Henry Richard Dana All You Need to Know
Beingness Introduced in England
xi Nov 2020
By Göran R Buckhorn
Richard Henry Dana, Three, graduated from Harvard in 1874 and and so began studying at Harvard Law Schoolhouse. He took a break from his studies July 1875 and went abroad to run across the 'world', or at to the lowest degree some parts of it. He left Cambridge, Massachusetts, for England where his father had many friends. Having plied the oar at Harvard, visiting England would give young Richard a possibility to accept a closer look at the 'English stroke'.
In 1921, the American publisher Houghton Mifflin Company published the book Hospitable England in the Seventies – The Diary of a Immature American 1875–1876 by Richard Henry Dana.
The Danas were a well-known American family, having in its ranks a long line of lawyers, politicians and writers. Richard Dana (1699-1772) was the father of Francis Dana (1743-1811), who was a signer of the Articles of Confederation and father of Richard Henry Dana, Sr., (1787–1879).
Dana senior'south son, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., (1815-1882) is the almost famous of the clan being the writer of the memoir Ii Years Earlier the Mast, the classic sea tale where the writer signed up equally a merchant seaman, sailing from Boston in August 1834 on the ii-masted brig Pilgrim to Alta California (then a part of United mexican states). Wanting to come up habitation sooner, Dana, Jr., signed upward on another vessel, the Alert, which went around Greatcoat Horn in the centre of the Antarctic winter. The Alert, with Dana onboard, reached Massachusetts in September 1836. Dana, Jr., received a poor deal from the American publisher when his Ii Years Before the Mast came out in 1840: $250 and 24 copies of the book. The book sold 200,000 copies the start decade. The British publisher paid substantially more than money when the book was published in Britain. Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick (1851), priased Dana's book and said that his descriptions of Cape Horn 'must accept been written with an icicle.'
Having viewed how mistreated the seamen had been onboard the vessels, specially the Pilgrim, Dana, Jr., studied maritime police at Harvard Constabulary School. In 1841, a year subsequently he was admitted to the bar, Dana published The Seaman'south Friend, a standard reference on the legal rights and responsibilities of sailors. Dana besides defended many seamen in court.
Richard Henry Dana, Jr.'s son, Richard Henry Dana, Three, (1851-1931) was the author of Hospitable England in the Seventies. As many of his ancestors, Dana III studied at Harvard where he took upward the oar. He was the captain and stroke of the Harvard crews of 1872, 1873 and 1874, winning over Yale in the 1872 and 1874 races.
At the winter term of 1873, Yale helm Bob Cook '76 was given go out to go to England to study the English stroke. Melt mistrusted the American professional scullers who coached the university crews. The famous 1869 race in coxed fours between Oxford and Harvard proved the superiority of the English stroke when the Dark Blues beat the Scarlet on the Putney to Mortlake course. (Meet too here.) Dana Three would several times mention the 1869 race and the crews in his Hospitable England in the Seventies.
Though for his voyage beyond the swimming, young Bob Cook was curt of funds. His father refused to give him money for the trip, as he had as well denied Bob, who grew up on a farm in western Pennsylvania, money for an educational activity. Bob's mother had helped him to pay for his time at Andover and Yale and stepped in again to help him with his trip and expenses in England. Yale Boat Club, which was constantly struggling with coin, managed somehow to raise $495 for the trip, and Bob and some of his friends raised another $295 through loans and pawning their furniture, Thomas C. Mendenhall wrote in his brilliant book The Harvard-Yale Boat Race 1852 – 1924 – and the coming of sport to the American College (1993).
While in England, Cook received his first proper rowing lesson, as Mendenhall wrote, from one of the finest oarsmen in England at this time, Francis Due south. Gulston of London Rowing Club. After a month on the Tideway, the American oarsman moved on to Cambridge and so Oxford to learn the English language style at the universities. 'Bob Cook was especially interested in the Boat Race of 1873. It was the first race in which both boats were equipped with sliding seats,' Thomas C. Mendenhall wrote in The Harvard-Yale Boat Race.
When Cook returned to New Haven, the American newspapers reported most Yale'south new English stroke. At present using the sliding seat, Cook was mainly concerned about the combination of legs, dorsum, shoulders and arms to get the most constructive stroke. In April 1873, members of the Rowing Association of American Colleges elected Bob Cook as president. One of the decisions taken at the meeting was that professional person oarsmen should no longer be used every bit coaches at the universities.
