Old Schools

Jolly boating weather

With a hay harvest breeze;

Blades on the feather

Shade off the trees;

Swing, swing together

With your body between your knees.

--Eton Boating Song

For one jolly-boating-weather day last week, Britain's hard-pressed aristocracy forgot their troubles and the Labor Government, put on their fanciest duds, and turned out en masse on the broad banks of the Thames at Eton. They were there to celebrate the 500th birthday* of Britain's biggest, most snobbish and most influential public (i.e., private) school.

The afternoon began with cricket on the playing fields of Eton, but what everyone had come for was the historic "procession of boats," which lasted on into evening under the red glare of rockets. As boat after boat passed the Royal Enclosure where the Duke of Gloucester (an Old Etonian) sat with his royal nieces, the schoolboy crews stood with glistening, uplifted oars in salute. Nobody spilled, and Princess Elizabeth sent her congratulations to the Captain of the Boats.

It was anybody's guess whether Eton could keep its course steady in its sixth century as it had in its first five. True, two members of the Labor Cabinet (Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton, Food Minister John Strachey) wear the black-&-blue old school tie, and are proud of it. So do six Labor and 57 other M.P.s, such left-wing literati as Cyril Connolly and George Orwell. But many a Briton was finding it hard last week to visualize Eton in a socialist future.

Sorry, It's a Girl. Eton was in no mood to change. For generations, Old Etonians have registered their sons at Eton the day they are born. (Some prospective fathers wire practically the minute their wives become pregnant, sometimes have to wire again: "Sorry, it's a girl.") Eton is booked solid for 1960.

The high cost of an Eton education (about $1400 a year) keeps the doors closed to almost all but the well-heeled. Besides its 1,050 "Oppidans," or tuition-paying students, Eton has 70 "Collegers" on scholarships. But the Collegers are sons of the Army, the civil service and the professions, not sons of workers.

Next fall, as a reluctant concession to the Ministry of Education, Eton will admit two state-supported boys -- but only as an "experiment." Says Eton's 74-year-old Provost Sir Henry Marten, who was Princess Elizabeth's private tutor in history: "We English are very slow, and we never rush into anything."

Dukes Must Fag. Eton's apologists point out that it has its own kind of democracy. Unlike other English public schools. where masters appoint boys as prefects and monitors, elected student committees govern Eton. The 20-odd top boys who make "Pop" run the sports, carry out the school rules, enforce discipline. and get special privileges. Even young dukes and princes must "fag" (do chores) for older Eton boys. To prove that this system teaches both obedience and leadership. Etonians point proudly to products like the Duke of Wellington,* ten Prime Ministers, including Gladstone, the elder Pitt.

For more than 100 years, Etonians have worn top hats to school and to military drill, sometimes stuffed with pencils and books like an extra pocket. Since 1820, Eton boys have worn black, in mourning for George III. Only boys under 5 ft. 4 in. wear Eton jackets and wide Eton collars; when they grow bigger they graduate into tail coats and narrow collars. Etonians must always leave the bottom buttons of their waistcoats unbuttoned, say "absence"' when they mean roll call, and talk a jargon that new boys study from a glossary, may not furl their umbrellas unless they belong to "Pop."

Entering school at 13, boys have usually passed the general examination for their School Certificate (university entrance credits), by 16. In the student days of Shelley, Gray, Swinburne and Fielding, both Latin and Greek were compulsory; today most still study Latin, about half Greek. Etonians spend their last two years at Eton specializing in some favorite subject (e.g., history, science) under a tutor's guidance, go as fast as they like. Eton's educational reputation: tops. Eton's educational secret: "We give the boys time to educate themselves."

By Eton's standards a mere babe in the educational woods, Trinity College (Cambridge) last week had a birthday too. King George VI, a Trinity man himself, showed up for the 400th birthday party. Beneath a Holbein portrait of Henry VIII, who founded Trinity, George raised his glass in a toast: ". . . Like many of you undergraduates, I myself came here [in 1919] straight from the fighting services, and I found in the atmosphere of Cambridge ... a steady and mellowing influence." Others under the influence: Newton, Bacon, Coke, Byron, Dryden, Tennyson.

*Actually, Eton is nearly 507 years old; it was founded in 1440 by Henry VI, but Old Etonians were too busy in wartime 1940 to celebrate. *Who probably never said in so many words that "the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton." There were no organized cricket or football playing fields in Wellington's day. He did say: "I really believe I owe my state of enterprise to the tricks I used to play in the garden [of Eton]."

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