Eric Lupton - The Last European Sculling Champion

Doggett's winners, ca. 1960: Harold Green (1924), Eric Lupton (1940), George Gobbett (1913) and Kenneth Collins (1957).

Some days ago, HTBS received an interesting e-mail from Colin Collier in Gravesend. He wanted to say that he was pleased to have come across an entry on HTBS, from 10 June, 2009, where Eric Lupton, the professional sculler was mentioned. Lupton was the 1940 Doggett’s Coat and Badge Race winner in a race held in 1947 (as there were no Doggett’s races during the Second World War). Colin writes in his e-mail: ‘Just after the War the Gravesend Regattas were started and I lived then a short distance from the riverside pub The Ship and Lobster - this was the Gravesend centre for professional scullers. My father, who was a Thames Waterman, was involved with the revival and was a friend of Eric Lupton and the Palmer family who were all professional scullers.’

Eric Lupton is mostly famous for racing Eric Phelps (on the left) for the professional European Sculling Championship. First time they met for the championship was in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1950. One of the famous rowing journalists and writers at that time was the Evening Standard’s Hylton Cleaver. He was a good friend of many professional oarsmen and he was involved in setting up the first meeting between the two Erics. On a website run by Lupton’s grandson, Nigel, you can read a letter of 25 April, 1950 that Cleaver wrote to Eric Lupton, here.

Phelps won the title in 1950 time, but lost it in 1954 to Lupton, who became the last European Professional Sculling Champion. To continue with Colin’s e-mail: ‘Eric Lupton was aided in his training by Dan Blackman who went to Germany with Eric [Lupton], who lost to Eric Phelps. When they [later] raced at Gravesend, I saw the whole race in Palmer’s motor boat which was following [the race]. I was 15 years old at that time, and I had started sculling myself which was known as “best boat rowing” locally. My boat was called Squeak which was originally owned by another Waterman, George Morgan.’ And Colin adds: ‘what memories you have stirred.’

How did it then go with Colin’s own sculling career? He writes: ‘I subsequently had a accident and dislocated my elbow which finished my sculling activities.’ Colin goes on by saying, ‘Interestingly, I applied to join the Gravesend Rowing Club, I was an apprenticed engineer and was told I could not join because I was an artisan.’ Colin finishes his e-mail by saying: ‘Eric Lupton and I had been good friends ever since he lived near me and he passed away about four years ago.’

There is a 1950 race report from the German rowing magazine Rudern here (in an English Google translation!)

My warmest thanks to Colin for sharing this exiting information!

Boat Race Article By Hylton Cleaver

Hylton Cleaver is a name that pops up now and then on HTBS. Yesterday in the mail, I received a copy of The Boy's Own Paper of April 1939, a magazine I had won on eBay. The main featured article is by Cleaver, "Coxing in the Boat Race - and What It Feels Like to Row In It". The article is 3-pages long and written in a typical Hylton Cleaver way: entertaining, educational, and with a comparison to at least one other sport, in this case, boxing and tennis.

Cleaver writes, "What is true is that this Boat Race is not a strictly foregone fixture like the Derby or the Cup Tie; nor is there a fixed date for it and time of day. It is occasioned by a written challenge from the new President of last year's winners, and that challenge is answered, also in writing. otherwise there would be no race. There is no prize. The expense of the race is considerable, and is borne by the college boat clubs at the universities. nothing whatever comes from the public. That is why we watch it for nothing."

Next month, September 2011, it is exactly 50 years since Hylton Cleaver passed away. I think I will raise a glass to his memory!

