THE course of the beautiful river as it glides onward from Windsor to Hampton might provoke many a quaint historical conceit, as other rivers have done less aptly. We drift on the tide of Thames, as on the tide of Time, away from the Norman to the Plantagenet, from the Plantagenet to the Tudor; and it is the life of England that we can scan as the waters flow past scenes which, through all the mutations of the ages, through all the seasons’ difference, year after year, are ever freshly, strongly, characteristically English. From the Conqueror’s steep-throned stronghold; past the ait and meadow associated deathlessly with the solemn declaration that “no freeman shall be seized, or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed, or in any way destroyed”—“nor condemned, nor committed, to prison excepting by the legal judgment of his peers or by the laws of the land;” past more than one memorial of the mild king whose piety and love of learning founded Eton College; and still onward, far onward, along the fluvial current of history, till we reach the stately and substantial record of another and a later Henry, last of that royal name, and opposite in all respects of character, temperament, and will to the weak and gentle Plantagenet. From Windsor, then, and from Eton’s distant spires; from the playing-fields, the bathing-places, the Brocas, and Firework Eyot; from the fisheries, too, which exist on the same spots they occupied eight hundred years ago—for wherever a fishery or a mill is named in Domesday Book, there it will generally be found, as of yore—we turn reluctantly, and not until a lingering look has been cast back on the old familiar scenes. Our way is on the river, or by its side, the towing-path being a track which pedestrians may follow with pleasant ease. But here and there the land may win us astray; and at the very commencement of our jaunt there is more to interest us ashore than afloat. Not that the river hereabout lessens in charm. On the contrary, its winding beauty is almost at its height. But that very beauty half depends on prospects which lead our thoughts inland; and inland we must consent, therefore, to be led.
Eton is a well-worn theme—but can never be outworn! The Royal College of the Blessed Virgin, whose assumption is depicted in the centre of the collegiate seal, was founded in the year 1440, after Henry’s visit to Winchester, whence came Eton’s first head-master, William of Waynflete. “It was high time,” says Fuller, “some school should be founded, considering how low grammar-learning then ran in the land.” The original endowments were for “ten sad priests, four lay clerks, six choristers, twenty-five poor grammar-scholars, and twenty-five poor men to pray for the king.” There are now on the foundation a provost, vice-provost, six fellows, three conducts, seventy king’s scholars, ten clerks, and twelve choristers. Beside these, there are above seven hundred scholars—Oppidans—who are not on the foundation. One of the masters of Eton College is illustrious through all time in which the English language is studied, as the writer of our earliest comedy, or the earliest which has come down intact to modern days. Not later than 1551, as critics and scholars are mostly agreed, did Nicholas Udall write his “Ralph Roister-Doister,” which, in plot and dialogue, is immensely superior to John Still’s “Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” supposed to have been written a few years—perhaps as many as fourteen—afterwards. The greatest of literary rarities in the library of Eton College is a copy of Master Nicholas Udall’s right merry conceit, which is divided, in what would be considered as modern orthodox form, into five acts; is constructed with comic art of uncommon excellence; contains thirteen characters, some of them powerfully and distinctly marked; and exhibits the manners of the middle order of people at that day, the scene being laid in London. All that we can reasonably guess concerning Nicholas Udall as a teacher of youth is, that he was one to help in setting that early example of severity which was long afterwards followed as a sacred tradition of public-school custom and discipline. Perhaps he had, according to custom of his time, a whipping-boy, or puerile scapegoat, to take on his back the sins of happier pupils. But it is more likely that Master Udall swished without favour all round. Thomas Tusser, who wrote the didactic poem, “Five Hundreth Points of Good Husbandrie,” was one of Udall’s scholars, and gives hard report of him as a most exacting master. It is somewhat remarkable that the first two writers of comic drama in the language should both have been schoolmasters. John Still, author of the piece of low rustic humour before mentioned, of which the dramatic point is that of the needle itself, found by Gammer Gurton’s man, Hodge, in a manner equally startling and climacteric, was master of St. John’s and Trinity Colleges, Cambridge, and afterwards Chancellor of the University, and Bishop of Bath and Wells. One of the best things in “Gammer Gurton’s Needle” is a song, the well-known—
“I cannot eat but little meat.”
