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ANNALS OF AN ETON HOUSE
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ANNALS OF AN ETON HOUSE
WITH SOME NOTES ON THE EVANS FAMILY
BY MAJOR GAMBIER-PARRY
ONCE A MEMBER OF THE HOUSE AUTHOR OF ' REYNELL TAYLOR : A BIOGRAPHY,' * DAY-DREAMS,' ETC.
WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
Sensere quid mens rite, quid indoles Nutrita faustis sub penetralibus Posset, quid Augusti paternus In pueros animus Nerones.'
Horace : Odes, iv. 4.
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1907
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EDWARD AND ALFRED;
TWO DISTINGUISHED MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE- TWO FINISHED EXAMPLES OF WHAT
ETONIANS MAY BE
I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME, IN MEMORY OF THE HAPPIEST YEARS.
PREFACE
Some among us will have no difficulty in recalling the sensations we experienced as Eton boys when we were * called up' to translate a difficult passage that we knew little about : we had not prepared the lesson ; we had left the possibility of being ' called up ' to chance. The rest of the Form witnessed our struggles amidst a growing silence, till, at last, we reached our appointed end, in the sentence from the desk, ' Sit down, write out and translate your lesson, and bring it me at one to-morrow.'
In a preface, a personal note may be permitted : I confess that my feelings at this moment are much those just described ; but with this all-important difference. The boys of the Form have been replaced by Masters, and I am about to be ' called up ' by the whole of them — 1, the single boy in the middle of them all. It counts for very little that I have tried to prepare my lesson, have tried to leave nothing to chance, have read end- less books, have pestered hundreds of people with questions innumerable, have written out and trans- lated my lesson, not once but many times — all this makes no difference; and to have tried one's best is qualified by the fact that one's best may often be so very bad. I stand now with my book in my hand, and I see before me a whole array of distinguished men ; and a horrible feeling comes over me, that, though much has been supplied by others, adequate advantage has not been taken of all the help received, and that
vii
viii PREFACE
my rendering of this passage in the life of Eton falls far short of what it ought to be. How infinitely better some of you would have done it, my Masters all ! Yet, I know you will be generous: that has been already shown in many a score of letters from the greatest and the best. And therefore, though there be occasion, here and there, for the free use of that violet ink that so ruthlessly scored our efforts both in prose and verse as Eton boys, I do not fear the * tearing over,' or that I shall have to * come at one.' I only know that during these past eighteen months and more of honest, daily effort, there has ever been with me this one absorbing hope, that some among you might find pleasure in these pages, in spite of their many shortcomings and the writer's stumbling gait.
There remains another point. When I was first charged with this task, one we all honour issued this caution, ' Be brief.' Brief ! The word has rung in my ears daily. Brief! when the House Books numbered seventeen volumes, averaging 300 MS. pages each ; when the proceedings of the House Debating Society totalled another dozen of even weightier proportions ; when William and Jane Evans' diaries covered a period of nigh fifty years ; when upwards of 400 Members of the House had to be written to half a dozen times and more ; when the period to be dealt with reached close on seventy years ; and when a small library of Eton books had to be run through. How simple the advice; how almost impossible of fulfilment ! To sacrifice everything to brevity would have been wrong ; and if in this respect I have failed, I can at least affirm that the material sacrificed exceeds tenfold that which here appears. But how would it have been if the subse- quent advice of the very person who at the outset had recommended brevity had been ultimately followed ? He finally suggested the inclusion of * all the letters.' Or where would have been the limits of this under-
PREFACE ix
taking had the desire of another been entertained, who pressed for the inclusion of 'all the matches,' even though they were inserted * in small print at the end ?' Brief? No; setting aside all such temptations, it was even then impossible to be so very brief. Many and many a letter has had to be omitted ; and my hope is that those who took the trouble to write and who do not find their letters here will understand the reason. To have included a larger number would have been to have greatly exceeded that margin of allowable repeti- tion that has been already far overstepped. On this account alone, many who deserved to be quoted could not even be named : I hope they will forgive it.
To thank all those who have helped in many ways would be out of place: the book is ours, not mine.
But yet some must be mentioned, and these the
members of the Evans family: Mrs. Fenn, Mrs. Samuel
Evans, and, especially, Mr. Sidney Evans. They have
trusted me. What more could they have done? I
only hope that they will not judge I have abused that
trust in any of these pages ; and that they will accept
the warmest thanks of every one of us, their debtors
still.
E. G. P.
CONTENTS
PAGES
Preface - - - - f - - - vii-ix
CHAPTER I Some notes on Dames and Dames' houses : a retrospect - 1-16
CHAPTER II
The Evans family — William Evans — Jane Evans' reminiscences, 1839 — William Evans founds the House: his system: his description of Dames' houses at this date - - 17-32
CHAPTER III
William Evans' first years as a Dame — The construction of the Hall — Manners and customs of the boys of the period — Annie and Jane Evans — The institution of ' Passing ' - 33-47
CHAPTER IV
Reminiscences of the earlier years of the House— Letters from
A. D. Coleridge, Lord Cottesloe, and the Dean of Ripon 48-65
CHAPTER V
1844-52 — Extracts from the Eton diaries of Sir R. T. White- Thomson and Lord Welby — Letters from Lord Redesdale, C J. Cornish, and Lord Rendel - - - - 66-86
CHAPTER VI
Annie Evans gradually assumes control of the House — The advent of boys from Coleridge's — The two sisters, Annie and Jane Evans — The founding of the House Library — Letters from T. F. Halsey, J. F. F. Horner, and the Earl of Cranbrook — The Committee of boys known as ' The Library' ------- 87-103
xii CONTENTS
CHAPTER VII
I'AGES
The * Boards' and the House Books — Aquatics in the 'forties- Letter from R. H. Denne : football - - - 104-114
CHAPTER VIII Aquatics, 1852-69 — Earlier races — The Cup for House Fours — Check nights — Oppidan Dinner— New races — The Volun- teers— The House Shooting Cup - - - 115-125
CHAPTER IX Football, 1855-68 — The House Football Cup — House colours — The Steeplechase and School athletics— The Beagles : letter from Lord Knaresborough .... 126-142
CHAPTER X The revival of cricket at Eton — The House Cricket Cup,
1860-71 ....... 143-153
CHAPTER XI Reminiscences, 1853-68— Letters from Earl Cadogan, Sir Neville Lyttelton, A. E. Gathorne-Hardy, Colonel W. S. Kenyon- Slaney, Spencer Lyttelton, Sir Edward Hamilton, Sir Hubert Parry, Lord Knaresborough, Colonel R. F. Meysey- Thompson, Viscount Esher, and G. G. Greenwood — The Musical Society — Stephen J. Fremantle — Evelyn F. Alexander ...... 154-175
CHAPTER XII Annie Evans — The two sisters carry on the House in William Evans' absence — Annie Evans' illness and death, 1871 — Her character and work — A letter from a boy to his sister — Jane Evans assumes chief control of the House - 176-188
CHAPTER XIII Anni Mirabiles, 1872 - 76 — Football — Cricket — Aquatics- Racquets — Fives ..... 189-212
CHAPTER XIV Reminiscences, 1865-77— Letters from Henry N. Gladstone, Herbert Gladstone, C. C. Lacaita, Edward Lyttelton, Alfred Lyttelton, Herbert Edward Ryle (Bishop of Winchester), C. T. Abraham, Bernard Holland, and Lord Farrer— Robert Buchanan-Riddell - . . . . 213-246
CONTENTS xiii
CHAPTER XV
TAGES
The House in 1877 — William Evans — His illness and death — His character and work — Jane Evans decides to carry on the House, and becomes Dame - - - - 247-258
CHAPTER XVI
