1 August 2023

By Greg Denieffe

How did you do in yesterday’s rowing quiz? Alternatively, how did you do in yesterday’s arts quiz?

I.  Television Drama.

Q. Which British playwright wrote the Cold War drama Blade on the Feather?

A. Dennis Potter (1980).

I’ve long been a Potter fan. Since my teens, I have never missed a TV series. I even went to the West End to see Blue Remembered Hills and was more excited about passing through the Forest of Dean on my way to Ross-on-Wye twenty years ago than returning with my first glass-bottomed tankard from Ross Regatta (memo to self: “move to port”).

Humphrey Carpenter’s wonderful book, Dennis Potter – A Biography (1998, 672pp), gives an insight into the political leanings of the Dark Blues at the time. Some may argue that they have moved further to the right.

The year in question is 1958. Potter is the editor of the undergraduate magazine Isis, and he prints an article on nuclear disarmament by two Labour Party members, William Miller and Paul Thompson. Like Potter himself, Miller and Thompson had been on the National Service Russian course, and they were suspected of breaching the Official Secrets Act.

Soon after, Special Branch charged the two students. Potter initiated a ’Defence Fund’ and financial support flooded in along with support from Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and big names like J. B. Priestley.

Of course, there was support for the police, no more vociferous than that by the captain of the Oxford University Boat Club who thought that Miller and Thompson “ought to be strung up” (Carpenter p.76). Potter responded by saying that he was glad that they lost that year’s Boat Race. They pair eventually received a three-month prison sentence for what became known as The curious case of Paul Thompson and William Miller.

Watch Blade on the Feather here.

II. Modern Classical Music.

Q. Name the composer of The Boat Race, a classical composition for voice, recorders, chimes, and percussion. It tells the story of a typical Boat Race Day on the banks of the River Thames, including commentary on the race.

A. Stephen Dodgson (1969).

III. Progressive Rock Music.

Q. In 2014, this poster was included in a 20th Anniversary re-release of a 1994 album. Name the album and the band.

A. The Division Bell by Pink Floyd. The 30 x 30 cm print was one of several included in a deluxe box set of vinyl LPs and singles, a CD, and a Blu-ray disk of the largely instrumental album.

Read more on Pink Floyd’s tenuous rowing links here.

IV. Punk Rock Music.

Q. Name the band and their iconic album that inspired this print.

A. The print is a tribute to London Calling by The Clash which was released in the UK on 14 December 1979. The cover shows Paul Simonon smashing his bass guitar on stage at New York’s Palladium on 20 September 1979. It also plays homage to Elvis Presley’s debut studio album, released in the USA on 13 March 1956.

In the song, London Calling, Joe Strummer attacks the ideas of famine, drug addiction, nuclear meltdown, and other varieties of the apocalyptic end. According to Strummer: “There was a lot of Cold War nonsense going on, and we knew that London was susceptible to flooding.” 

V. Opera.

Q. Name the opera that include the following lyrics:

I got a blister on my sittin’ down place.
I got a blister in my hand
But I`m gonna row this little boat, trust me Gawd
Till I anchor in the Promised land.
It take a long pull to get there, huh!
It take a long pull to get there, huh!
It take a long pull to get there
But I`ll anchor in the Promised land.
In the Promised land.

A. Porgy and Bess (1935)

I filed this question under ‘Opera’, but I am probably taking advantage of my opera virginity here. Just when these lyrics emerged is unknown to me. Porgy, a novel by DuBose Heyward, was published in 1925 and this was quickly followed by a play of the same name (by Dorothy Heyward, DuBose’s wife) in 1927. The world premiere of the opera Porgy and Bess by George and Ira Gershwin took place at the Colonial Theatre, Boston, in September 1935 and subsequently opened on Broadway the following month. A folk opera version hit the stage of the Majestic Theatre, Charleston, South Carolina, in January 1942.

Most familiar, at least to me, is the 1959 Hollywood film starring Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge in the leading roles. Five years later, Poitier ‘starred’ in The Long Ships, a role that earned him an obituary on HTBS.

In Chapter Five of his book, The Seven Seat, Dan Boyne recounts a unflattering story about a crew mate of his at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, who earned the nickname Porgy. When in the gym, ‘Porgy’ who misunderstood the origins of his moniker, had a fondness for belting out the verse: “OH BESS, YOU ARE MY WOMAN NOW!”.

VI. Broadway Musicals.

Q. Name the musicals that include the following lyrics:

(i)

I want to row on the crew, Mama,
That’s the thing I want to do, Mama.
To be known throughout Yale as I walk about it,
Get a boil on my tail and then talk about it.
I’d like to be a big bloke, Mama,
And learn the new Argentine stroke, Mama.
You’ll see your slim son
Putting crimps in the Crimson,
When I row on the Varsity Crew.

