The exact origin of the word “Tug” has never been cleared up. The most popular explanation has always been that it is derived from the Latin word toga, a gown, and referred to the black gowns they wore, and still wear, in school. It should here be added that up to 1864 this indispensable appurtenance of a King’s scholar was made of cloth and very heavy. In that year, however, the light material at present in use was introduced, while the length of the gown was somewhat reduced. The old-fashioned gowns contained pockets, which were often receptacles for viands and dainties to be smuggled into Long Chamber. A parody of Gray’s Ode on Eton College, written by a King’s scholar in 1798, alludes to this:—
I know my gown when first it flowed
An awkward majesty bestowed,
When waving fresh each woolly wing
That worn-out elbows serve to hide,
Or else to hold unknown, unspied,
A loaf or pudding in.
As far as the writer has been able to ascertain, the top-hat, or in earlier times its predecessor, the cocked or three-cornered one, has always been the head-dress worn by Collegers, though in an illustration[9] representing the Iron Duke being cheered in the quadrangle in the middle of the forties of the last century, the King’s scholars are shown wearing or waving mortar-boards. These, it would appear, existed only in the imagination of the artist.
The allusion to worn-out elbows in the ditty given above is significant as to the poverty-stricken appearance of the Collegers, most of whom were then very sorrily dressed. Almost without exception they were boys whose parents had but small means. As a matter of fact College was never intended to be an educational refuge for rich or high-born boys, and, as a highly competent critic has remarked, “A young aristocrat in a serge gown is an anomaly not contemplated by the statutes of the royal founder.”
Before the reforms made in College in 1845 most of the King’s scholars, it must be confessed, were more of the class intended by Henry VI. than has since been the case. In latter years many Collegers have belonged to well-to-do or even rich families, whereas the Foundation was specially intended for poor boys. In the early part of the nineteenth century a certain proportion of those in College were the sons of Eton or Windsor doctors or solicitors, royal servants, or successful tradesmen. Besides these there were sons of Eton masters and boys of impoverished country squires. The former class of boys, however, were in some way made to feel that they were not the equals of the sons of gentlemen, and subjected to petty humiliations which did their schoolfellows small honour.