The story of the blues
QUESTION What is a university blue?
Sporting colours in the form of a tie or blazer are awarded to members of a university or school who have excelled in a sport. Most, but not all, university colours are blue. However, Bristol University awards red and trinity College Dublin uses pink.
the awarding of blues dates from the Boat race, first held at Henley-uponthames on June 10, 1829. Jackson’s oxford Journal for June 13, 1829, describes: ‘the oxford crew appeared in their blue check dress, the Cambridge in white with pink wristbands.’
it is thought the dark blue of oxford was adopted from the coats of the royal Horseguards, nicknamed the oxford Blues, now better known as the Blues.
in the first Boat race, hot favourites Cambridge were roundly beaten by oxford. the London review reported: ‘Before the race, Henley swarmed with pink and blue favours, after it pink was scarcely seen. the Cambridge men, i might say, entirely withdrew their colours and appeared unmarked.’
Cambridge dropped the unfortunate colour and at the second boat race, held in London in 1836, attached a pale blue ribbon to their shirts. Cambridge won, thus establishing the two shades of blue for the universities.
the custom of wearing and awarding blues spread from rowing to other sports contested by the two universities and then to other institutions.
Loren Shepherd, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warks.
QUESTION Did Lou Reed borrow the refrain ‘Goodnight ladies, ladies goodnight’ from a T. S. Eliot poem? t. S. ELiot’S 1922 poem the Waste Land was a cultural phenomenon. it wrenched poetry into the modern world and its impact was equivalent to James Joyce’s Ulysses on the novel and picasso’s on the art world.
the Waste Land was beloved of English literature students who were inspired by its visceral language. they included a young Lou reed, who majored in English at Syracuse University in new York.
the key figure at Syracuse for reed was his English professor, Delmore Schwartz. A fine modernist poet in his own right, he was profoundly influenced by Eliot and wrote the 1945 essay t.S. Eliot As the international Hero.
reed was well versed in the works of Eliot. He borrowed from the 1925 poem the Hollow Men, which ends: ‘This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.’
reed’s memorable lines: ‘Between thought and expression/Lies a lifetime’, from his Velvet Underground song Some Kind of Love, paraphrases Eliot: ‘Between the idea.
And the reality; Between the motion. And the act.
Falls the Shadow.’
Likewise, reed’s goodnight Ladies borrows from the ending to A game of Chess, the second act of the Waste Land. there are snippets from an unnamed woman discussing Lil and her husband Albert, her bad teeth, his return from the war and a dinner of celebration. then it’s time to go: ‘Goodnight Bill. Goodnight Lou. Goodnight May. Goodnight. Ta Ta. Goodnight.’
it sounds like an episode of Coronation Street. But then the barman plaintively says: ‘Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.’
this comes directly from Shakespeare’s Hamlet when a deranged ophelia, imagining herself queen, calls for her coach and says farewell:
‘Come my coach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night.’
Lou reed’s goodnight Ladies, the song that closes his 1972 transformer album, is about fading beauty and clearly borrows from Eliot and Shakespeare. John Ross, Ullapool, Ross-shire.