A (i). Anything Goes (1934) – Lyrics from I want to row on the crew (Original song by Cole Porter c.1914).

(ii)

Let’s all stroke together
Like the Princeton crew
When you’re strokin’ Mama
Mama’s strokin’ you.

A (ii). Chicago (1975) – Lyrics from When You’re Good To Mama by Fred Ebb and John Kander.

One of the historical niceties of American College rowing is the private races between two or perhaps three colleges in the early weeks of the season. The Varsity crews of the three Ivy League universities mentioned in these musicals race each other for cups, prestige, and free kit – the losers handing their shirts to their opposite number in what is known as ‘shirt betting’ in the USA.

Princeton race Yale (and Cornell) for The Carnegie Cup (1921), and Harvard for the Compton Cup (1933). Harvard (Crimsons) and Yale race each other later in the season for The Sexton Cup; ‘The Race’ dates to 1852 and is the oldest collegiate sporting event in the United States. Failure to mention this fact would have prompted a reprimand from at least one of the HTBS crew – I’d put my shirt on that.

VII. Poetry.

Q. Name the poet who wrote this short poem:

I heard their young hearts crying
Loveward above the glancing oar
And heard the prairie grasses sighing:
No more, return no more!

O hearts, O sighing grasses,
Vainly your loveblown bannerets mourn!
No more will the wild wind that passes
Return, no more return.

A. James Joyce wrote Watching the Needleboats at San Sabba whilst in Trieste c.1912.

FISA (now called World Rowing) was founded in Turin, Italy, by rowing representatives from France, Switzerland, Belgium, Adriatica, and Italy on 25 June 1892 in response to the growing popularity of the sport of rowing. Trieste was part of the Adriatic Society in 1892 but is now part of Italy, and was chosen as the location for the 130th anniversary celebration regatta of the foundation of the sport’s international governing body.

I chose this poem by Joyce because of its link to the origins of international rowing. Trieste also has a dark past and perhaps the poem has more meaning to me because of the terrible crimes against humanity committed there during WWII.

VIII. Graffiti.

Q. A familiar image to HTBS readers is the 1858 Punch cartoon, The “Silent Highway” – Man. Name the graffiti artist responsible for this 2003 interpretation which goes under the name of The Grim Reaper.

A. Banksy

One of the most infamous of Bristol graffiti artist Banksy’s works is The Grim Reaper. Originally painted on the side of the Thekla, a social boat moored in Bristol harbour, the decision was taken to remove the work to protect it from damage and wear and it is now on display in Bristol’s M Shed (on long-term loan from The Thekla).

IX. (The Coxswain Question) – Song Lyrics (from Beyond the Grave).

Q. Name the artist and the song, released after his death, containing these lyrics:

Blades go skimming through the water.
I hear the coxon shouting his instructions about.
With this crew oh it could be a tall order.
Have we time to sort all of these things out.

A. George Harrison and Pisces Fish.

Harrison died in Los Angeles on 29 November 2001 whilst there for treatment for lung and brain cancer. His permanent home for the previous thirty years was Friar Park, Henley-on-Thames. Following his death, his son Dhani and Jeff Lynne completed his final studio album, Brainwashed, and released it in 2002 to a grateful public. Pisces Fish is my favourite track on the album, somewhat for its Henley and rowing references but mainly for the short chorus: “I’m a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul.”

Watch a YouTube video of the song with pictures and clips taken in Henley here.

X. (The Coach Question) – Photography.

Q. Not quite a Kodachrome, more a late 19th Century glass slide, name the rowing coach juggling with his mega-megaphone on the Hudson River.

A. R. C. Lehmann (coaching Harvard University at Poughkeepsie).

In December 2014, Carol Rumens (The Guardian) selected a new work, Signal Flags (Without You It’s Chaos), by Lucy Tunstall, as her poem of the week. In her review, she described it as ‘an unrequited love poem.’ The opening two verses inspired the final question:

In faded Kodachrome you cycle the towpath,
juggling stopwatch, megaphone, spectacles, paunch,
booming plummy instructions to a boatful of young historians.
Without you it’s chaos.

Those Edwardian vowels carry over the river.
I catch your drift, imagine an encounter
tall ship to tall ship in open water.

R. C. (Rudie) Lehmann is a ‘HTBS character’ with nearly sixty tags for various articles. Wikipedia does a decent job of summarising his life in a few short paragraphs. As a rowing coach, and as Honorary Secretary of the Amateur Rowing Association, he drifts in and out of Irish rowing, especially Trinity College Dublin who won the Thames Cup at Henley in 1903 with Lehmann making a late change to the crew, bringing in a junior oarsman, W. F. Fox, to replace Pim, the bow oar.

Lehmann was not unfamiliar with defeat. He lost every race he rowed at Henley between 1877 and 1888, and Harvard University failed to win a race under his coaching. His indefatigability is one of the reasons that I like him.