Professor Craik was inclined to opinion that “Ralph Roister-Doister” was the later of the two “farcical comedies,” as they would now be called.
Men of the world, active in social affairs, as well as clerkly and diligent in the conduct of the school, were some of the earlier provosts and masters. Roger Lupton, whose rebus, the uncouth syllable, LUP, surmounting a tun, is carved over the door of the little chantry which contains his tomb, built the great tower and gateway, when he was provost in Henry VII.’s time and later. Sir Thomas Smith was a Secretary of State and a well-known diplomatist in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth. Sir Henry Wotton was conspicuous both as a writer and a statesman, having been an ambassador of James I.; nor is it necessary to say that as an angler he was the companion of Izaak Walton, by whom he was beloved and praised, notably as an “undervaluer of money.” Francis Rouse, Speaker of the Barebones Parliament, saved Eton from confiscation, and founded three scholarships. All these men might have been famed in other paths than those of learning had they never seen the college they influenced and benefited. Other illustrious provosts and head-masters, though not so versatile as to have influenced worldly affairs and the state of the nation in any direct way, or to have written freely and jovially for the “inglorious stage,” have left a mark on their time which is more than merely scholastic. Such were Sir Henry Savile, reader to Queen Elizabeth, and one of the greatest scholars of her learned reign; Thomas Murray, tutor and secretary to Prince Charles; Dr. Steward, clerk of the closet to that prince after his accession to the throne; Nicholas Monk, brother of the Duke of Albemarle, and sometime Bishop of Hereford; Richard Allestree, Canon of Christchurch, who built the Upper School; and the late Dr. Hawtrey, famed for his elegant scholarship as well as for his success as head-master. The “ever memorable” John Hales (whose name, brilliant at one time as that of a keen theological controversialist, might in this age be forgotten but for Milton’s well-known sonnet), Bishop Pearson, Bishop Fleetwood, Earl Camden, Dean Stanhope, Sir Robert Walpole, Sir William Draper, and Archbishop Longley were all, as boys, on the foundation of Eton College; and other celebrities educated there—some of their names carved on the old wainscoting—were Edmund Waller, Harley, Earl of Oxford, Lord Bolingbroke, the great Earl of Chatham, Lord Lyttelton, Thomas Gray, Horace Walpole, Wyndham, Fox, Canning, Henry Fielding, Admiral Lord Howe, the Marquis Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, and Henry Hallam.
ETON, FROM THE PLAYING-FIELDS.