Some Good Old Stories Told By Cleaver

I feel that I am not yet ready to let go of Hylton Cleaver's The Vengeance of Jeremy (1953), which I wrote about on 28 November. Cleaver is well-known for his sport books about rowing, but this is a fictional book about the young boy Jeremy, who in the beginning of the story loses his father. Jeremy's father is a newspaperman who drops dead in front of his editor after he mysteriously got stabbed researching a front-page story for the paper. Jeremy follows in his father's foot-steps to try to find out why his father got killed. This leads him to the Metropolitan Rowing Club, which has an eight training for the regatta at Henley. About the town of Henley, Cleaver writes:

"Henley itself is an old riverside town halfway between Oxford and London, and spread over three counties, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. All three meet where it stands. As a world-famous course it has one peculiarity. For most of the year there is nothing to suggest that a regatta is ever held there. The racecourse at Epsom on which the Derby is run is permanent; the Twickenham stands rise gauntly towards the sky as stolidly in the summer as on the days of Rugby internationals; the famous Long Room in the pavilion at Lord's is there throughout the winter, to be seen and studied; and the Stadium at Wembley never changes.

But the race-course at Henley is built afresh every summer; the piles and booms are set in those dead straight lines by experts only just in time for the regatta to open, and as soon as the last race is rowed the same gang of craftsmen start to dismantle it again. When racing begins those enormous grandstands, vast marquees, flower gardens, restaurants, band-stand, boat tents, rafts and judges' box, look as if they had their roots there. But the river is a King's Highway; the tow-path cannot be barred to the public; and so every year 10,000 has to be spent in setting out the lavish scene, and then removing it again as if by magic."

In the same chapter, called 'Water Jockey', Jeremy gets a question by the eight's coxswain: "You've never been a cox? [...] Don't take it up, then. You have no idea what it's like to spend your time sitting cramped in a boat about a yard away from the face of your Stroke, and to be forced to keep on starring into it for an hour on end." The cox continues: "On the water [...] the jockeys are called coxes", and in a most unflattering way, he then says: "Horses may be a little less stupid than crews, and they do at least face the right direction, whereas the slaves who ply the oars in these galleys have their backs to the winning post, and can be told any story about how far away it is."

In the next chapter, 'Coaching Days' the Metropolitan RC's coach, Mr. Harkwright Startin, tells Jeremy some old, 'true' stories about Leander, Cambridge, Oxford, and Henley and these stories would later reappear in the magazine Rowing and his A History of Rowing (1957).

A Rowing Story By Hylton Cleaver

On 10 November I asked if anyone knew about a fiction story on rowing by Hylton Cleaver, who was a sport journalist and author of books for young boys. I know of several novels by Cleaver in which he tells the stories of boys boxing and playing cricket and Rugby football, but rowing, sadly not. On 13 November Tim Koch published a nice piece about Cleaver, which had a link to many of the titles of his novels, but nothing stood out as being about rowing. Then slightly more than a week ago, Tim sent me a link to a book by Cleaver on eBay, The Vengeance of Jeremy (1953). The cover was ripped, but on the spine one could see a 'rowing scene'. I looked around on the web and found a copy with a nice dust-jacket, and ordered it right away.

The book arrived just before Thanksgiving, and I am happy to report that here it is, a fictional story by Hylton Cleaver that actually involved rowing, and rowing at Henley Royal Regatta, I might add. However, Cleaver does not miss the opportunity to mention also the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, Head of the River, and the Doggett's Coat and Badge Race. To be really honest, to a reader of today the story-line might seem a little weak, but to a young English boy, who read it now almost sixty years ago, he would probably indulge it with delight.

On top is the cover and the spine, and on the right is the frontispiece. Please contact me if you know of any other titles of fictional works by Hylton Cleaver that involves rowing.

