Seven Years at Eton, 1857-1864

Front matter

Google to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

Preface To The Third Edition

I HAVE to thank the great many old Etonians who have written to me oflfering recollections of their own for addition to this volume. It has been impossible for me to reply to all these kind letters, or to avail myself in every case of the interesting matter they contained. Corrections — they were few — ^have been attended to, and in certain instances I have published facts or opinions of an exceptionally noticeable character. The most important of these addenda wijl be found at the end of Chapter xxviii., and I beg to call attention to it, because it furnishes a very plain vindication of the standard of scholarship that existed at Eton during the last year of Dr. Goodford's head-mastership, just before the inquiries of the Royal Commission on Public Schools.

The list of the sixty-five boys who were in Dr. Goodford*s

division at Christmas 1861, with a record of the honours they

won in University and other examinations, will assuredly

challenge comparison with any similar list that could be issued

from no matter what other Public School. It is a list which

will place Dr. Goodford, as a Head-Master, very high in the

estimation of everybody who reads it.

J. B.-R.

London^ April, 1883,

JkLP wa^^mm

CONTENTS,

CHAP.

)l

1. "HOS EGO VERSICULOS FECI . . .

II. THE NEW FELLOW

III. IN NONSENSE AND SENSE

lY. MY FAGhMASTER AND MESSMATES

V. BROWN, WEBBER, BARNES, LEVI, ^'SFANKIE

VI. TUTORS AND DAMES ..,

VII. "crab" and "drab" — ^JUMPING

VIII. UNDER THE ROD ...

IX. A MILL AT THE GAS-WORKS

X. CUCKOO WEIR AND ACROPOLIS ...

XI. CHECK NIGHTS — PULLING— SCULLING

XII. THE TOGATI, OR "TUGS"

XIII. DR. GOODPORD — SCHOOL DISCIPLINE

XIV. CRESCIT AMOR NUMMI

XV. "CROPPIb" FOOTBALL

XVI. IN FOURTH FORM

XVII. GOING FOR " EXCUSES " ...

XVIII.

THE PUG •* RUNAWAYS — BULLYING pAoa 1

ui

123 136 147 158 169 186

CONTENTS,

CHA.P.

XIX. IN MR. birch's FORM

XX. THE LAST OPPIDAN DINNER

XXI. ANNUS MIRABILI8 ...

XXII. " DRY BOBBING " — FIFTH FORM " TRIALS

XXIII. IN CHAPEL

XXIV. OUR ROOMS

XXV. COLLEGE " CADS "

XXVI. THE SHOPS UP TOWN

XXVII, THE ETON R. V. C.

XXVIir. PROVOST HAWTREY — DR. BALSTON

XXIX. ETON V. HARROW — LONG GLASS ..

XXX. LEARNING EXTRAS

XXXL THE QUEEN AND COURT ...

XXXII. THE PRINCE OF WALBS'S WEDDING

XXXIII. DISTINGUISHED ETONIANS

xxxiv. MR. Gladstone's schooldays .

SEVEN YEAES AT ETOK

CHAPTER I. "hos ego versiculos feci ..."

The other day being at Eton, and calling in for a cigar at a tobacconist's in the High Street, I came there upon a copy of verses which I had written years before whilst a boy at the school.

The subject of the verses w^as ' Peace ' ; the metre elegiac, and as a matter of course the poem began with ten verses about the horrors of war. Had the ode been on ' War,' the first ten verses would have celebrated the blessings of peace. As I read the queer jumble of dactyls and spondees which had once passed muster for versification, the recollection of how I used to do my Latin verses came upon me with a sense of sudden humour which was irresistible.

B

Sweet verses, there was so much oijam in them ! This old joke was my tutor's —

" What, n^ jam to-day ? " he once said astonished, ' after reading through half-a-dozen verses without finding my favourite adverb in it.

" There's jam-jam further on," I answered, too innocent then to understand the sarcasm.