Samuel Evans' position— Jane Evans makes various changes in the House — ' The Library ' — The conduct of the House in Jane Evans' absence — The Breakfasts — The liberality of the Evans ...---- 259-276
CHAPTER XVII The House Debating Society ... - 277-297
CHAPTER XVIII House-matches and Athletics, 1878-90 - - ^- 298-307
CHAPTER XIX Jane Evans' diaries, 1878-90 (first portion) - - - 308-326
CHAPTER XX
Reminiscences, 1878-90 — Letters from E. Hobhouse, J. A. Pixley, E. D. Hildyard, the Earl of Arran, Horace Marshall, and J. R. Moreton Macdonald - - - - 2^7-3^7
CHAPTER XXI Miscellanea ------- 338-357
CHAPTER XXII Jane Evans' diaries, 1891-1900 (second portion) - - 358-380
CHAPTER XXIII The Portrait ------- 381-390
CHAPTER XXIV House-matches and Athletics, 1 89 1 -1905 - - - 391-410
CHAPTER XXV
Reminiscences, 1890-1906 — The character of the House — Letters from S. J. Selwyn, G. E. Bromley-Martin, Charles Lyell, Lawrence-Buxton, M. F. Blake, C. Clifton Brown, F. Lacaita, and E. V. Gibbs - - . . . 411.429
xiv CONTENTS
CHAPTER XXVI
I'AGES
Samuel Evans — Jane Evans' illness and death — Sidney Evans
has charge of the House — The end - - - 430-444
APPENDICES
I. List of the Captains of the House - - - . 445
II. A List of those who were Captains of the House Aquatics
and who kept the Boating Book . - _ 447
III. A List of those who kept the House Football Book from its institution in 1855 to the date of the founding of the Football Cup in i860 ----- 448
IV. Table showing the position of the House in the Football Ties from the date when the House Football Cup was started in i860 ------ 449
V. List of former Members of Evans', eighty-three in number,
who served in South Africa, 1899-1902 - - - 451
VI. The names that appear upon the ' Boards ' - - 453
VII. Rules of the House Library - . . - 460
VIII. Rules of the House Debating Society - - _ 461
Index - - . . _ 463
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
William Evans, from the Portrait by F. G. Cotman, 1877, IN the Possession of Sidney V. Evans, Esq., Eton College {photogravure) - - - frontispiece
Mrs. William Evans, from the Portrait by Margaret Carpenter, 1830, in the Possession of Sidney V. Evans, Esq., Eton College - - - - 24
♦The Hall ....... 36
*The Cottage -.-..-- 38 ' Evans' ' - - - - - ■ -104
The Winners of the Pulling in 1862 - - - 120
*The House Eleven in 1865 - • - - - 134
** Over-the-Way ' --.... 176
*Annie Evans, from a Photograph taken in 1865 - 180 *The House Group in 1875 - - - - -190
*The House Eleven in 1872 - - - • - 194
*The House Eleven in 1874 - - - - - 198
*The House Four in 1875 • - - - - 208
*The House Eleven in 1888 - - - - - 302
Jane Evans, from the Portrait by John S. Sargent, R.A., NOW the Property of the Provost and Fellows of the College {photogravure) - - - . 390
*ViEw from South Meadow - - - . . 392
*The House Eleven in 1904 - . . . . 395
*'The Door' - - - - - - -440
The illustrations marked * are reproduced from photographs taken by Messrs. Hills and Saunders of Eton.
XV
ANNALS OF AN ETON HOUSE
L CHAPTER I *
SOME NOTES ON DAMES AND DAMES* HOUSES : A RETROSPECT
To those who are unable to claim the name by which many of us set such infinite store, and whose know- ledge of Eton is confined to a single visit on some great holiday, few things are more puzzling than the terms we Etonians use so glibly and that are current in the daily life of the School. Every school has its slang; but the terms referred to can scarcely be so dismissed : they have passed the lips of Eton boys and Eton masters for generations, their origin un- questioned, their meaning undefined, and many of them seem destined to continue in use in the genera- tions still to come, by Eton boys and Eton masters who are as yet unborn. And the strange thing about these terms to an outsider is that the phraseology of the place seems to be governed by opposites. It is not at once apparent why boys confined indoors are said to be * staying out ' ; why the day is divided into chronological periods often in direct contradiction with the hours ; why the year has three ' halves ' ; or why, again, that moving crowd, answering ' Here, Sir,' to the Head Master's call, is said to be attending 'Absence.' It is all very strange, perhaps, like the name of * Pop,'
I
#
2 DAMES AND DAMES' HOUSES
or that game in which the ball itself is seen only at intervals, which is played against a wall, but which is yet called football. They belong, doubtless, to the domain of the genius loci; they have been often noticed; but to the stranger they must remain as much a mystery as the bewildering intricacies of unending toil that constitute the day's work of a so-called idle Eton boy.
And if this phraseology is for the most part likely to live, one term, in constant use for centuries, though still apparently struggling hard for life, has come now to its appointed end. The visitor aforesaid may have been puzzled by much, but he was puzzled the more when he learnt that the ' Dames ' were playing the 'Tutors' in 'the Field,' and still further, perhaps, when he was introduced to one spoken of as ' my Dame,' but yet addressed as ' Sir.' There was nothing feminine, much less effeminate, about that manly form ; yet was he termed officially * a Dame ' ; his very house was a Dame's House; he was called by all *my Dame,' — William Evans, for instance, height well over six foot and weight some fifteen stone, a Dame : there was something very funny about that ! The other terms might look after themselves, but this one surely needed some explanation.
And so it does, and the more so because the old term in its old sense is dead. It may continue to be applied, in spite of all enactments, it may take an un- conscionable time in dying; but in a few years the very name will in all likelihood be without meaning in the School, and survive only as the title of a Matron of a House. The last of the real Dames' has closed its doors, and because of this and because of the halo that surrounds its name, an effort shall be made to tell its story — to collect such details of its history as may be possible; to piece together facts about its busy life of nearly seventy happy years ; to
EARLY HISTORY OF DAMES' HOUSES 3
tell of those who ruled over it, and of those who once peopled its walls, who added to its fame, who loved it — to do this in halting phrases, doubtless, but in all sincerity and truth. The last of the Dames' — the last, the oldest, the most famous of them all — Evans' in Keate's Lane, has passed away. Let us set out, therefore, on our task ere the Dustman comes along and scatters all to the four winds.
At the outset, then, and for the better understanding of what follows, it seems necessary to preface this story with a short historical retrospect. We are to deal with the last of the Dames. What do we know of those who first held the title ? Not very much. Such data as are procurable at this distance of time are con- fused, nebulous, not easily to be laid hold of at all. One may probe about among old leases and convey- ances, one may study the tenure of this or that bit of property, one may seek to rebuild in fancy this or that demolished house, or wander along boundaries very ill defined ; but when one spreads out the material collected and turns on to it present-day light, the answer is much that of an illusive smile when we hoped for speech. Still, a few things may be set down for what they are worth.*
The original Statutes leave us in no doubt as to the wishes of the King when he put his hand to the first Charter of Foundation in 1440. He hoped that his College would become a great centre of education for
* Among the various works consulted for what follows have been : History of Eton College, Sir H. C. Maxwell Lyte; Memoirs of Celebrated Etonians, Jesse ; Etoniana, Collins ; Memoirs of Eminent Etonians, Sir E. Creasy; A History of Eton College, Lionel Cust; Seven Years at Eton, Brinsly Richards ; Eton in the Forties, A. D. Coleridge ; Fasti Etonenses, A. W. Benson ; Memories of Eton and Etonians, Lubbock ; Memoirs of Rev. F. Hodgson; Reminiscences of William Rogers ; A Guide to the Buildings of Eton College, R. A. Austen-Leigh; Etoniana, R. A. Austen- Leigh ; Report and Minutes of Evidence taken before the Public School Commissioners^ 1864; Regulations of the New Governing Body ^ 1872.
