roof of the old shack like the back of an aged horse, and inside, where the last ice had melted years ago, the floor was deep in damp sawdust, giving off a dank cellar odor.
"Mrs. Ernest M. Hopkins, wife of Dartmouth's president, was standing outside and gave the shells a baptismal dousing with water from square, frosted bottles reminiscent of applejack, and then the lads flopped the boats into Mascoma pond, harnessed their feet into floor straps and fitted their stout hams into the little, postage stamp seats.
"And finally, Jerry Cross, coxswain of the No. I boat, which was christened Ledyard, after the first Dartmouth man to sail around the world, commanded, 'Heave ho,' and the lads fetched a goshamighty haul on their hoehandles which was like to pull the jiblets out of the boat and set it to teetering so that some of the ship's company let go their poles and snatched for the railing.
"Well, it was what you might expect, because in the proper college circles you don't just go out brazenly and start to row. You spend the winter indoors in a glass conservatory, sitting snug on a stationary float, with live water running on either side, and pulling to the beat of a symphony orchestra.
"There are servants strolling around the runways with tall glasses of mineral water with mint leaves floating on the top, and big mirrors along the walls to throw back your image.
"Then upstairs there are lounges and a cordial atmosphere of thick upholstery, with the photos of proud former oarsmen looking down from the walls. You have to sit around in your woolen panties and heavy socks and sing seachanties in four-part harmonies. No, you don't just go out and go vulgarly to rowing. Not if you are anybody you don't.
"So, after spooning up a little headway, the Dartmouth boats spidered off in a cloud of spray, paced in a single shell by their coach, Jim Smith, a former Englishman, with freckles as big as pennies. And every so often Jim would yell across in his Limehouse lisp, and the boys would put on their brakes, gentle down and listen while he said how to streamline their chins and row without digging up kelp.
"Fortunately, none of the fleet tipped over, as sometimes happens in the most polite rowing society. Because if they had, there was no mahogany launch with male nurses to throw over floating mattresses and fish the lads up. And I think, when the crew came sailing home to their ice house again, Rip Heneage, the sports director, felt very relieved to count nine men, including the coxswains, in each boat.
"As the boys bedded their shells down on the sawdust floor, it was voted a lot of fun. Though vulgar, fun to be sure."