Ingenious verses, doubtless, which made singular, if not entertaining, prose when translated word for word into English. Here is a pentameter from my effusion on ' Peace ' : —

Which means literally —

" The lover breaks his breast in a grassy field."

But, as you may suppose, my' meaning at the time I wrote was finer than this. I was alluding to the grief of a lover at being suddenly called away by the martial blast of the trumpet ; and I wanted to show him sinking down dejected on the grass of the meadow where he and his lady-love last exchanged tender vows. Here evidently was the germ of a great idea; but dejection, sinking down, exchange of vows, etc., would not have fitted into the pentameter, so I proceeded after the manner of the man who wrote the epitaph on — * John Bun killed by a gun.' The deceased's real name was Wood.

*'nOS EGO VERSICUL08 FECI:'

" But that wouldn't rhyme, So I thought Bun should."

I condemned my lover to death, because to break bis breast was so much easier than to wring his heart — cor being an inconvenieut monosyllable.

The best of it is, the above verse had been passed by my tutor without any correction. Homer sometimes nodded, and I am afraid poor Mr. Eliot often did so over the compositions of his pupils. He used to have occasional outbursts of indiguation at the sight of false quantities, but he was largely tolerant as to the sense of our verses so long as they would scan. I do not think he would have said much to the Harrow boy who rendered —

" To point a moral or adorn a tale,"

as

Once he told me that I used the term purpurea que ro8(B too often, but this was only because these three words constituted half a pentameter, and the too frequent use of them on my part was a palpable shirking of the labour of composition. For the same reason he ended by protesting against two sweet verses descriptive of a garden, which I used to deposit on his desk about four times every half year until checked. They were convenient verses, for they would apply to the flowers on a grave, to

B 2 the bouquet in a lady's hand, or to the posey in a drawing-room vase, as well as to the bed in a garden. In case some Eton fellow of to-day would like m try his luck with them, here they are at his service : —

It may occur to the connoisseur in versification that this last couplet exhibits more inspiration than the verse about the lover who broke his breast in a grassy field ; but I suspect the flowery couplet was turned off by a fluke, for I was in the Lower Fifth Form when I did the ode on * Peace,' and the pentameter I have quoted may be taken as a very fair specimen of my scholarship at the age of fifteen.

Mrs. Fraser, the tobacconist, used to buy up old

... -*

copies of themes and verses from the school-servants to make her * screws' with, and that is how by some accident that copy of mine has survived to this day. I was very glad to get it, for it set me thinking on all the years which I spent at school, enjoying myself so much, and learning so little, till at last, like many others, who, instead of bottling up their ideas for home consumption, feel impelled to pour them into the public ear, I thought I would write this book. I will not say, in the words of a

*'n08 EGO VERSICULOS FECI:* newspaper prospectus, that the. need for it has been generally felt, but I will say that I have thought it would please me to write it.

I propose to talk of Eton as it was when I was a boy there, of some of my schoolfellows, of our masters, our sports, adventures, troubles, and the rest. If any moral be derivable from what I write as to the results of public school education in general, and of Eton education in particular, I will leave the reader to draw it for himself. I will be no moralist : —

Let this be a holiday book — its chapters like the confetti which are flung from the balconies of Roman houses at Carnival time.

CHAPTER 11.

THE NEW FELLOW.

I ENTERED Eton at the beginning of the Football Half, or Michaelmas Term, 1857. I was ten years old. Boys no longer go to Eton so young ; but in those days it was not uncommon to see boys of seven and eight in the Lower School. Fellows sometimes left the School at eighteen, after having worked their way up from the First Form to Doctor's Division, at the rate of two removes a year — a process which, including three years' inevitable stoppage in Upper Fifth, required more than ten years to accomplish.

