William Dudley Ward ('C.U.B.C.')

Leslie Ward ('Spy') presents William Dudley Ward, President of the Cambridge University Boat Club, as Men of the Day No. 777. The full-length chromolithograph shows a lean young man in profile, dressed in cream rowing kit — short-sleeved shirt with light-blue collar and cuff trim, white shorts, pale-blue socks, and brown lace-up shoes — hands tucked behind his back with collegiate ease. The caption reads simply C.U.B.C. The plate carries no ethnic caricature; Ward is rendered as the idealised, well-muscled English gentleman-athlete. The politics are those of Oxbridge rowing culture at its social peak: the Boat Race was a national spectacle, and its club presidents were celebrated public figures worth satirising in a society weekly.