In those days it had already assimilated some striking features of that curious alliance of licensed mendicity, brigandage, and gaiety—the modern charity bazaar. Of its ancient character as a semi-religious festival nothing remained, and it had become a collection for the benefit of the Captain of the Collegers who might have been fortunate enough to obtain a vacancy at King’s College, Cambridge.
“MONTEM-SURE”
The proceedings in College which heralded the approach of Montem were characteristic and peculiar. In former days it was the custom that any vacancy at King’s should be immediately announced at Eton by the “resignation man,” generally the coachman of the Provost of that College, a delay of three weeks all but a day being allowed to the Captain of the school in which he might make his preparations for leaving. If, however, this period of grace should chance to expire on the very eve of Whitsun-Tuesday Montem-day, the right of being Captain would lapse to the Colleger who was next on the list, so that the twentieth day before Whitsun-Tuesday in that year was a very critical day for the Captain and second Colleger. Till midnight it could not be known for certain who would be Captain. The boys called that night “Montem-Sure Night,” when wild excitement prevailed amongst the Collegers in Long Chamber, and as the last stroke of midnight sounded from the clock in Lupton’s Tower, some fifty-two stout oaken beds would be let fall on to the floor with a thundering crash, numberless shutters would be slammed with furious energy, and “Montem-Sure,” shouted by many powerful young throats, would ring out all over Eton.
Whoever was Captain of the school on the Whitsun-Tuesday in a Montem year became ipso facto Captain of Montem. But, as has before been said, the Captain of the school could not be known for certain till within twenty days of the eventful Whitsun-Tuesday.
A King’s scholar could, if he succeeded in passing his “election trials” every year at the end of July, remain at Eton a twelvemonth after passing the last examination, provided he was not yet nineteen. If by that time he had not gone to King’s College, Cambridge, he was superannuated, and had to leave Eton. At the examination at the end of every July those boys who had passed their eighteenth birthday were placed in school order of merit, and were called from thence to Cambridge at any time of the year, whenever, through death, marriage, or any cause, a vacancy occurred in the number of the seventy members of King’s College, in order to supply which King Henry VI. founded his school at Eton of seventy scholars. Montem only happened every third year, for which reason it was only possible that a boy who was born in such a year that he would have passed his eighteenth birthday on the July previous to a Montem could ever become captain of Montem, and obtain the financial benefits accruing from the collection made at that festival.
“SALT! SALT”
William Malim, the Headmaster, who wrote an account of Eton for the Royal Commission who visited the school in 1561, thus described the Montem of his day:—
About the festival of the Conversion of Saint Paul, at nine o’clock on a day chosen by the Master, in the accustomed manner in which they go to collect nuts in September, the boys go ad montem. The hill is a sacred spot according to the boyish religion of the Etonians; on account of the beauty of the countryside, the delicious grass, the cool shade of bowers, and the melodious chorus of birds, they make it a holy shrine for Apollo and the Muses, celebrate it in songs, call it Tempe, and extol it above Helicon. Here the novices or new boys, who have not yet submitted to blows in the Eton ranks, manfully and stoutly, for a whole year, are first seasoned with salt and then separately described in little poems which must be as salted and graceful as possible. Next, they make epigrams against the new boys, one vying with another to surpass in all elegance of speech and in witticisms. Whatever comes to the lips may be uttered freely so long as it is in Latin, courteous, and free from scurrility. Finally they wet their faces and cheeks with salt tears, and then at last they are initiated in the rites of the veterans. Ovations follow, and little triumphs, and they rejoice in good earnest, because their labours are past, and because they are admitted to the society of such pleasant comrades. These things finished they turn home at five o’clock and after dinner play till eight.
In the days of Elizabeth, and during the turbulent time of the Civil War, Montem seems to have assumed a more regular and ceremonious form. Only, however, at the beginning of the eighteenth century did it acquire those military characteristics which it retained with little modification till its abolition in 1847. Till the middle of the eighteenth century (1759) it was held in the last week in January, but at that date Whitsun-Tuesday was appointed as the great day. Dr. Barnard it was who altered the dresses and formed the boys into a regular collegiate regiment.
In ancient times the collectors, that is to say the boys who scoured the roads for miles round Eton to collect contributions, carried large bags which actually contained salt, a pinch of which they gave to every contributor as a receipt. In the rough old times, when any boorish-looking countryman after having contributed a trifle asked for salt, it used to be a favourite pleasantry to fill his mouth with it. The last Montem at which salt was actually used seems to have been that of 1793. The cry of “Salt! Salt!” lasted long after tickets had taken the place of the condiment, and, indeed, endured to the end, embroidered bags being proffered to travellers along the roads, who, in return for contributions which varied from fifty pounds to sixpence, were presented with little blue tickets inscribed with one of the Latin Montem mottoes. In the years preceding the abolition of the ceremony, Mos pro Lege and Pro More et Monte were used in alternate years. Not infrequently people who had never heard of the ancient custom were very much astonished at being asked for salt. William the Third, it is said, soon after his accession, had his carriage stopped by Montem runners on the Bath road, and his Dutch guards, being not unnaturally indignant at their monarch being waylaid in such unceremonious fashion, were only prevented from cutting down the boys, whom they took for some kind of highwaymen, by the King himself, who good-naturedly gave the salt-bearers a liberal contribution.