The sample already given of my attainments when I was in the Fifth will prepare the reader for the announcement, that I was placed as low down in the School as was possible. Had there been a lower place than that of lag in the First Form I should have been put into it. I almost wonder that a special division was not created for

THE NEW FELLOW.

my benefit, when it was discovered how strange was my knowledge of Latin. I had been taught its rudiments at home by an Irish seminarist, who had been brought up in France, and who held, that we in this country ought to pronounce the dead languages as they were presumably articulated when they were living tongues. My First Form master was the Rev. Charles Tickell Procter, now vicar of Richmond, who had a close-cropped head and a pale face like a mediseval monk. Even he, though little addicted to mirth, broke into a laugh when he heard me read my first line out of the Delectus in a chirping, Galiico-Irish accent. Being a sensitive boy, I hesitated for some time after that to commit myself to plain pronunciation, but used to roll my worda on the tongue as if they were chips of fried potatoes which burnt me.

The first days at Eton are among the delights of life which can never be forgotten. The fly which drove me up to my tutor's house, near Barnes Pool Bridge, on a soft sunny afternoon in September, brought me to a boy's paradise. No school has so many joyful surprises in store for the new-comer. Whether emancipated from the bondage of a private school, or from the gentle restraints of maternal government at home, the boy who comes to Eton feels for the first time what it is to be free.

He also feels the dignity of donning that symbol of manhood — a tall hat. To this day when buying a new hat, the smell of the band-box, and the rustling of the silk paper, as it is being unpinned from the crown, recall that almost startling sense of promotion which was experienced when assuming a head-dress which added a cubit to my stature. But the hat was only one of the many new possessions which made me proud* What a grand thing it was to have a room to myself, freshly furnished, for every new fellow was treated to a new bureau, carpet, table-cloth, and to a cupboard full of new crockery, Britannia metal tea-pot, etc. To overhaul these treasures with a knowledge that they were your own, to see in your cupboard the weekly ration of tea and sugar (which appeared inexhaustible) entirely at your own disposal, and to be told by the boys' maid that you were to make your ow^n tea and breakfast in your own room, was certainly the next best thing to wearing a silk hat. The first time I laid my cloth and sat down to a solitary meal, after having carried a kettle up three flights of stairs to make tea, the sense of my own importance caused me to eat with more solemnity than a shy man at a public banquet where he is to make his maiden speech. I was not sorry though when, two or three days later, a couple of Fourth

VM^P^^^M^iV

Form boys, who messed in the room next to mine, asked me to join their table.

I boarded at the house of a tutor, the Rev. W. L. Eliot, who was senior master in the Lower School, but who had only two or three Lower School pupils in his house. The Lower School was then a flourishing institution, comprising more than a hundred boys, and having four masters besides the lower master, who, at the time of which I am writing, was the Rev. W. A* Carter.

Most of the Lower School fellows boarded with the Rev. John Hawtrey, whose house at the corner of Keate's Lane (now Mr. Mozley's) was managed much like a private school. Mr. Hawtrey had a special ability for ruling small boys, and he was well assisted by his gifted wife, and by his sister-in-law. Miss Procter. Mr. John Hawtrey's boys were not allowed the same amount of liberty as those in other houses : they took breakfast and tea all together, and in play-time generally went to Mr. Hawtrey's private field" instead of loafing about the streets.

The field in question is now attached to Mr. Warre's house, which Mr. John Hawtrey himself built in 1862, and whither he removed with his pupils from Keate's Lane. Here he remained until he left Eton, to set up at Slough a school of his own, which has become very much like what the Lower School of Eton used to be.