4 DAMES AND DAMES' HOUSES
the whole country. It was not to be confined to the actual Foundationers : there were to be others besides these — Commensales, they were called, 'the sons of noblemen and of special friends of the College,' to the number of twenty, who were to be allowed to sleep and board in the College so long as no expense was incurred for them beyond that of their instruction in grammar, while there was also to be another class of Commensales who were to be allowed to dine at the third table in Hall with the scholars and choristers. These last were Commoners, the former being Gentle- men-Commoners, having the right of dining at the table with the Chaplain, Usher, and Clerk.
Such were the conditions, so to speak, within the walls. Outside there was something different, for Henry's scheme was a comprehensive one. The King bought up all the available ground in the immediate vicinity, together with the private houses, gardens, and fields, and made these over to the Provost and Fellows of the College by a series of grants. These properties were to form a portion of the endowment of the College ; the houses, which were none other than the forerunners of our Dames' houses, affording accommodation for those who should resort to Eton for the teaching that was offered.
It is very difficult now to determine the extent of these original grants, and for this reason. The Manor of Eton never fell to the College, and so it is that the various Houses are in some cases held from the Crown, in others from the College, and in some, again, from the Lord of the Manor, the matter being further complicated by later transfers of property either by purchase or exchange.
Mr. R. A. Austen-Leigh, than whom no better authority exists in such matters, points out in various letters to the writer that, as regards the Manor of Eton, there seems a strong probability that there were
THE KING'S PURCHASES OF LAND 5
originally two Manors, if such is possible, in one place, viz., Eton Gildables and Eton Stockdales-cum-Cole- norton. The second of these is now the * Lord of the Manor' property. It is probable, therefore, if the foregoing surmise is correct, that Henry bought up Eton Gildables,
As regards the quarters from which the houses are * held,' the following deserves to be mentioned. The house at the bottom of Common Lane, which was built by John Hawtrey in 1862 and afterwards occupied by Mr. Warre, is Crown property ; while the houses now known as Williams', Stone's, and Broadbent's are all on Lord of the Manor property. Similarly, Godolphin and Holland House were only acquired by the College about the year 1870, and Tatham's, recently pulled down, was until 1905 Lord of the Manor property.* From this point the block of build- ings reaching South to Keate's Lane and West as far as Keate's House was Crown property until 1845, being known as Clock Close. Lastly, the house now known as Wells', at the South-East corner of Keate's Lane, was, until quite recently, freehold.
It is unnecessary to give further examples ; but of the land now occupied by Boarding Houses, the only sites that may always have been in the hands of the College would be the ground round the Chapel grave- yard, that is, between that and Baldwin's Shore, and the site of Gulliver's, Jordley's, Hodgson House, and, lastly, Evans'.
It remains to be said, to complete these somewhat dry but not unnecessary details, that the College does not appear often to have themselves built the houses that later on became Boarding Houses, but usually adopted the plan of letting the land on building leases, the Masters, or others, finding the money for building. Among the sites so let were those in Weston's Yard,
* The site is being utilized for the South African War Memorial.
6 DAMES AND DAMES' HOUSES
others on the right-hand side going down Common Lane, and the ground on which the New Schools now stand.
The Scholars attending the School from outside and finding accommodation in the houses referred to were, with those attached to the Foundation, equally known as Commensales, or Oppidans, though the earliest mention of Oppidans, as such, does not occur until a century later, in an Eton audit-book of i557'i558, Malin also using the word in his account of the daily life of the School, 1561.
The earliest Oppidan of whom we know anything is one, William Paston, who was at Eton in 1478, and who, it appears, must have found lodging at a house kept by a lady whom he refers to as his ' hostess.' Writing to his brother, he says, * Furthermore, certify- ing you as to the 13s. 4d., which ye sent by a gentle- man's man for my board, called Thomas Newton, was delivered to mine hostess.' And he goes on, ' And as for the young gentlewoman, I will certify you how I first fell in acquaintance with her. Her father is dead; there be two sisters of them : the elder is just wedded, at which the wedding I was with mine hostess.' We certainly seem to have here not only the words of one of the first Oppidans, but a suggestive reference to one of the first of the Dames.
Henry had been long dead, and Eton had passed through many vicissitudes, notably its attempted sup- pression by Edward IV., ere the numbers attending the School increased to any very great extent. Never- theless, as earl}' as the middle of the sixteenth Century, we hear of many of the greater families sending their sons there, while a few years later the numbers had so far increased that it became the custom of the Provost and Fellows to take one or two boys as boarders in their houses. Again at the date of the Dissolution of the Monasteries a large influx of students occurred,
ORIGIN OF THE DAME SYSTEM 7
and early in the following century we hear of the School being ' very much thronged by the young nobility.' The lodging, or boarding, houses were filling up, and they are spoken of as being kept by * Dames ' or ' Dominies,' the latter title being used when there was a male head of the establishment, though, later on, the term ' Dame ' was equally applied without reference to sex.* We learn, too, that the Head Master and the Usher had long been unable to cope with the work : assistant masters were appointed, and the building of the first Upper School was begun (1665) in order to find accommodation for the increasing- number of Oppidans. At this same date the assistant masters were in some instances taking pupils in their houses, though such did not become general until many years latent The province of the Master appears to have been regarded as lying in teaching only and not in keeping house, and it is in this fact that we have the real origin of the Dame system, a system which must not be supposed to have existed at Eton ^nd nowhere else, for it certainly did so at Harrow and at Rugby, among other schools, while to this day it has its place in certain schools in America.^ At Eton, as we know, the Dame system has now been swept away and the Tutor keeps the house, the diffi- culty of the housekeeping being got over by the insti- tution of that most useful body, the Matrons.
Another century went by, and a considerable altera- tion had already taken place in the scheme of education.
* The terms Boarding Masters and Boarding Dames occur in the Church Registers.
t The assistant masters were not allowed to keep boarding-houses in 1766, and, while there is no record of when they first began to compete with the Dames in this respect, the fact of their doing so is mentioned as a recent innovation in 1824.
X The Dame system may possibly have been imported from Eton ; in the case of Harrow by a succession of Etonian Head Masters, and in that of Rugby by Dr. James. Mr. R. A. Austen-Leigh informs the writer that he found the Dame system in existence at the Philips Andover Academy, America, in 1903
8 DAMES AND DAMES' HOUSES
In 1766, for instance, French, drawing, and dancing were being taught — the foreshadowing, in fact, of a kind of ' Modern Side.' And then, again, in a docu- ment drawn up for Thomas James in 1 768-1 775 appear quite a number of terms linking us clearly with those days. Here is one which might have been written yesterday: 'On finding any boys missing, the prae- posters enquire the reason of their absence at the Dames who keep the boarding Houses, and bring an excuse for it in the Dame's handwriting.' There is even a reference here to ' staying-out,' though the writer seems to have thought better of it, for it is struck out in the original manuscript.