Tim Koch On Hylton Cleaver

“Don’t get excited,” Tim Koch writes in an e-mail from London, regarding my entry about Hylton Cleaver on HTBS 11 November 2010. Tim continues, “I have not discovered any Hylton Cleaver rowing stories, but attached are some thoughts and facts.” So without any hesitation, over to Tim, who writes:

Hylton Cleaver was a lifelong author of boys’ adventure stories (especially the peculiarly British ‘boarding school tales’) and a well-known sporting journalist covering rowing, boxing, Rugby football and equestrianism. He also wrote crime fiction and factual books on show jumping and A History of Rowing (1957). My view of the latter book is that it reflects the English amateur rowing establishment of the time. He acknowledged that rowing existed outside of the big London clubs and the ancient universities and private schools but it seems that he did not feel that a book entitled ‘a history of rowing’ should cover this aspect of the sport in any detail. True, there was some coverage of professional rowing, the Doggett’s and the working man’s National Amateur Rowing Association but, at least by modern standards, this does not excuse the excessive concentration on the Gentlemen Amateurs of the ‘Putney Mafia’.

Cleaver was born in 1891 and educated at the private St Paul’s School in Hammersmith, London. A prodigious writer from an early age, his first published work appeared in the Ladies’ Gazette when he was only 13. In the First World War he served in the ‘Sportsmen’s Battalion’ of Royal Fusiliers and was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry. He continued writing stories while in the trenches and by 1918 was published in the Strand Magazine which contained the works of some of the greatest authors of the 20th century including Graham Greene, Rudyard Kipling, G.K. Chesterton and, of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Cleaver’s 1961 Times obituary stated:

[Following the First World War] much of his work appeared in ‘The Captain’ where another young author, Mr P.G. Wodehouse, was already making a name for himself as a writer of school stories. Indeed, Cleaver’s stories were not dissimilar from Mr. Wodehouse’s, but many contemporary judges regard them as superior.

Many of Hylton Cleaver’s stories were set in the fictitious ‘Harley School’. He wrote ‘The Harley First XV’ (1920) and ‘The Harley First XI (1922) covering Rugby football and cricket respectively – but no ‘Harley First VIII’ as far as I can discover! For more about his books, please click here.

The obituary concludes:

As a sporting writer Hylton Cleaver was on of the most versatile men in Fleet Street… [his] journalism was of a type which is now increasingly rare; he was a man who could write with ease and confidence on a dozen subjects, while remaining an authority on a few chosen things…

An enviable talent, even rarer now than when this was written.

Many warm thanks to Tim for his insightfully thoughts on Hylton Cleaver!

Is There Any Fictional Rowing Story By Hylton Cleaver Out There?

Some weeks ago I ordered a book from a bookseller in Scotland, The Great Book of School Stories for Boys (1933). According to the web site where I found the book, it contained stories by Hylton Cleaver, Captain G.A. Hope, N. Humphrey, Davy John Sweet, etc. The web site also had a picture of the book cover, an image of some rowers and with 'Pull!' written on the left-hand corner.

Anyone interested in rowing history would immediately recognise Hylton Cleaver's name as he was a great authority on the sport several decades ago. His most famous book about rowing is A History of Rowing, which was published in 1957. This is an entertaining book with a lot of good stories and anecdotes about The Boat Race, Henley Royal Regatta, the European Championships, Olympic rowing, The Doggett's Coat and Badge Race, the professionals, 'sea rowing' (which today is known as 'coastal rowing'). etc. For one of Cleaver's good stories, about Ran Laurie and Jack Wilson, see HTBS 1 June 2009.

What is maybe not that much known by rowers and rowing historians today is that Hylton Cleaver began his writing career, not as a sport journalist, but as a short-story writer, novelist and playwright. As Cleaver wrote tons of stories for boys, I thought, or hoped, that the rowing image on the cover of The Great Book of School Stories for Boys would be related to a rowing story by Hylton Cleaver, maybe with the title 'Pull!'? Not so! When the book arrived on my doorstep, I could see that there is no fictional rowing story by Cleaver in this book, nor is there a rowing story at all... Of course, I should have checked with the bookseller before I ordered the book, but the book was very cheap, and the cover is still very nice, I think.

But let me ask you, dear reader, do you know of any fictional rowing story by Hylton Cleaver? If you do, please contact me!