It was a great advantage to Lower School boys to begin their Eton career at Mr. John Hawtrey's, and I have always regretted that I did not do so. Mr. John Hawtrey was not only a kind-hearted, lovable man, who understood boys and knew how to make himself popular with them; but he was firm, and went on the principle that whatever boys did, whether work or play, should be done with their might All his boys used to turn out well ; and when on reaching the Upper School they migrated to other houses, they always carried with them a good grounding of knowledge, besides steadiness of character. I am not saying that my own tutor was less amiable, or less of a scholar than Mr. John Hawtrey : he was indeed a man of the sweetest disposition, and as a scholar equal to the best ; but he was not strict, and suffered the smallest boys in his house to do pretty much as they pleased, like the big ones. The work of the Lower School was so different to that of the Upper, that Lower School boys always got on better when they had tutors who took no Upper School pupils. Lower School boys also ran some danger of contracting early bad habits when they were thrown too young into the society of much older boys living under an easy tutor.

Mr. Eliot was such a thorough gentleman, however, and he was so well liked by his pupils, that he exercised influence over them unconsciously : the fear of paining him was more potent to restrain evil-doers than the dread of punishment was, in many cases, elsewhere. There was no bullying in his house ; but in this respect Eliot's was no exception to a rule which had become universal at Eton for some time before I went to the school. We used to hear of the old times when new fellows were "licked into shape," but I saw nothing of them, and found from the first that any attempt to take advantage of a new fellow, whether by making him fag, by imposing on his credulity, or by teasing him, was regarded with disfavour. On the day after my arrival the captain of the house informed me that I would be exempted from fagging for a fortnight, but that after that time I should be the fag of Hall, a fellow whd was in the " Boats," and a " swell " generally. Hall, who was present, confirmed the information with a pleasant nod, and told a fellow who was to be my co-fag to take care of me for the present. By this he meant that the other was to initiate ine into all the ways of the school.

Freshmen, griffins, green hands, jolly raws, or by whatever name you may call those who are entering into a new social circle, are generally considered as subjects for fair amusement, but the Eton custom of being kind to new fellows was so thoroughly a tradition of the place that it deserves mention. The first thing to do with a new fellow was to correct the imperfections of his dress ; and this was done with anxious alacrity. The new boy would come with a coloured cravat tied in a bow, a stickup collar, or a brown jacket with gold buttons. I even remember one who for a brief calm hour cruised about College in a white beaver hat with long hairs, every bristle of which stood up on end at the least breath of wind. Boys often came strangely attired, because their fathers who had been to Eton had retained vague recollections of the latitude that existed about costume in the days of Montem, when the scarlet tail coats worn by the Fifth Form boys, and the blue jackets with white ducks donned by the Lower ones, were sported afterwards throughout the summer-half till used up. Even now odd mistakes are made about Eton attire. I lately saw in Punch some drawings in which Eton fellows were introduced wearing jackets with neckties in a bow. What was F. C. Burnand about when he forgot that the black cravat of a boy in jackets had to be tied in a sailor's knot, while the white one of a boy in coats or tails was equally bound to take the shape of a bow ? These laws were as unalterable as the form of letters in the alphabet.

I was much pestered during my first few days by being continually asked —

" Who's your tutor 1 who's your dame 1 What s your form 1 and what's your name 1 "

I resented the right of boys smaller than myself to evince so much curiosity about me ; but was told that a new fellow must submit to be. catechised. I was also informed that although I must salute my tutor when I met him in public, it was superfluous courtesy to allude to him as Mr. The only other initiatory rite that I can remember was the pannelling of one's bureau. On the evening of the day when my fortnight's exemption from fagging expired, three lower boys marched solemnly into my room with three pokers, and explained that they must " spoil my bureau's face " unless I strongly objected. No objection being offered three bangs with a poker made as many splits in the panels of the upper or cupboard part of the bureau. This done my three friends retired after congratulating me upon being no longer a blind puppy. They had been very particular indeed in asking me whether I minded the operation, and were anxious when it was over to hear me repeat that I had been an entirely consenting party.