At this same date (1766) there were already no less than thirteen boarding Houses, three of which were kept by Dominies and the rest by Dames of the other sex, while there were eight assistant masters employed in teaching. The boys are spoken of as preparing their lessons in the boarding Houses, and the school hours, on what we should call 'whole school days,' were almost identical with those of our own time. These hours were, on the stricter working days, 8 to 9, II to 12, 3 to 4, and 5 to 6. Tuesday was a whole holiday, Thursday a half-holiday, and on Saturday there was * play at 4.' For all we know, Friday may have been reckoned * black,' and in summer there was certainly Absence at 6 in the evenings on half and whole holidays.
It is unnecessary to refer here to the condition of College, or to Long Chamber and its many scandals, save in so far as the Collegers were themselves con- nected with the Dames' Houses. In the early part of the last century the whole atmosphere of College was bad. For seventy Scholars there were only four dormitories. In Long Chamber, where fifty-two boys were supposed to be accommodated, there were neither chairs nor tables, only beds, these being made
COLLEGERS AND DAMES' HOUSES 9
in the mornings by the Lower boys. Water had to be fetched from the pump in the yard, and tallow candles, from one or other of the Dames' Houses, were usually stuck on to the back of a book, as no candlesticks were provided. ' When,' writes a boy at this date, * I wished to obtain water for my own use, I was told that the Sixth Form and the Liberty only had this privilege in College, and that any ablutions of mine must take place at my Dame's. On arriving there, I found a room of the barest description, with a sanded floor, called the Collegers' room.' The food in Hall was of inferior quality, and varied little from day to day, further supplies being brought in from the Dames' Houses. A Dame's was looked upon at this date as a place of refuge, the holder of a House having to undertake 'for himself, his assigns, and undertenants, to admit a certain number of King's Scholars according to the direction of the Upper Master for the time being, and to take care that they were properly attended in his house in the time of sickness according to the ancient usage of the place, and if at any time he refused to comply with such directions, his lease was to be immediately void and of none effect.'*
It was well that the Collegers had even this safe- guard, for they had little else. But the time was now approaching when many scandals were to be swept away, and when Eton was to be practically regenerated. There is no more important date in the history of Eton in modern times than the year 1840. That year saw the appointment of Provost Hodgson, and if Mr. Gladstone was wont to say that * the three great reformers of Eton to whom she owed most were Hawtrey, G. A. Selwyn as private tutor, and the
* From a note by William Evans regarding his original lease. A clause to the same effect is to be found in the leases of Jordley's, Bearblock's, Woodward's, and Slingsby's.
lo DAMES AND DAMES' HOUSES
Duke of Newcastle, who compelled the study of Divinity by his Scholarship/ to this trio must surely be added the name of Francis Hodgson, Certain reforms had already been introduced shortly before Hodgson's term of office began, but the Head Master, Hawtrey, had received little or no real support in attacking the many evils that he knew were crying for remedy. Hodgson's ejaculation as he drove over Fifteen arch bridge and surveyed the pile of buildings that then opened to his view, is said to have been, ' Please God, if I live, I will do something for those poor boys.' He was true to his word. But he did not stay his hand when he had swept out Long Chamber: he went further afield than that. There were abuses calling for correction outside College as well as within, and, ably seconded by Hawtrey, he turned his attention to these too, in his efforts for the general welfare and happiness of Eton.
First and foremost came College itself. A com- mittee was formed, of which Lord Lyttelton was chairman, and subscriptions were collected for the purpose of building a new wing for the Collegers. So bad had been the reputation of Long Chamber, that in 1841 only two candidates had presented them- selves for thirty-five vacancies. But now all this was changed. The Prince Consort laid the foundation- stone in 1844, and when the new wing was opened two years later, separate rooms had been provided for the first forty-nine Collegers, and only twenty-one were left to occupy one half of Long Chamber.
Such a change as this naturally affected Eton generally. A levelling up took place on all hands. The condition of the Dames' Houses called for attention no less than the interior of College. They were often at this date kept by persons of an inferior class, who looked far more to the interests of their own pockets than to the welfare of their boys, their
CONDITION OF DAMES' HOUSES ii
position being in many cases unassailable by reason of the vested interests they had in their houses. The very name of Dame at this date was regarded almost as a reproach, and in the minds of some a social stigma seems even to have attached to the office. Yet there w^ere never wanting those who were ready at all times to buy out the holders of these houses, and at a considerable premium, either for the purpose of taking office themselves, or as a convenient place for a poor relation. The houses were, in fact, looked upon much as a boarding-house at the seaside is in these days — as simply a means of making money, and with the additional advantage that tenants were certain, security ample, and trouble confined to a limited portion of the year. Of order there was little, and the arrangements generally were regarded as a private matter between those who kept the houses and the parents of the boys, the authorities rarely interfering save in the case of a serious breach in the rules of the School. The accommodation was often of the poorest description, the food of the coarsest, the floor of the dining-room being usually sanded, and carpets in the bedrooms by no means general. Discipline in many cases scarcely existed, and was only upheld by a liberal use of the fist among the boys, or an equally liberal use of the birch in the hands of the Head Master. The spirit of emulation, as we know it, was almost non-existent, the days of cups and colours had not dawned, and there was an almost total absence of that spirit of rivalry in the field of athletics which has since become a part of the inner life of all our great schools, and which is so invaluable from whatever side we may regard it.
As a beginning towards remedying this condition of things, a number of dilapidated buildings were acquired and pulled down, new houses for Masters taking their place. The Christopher Inn, standing in
12 DAMES AND DAMES' HOUSES
the very heart of the School, and from which drink was regularly fetched for consumption in the Houses, was acquired from the Crown and closed, and with the disappearance of the well-known signboard there vanished a source of undeniable evil. To provide for the sick, in case of epidemics, a Sanatorium was built by subscription on the Eton Wick road. Previous to this there had been no provision for those seriously ill, and in the case of Collegers, as we have seen, their only refuge was at one or other of the Dames' Houses, as there was no accommodation whatever for them in College. The general health of the School was at the same time greatly improved by an entirely new system of drainage carried out at vast expense. On all hands there was a general awakening ; the old order of things was passing away : it had served its time ; it had sent out into the world scores of men destined to occupy the very highest places, and to win those places by the strength of their own arms, the force of their own intellects, the depth, the beauty, the man- fulness of their own individual characters. But now had come the time for Eton to be born anew. Old anomalies, old abuses, even old customs that had stood the test of centuries, were one and all to be abolished or reformed, and though the outcry against the reformers was loud and deep, we, who look at their work from these later days, can have nothing but admiration for what Hodgson and Hawtrey did for our School sixty and seventy years ago.
The material welfare of the boys was not, however, the only point that engaged Hodgson's and Hawtrey's attention. The Chapel, previously somewhat un- sightly, was now entirely altered, and though the work was attended by a certain Vandalism that stripped the floor of its marble and its brasses, robbed pos- terity of some of the mural paintings that adorned the five western bays of the church and covered up the
REFORMS IN THE SCHOOL 13
remainder, and narrowly escaped turning Lupton's Chapel into an organ loft, some improvements were certainly effected. Religious instruction, which a few years before had had no place at all, was now allotted a definite position ; the study of Mathematics was in- troduced, if still only as a voluntary subject, a stimulus having been given by the institution of the Tomline scholarship ; modern geography was taught in many of the Forms, and considerable alterations were made in the list of classical works in use throughout the School ; the entrance examination for the Foundation was entirely remodelled ; a library was opened for the use of all ; and the study of modern languages encouraged by prizes offered by the Prince Consort.*
Nor must mention of one of the most drastic reforms of all be omitted. The private tutor system was now swept almost entirely away. These tutors had in some cases lived in the Dames' Houses, and occa- sionally taken part in the management ; others had lived together in the town. But now all this was altered, and all boys were placed under one or other of the Assistant Masters as their official Tutor. The staff of Assistant Masters was at the same time greatly strengthened, and new houses were built for several of them.f
Great changes were also made in the discipline ot the School ; a wider trust was placed in the boys themselves, and appeals to the block became less frequent. In the playing fields games were en- couraged, and cricket was more widely patronized. On the river, boating was no longer ignored by the authorities in the way in which it had previously
* French was introduced as part of the regular school-work by Dr. Balston. Physical science followed for Fifth Form in 1869, and in 1875 for Remove.
t In 1833 there were only 9 masters, including the Head, for 570 boys in Upper School, Dr. Keate's division at one time is said to have numbered 1 70.
