In the early twenties of the nineteenth century, boys who were mere children, hardly out of petticoats, were sent to Eton in order that they might gradually work their way up and get to King’s. Oppidans also were then very young, a child aged four and a half being admitted in 1820. At that time a boy could rise to the top of the school merely by seniority, due importance not being attached to hard work and sound scholarship. The “trials” were then more or less nominal, but the curious thing is, that in spite of all this Eton produced some very fine classical scholars, while the vast majority of the boys were better acquainted with Latin and Greek than their successors who went to Eton when a more exacting curriculum came into force. In 1827 there were no examinations after the Fifth Form was reached, nor any distinction attainable except that of being sent up “for good,” the reward for which then was a sovereign, and every third time, a book.
When a master came across some peculiarly good set of verses he would send them up to the Headmaster “for good”; in due course the writer would be called up by the Head, who would compliment him and read out the lines to the assembled boys in Upper School. A guinea was afterwards given to the boy by his dame. Sending up “for good” seems now on the increase, but in my own school-days one seldom heard of any one achieving such a distinction, whilst sending up “for play” was rarer still. In the past, getting into Sixth Form did not change an Eton boy’s life nearly so much as it does to-day. True, he had his seat in the stalls in chapel, and came into church later than any one else except the Provost and Fellows; in Upper School on certain public occasions, he had also the honour of making speeches. Beyond this, however, and the release from shirking the masters, his position was in no wise altered or improved.
Fifty years ago Eton in respect to school work somewhat resembled an oriental state in which the first symptoms of modernisation are beginning to appear. In the main the old classical traditions commanded a rigid adherence, boys with a totally insufficient knowledge of Greek being by a polite fiction supposed to be able to construe Homer with ease, whilst dunces who could not write a sentence in correct English were every week obliged to show up a copy of Latin verses. The wonder is how all this was ever done at all, but done it was; and, considering the vast ignorance of the majority, who frankly regarded the whole thing with a sort of good-humoured contempt, done fairly well. Perhaps this was in no small degree owing to the fact that in almost every house there was some easy-going clever boy who, having received a good grounding at a private school, was able and ready to help his less gifted schoolfellows.
MAP MAKING
One of the great features of school work was the execution of a map once every week, illustrating various countries as they were in classical times. Occasionally boys with a turn for drawing would decorate the margins of their maps with some fanciful device. As a rule, the masters extended a good-humoured toleration to this practice, which often bore some reference to current events. At the time when a coming prize-fight was exciting great interest in sporting circles, a boy decorated the top of his map with portraits of the two fistic heroes of the day. This, however, was little appreciated by his master. A more clever form of decoration was the picture of an eight-oar manned by masters and steered by Dr. Keate which a clever pupil of the Doctor drew in the middle of the Mediterranean with Gens inimica mihi Tyrrhenum navigat aequor inscribed beneath the boat. All the maps were shown up on the same day, when “Map Morning,” as it was called, filled the school yard.
The old system of sending mere children to Eton lasted up to about half a century ago. In 1857 boys went still there as young as nine or ten, nor was it uncommon to see children of seven or eight in the Lower School. Many stayed at Eton till they were 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. In the school list for Election, 1834, Lower School has shrunk to a very small number. The first part of it, Third Form, contains but three boys; the second division, seven. “Sense” and “Nonsense,” which come next, have but six between them; there is no one in Second Form, and in First Form only two.
Up to the early ’sixties of the last century, certain divisions of Third Form retained some quaint old titles—the first sections being called Upper Greek, Lower Greek, “Sense” and “Nonsense.” Lower Remove, Upper and Lower Remove in the Second Form and First Form completed the tail-end of the school. “Sense” and “Nonsense,” it should be added, received their quaint titles because boys in the latter were doomed to a sort of “poetical purgatory,” and only wrote “nonsense” verses; that is, Latin compositions which scanned as verse, but contained no ideas; in which respect the effusions in question resembled the productions of some living bards.
LOWER SCHOOL
When Mr. John Hawtrey was an Eton master, Lower School, somewhat altering its constitution, became larger again; the boys in it, mostly very young, being all together in his house at the corner of Keate’s Lane, where he kept what was practically a private school apart. His boys were not allowed the same amount of liberty as those in other houses: they took breakfast and tea in common, and generally played their games in Mr. Hawtrey’s private field. On reaching the Upper School they usually went to other houses.
The curriculum of Lower School was entirely different from that followed by the Upper Forms. In “Nonsense” the boys, besides being taught to write nonsense verses, grappled with intricacies of the old “Eton Latin Grammar.” After this they were promoted to “Sense,” when the nonsense verses were discarded; Lower Greek and Upper Greek did very elementary work.