MR. AINGER'S ETON MEMORIES.*
Ma. AINGER does not follow the example of Mr. Arthur Coleridge and Mr. Eric Parker by calling his book Eton in the " Fifties," because his purpose is not merely to give a picture of Eton when he was a scholar there, but also to throw into a high light the differences between the life of sixty years ago and the life there to-day. No one could be better equipped for the purpose, for no one has devoted his life more fully to the schooL We hope that it was as great a pleasure to him to write the book as it will be to Etonians to read it. To cast his mind back thus must have been a special solace when schoolmasters are accumulating grief as they learn of the deaths of those whom they knew so intimately in their fullest vitality ; those whom they tried to prepare for life, little thinking how glorious and how short many of those lives would be. This is a sorrow added to the sorrows that must come when an author can dedicate his work, as here, " to the memory of a friendship of sixty years " with the late Vice-Provost and Lower Master. There is a more mellow tone than seems quite " Ainger- like " to those who were up to him many years ago. Perhaps it is due to the same cause as the unfamiliar dark tie which, if Mr. Milbanke, the artist, will forgive our saying so, is the first thing that strikes the eye in the portrait-frontispiece and pronounces the master as donaturn jam rude. A knave or fool had need of a thick skin in old days if his withers were never wrung by some of Mr. Ainger's quiet remarks in his division. Only once in this volume were we delighted by a really character- istic choice of epithet—namely, where he describes the current literature provided as suitable pabulum for boys in the library (the Edinburgh, the Quarterly, and Notes and Queries) as "gritty." This mellow tone befits the subject and its treatment, but with its coming there has departed a certain careful precision that one associates with the author. He himself describes his writing as desultory, and it is so. It is even scrappy ; but does that matter if every scrap is a pleasure ? Inserted between the chapters are seventeen of his school songs and other verses, and Johnson's " Boating Song," which, with Mr. Ainger's " Carmen " and " Vale," is known all the world over. There are also contributions by other hands, three by General Sir Neville Lyttelton and one by Mr. John Murray. The object of these is to add to the description of life in College pictures of private schools and of life at Eton in a Dame's and a Tutor's houses. Sir Neville's account of Evans's is a brief and mainly personal sketch. It could not well be more, for his Dame's has already found its rates weer in Major Gambier Parry. He also writes a lively account of school cricket in his day. Mr. Murray tells of John Hawtrey's and Wolley-Dod's, and he has the advantage of ten years of youth over tho elder of his collaborators.
Even in the " fifties " under Goodforcl there were few outstanding spectacular relics of older days beyond those that still survive, such as the procession of boats on the Fourth of June. Montem had died in 1844; but Mr. Ainger can describe one forgotten pomp :— " The Posers, in company with the Provost of King's, used to drive in a yellow chariot with four horses from Slough to Eton and to enter
• Memories of Eton Sixty Years Ago. By A. C. Ainger. London : John Murray. (Os. nat.(
College in state. Under Lupton's Tower they were welcomed by the Captain of the School in a Latin oration, called ' Cloister Speech,' and the two Provosts are said to have greeted each other, in royal fashion, with a kiss."
Who were the Posers ? They were two Fellows of King's who con- ducted the then perfunctory examination for scholarships at King's. Of other outward changes, Mr. Ainger regrets the enormously increased attention given to clothes and " colours." But we believe that a proper war economy has treated colours drastically. On the whole, the luxury and comfort of boarding-houses and schools have not ad- vanced on a more lavish scale than the general standards of living in England during the last sixty years ; but that implies vast changes for the chronicler. It is more remarkable that any of the old schools and their fittings should remain. We remember that the present Provost, opening a new elementary school some twenty-five years ago in the district of the Eton Mission in Hackney Wick, expressed a wonder how the four-hundred-year-old schools still in use " in another place " would appear to an inspector of the Board of Education. The changes of character and manners among the boys are not really great. Youth has come to its own in this century, and Sir Neville Lyttelton finds boys more inclined to patronize the old Etonian than to be sub- servient or shy. Mr. Ainger says that " the tendency of changes at Eton during the last fifty years has been to produce a more serious, more courteous, more dignified, more mature type of Etonian." The boys also show, he says, more concern as to their future careers. In this connexion we are also told of a boy who, " when asked his preference in the matter of a profession, selected that of a retired banker." Certainly the masters and boys have more amicable relations. The place of one's tutor as not only an instructor, but as a friend against the world and even against other masters, has developed in a wholly satisfactory manner. But the liberty in work and play which arouses wonder elsewhere is nothing new. The Regina Professor of Greek at Cambridge has often told his pupils that Etonians had on the whole a broader knowledge of the classics than others who might have been harder workers or cleverer boys. This comes from the tutor's and the boy's own freedom of choice in reading. But in general Eton boys aro expected to behave rationally upon their own initiative. That is why strong characters have a better chance of development. It is also a reasoxl why a boy devoid of all strength of character will do better to stay away. Tho powers of Sixth Form and other leading boys is immense, and recognized by authority. In the " sixties " it was desirable to put an end to the abuses of " Check night " and " Oppidan dinner." They were not forbidden by ukase : Dr. Goodford " opened negotiations " with the Captain of the Boats and " a treaty was arranged." The objectionable functions were given up, and other liberties of value to the boys were granted. Where else would a pack of beagles be instituted and successfully managed by the boys without leave from or interference by the authorities ? Yet at Eton it seems natural to masters and boys, and even tenant farmers. Where else, we may add, could a Head-Master who expressed himself injudiciously in public at a time of national crisis receive a testimony to his good intentions and loyalty in the form of a letter to the Times signed by the leading boys, a letter which absolutely stopped the ignorant talk of outsiders ?
The changes of nomenclature and colloquial language are noted, and Mr. Ainger sees a lamentable tendency to borrow from other seats of learning. He explains most of the peculiar terms, but uses one, " turning down," without the explanation that is perhaps the more desirable, since the identical words have become a slang phrase of the outside world ; indeed, this is so rare a punishment that even Etonian readers may not remember its consequences. The custom of giving leaving-books is one whose decline the author does not regret. In his day it was tending to become an expensive and unmeaning formality. (Here gratitude compels the present writer to say that his copy of Clough's Poems is witness that Mr. Ainger kept up the custom, between masters and boys at any rate, longer and more generously than most.) Leave, as affected particularly by railways and motor-cars, cricket, football, fives, and the Volunteers are other pegs on which are hung the records of change.
The ilustrations are partly designed to show vanished or vanishing views of Eton, but we are specially glad that this work preserves a series of twelve early Victorian photographs of men whom the preacher's words befit : " such as did bear rule in their kingdoms, men renowned for their power, leaders of the people by their counsels and by their knowledge of learning meet for the people, wise and eloquent in their instructions." Mr. Ainger gives some valuable notes on each. They include his Head-Master, Goodford ; William Carter, his first tutor, subsequently Bursar ; Judy Durnford, who worked himself beyond his powers for his pupils, and seemed to one of them " the ideal of what one would wish for in an Eton Master " ; Balston, the reluctant Head. Master who carried through the unwelcome reforms of the Public Schools Commission with equal loyalty fo the school and to outside authority, and who never had an enemy nor a just fame ; Johnson, afterwards Cory, a man of real genius, a great scholar and true poet, an inspiring
teacher of boys and men. The gallery ends with Badger Hale, who scarcely yet seems to belong to the past. Eton and England owe much to these men, and not a little to such of their followers as the compiler of this book.
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