14 DAMES AND DAMES' HOUSES
been. A test in swimming, called * Passing,' was in- stituted before a boy was allowed afloat, bathing- places were made, and Watermen were engaged to teach swimming and to watch the river. Lastly, Montem, which had been celebrated for centuries, was abolished, the year 1844 seeing the great festival celebrated for the last time, and 1847 its total ex- tinction. Several anomalies continued for a time unremedied, more especially as regards * bounds ' ; but if these, like many of the reforms just mentioned, are found to have a place in our story, there still remains one other point calling for reference here, and this is as to the title of * Dame ' and how it comes to be now extinct.
We have seen how, at the outset, the Oppidans, or Town boys, were lodged in houses kept mostly by dames in the ordinary sense, and how the term * Dame ' came to be applied to boarding-house keepers of either sex. When, as time went on, the regular Assistant Masters, or Tutors, gradually supplanted these, and the College took to exercising a more direct authority over the boarding-houses than it had hitherto done, these Houses were one by one occupied by the Classical Tutors, as the great body of the Assistant Masters were called. But with the extension of the educational system there now sprung into existence another body of teachers who were termed non- Classical Tutors. These were the teachers of Mathe- matics, Modern Languages, Physical Science, and Drawing, and for a number of years this class of Masters laboured under very serious disabilities : they were not allowed to hold Houses at all, and when at last this restriction was removed, they were still styled ' Dames.'
The position of this body may perhaps be best exemplified by that of the Mathematical Masters at this period. Mathematics had had no definite place
ABOLITION OF DAMES' HOUSES 15
assigned to them in the school curriculum previous to 1836.* At this date Stephen Hawtrey was allowed to give voluntary teaching, and was at first placed on the same footing as the Drawing Master. He built the Mathematical Schoolf at great expense, satisfied the vested interests of a previous teacher, and engaged a number of assistant masters to help him. It was not, however, until 1851 that Mathematics became part of the regular school work, and that Hawtrey was placed, in some respects, on the same level as the Classical Masters, being given the title of Mathematical Assistant Master. His assistants had to wait long years for any similar recognition : they had no right in regard to School discipline out of school hours ; they were not allowed to wear the academical dress, and they could not send in * complaints *t unless these were first signed by Hawtrey. When, at last, the study of Mathematics came to be regarded with more import- ance, these disabilities were removed ; Hawtrey's assistants were then made Assistants to the Head Master, and were placed, by degrees, on the same footing as the Classical Masters, being allowed to exercise authority out of school, to hold Houses, and finally to be regarded as Tutors. Similar advantages were extended at the same time to the teachers of French and Physical Science, and these have all now gradually supplanted the Dames in the boarding- houses, no new leases being granted to the latter by the College.
Thus the Dames have one by one ceased to exist, till they now no longer have any place in Eton life. Whether the title has altogether vanished is a moot point. Eton is innately conservative in the way she
* The rule now is that there shall be one Mathematical Master, at the least, for every loo boys in the School.
t This was pulled down to make room for the Queen's Schools and Lower Chapel.
X For summary punishment at the hands of the Head Master,
i6 DAMES AND DAMES' HOUSES
regards her own affairs, and things there die hard. The title is now confined, in the Tutors' Houses at all events, to the Matron ; but, in spite of the official title of House Tutor, a boy boarding in the House of a non-classical Master and having his Tutor outside, still often speaks of the latter as ' m'Tutor ' and the former as ' m'Dame.'
We come back, then, to the initial difficulty of Eton terms and Eton nomenclature. We all remember Six- penny, and can only conclude that it was so called because the price of entrance was a shilling ; we have all attended innumerable Absences, but it is a question whether our minds are not still a little hazy on the point — why, when there was no Absence, it was called * a call.' So, too, with the time-honoured title of Dame : we must leave posterity to decide how long it is to be retained, and turn, ourselves, to the last real Dame's in the old sense and weave such story of its past as may be possible.
CHAPTER II
THE EVANS FAMILY — WILLIAM EVANS — JANE EVANS' REMINISCENCES — WILLIAM EVANS FOUNDS THE HOUSE — HIS SYSTEM — HIS DESCRIPTION OF DAMES' HOUSES AT THIS TIME
In the latter part of the eighteenth century there came to reside in Windsor one Samuel Evans. He had been living in Flintshire till that time, and was a man of good antecedents. His father, John Evans, had married into the Morton family of Sheffield, his grand- father had been in business in London, and his great- grandfather had taken for wife Mary Sidney, a direct descendant of Sir Philip Sidney of immortal memory. As a means of livelihood, Samuel Evans followed the profession of an artist and drawing master, and among his pupils at Windsor were the daughters of George III. To testify to this, there still stand in the studio of his descendant, Sidney Evans, the present Drawing Master at Eton, models of a bull and a cow, with this inscrip- tion by William Evans beneath them :
Given to my father, Samuel Evans, in 1795, by H.R.H. Princess Elizabeth, daughter of George III., as a mark of esteem.
The works by Samuel Evans that still remain in the possession of his descendants show him to have been an artist of some talent, and among them are portraits of himself and his wife, and especially, too, a picture of Old Windsor bridge that was once honoured by a
17 2
i8 WILLIAM EVANS
place in an exhibition of the Works of Old Masters at Burlington House.
From being a drawing master at Windsor, Samuel Evans, though at what date is uncertain, migrated to Eton and took up his abode in the old house on the North side of Keate's Lane, still used as the residence of the Drawing Master of the School, and exactly opposite to the one that was destined in after-years to be so intimately associated with his family.
There is little need here to refer to the children of Samuel Evans and Ann his wife, a daughter of a Mr. Knight of Soberton, Hampshire. Of their two sons, one died at the age of sixteen as an Eton boy, and the other, William, the eldest, lived to become the founder of the Eton House that took his name, and thereby to confer no small benefit on the School.
William Evans was born on December 4, 1798. At eleven years of age he joined the School as an Oppidan, remaining till 181 5, when his father decided to make him a doctor, though he already showed a leaning towards Art. His medical studies were not, however, destined to last long, for in 1818 his father's health began to fail, and it became evident that if he was to continue to hold the position of Drawing Master he must call in some one to help him. It is related that one day, at this period. Dr. Keate paid a visit to the house arrayed in all the glory of silk cassock, pudding- sleeved gown, and three-cornered hat. Mrs. Evans is said to have been delighted that so distinguished a man should deign to inquire after her husband's health ; but she soon found her mistake when Keate broke in with, ' Where's your son ?' Mrs. Evans replied that he was in London studying medicine. ' Send for him at once,' said Keate ; ' he must come and take his father's place.'
