Robert Egerton Swartwout (July 2, 1905 â June 2, 1951) was an American-born English cartoonist, coxswain, and writer, including poet.
He was the only son of American architect Egerton Swartwout and British-born Geraldine Davenport Swartwout. He drew from his rowing experience to produce a locked-room mystery about The Boat Race and many poems.
Swartwout rowed and coxed for Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts, from which he graduated on June 13, 1924. While attending Trinity College, Cambridge, he became the first American to cox Cambridge University Boat Club to victory in The Boat Race 1930 over Oxford. Swartwout was 5' 6", weighed , and possessed a powerful bass voice.
At Trinity College, Swartwout earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1928, followed by a master's degree in literature in 1931. That same year, he was president of the Cambridge University Liberal Club; his devotion to David Lloyd George was such that he later became, according to the historian Eric Hobsbawm, a Welsh nationalist.
Swartwout was also a member and debater with the Cambridge Union Society. Under the pen name R. E. Swartwout, he contributed to Granta and Punch, as well as crosswords for The Spectator. He wrote a short Holmesian piece entitled "The Omnibus Murder" and wrote four books:
In 1931, Swartwout wrote the introduction to Sir William Schwenck Gilbert: A Topsy Turvy Adventure, by Townley Searle, London: Alexander-Ouseley, Ltd., 1931.
Robert Swartwout became a British subject on June 9, 1933.
Swartwout died unmarried in Hartismere Hospital, Eye, Suffolk, England on June 6, 1951, of esophageal cancer complicated by pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of 45. He was buried in Fenn Ditton Cemetery on June 12, 1951.