At the aforementioned time, at Harvard, helm Richard Dana III had also been working difficult to improve the rowing style and not apply professionals as trainers. 'Dana's solution was non to accept a trip to England but to bring England to Cambridge [in USA] past revising an Oxford manual, to be chosen Principles of Rowing at Harvard,' according to Mendenhall. Writing this, Mendenhall was plain not aware of Dana III's travels to England and the accounts he gave in Hospitable England of visiting both Oxford and Cambridge.
Like his father, Dana 3 took a break in his law studies at Harvard to have an 'educational' trip. However, dissimilar his father, who had lived before the mast, Dana 3's trip was in comfort and style. Dana III left for England in July 1875.
The three outset diary entries in Hospitable England began with a daily weather report: July 14: Pelting!, July 15: RAIN again and July xvi: MORE pelting. The young American diary writer, who maybe did not expect to run across rain in the middle of summertime, then probably gave up on the atmospheric condition or it actually stopped raining, though I am inclined to believe in the sometime.
In Hospitable England – though nosotros must remember information technology is a diary and probably not written at first to be published – Dana Iii is a terrible namedropper. Every entry is a list of the people he visited or saw in England. His begetter, who had many friends in England, wrote him several letters of introduction to Lord That, Sir This and Lady Whathaveyou. Dana III wrote:
It is customary in England to leave a letter of the alphabet of introduction and one's card with an accost on it, without asking to see the person to whom one is introduced. This allows him to read the letter more at leisure and arrange for some time to come coming together, and peculiarly in the crowded life of London, works far improve and more satisfactory than trying to encounter strangers at the first call. July 15
Richard Henry Dana, Jr's, letters open all doors for his son in England. Or as Dana III wrote in his diary on July 29: Everywhere I get my begetter's name is a remarkably expert introduction. And in that location is barely any day when young Dana 3 is not invited for breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner or an after-dinner party. In his diary, he made notes on different English customs and later on French etiquette compared to American manners:
What struck me most in the details was the absenteeism of napkins at lunch, though it was what we [Americans] should call a heavy lunch, with soup, craven and game, vegetables, fruit, wines, etc. It seemed foreign that they should be then deadening in irresolute their old community, for, of course, a napkin is every bit necessary at a heavy tiffin of this as at a dinner. July 18
Dana III discussed other different community between the Englishmen and women and the Americans in this diary entry: should one eat a chicken bone with ane's hand (as in England) or cut off the meat on the bone with a pocketknife (as in the U.S.) and how to identify fork and knife? He wrote:
We [in the U.S.] usually identify the fork at the left and the knife at right angles to it at the top. Here they put the knife on the correct side of the plate, parallel to the fork (equally we take since come to do in the "States"), and when I inadvertently inverse it to the American fashion, out of habit, one of the waiters immediately took the knife and put it back. He was not going to tolerate any such outlandish custom in a great English language house. July eighteen
While in London, Dana III visited the Parliament where he easily recognised some of the leading members from pictures in Punch magazine, among them Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, whom Dana III heard at dinner parties was referred to as 'Dizzy'. It was also at lunches and dinners, Dana III'southward hosts, hostesses and their guests were eager to discuss the American Ceremonious War, which, in 1875, ended just ten years prior and was yet on many people minds. Dana III noticed that many of the English people he spoke to said that they had been on the Confederates side in the war, although the majority of them were confronting slavery. Other things that were brought up at these social occasions were the 1869 Alabama Claims, the so-chosen Greville Papers, and, in 1876, a more personal matter for the Dana family unit when President Ulysses S. Grant proposed Richard Henry Dana, Jr., as Minister (Ambassador) to Great Great britain, a nomination that was defeated in the Senate by Dana, Jr.'southward political enemies.
Hospitable England in the Seventies is otherwise a deceiving championship every bit Dana III not only travelled effectually in England simply as well in Scotland and visited the continent twice during his time abroad from the United states.
When Dana III visited Scotland, he called on Lord Immature, who was a Senator of the College of Justice, whom Dana Three had met in London and who had invited the American to his home in Edinburgh. It was after a visit in Lord Immature's home in 28 Morary Place that Dana III wrote down the first connexion to rowing in his diary during his stay in Britain. After he mentioned that Lord Young had 14 children, Dana III wrote: I met in that location a Miss Goldie, sister of the famous Cambridge University stroke oar [John Goldie], said to be the all-time there ever was in that University. Baronial 18
Dana III's visit to Scotland became news in the papers. He wrote in his diary on August 24, In the Dundee "Advertiser" was a notice of my visit to Dundee, speaking of me as the son of the popular writer of "Three Years Before the Mast" [sic] and the grandson of Dana, the American poet.