This laudable consideration for the feelings of new fellows was illustrated in rather a striking way on a ludicrous occasion during my first-half, when a very green hand who stammered was hoaxed into asking the head master to grant a half-holiday to the whole school in honour of his birthday. Dr. Goodford stared at the applicant to assure himself as to whether he was a natural zany or only playing the part of one; but before he had made up hia mind on this point, the stammerer followed up his first request by begging that " g — g — ginger wine " might be served oat to all the boys in his house, and " p — p — ^put down to my f — f — father's account, please, sir."

Although this incident made the wliole school, masters included, merry for a day and a night, the boy who had greened the new fellow into making such a phenomenal exhibition of himself was told that what he had done was an "awful chouse''; and the whole weight of his £ag-master's boot was added to this rebuke to carry it home more forcibly to his better feelings.

7.V NONSENSE AND SENSE, 15

Chapter III. In Nonsense And Sense

When I had been in his division about a fortnight, Mr. Procter said to me :

*' You have already fallen into Eton ways, I see."

" Yes, sir, thank you," I answered cheerfully.

*^I mean that you are already idling," continued Mr. Procter, shaking his forefinger. " How do you construe JS^o sum piffer ? "

" Mr, Procter is idle,'' I replied readily, and with a beaming face, for at home I had always thought it capital fun to make a point against my Irish tutor.

The joke fell flat, however, for the other fellows in the division were too stupefied at my audacity to laugh ; and Mr. Procter gravely ordered me to write out fifty times a correct version of the sentence he had propounded by next school. At the same time he announced that he was going to promote me to Mr. Hardisty's division.

" I have spoken to Mr. Carter about you, and he thinks that you can do the work of nonsense."

I thus got two steps of promotion at once. I had imagined myself to be lag of the school, and I suddenly found myself hoisted into the Fourth Division of the Third Form. My next neighbour nudged me and whispered how lucky I was. *' Hardisty is the j oiliest master in the school, and you needn't do a stitch of work under him."

"Jolly" in our school language did not mean jovial. Mr. Hardisty had a placid face overspread with serenity. He was handsome and dignified, patient as a lady's doctor, and so afiable that he spoke to the smallest boys as if they were grown men, and was the only master who lifted his hat to acknowledge salutes. It was in his form that boys took their first steps up the slopes of Parnassus. They were taught to write nonsense verses — a habit which was apt to cling to them till they left the school, and gave up writing verses altogether.

When not piecing dactyls and spondees together, we droned through the pages of the Eton Latin grammar. Oh, most foggy of books, in which the study of the simplest among languages was so obscured as to become mysterious and hard. I believe that in the early days of the school, when it was a place for poor scholars, the priests who

IN NONSENSE AND SENSE. 17 taught in this very Lower School out of horn books, t-alking Latin to their pupils, and making them answer in the same tongue, conveyed knowledge more rapidly, and in a more solid fashion, than that in which we got it. But Mr. Hardisty did his best with the system then existent.

As he was an elegant scholar, his work must have been about as agreeable to him as the teaching of scales to boys having no ears for music would be to a firstrate musician. He used sometimes to say pathetically, "Can you take no interest in what you are learning?" but, in truth, we learnt very little, beyond maundering by rote Latin rules as many as were wanted for the day's lessons ; and from day to day we forgot what we had committed to our tongues' tips the day before.

The Lower School room, in which we took our lessons, is the original school of Eton — centuries old. It has a decayed and grimy look, but is picturesque in a measure not to be imagined by those who have never seen it. The ceiling is supported by heavy oaken arches and columns, which were erected so far back as the provostship of Sir Henry Wotton, and which are all cracked with age. Once upon a time "choicely-drawn pictures of the most famous poets, historians, and orators of antiquity," were hung from these pillars by way of inducing the boys to take an intelligent interest in their lessons.^ But this was long before my day. I have sometimes amused myself by poking a penknife into the deep chinks of the })illars, and spearing out bits of paper that had been thrust in there by boys of former generations long gone. Once I extracted the fragment of a play bill issued by a strolling troupe who performed at Windsor Fair in 1769.

