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28 . ETON
It should be known that the period of which I am writing
. embraced the closing years of the barbaric epoch of Public
School life in this country. The last year was after I
left in 1875. The date was important in the history of
the school for reasons deserving of mention. It took me
many years of contact with boys to learn that any definite
strong resistance to evil is hardly possible to boyhood.
What was lacking in the Eton of our time was that the
housemasters were out of touch with the bigger boys
and the pastoral relation between boys and men had not
begun. That was the first great cause of evil
The second was the bad condition of many preparatory
schools. On that subject enough has been said.
Thirdly, the lack of any rational interest. It must be
remembered that those were the days when the medireval
curriculum of studies. had only begun to be modified so
as to admit of such subjects as French and mathematics;
but neither of these was treated with any respect except
by a gifted boy here and there. Latin was the chief
subject, and that meant Latin verse-writing for those who
had a little skill. But what was there in this to feed our
minds and stir our curiosity 1 Nothing. The conversation
of the boys, many of whom were quite eager to learn,
was restricted to games, story·telling about the masters,
and the chronique scandakuae of wrong-doings in the
school. The change of late years has certainly been
amazing. .
A fourth predisposing cause of mischief began to operate
in the seventies. It was the teaching of many gooil
parents that growing ooys should eat as much as they
could: in other words,- that gluttony in boyhood was not
a vice ; rather the reverse.
Added to all this was negleCt of safeguards : in both
kinds of school the whole matter of purity was left to
chance. No instruction or warning was given, except in
most exceptional cases, and even in those, often badly.
In among the youngest boys at · Eton coarse louts of
about sixteen were permitted to stay on ; and the mischief