3-052-489 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

At the Boat-Race, 1880. 'Blue Belles; An Early Breakfast; The Early Bird...The yearly contest on the Thames between the two University Club picked crews of Oxford and Cambridge eight-oars will be decided about eight o'clock in the morning of the Saturday upon which this Number of our Journal is published...[We present] Sketches of some of the groups of spectators who are likely to be assembled, if it be tolerably fine weather, along the suburban banks of the river from Putney to Mortlake. Here are seen the "Dark Blues" and the "Light Blues," mustering in equal force of a holiday multitude, especially of the fair sex, whom gallantry would grace alike with the designation of "Blue Belles;"...Here is the charming young lady who has her own personal reasons for wishing success to Oxford; and the not less admirable maiden, a flower of a superior family, who prefers Cambridge from motives well known to all her female friends. The brother or cousin of one or the other elegant girl is looking out with a field- glass to see if the boats are coming...Every Londoner...has had an opportunity of witnessing the incidents here delineated in the past years of these annual Saturnalia, which may be regarded as the Aquatic Derby Day on the banks of the Thames'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.