Such an order from such a man could claim only instant obedience. William Evans was started on a
DR. KEATE AND WILLIAM EVANS 19
new course of studies, chiefly under the famous De Wint, and after a while returned to Eton as his father's Assistant. For several years the father and son worked together; but in 1823 Samuel Evans* health broke down altogether, and he retired to Droxford in Hampshire, where he died in 1837, in the seventy- fifth year of his age, his wife following him in the year 1852.
There can be no doubt that Keate's choice was fully justified. Evans was possessed of just those qualities that were necessary for the post. He had been an Eton boy; he was at all points essentially a man. He was of fine appearance, standing more than six foot ; he was a conscientious worker, and he became devoted to his art. Nor was he less likely to gain the affections of Eton boys by reason of other dominant traits of character. Endowed with immense strength, he gloried in all manly exercises ; he was a keen sportsman, and it was said of him in at least one Scottish home that he could catch a salmon when nobody else could. With the rifle and shot-gun he could equally hold his own ; he was a wonderful swimmer, and on the river he was a fine oar.* In looking back over these long years it almost seems that in appointing Evans Draw- ing Master, Keate was not thinking alone of art training, but of something of far greater importance where boys were concerned. He could hardly have made a happier choice. Evans was fully competent to teach ; he was also, at this period, competent to lead, and, in leading,
* Evans' earlier diaries are chiefly devoted to his art work, to meetings with friends (such as Landseer, Dickens, Forster, Thackeray, and others), and to sport. Entries such as these are common : 'Dunkeld and Perth. Highland gathering.' 'Duchess of Kent arrived at Blair. Killed 23^ brace of grouse.' ' Dunkeld. Duke killed 8 harts.' ' Thirty brace of grouse, shooting with Lord Shannon.' 'Upton Wood with Smith ; 13 brace of pheasants.' 'Killed 3 harts at Loch ; 13 stone 3, 12.8, and 12.5.' ' One hart, 14 stone 7 lbs.' * Killed 41 brace grouse ; Duke, 40.' ' On the moors near Bruar with Lord James Murray. 25 brace.' 'Dunkeld. 5 kelts ; 3 salmon, 18, 10, 5i,' and so on.
2 — 2
20 EVANS BECOMES DRAWING MASTER
to influence for good both outside the doors of his studio as well as within,*
And from the point of view of Art, Evans was no mere Drawing Master, possessed of the power o£ imparting pretty tricks ; he was something very dif- ferent. He might possibly have become a successful doctor ; he became something more than a successful artist. He had inherited to the full his father's talent ; the feeling for Art ran strong in him. He had an eye for line ; he had the sense of colour, and composition came easily to him. These of themselves formed a fair equipment ; years of persevering study did the rest. The writer chances to have been familiar with William Evans' water-colour drawings all his life, and to possess several of them, and just as in all Arts the character of the Artist never fails to declare itself, so do these drawings show something of the character of the man behind the brush. There is strength and breadth of touch, an absence of all 'finicking,' often great brilliancy and freshness, and though, perhaps, even in his very best examples, the hand of the real genius is not present, his work is never- theless capable of giving us at all times exceeding pleasure.!
Evans' work received its first tangible recognition in 1828, when he was made an Associate of the Old Water-Colour Society, being elected a full Member on June 7, 1839. In the aff'airs of this Society he soon began to take an active part ; he regularly attended its meetings in London, and his best work was to be seen
* Evans' actual appointment dates from 1823, when he definitely succeeded his father. He was Drawing Master till 1853, when he was succeeded by his son, Samuel T. G. Evans.
t Two of William Evans' most widely known pictures are ' Montem in the School-yard' and 'The Playing-fields.' Many of the figures are portraits. The two pictures were painted for Mr. Pigot in 1844, being subsequently engraved by C. Lewis, and being now the property of Lord Braybrooke (see Loan Collection Catalogue, 450th anniversary of the Foundation).
THE OLD WATER-COLOUR SOCIETY 21
upon its walls.* Many years later, Frederick Tayler, writing to him in reference to the work he had so long done for the Society, says : ' No member, no six members, I might say, have done so much that is practically valuable for it as you have, and God grant that you may live to do much more.' Reading through the whole correspondence of this date, one is struck by the way in which many of the Members turn to Evans for his opinion and advice. A large number of letters from many of the leading artists of that day have been preserved by Evans' family, and these all ahke show that Evans' voice never failed to make itself heard on occasions of importance. The natural force of character that was behind the man compelled him to speak out and often to take the lead. But that he never did so in an overbearing way is shown by the great affection with which he was evidently re- garded by his fellows. Were it the difficult question of deciding upon the rival claims of candidates for Membership ; was it the condition of some artist in poor circumstances — and many were those he helped ; the erection of a memorial to another that was gone ; the collection of funds for the assistance of a widow left with a number of children ; or even answering the call of a comrade who had fallen by his own fault and his own folly, Evans appears to have been often entrusted to carry out what was necessary, and more often to have been the one who had initiated the whole matter. To the end of his days he continued to work for the Society, and he died one of its oldest Members. Meanwhile William Evans had taken to himself a wife. In 1822 he married Jane Mary, daughter of George Vernon Jackson, of Droxford, Hants. No less than six of Mrs. Evans' brothers served in the
* The Society was founded in 1804, being known under the above title until 1881, when Queen Victoria conferred the prefix of 'Royal,' first signing its diplomas in the following year. It is now known as the Society of Painters in Water-Colours.
22 WILLIAM EVANS' FAMILY
Royal Navy. Three of these lost their lives in the Service ; a fourth, George Vernon, completed a fine record ere he died as a Rear Admiral ; and another became a soldier. Her descendants could well claim, therefore, that they were of good fighting stock.
On his father's retirement, Evans established himself in the Old House, as it was then called by the family, in Keate's Lane, and here were born to him a numerous progeny.* Of these, two claim our especial attention as being intimately associated with our narrative — the two sisters, Annie and Jane. Their brother, Samuel, will also be often mentioned, and Mrs. Fenn, the sole survivor of them all, has contributed materially towards any interest these pages may possess.f
Little has been preserved in connexion with these earlier years ; but one invaluable record remains in some * Recollections ' dictated by Jane Evans many years later and taken down by her sister, Mrs. Fenn. They are, however, very brief, being contained in a few pages of one small notebook. Here is the earliest of them :
'Montem of 1835. A great day. We children were dressed in new frocks, of course.
* William Vernon, b. 1823, d. in New Zealand, 1843. Ann Maria, b. 1824, d. at Eton, 1871. Jane Mary, b. 1826, d. at Eton, 1906. Samuel Thomas George, b. 1829 ; m. Susan, daughter of Mr. T.
Bross, of Springfield, Clapton ; d, 1904. Mary Radcliffe, b. 1830 ; m. Rev. W. Wanklyn, Vicar of
Deopham, Norfolk ; d. 1905. Fanny Elizabeth, b. 1833, d. in infancy.
George Richard, b. 1832, d. a midshipman, Indian Navy, 1853. Fanny Elizabeth, b. 1834 ; m. Major A. Drury, Madras N.I. :
d. i860. Grace, b. 1836; m. Rev. W. M. Fenn, Rector of Tankersley, Yorkshire. /Edward Augustus, b. 1837, d. 1838. (John Sidney, b. 1837, d. 1838. t With Mrs. Fenn's name must be coupled, in this particular, those of Mrs. S. T. G. Evans and of her son, Sidney V. Evans, the present
JANE EVANS' RECOLLECTIONS 23
'Montem had to be abolished on account of the trains bringing so many undesirable outsiders into the place. It was a day given up to hospitality and gathering money for the first Colleger who did not get the King's Scholarship. In those days the Houses had all to take care of Collegers, there being no accom- modation for sickness in College. Drake was one of those belonging to our House. He was a very good- looking boy, and I well remember the pleasure with which we heard he had received a sum sufficient to help him substantially at Cambridge. There was no idea that the money collected was in any way a charity, but that it was a gladly given gift to one who must have worked well to have become entitled to it.