Dana Three came back to table manners in his diary when he visited the Duke and Duchess of Argyll at Inverary Castle in Scotland. Sitting downward to dinner in the evening was too the Duke and Duchess's son, Marquess of Lorne, and his wife, Princess Louise, who was the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria. Near Princess Louise, Dana III wrote: September 1She is good-sized, well developed, with a German cast of face up, and a slight German accent. Her r's are guttural, for example, instead of lingual. Her table manners are not at all German.
Of course, 1 can wonder if that meant her table manners were expert or bad – only it was meant equally a compliment! Writing about the Princess'southward pleasant manners, the post-obit solar day, Dana III wrote that he fell a bit in love with Princess Louise September two. Later, he wrote in his diary that the Princess was happily married to her hubby, John Campbell,Marquess of Lorne. They might have been happy at this time, four years after they got married, in 1871, simply their spousal relationship would become childless and unhappy.
And then Dana III went to Glasgow to take a train back to London. He was non impressed by the Scottish city:
What little I saw of Glasgow was depressing, indeed. The metropolis was dirty and smoky, and I never saw so many drunken people about as I did that evening, both men and women, boozer and expressionless boozer, sitting or lying on the sides of streets. September vi
From London, Dana Three took the afternoon railroad train to Honiton, Devonshire, to visit Lord and Lady Coleridge. Later supper and an evening chat with Lord Coleridge, who was the corking-nephew of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Dana Three was shown to his room. He went to bed but woke up in the middle of the night with a feeling that he was non alone in the room. He opened his eyes and could clearly see a silhouette by the dressing tabular array. He wrote:
I listen attentively, and in a moment I hear a grating sound as of a chair moved along the carpeting. […] I endeavour to pretend I am asleep, but my heart is pounding like a triphammer and my jiff comes and goes so fast so noisily that I know I am betraying myself. I can't whatsoever longer feign sleep, and I fright the burglar or insane person or whoever information technology may be that is in the room will rush on me. [Dana III jumps out of bed, found some matches, breaks two, but managed to light the 3rd one] then phone call, "Now, sir!" expecting to see earlier me at to the lowest degree a stalwart burglar, but to my anaesthesia and horror the room is empty. September 7
Dana 3 examined the room, but no ane was there. He even found the door locked from the inside. Dana III did not remember that he had locked the door. Just then he heard a canis familiaris in the garden baying and growling. Was it the ghost of the toothless mastiff of Coleridge'due south "Christabel," answering the midnight clock with "Sixteen brusk howls non overloud"? September seven Had Dana Three had a ghost in his room?
A few days later, Dana III went on a walk with Bernard Coleridge, Lord Coleridge eldest son, who had graduated from Oxford that yr. Dana III wrote:
[W]e found a common topic in rowing, for he was captain of his college boat and I helm and stroke of the Harvard University crew; he was too light to brand the Oxford Varsity boat. The sliding seats had only recently been adopted in the great races, and he and I talked over the development of this stroke which has practically been the same at both Oxford and Harvard. Harvard first used the slides in 1872 and Oxford in 1873. September x
When it came to the dates on the sliding seat, Dana III was correct. However, Yale used a sliding seat of sorts already in the American Boat Race in 1870, and both Oxford and Cambridge used sliding seats in the 1873 Gunkhole Race. (Amongst the gunkhole clubs at Oxford, Pembroke Higher BC was the outset club to use the sliding seat, in the Fours in 1872.)
Dana 3 left England on 25 September 1875 and travelled to Paris, Rome, Athens, Cairo and Constantinople. While in France, he got an outing in Marseilles. Dana 3 wrote:
[…] Took a row with an former boatsman about the harbor. I found it hard to understand him, for he spoke provincial French and used many nautical terms […] Dec 16
Dana Three was back in England on 16 May 1876 and arrived at Oxford 2 days later on.
Part Two volition continue tomorrow with Richard Henry Dana 3's days in Oxford.
Source: https://heartheboatsing.com/2020/11/11/richard-henry-dana-iii-an-american-oarsman-in-england-part-i/
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