The Liberty of the Boys.
To all these protests Dr. Warre had practically but one answer—that hare-hunting not being illegal, he could not interfere with the liberty of the boys in the matter, many of whom, he stated, are in the habit of hunting “when at home in the holidays, and with the approval of their parents.” But this plea is at once invalidated by the fact that many things are prohibited to schoolboys which may (or may not) be permitted to them at home, and which are not in themselves illegal. Some of the elder boys, for example, smoke when at home in the holidays, and with the approval of their parents; yet if these young gentlemen, relying on Dr. Warre’s argument, had started a smoking-club at Eton, he would not have hesitated to interfere very promptly with their freedom. Why, then, should an excuse which is not nearly good enough to justify a smoking-club be seriously put forward by the headmaster of a great public school when a cruelty-club is in question?
On one point only would Dr. Warre make any concession—viz., with regard to the reports that appeared in the Eton College Chronicle of the “breaking up” of hares and the “blooding” of hounds. “The phrases in question,” he said, “are among those current in sporting papers, and I regret that they should have found their way into the pages of the Eton College Chronicle, being objectionable in sound, and liable to misinterpretation. I understand, however, that these phrases do not imply anything more than that the dead hare is devoured by the hounds.” This led to a pertinent inquiry in the press, whether the Eton boys were in the habit of hunting “a dead hare.” The cruelty of the sport obviously consists less in the actual killing of the hunted animal than in the prolonged torture of the hunt that precedes the death—the “bustling” which, as we have seen in the extracts from the Eton College Chronicle, often renders the panic-stricken little animal “dead beat,” “absolutely stiff,” “so done that it cannot stand.” And, really, if the boys are encouraged to do this thing, it is a somewhat dubious morality which is content with forbidding them to speak of it! “Objectionable in sound” such practices are, beyond question; but are they not also somewhat objectionable in fact?
Thus, while on the one side Dr. Warre hardened his heart and would not lay a sacrilegious finger on the time-honoured institution which had been forbidden in the Statutes of the Founder, humanitarian feeling, on the other side, became more and more aroused, and memorial after memorial was presented to the Eton authorities, suggesting that, “as there is now an increasing tendency among teachers to inculcate a more sympathetic regard for animals, it is desirable that Eton College should no longer stand aloof from this humane spirit.” It is significant of the growth of public opinion on this subject that, whereas, some twenty years ago, the very existence of the Eton Hunt was unknown to many except Etonians, we now find among the signatures appended from time to time to these memorials such diverse names as those of Mr. Herbert Spencer, Archbishop Temple, the Bishops of Durham, Ely, and Newcastle, Dr. Clifford, Mr. Thomas Hardy, Mr. William Watson, Mr. Frederic Harrison, Sir A. Conan Doyle, Sir John Gorst, Sir Frederick Treves, and Lord Wolseley, also a number of heads of colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, the headmasters of numerous grammar schools and training colleges, officials of the branches of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and many distinguished clergy and laymen, representative of almost every shade of opinion.[23]
When it was known that Mr. Lyttelton was to be Dr. Warre’s successor in the headmastership of Eton, it was thought probable that his notorious humanitarian sympathies would lead him to the desired reform; but these expectations proved to be too sanguine. The immense stability of an “old institution,” in so conservative a stronghold as Eton, is a fact that must be reckoned with; for Eton is not like Rugby, where a reforming headmaster might venture, as Dr. Arnold did, to sweep away at a stroke an ancient sporting custom which had nothing but its age to recommend it. We all know the passage in “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”—the speech of “old Brooke”—where Arnold’s abolition of the Rugby Beagles is incidentally referred to:
“A lot of you think and say, for I’ve heard you, ‘There’s this new doctor hasn’t been here so long as some of us, and he’s changing all the old customs.…’ But come, now, any of you, name a custom that he has put down.
“‘The hounds,’ calls out a fifth-form boy, clad in a green cutaway, with brass buttons, and cord trousers, the leader of the sporting interest.
“Well, we had six or seven mangy harriers and beagles, I’ll allow, and had had them for years, and the doctor put them down. But what good ever came of them? Only rows with all the keepers for ten miles round; and big-side Hare and Hounds is better fun ten times over.”
If we compare this passage with the report of Mr. Lyttelton’s address to the Eton boys at the commencement of his headmastership, in which he frankly avowed his own “strong opinions” on the subject of the hare-hunt, but added that he did not hold these views in his boyhood, and did not see why he should force them on the boys, we see the difference, not so much between an Arnold and a Lyttelton, as between a Rugby and an Eton. It is doubtful if even an Arnold could have safely flouted Etonian susceptibilities in this matter of worrying hares with hounds. The reason given by Mr. Lyttelton for allowing the hare-hunt to continue is that all legislation which outstrips “public opinion” is injurious and unwise, by which he presumably means the “public opinion” of Eton itself—for it is certain enough that public opinion outside Eton would bear the disappearance of the hare-hunt with equanimity—and undoubtedly Eton opinion, to those who dwell under the shadow of the “antique towers,” is a matter of serious consideration, however medieval it may be. It is a curious fact that the large majority of Etonians, though nowadays a bit ashamed of the ram-hunt and other sporting pleasantries of a bygone period, do not in the least suspect that their beloved hare-hunt belongs in effect to the same category of amusement. Thus, Sir H. Maxwell Lyte, in his history of the school, referring to the earlier barbarities, remarks that “it is evident that in the time of Elizabeth cruelty to animals was not counted among the sins for which penitents require to be shriven.” But what, it may be asked, of the time of George V.? It is entertaining to find the Eton College Chronicle itself referring to the ram-hunt of the eighteenth century as a “brutal custom,” and remarking that Etonians were “once so barbarous.” Once!