'The Queen often came, and sat at the window over the archway in the Clock Tower to watch the pro- cession of boys passing below and waving the Montem flags. It was the custom for the boys to wear fancy dress, and many of them, being the sons of rich parents, spent large sums on their get-up. The rest of the School wore red coats and white trousers, with cocked hat and white plumes. After the last Montem, an order was issued for the boys to wear their red coats, and for many weeks they gladly took advantage of this.
' Some of my earliest recollections have to do with the time when we were still living in the Old House, and with scraps of conversation between my father and mother. At that time my father was getting on well in his profession, and often went to London to attend committees of the Old Water-Colour Society. Many of his brother artists would come and stay with him at Eton, and among these was Sir Edwin Land- seer, who was very fond of teasing my eldest sister. For some reason my mother and she both disliked the idea of the life of a Dame, and perhaps the reason may have been that so many of those they came in contact with were there simply for the sake of providing for their families, without taking much interest in the work. At that time there were some twelve or thirteen
Drawing Master at Eton. The writer feels very greatly indebted to them for the unwearying patience they have shown in assisting him by every means in their power.
24 JANE EVANS' RECOLLECTIONS
Dames' Houses, presided over by women of various social degrees. In some cases the property was their own by inheritance — viz., Miss Langton, for instance, who lived in Keate's Lane and afterwards married Colonel Bulkeley. Miss Angelo was another. She had been a noted beauty, and to the end of her days used patch and powder and wore ringlets, and when no longer able to walk she was carried to church, with some state, in a sedan chair. Another was a Miss Bearblock. She was my sister's Godmother, and was very kind to her; but she was a Dame, which grieved my sister, as she was fond of her. Sir Edwin could not resist making fun of my sister over this by asking her continually who her Godmother was.
* Cattermole,* too, was a great friend, and when a bachelor spent many weeks at a time at Eton. He was full of practical jokes, and sometimes we children were the sufferers. At that time we had a governess who admired him very much. He did not appreciate her attentions, and occasionally revenged himself She had a habit of watching him at work, and, one day, his room being on the first floor and a ladder having been left against his window by someone who was cleaning it, he heard a stealthy step cautiously ascending it. When he guessed the person's head would be above the window-sill, he carelessly threw his painting sponge at it, saying : " That serves you right, Master Sam." Sam was my brother, then aged about six, and his turn came next, poor little boy, for after bribing him with sixpence, Mr. Cattermole persuaded him to be put into a big hamper which was to be taken to Miss H., the governess. She, thinking it was something from home, opened it with great delight, when out popped Sam's chubby face, to be received with many smart slaps, for which the sixpence was poor comfort.
'In November, 1837, there came a terrible sorrow into my father's life. My mother died very shortly after giving birth to twin sons.f At the time my
* George Cattermole, 1800- 1868, was an artist of considerable repute. He worked in oils as well as water-colours, and received many distinctions from foreign Academies. His illustrations to the Waverley Novels are well known.
t William Evans seems to have marked this day throughout his life, and in an entry in his diary on November 19, 1872, there is this : '.Twins born this day, 1837 died in infancy. To show their regard
MRS, WIU.IA:M EVANS. From the portrait by Margaret Carpenter, 1830.
Yfo/acc p. 24.
EVANS IS LEFT A WIDOWER 25
father was seriously ill with quinsey, and in those days, when good nurses were not easy to find, my poor mother was not looked after as she ought to have been. One morning when alone, and very weak, she slipped out of bed, and went to the other end of the house to see how my father was. This brought on a chill, and in a very short time fever and death. Mr. G. Selwyn was constantly by her side during the last few hours of her life, and he and Mr. Edward Coleridge acted as true friends to her and to my father, whose agony of mind can be understood. The sympathy of the whole place was stirred, and every one did what they could for him, though it was impossible for anyone to do more really than stand by his side and wait for time to soften the blow.'
Evans was thus left a widower. His twin sons survived their mother only a few months, when they were laid by her side at the east end of the College Chapel burial-ground, beneath the flat grey stone that still marks their resting-place. Eight others, the eldest of whom was but fifteen years and the youngest eighteen months, remained with their father in the Old House. He himself was in his fortieth year ; he had worked hard, and it is pathetic to find his daughter writing : * Up to this time he had led a happy life, and he afterwards told us that that year he and our mother had for the first time been able to save and put by in the Bank the sum of £60.^
For the time Evans was a broken man, but he had the strength to realize that in sorrow work is the best remedy, and applied himself with greater vigour to his pupils and his pictures. He had the sympathy of those about him, he had won the affections of his brother artists ; above all, he had the love of his children, and at his elbow there stood those two stanch
for me, the following became their sponsors — Dr. and Mrs. Keate, E. Willis, of Goodrest, Col. Augustus Liddell, Mrs. Carter, and Thomas Gambier Parry, of Highnam.'
26 THE SECRET OF A GOOD HOUSE
friends, George Augustus Selwyn and Edward Coleridge.*
We are justified in believing that had it not been for the influence of these last, Eton would certainly at this time have lost Evans, who had made up his mind to quit the scene of his sorrows, to go to London, and to establish himself there as an artist. He was most fortunately dissuaded from carrying this de- cision into effect.
The condition of many of the Dames' houses has been already described, and Evans had long wished to see them improved. No less than twenty-one ladies' names appear in the Eton Register as having held houses at this period ; but the hand of the reformer was already making itself felt, and many of these houses were destined very shortly to be swept away. Here was Evans' opportunity, and his friends were not behindhand in pointing out that now was his chance of taking up fresh work, of doing something for the School, and of carrying into effect his ideas ot what a Dame's house should be.
Evans had always maintained that the secret of a good and successfully managed House would be found in this — the degree to which the boys were trusted to govern themselves. He considered that this govern- ment should be oligarchical in character; that there should be a Captain who possessed, first of all, the absolute confidence of the holder of the House, and who should be trusted under him to carry out the necessary orders and to maintain discipline ; that the Captain should have for his support a certain number of the senior boys immediately below him ; and that by this means the honour of the boys as a whole would be appealed to as well as their better instincts
* George Augustus Selwyn was then a private tutor at Eton, and Edward Coleridge an Assistant Master, holding the house at the corner of Keate's Lane and the Eton Wick Road, now known as Keate's house.
EVANS' PRINCIPLE 27
and that they would so come to learn that the credit of their House and the position it occupied in the School rested ultimately in their hands. The abso- lute authority would still remain, of course, in the hands of the holder of the House, but, save in cases of a serious nature, the executive would be largely vested in the Captain and his coadjutors.
To attempt to carry on a House on these principles in the Eton of that day was no ordinary enterprise. It amounted to a revolution ; it was against all pre- cedent ; it threw a responsibility on boys for which many considered them quite unfitted ; not a few persons scouted the idea as chimerical ; and those who saw in Evans' scheme an attack upon their vested interests, endeavoured to hold it up to ridicule and contempt.