In the notes to Collier’s map of Windsor, published in 1742, an etymology is assigned to Eton which is not clearly demonstrated, if, indeed, it be demonstrable. “Eton,” we read, “is so called from its low situation among the waters; for Eton is the same as Watertown, but, as they are running waters, and it is a gravelly soil, it is observed that no place is more healthy than this.” Few buildings, indeed, are more happily situated than this venerable pile of old red-brown brick and Caen stone, marked by the characteristic architecture of three centuries. The old part of the college, begun in 1441 and finished in 1523, consists of two quadrangles, in one of which are the chapel and school, with the dormitories of the foundation-scholars, while the other contains the library, provost’s house, and lodgings of the fellows. It is, of course, the chapel—a fine example of early Perpendicular, resembling in outline King’s College Chapel, at Cambridge—that gives dignity and distinction to all pictures of the place, from whichsoever point you take your view. The spires of this beautiful structure are those which “crown the watery glade,” and are conspicuous above the quaint turrets of the surrounding buildings seen from afar. Many are the views of Eton which are commended, each as being the best, by different persons. The curving railway-run from Slough gives a continuous succession of changes not to be despised; but undoubtedly the riverside is best. Gray’s distant prospect was from the north terrace of Windsor Castle. Mr. David Law chose Romney Island for his standpoint when he made the sketch for one of his finest etchings. But in truth the buildings group well everywhere, as they are seen from a distance; the crowning glory being always the pinnacled chapel. It is scarcely to be doubted that Henry VI., who laid the first stone lovingly, and with meek emulation of the noble foundations of William of Wykeham, at Winchester and Oxford, in his mind intended that the structure, perfect as it now appears, should form only the choir of a magnificent collegiate church. To the beautiful building, as we see it, he would have added a nave and aisles, grandly vaulted, as the strength of the buttresses sufficiently indicates the chapel itself was meant to be. But the troublous years that closed his reign prevented the fulfilment of those designs; and it was left for the present century to bring the interior more worthily into accord with so fair an outside. Bird’s bronze statue of the royal founder, erected by Provost Godolphin, in 1719, stands in the centre of one of the quadrangles. There is a look of cheerful gravity in the brick fronts of the college buildings. The elaborate quaintness of the chimneys, the sedate solidity, whether of plainness or of ornament, give a pleasant character to these quadrangles, in the larger of which, containing the bronze statue of Henry VI., is as picturesque a clock-tower as any architect in soul might wish to see. Here, on the opposite side, the hand of Sir Christopher Wren is denoted in the fine arcade supporting the Upper School. The second and smaller quadrangle, called the Green Yard, is surrounded by a cloister, and in it is the entrance to the Hall, a curious apartment, with a daïs, and with three fireplaces, which were long panelled in and lost to memory.
But we must not lose ourselves too long within the College and its precincts, lest the attractions of the library, the provost’s lodgings, the election-hall, and the new buildings erected in the Tudor style, make us oblivious to our riverside ramble. It is on the stream itself, and on well-known spots along its banks, that Eton manifests her vigorous training in various traditionary ways. The river is constantly covered with boats, and its proximity to the College has given Etonians that proficiency in swimming and rowing of which they are justly proud, and which they maintain by practice and prize-giving. Chief among the bathing-places of note is Athens, with its Acropolis, famed for “headers.” On the Fourth of June, now the Speech Day, loyally instituted in celebration of the birthday of King George III., a procession of boats from the Brocas to Surley Hall is the event of the afternoon; and the evening closes with a display of fireworks. There are many old Etonians whose memory goes back to the Montem, abolished forty years ago. It was a triennial celebration, held on Whit Tuesday, and has been the subject of many a picturesque description, not the least vivid and truthful of which was a dramatic sketch by Maria Edgeworth, intended, like other of her charming essays and tales, such, for example, as “Barring-Out,” for the delectation of youth. Eton Montem partook somewhat too strongly of the old saturnalian character for modern tastes; and it was at the instance of a head-master that the old custom was discontinued, not without aid from Government and opposition from young and old Etonians. The last Montem, in 1846, was conducted with such maimed rites as to be a mere shadow of olden heartiness and gaiety; but in its jolliest days, which were in the reign of “Farmer George,” there was no doubt something really salient in the mock-ceremony on Salt Hill. It was “for the honour of the college” that the boys, handsomely and expensively dressed in various fancy costumes, levied contributions on all and sundry passengers along the Bath Road, past the mound, believed to be an ancient tumulus, which bore the name already mentioned. The money called Salt was gathered for the captain or senior boy to defray his expenses at Cambridge, whither he was going as king’s scholar. When Henry VI. resolved on founding a college at Eton, he incorporated two small colleges or hostels at Cambridge, one of which he had instituted two years before. Thus originated King’s College, to which, as Lambarde says, “Eton sendeth forth her ripest fruit.” The scholars are required by the statute to be “indigentes,” but of course this provision has long been a dead letter.