The Simple Fact.
Princely and Humble Lycéens.
Education of the Orleans Princes.
In England the choice of school and University has an immense influence on a boy’s future social position. Educate him at a grammar school or send him to Eton and Oxford, the difference to his future rank will be enormous. If an English mother has a son at Eton she is sure to let you know. All English people associate the idea of class distinctions with the different English schools, and they have an almost insuperable difficulty in realising the condition of things in France, where there is neither an Eton nor an Oxford, nor anything in the least degree resembling them from the social point of view. In this way the English are always wrong about the French lycées, because they begin by imagining the English class distinctions. The prevalent English idea about them is that they are low and cheap places. One English writer accepted it as evidence of the very humble origin of a distinguished Frenchman that he had been educated in a lycée. He could not realise the simple fact that the lycées have nothing to do with social rank either one way or the other. My brother-in-law was educated at a lycée, and one of his ordinary class-fellows was a prince who is now actually reigning; other class-fellows may have been sons of small shopkeepers or poor clerks. Older Frenchmen are still living who were class-fellows of the Orleans princes at the lycée Henri IV. The princes worked like the others, and it was only thought a proof of their father’s good sense that he sent his boys to one of the best schools in the town where he lived, though he happened to be King of the French. It was good for them, but it made no difference to the others, nor to the school. King Milan of Servia was afterwards educated at the same lycée.
Views of the Reactionary Aristocracy.
Religious and Political Reasons.
A boy gains no rank, and loses none, by being at a French lycée. It is true that the reactionary aristocracy looks upon the lycées with disfavour, but that is not because they are cheap,[14] or because some of the pupils are poor, for the aristocracy is willing to send its children to priestly seminaries, which are still cheaper, and where most of the pupils are poorer. The reasons are not social, but religious and political. The lycées have lay masters, the seminaries have priests; the lycées are animated with a republican spirit, the seminaries are royalist. Everything has a political colour in France. When a young noble has not been to a seminary he is educated on its principles by a clerical tutor at home, or else in some Jesuit school abroad.
Education itself gives little Position in France.
Revival of the Middle-age Idea.
The Brilliant Nobility.