Another of my amusements was to scoop out from the rough iron candlesticks clamped to the pillars deposits of wax that had remained there since the days when the room was lighted by candles. It was quite in accordance with Eton ways that, on the introduction of gas, the old servant who swept the school-room should have thought it was no part of his duty to give the candlesticks a cleaning ; so years afterwards a great deal of fine soft yellow wax fell to my spoil, and, at the suggestion of a fellow of numismatic turn, he and I struck off some impressions from little round blocks of wood, on which we had carved the dates of events important in our school annals. : These wax medals we stuffed into some of the

^ H. C. Maxwell Lvte*s * History of Eton ' (published by Mac- Biillan). This learned and entertaining book should be read by all Etonians ; it is full of information, most varied and interesting.

J

IN NONSENSE AND SENSE. 19

higher crevices of the pillars, as far out of ordinaryreach as we could, and there they will perhaps be found some day, when the pillars meet with the fate of all things, and get disestablished.

Through the diamond panes of the casement, which stood in deep recesses and were protected outside by thick wire nettings, for fear of fives' balls, very little light filtered into the Lower School. On murky winter days the masses of old oak made it look dark as a church vault, and to juvenile delinquents expecting punishment, most depressing. In the sunniest summer weather it never had the same cheerful appearance as the handsome Upper School, where scarlet curtains, gilt chandeliers, and the marble busts ranged all round the walls, were effectively shown off by two rows ©f broad lofty windows. Another reason which serves to impress the Lower School on my mind as a dismal place is, that the lessons there were never got through — even in Mr. Hardisty's division — so pleasantly, that is, so idly, as in the Upper. The average number of fellows in an Upper School division ranged from sixty to seventy-five, but in the Lower School there were five masters for about a hundred and ten boys, and this gave an average of no more than twenty-two to each form. Such numbers being within a masters easy control, evoiy boy

C 2 received an amount of individual attention which was more beneficial to him than pleasing.

I did not make a long stay in Mr. Hardisty's division. Having handed in three consecutive copies of Nonsense verses, in which there was no mistake, I was declared fit for Sense. Thereupon the captain of Lower School claimed an old privilege, and asked that the Lower School might have a playat-four, in consideration of my having obtained two removes in the same half. Mr. Carter resisted the claim on the ground that, being a new boy, I had not been fairly " placed," till I got into Nonsense ; but he good-naturedly excused me from attending five-o'clock school on the day of my promotion, and my tutor gave me a copy of Scott's Poems as a prize. A question arose whether I was not also entitled to get half-a-crown from the Lower master, and I believe some precedents were consulted to ascertain what was the law on the subject. In the end Mr. Hardisty gave me the money, and a shilling of it was at once claimed by the Lower School praepostor, as his fee for altering my place in his list.

I had not got my promotion by merit, but merely because I found my work too easy. I was equally fortunate in the Mathematical School, where in my first half I obtained a great number

7.V NONSENSE AND SENSE. 21

of good marks. Unfortunately I got them as M.P/s in those days carried their seats — by bribery.

That best of men, Mr. Stephen Hawtrey, who was Head-Master in the Mathematical School, used to employ some lads from his St. Mark's School at Windsor to act as teachers for us boys of the Lower School, and these youngsters were not always proof against gifts of pence, fives' balls, old novels, and sixpenny lead pencils. I say pencils because the particular lad in whose class I was seemed to have a passion for these instruments. In return for two or three screw pencils (which were less common then than they are now) he did all my sums in school for nie on the sly. Fellows more conscientious or less open-handed were continually suflFering tribulation from the other teachers, and especially from one — a big-bearded Prussian, who was usher at St. Mark's School, and whose voice used to twang odiously under the dome of the Kound School, crying, ^*I vill stand no 'ombogs from any boy. If you do your zoms you shall go to blay, if not you shall not go to blay, and you shall take away bonishment zoms to do out of zgool. Peach, some bonishment zoms."