The Sculling Earl To Be

The photograph above shows twenty-one year old Hon. Rupert Guinness (1874-1967), who was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. During the mid-1890s, he was chasing the Nickalls’ brothers for either the title in the Diamonds or the Wingfields. In 1895, Guinness (sculling for Leander) defeated Guy Nickalls with a length and a half to take the Diamond Sculls, but was over-powered by Guy’s brother Vivian some weeks later for the Wingfield Sculls. The previous year had ended with the same result, Vivian overcoming Rupert in the Wingfields. However, in 1896 Rupert Guinness did take both the Diamonds and the Wingfields, in the latter race beating Vivian Nickalls.

In his Life’s A Pudding (1939), Guy Nickalls writes about Guinness (by then the Earl of Iveagh) “Rupert Guinness, although not what any one would term a born sculler, confined himself to sculling and obtained useful proficiency by dint of long and careful practice with East.” East, that Nickalls is mentioning, is the professional oarsman William G. East, Doggett winner (1887), sculling champion of England (1891), and author of Rowing and Sculling (1904).

Rupert Guinness would later be elected president of Thames RC, and in 1927, he succeeded his father as Earl of Iveagh and as chairman of the family’s famous brewing company in Dublin. When Guinness was depicted by Spy for Vanity Fair in November 1905 (on the right), he had become a little rounder all-over. Earl of Iveagh is also mentioned in an entry by Tim Koch on 26 March 2010, and a follow-up entry on 27 March 2010, and Hélène Rémond's entry from 8 April 2010.

Earl Of Iveagh's Dinner...

Hélène Rémond, one of the readers of this blog, spent the Easter weekend in London to cover the Boat Race for a French newspaper. While at the Thames RC, which acted as the Media Centre, she found an interesting ‘invitation’ for a dinner in 1930, the Wingfield Sculls Centenary Dinner. Tim Koch wrote about this dinner in an earlier entry, on Friday 26 March, which I then followed up with another entry, on Saturday 27 March. You can see Hélène’s photography of the invitation above. I am happy to report that tomorrow, I will post an article Hélène exclusively wrote for this blog about the Boat Race.

Wingfield Sculls Centenary Dinner Menu

Autobiographer Vivian Nickalls, Wally Kinnear, and Bill of Fare composer, Guy Nickalls.

Here is a little foot note to the wonderful story Tim Koch provided about the Wingfield Sculls Centenary Dinner which was posted yesterday. In Vivian Nickalls’s autobiography Oars, Wars, and Horses – how I love this title – which was published in 1932, Nickalls mentions this dinner (pages 42-45) and the Bill of Fare which was composed by his brother, Guy Nickalls. It is really an oarsman’s menu,

“THE START with WHERRY – good OAR d’Oeuvres NO CRABS included – soup TURN TURTLE – fish SOLES PRESSED (against the stretcher) – Cutlets supreme with CUTTERS (far astern) – NO FOWLS Pheasants with NO FEATHERING – THE STARTERS – Peches TO Melba – BEST and BEST BOAT Ice – Last Course – CHAMPION CHAMPIGNONS with a HARD ROW Over. Wines without Whines – Champagne – Real Pain for those on Fixed Seats Only – Port – Starting Always On The Port Side.”

Vivian Nickalls writes that three more Wingfields’ winners were invited to the dinner, but F.L. Playford was very ill, and both A.A. Stuart and A.H. Cloutte were abroad at the time of the dinner. Nickalls seems to have collected the autographs of the fourteen men present (Above; observe the charming little drawing of a sculler after Harry Blackstaffe’s name!).

The Rowing English Gentleman

In a message regarding a previous entry on my blog, Tim Koch of Auriol Kensington RC in London has some entertaining comments: “Your recent posting, ‘An Oarsman’s Dress Code’, included two of my interests: rowing history and classic men’s clothes. The archive at Auriol Kensington nicely illustrates how men’s formal dress changed during the Twentieth Century. The splendid picture ‘Wingfield Sculls of the Thames’ [above] shows a dinner given by the Earl of Iveagh (Rupert Guinness) held at his house, 11 St James’s Square, on 11th December 1930 for past winners of the Wingfield Sculls (The English Amateur Sculling Championship). Those present, to commemorate the centenary of this race, were Iveagh, Guy Nickalls, Rev. W.S. Unwin, F.I. Pitman, Vivian Nickalls, J.L. Tann, T.D.A. Collet, H.D. Blackstaffe, D.Guye, J.C. Gardner, J. Beresford [Jr.], Rev. A.C. Dicker, C.W. Wise, and W.D. Kinnear. All are resplendent in ‘white tie’, which is a tailcoat, white waistcoat (vest) and dress shirt with a stiff bib front, high-standing wing collar and white bow tie. Even Kinnear and Blackstaffe, men much lower on the social scale than the rest of the group, are in the correct dress. They are all wearing their Wingfield Medals, each with a bar on the ribbon denoting the year(s) in which they won.” [Have a look on the right at the stylish Jack Beresford, Jr., and his seven bars for his Wingfields' victories between 1920-1926].

On this fascinating topic Tim continues, “Though taken in 1930, the picture is more illustrative of a formal gathering before the 1914-1918 War. The picture ‘KRC Dinner 1933’ [above] shows the mixture of ‘white tie’ and ‘black tie’ (a.k.a. ‘dinner jacket’ or ‘dinner suit’ or ‘tuxedo’) that would have been common in the inter war years. The dinner jacket had been invented in the 1870s by the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII, 1901-1910) for informal dining at home. Its essence was a tailless jacket and soft shirt with a turned down collar and black bow tie. By the 1930s the Duke of Windsor (briefly King Edward VIII) and his set were wearing the more comfortable outfit in public and it began to replace the tailcoat. ('DOW' in 'DJ' on the right.) Since the 1939-1945 War, white tie is only seen on the most formal of state occasions. In the 1960s and 1970s it looked as though black tie would also drift into oblivion but, by the time I started to attend rowing club dinners in the mid 1980s, the ‘DJ’ was back and is now worn by the vast majority of men at formal evening functions. I do mean ‘evening’, only Americans and waiters wear black tie during the day. At Auriol Kensington, those of us with regatta blazers sometimes follow the Oxford and Cambridge custom of wearing them in place of the traditional jacket with our dinner suits. On the left is a picture of me in such a rig,” Tim concludes.

Tim, this was very entertaining. Thank you! Maybe time for you to start a blog on well-dressed oarsmen and oarswomen?