A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



scientists, 12 historians, 6 devote themselves to 

 modern languages, and 5 to mathematics. It is 

 significant that only two King's scholars are found 

 among them ; one in the Sixth Form and another 

 from the First Hundred. The Army Class of 

 29 boys contains only one King's scholar. The 

 next 120 contain a smaller proportion of special- 

 ists, namely 20. Below that, specializing is, 

 very properly, not allowed. If we descend to 

 the lowest division of the school F, or the 

 Fourth Form, which is divided into Upper, 

 Middle, and Lower, and contains 1 1 6 boys, we 

 find the school hours number 25 instead of 22, 

 owing to their returning to school, or rather 

 pupil-rooms, at their houses at 2.15 instead of 

 3.45 in the afternoon. Their hours are given : 

 one to divinity, but the sacred fifty minutes on 

 Monday morning is spent not in school but in 

 pupil-room ; to Latin 6, to Greek 3, French 4, 

 English 3, Mathematics, which includes an 

 hour's drawing, 5, and Science 3. Their Greek 

 is learnt from a book called Sertum, a garland of 

 ' flowers of Greek speaking ' consisting of short 

 pieces of prose and verse, the prose chiefly 

 anecdotes and the verse taken mostly from the 

 Greek anthology. Latin is pursued in Hardy's 

 Latin Reader and Ovid ; English History in 

 S. R. Gardiner's Outlines ; and French in 

 Guerber's Contes et Legendes. They are all 

 books of a calibre which the Eton boy of the 

 same age of the iyth or i6th century would 

 have regarded as fit only for babes and sucklings, 

 the petits of the Song School, not for boys of 

 fourteen or fifteen years old who had spent five 

 or six or seven years in ' grammar.' Not that Eton 

 is peculiar in this respect. For in all the schools 

 it is the same. In spite of all the talk about 

 education, childishness in subject and in thought is 

 prolonged to the verge of manhood. While the 

 contemporary of Milton or of Shakespeare or of 

 Chaucer would have been declaiming in Latin 

 on ' foreknowledge absolute,' or such high themes, 

 the Public School boy of the present day is learn- 

 ing a jingle of jargon to distinguish the gender 

 of from a brow from from a. leaf, or stumbling 

 through a story about the scholastic who cried 

 out on the boiling snails for singing when their 

 houses were burning. 



True life for the average boy is not the time 

 spent in pupil-room or school, but in playing- 

 fields or on the river. In the Summer term, until 

 the Winchester and Harrow matches, the dry-bob 

 is bent on playing cricket in Junior Houses or in 

 getting his colours in Upper Choices or Twenty- 

 two or the Eleven. The great matches are 

 against Winchester, played originally at Lord's, 

 but since 1854 alternately at Winchester and 

 Eton, traditionally on either Midsummer Day or 

 St. Peter's Day and the day before or after, as 

 the calendar suited for Friday and Saturday ; until 

 1908, when the day was altered exceptionally to 

 3 and 4 July. This was disastrous for Winchester, 



whose captain and three old ' Lord's men ' were 

 down with mumps, since against the residue Eton 

 compiled 410 runs, 'declared' with seven wickets 

 down, and won by an innings and 7 runs. 

 Harrow match is played at Lord's cricket ground 

 in London on the second Friday and Saturday in 

 July. In 1908, thanks largely to the weather, 

 which turned bad in the afternoon of the first day, 

 after Harrow had made 250 runs, Eton got out 

 for 37 runs, and only made 150 in the second 

 innings, and lost the match by nine wickets. 

 Harrow match being over, House matches fill the 

 time to the end of July, when the holidays begin. 



For wet-bobs there are House Fours, in 

 which college is represented by two fours. The 

 first ambition is to get into Lower Boats, which 

 number altogether some fifty boys, including the 

 Lower Boat ' Choices,' about twenty ; then into 

 Upper Boats, who number twenty-seven, includ- 

 ing Upper Boat Choices and the Eight, which 

 represents the school at Henley. The Ladies' 

 Plate used to be regarded as Eton's peculiar 

 pride ; but sometimes it aims at the Grand 

 Challenge Cup, and in 1908 was only beaten 

 in the final tie by Christ Church, which rowed 

 head of the river at Oxford. 



The great day at Eton, which has superseded 

 all Saints' days, which are now only holidays, 

 broken up and made useless by repeated 

 ' absences,' or names callings, founders' days, and 

 ' Montem,' is the ' Fourth of June,' the birth- 

 day of King George III ; not a very worthy 

 saint when we remember that he was the main 

 cause of the greater celebration of 4 July. 



The Fourth of June gives eminent merit, both 

 intellectual and athletic, its chance of display. 

 After early school and an ornate chapel, the 

 morning is devoted to ' Speeches,' the last surviv- 

 ing relic or substitute for the ancient declama- 

 tions and disputations. The Sixth Form, singly 

 or in companies as their tastes may dictate, 

 deliver monologues, or dialogues, or scenes from 

 plays Greek, Latin, French, German, or Eng- 

 lish. They are dressed in ordinary evening 

 dress, but with knee breeches and white silk stock- 

 ings. The speeches are followed by a cricket 

 match with New College, Oxford. At 5 

 o'clock comes the event of the day, which dis- 

 tinguishes the Eton Speech Day from those of less 

 fortunately situated schools the Procession of 

 Boats. The boats which go in procession are- 

 not the racing eights of the present day, but 

 of a penultimate day. First goes the Monarch, 

 which consists of people high in the school, but 

 not distinguished oars, stroked by the Captain of 

 the Boats. Then follows the Victory, consisting 

 of the best oars, stroked by the second captain.. 

 The third man strokes the Prince of Wales, and 

 so on for the Britannia, Thetis, Dreadnought, 

 Alexandra, Hibernia, and Defiance. The cox- 

 swains are resplendent in the admiral's dress of 

 Nelson's day ; the crews wear white ducks and 



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