But Evans had decided to follow the advice of his friends and, having done so, put his hand to the work at once. Underlying his scheme there was a great principle, though one which at that date had made little way in our leading schools. His may have been a high ideal, but it set a high ideal also before the boys of his House. They were to be trusted ; they were to be believed, and not doubted ; honour, truth, manfulness, were to be held up as things for which they must themselves strive, and without coercion, without the shadow of the master at their elbow, or the sudden advent of some one from outside to call Absence at unexpected moments.
It happened that on the opposite side of Keate's Lane, and immediately facing the house in which Evans was living, there stood a somewhat dilapidated structure, housing some fourteen boys, and kept by a Mrs. Vallancey. It appears to have been a typical Dame's House, and as the holder was willing to negotiate, Evans and his friends decided that this should be the field of his future enterprise.
28 DAMES' HOUSES
Writing, apparently, some twenty-five years later, Evans gives the following account of the Dames' houses at that time, and of the first steps he took in acquiring his own :
' The gradual transition from the Dames' to the Masters' Houses began with the present century. When Dr. Goodall was Head Master he had two or three boys in his House. In 1809, when 1 entered the School as a boy, Mr. Carter had a few boys of the class who afterwards came with Private Tutors. Dr. Keate also took boys for a time. Mr. Bethell and Mr. Yonge also had some few, their then superior accommodation justifying the enormously increased charge on that made by the Dames. For instance, the dinners were properly served ; boys dined in their Tutor's dining-room ; all boys but brothers had single rooms, and they lived as gentlemen's sons should live. On the other hand, in the Dames' Houses there were many instances of four-bedded rooms, with an extra charge of ten guineas for what was called a study, a closet about 4 feet square. The disorderly state of these Houses was such that they were constantly liable to be visited by the Head Master, who would come in at any hour and call " Absence." The whole system was so bad that those who had to struggle against it had a hard time of it.
* This state of things went on for some time. The Dames made large fortunes, for there was no induce- ment to the boys to eat at home, and their bills at the cooks' shops were consequently enormous. The dinners were served in the most uninviting way : the tablecloth changed once a week ; common knives, two- pronged forks, tin cups ; some boys allowed meat only once a day. Their supper was bread and cheese at 6.30 ; the dining-room floor, as that of their own rooms, sanded — in fact, they were worse provided for than their fathers' servants. A boy, afterwards in the Life Guards, told me that he never went to his Dame's dinner during his last two years at Eton.
' In course of time the younger masters adopted the plan of their seniors ; many houses were built, and gradually drew off a great many boys from the Dames.
EVANS TAKES VALLANCEY'S 29
This went on till about 1838. At that time my friend George Selwyn, afterwards Bishop of New Zealand, was a private tutor at Eton. I was in great trouble, and had great inducements to follow my profession in London, but he and others induced me to purchase the goodwill of the house I now occupy from an Irish lady, Mrs. Vallancey. The terms were drawn up by him, and attested by Mr. Carter, the Vice-Provost, and Mr. Coleridge.* I was to pay her the sum of ;^3,ooo for the goodwill of the house, their belief being that if the treatment was more that of a Master s House it would be successful.f
* Provisions were then much cheaper ; everything, in fact, so per cent, less than at present. It was usual to supply all the groceries from the Rolls and Butter shops. These things were brought to the rooms by women not always of the best character; the supply was bad, and disagreement constantly occurring. I made up my mind at once to abandon these things, for which these people charged two guineas a term a boy, and witnout remuneration.! Mr. Dupuis was the first to follow the example. I
* This agreement is before the writer. It is dated February 11, 1839, and this must therefore be taken as that of the founding of the House. Mrs. Vallancey had held the premises since 1812.
f Reference to Evans' evidence before the Public School Com- missioners, 1 863- 1 864, shows that when the Dames' Houses changed hands a payment was always made for the so-called goodwill, but that there was no such payment in the case of the Tutors' Houses. The Dame holding the House might sell the goodwill to any person she liked, though the Head Master was considered to hold a veto. Dr. Goodford did his best in his day to put a stop to this payment for the goodwill of a House, but found himself quite unable to prevent it in the case of the Dames' Houses. This was one of the objections to this class of house, a complicated mass of varied interests due to these payments having grown up within the College, and which the Com- missioners speak of as ' being most injurious to the interests of the School.' When, in 1870, the New Governing Body for Eton was appointed, the whole question of the tenure of Houses was considered, and when, in 1872, they issued their Regulations, it was decreed that ' the terms of succession to all Boarding Houses, whether belonging to the College or not, shall, for the future, be subject to the approval of the Governing Body, but there shall be no charge for " goodwill/' directly or indirectly.' It is well to bear these points in mind in view of subsequent events.
X These were what we used to call our ' Orders ' — /.^, three hot rolls in the morning, with a pat of butter, tea, milk, and sugar ; and a quarter of a loaf of bread, with the same other allowances, at tea-time.
30 THE PRIVATE TUTORS
placed around the boys the best servants I could procure ; the Bishop ordered for me, of his own silversmith, £120 v^orth of silver in forks and spoons, and I then built a proper dining-room. The effect of all this was soon apparent in the discipline and numbers of the House. It has continued to prosper. As to the statement that the ordinary charges of a Dame's were increased, I have only to say that, on examining the accounts, the single rooms, which were few, were charged at fancy prices, and by way of increasing the charge for the double-, three-, and four- bedded rooms, an extra sum of ten guineas was placed on the studies. Extra charges were made for every conceivable thing — for instance, glass, any luxuries supplied during sickness, repairs to rooms and furniture, every drop of wine consumed, so that the sum total was not increased, but the charges con- solidated.
* It should be remembered that, at the early part of this period, there were as many as twenty private tutors, who generally came to Eton with boys of rank and fortune. They formed a little world of their own, many living in private houses in the town and others in the Dames' Houses, dining at the family table. There was one at my House with Lord Dartmouth, my first Captain ; but he was quickly sent away. Lord Dartmouth kindly saying that I had amply filled his place. The Duke of Athole (who was here with Mr. Way) told me that his expenses when he was at Eton were ;^ 1,000 a year, and that his son's never exceeded £170. The one was under the private tutor system, the other showed the saving effected when a boy was thrown into the School.'
It is fitting that some mention should be made here of the one who was so intimately associated with Evans in starting the House, George Augustus Selwyn. It speaks well for Evans' character that he could claim the friendship of such a man ; it was no less happy for the House that Selwyn was able to leave upon it the impress of his hand. He was no ordinary man, and perhaps his life cannot be more happily described
GEORGE AUGUSTUS SELWYN 31
than in a single sentence by Bishop Harold Browne : ' He was always first in everything, and no one ever knew him without admiring and loving him.' His physical activity is said to have been prodigious ; he once walked from Cambridge to London in thirteen hours without stopping ; he rowed * 7 ' in the first Oxford and Cambridge boat-race ; and he was one of the society, known as the Psychrolutic Society, to which Evans also belonged, whose members bathed nearly every day of the year.* He was ordained in 1833, was made Bishop of New Zealand in 1841, and of Lichfield in 1868, and when he died in 1878 Mr. Gladstone wrote of him, * He was attached to Eton with a love surpassing the love of Etonians.'!
Many years later, as a testimony of what the Evans family owed to him, Jane Evans erected a brass in his memory and in that of his son and his grandson. It stands in one of the passages, close to the oak panels, known as ' the Boards,' on which the names of members
* The Society of Philolutes and Psychrolutes (lovers of bathing, and of bathing in cold water) was an Eton Society founded in 1828. Sir Launcelot Shadwell was its first President, and among its sup- porters were T.R.H. the Prince Consort and George, Duke of Cam- bridge. G. A. Selwyn and William Evans were its leading spirits. A fine was levied against Psychrolutes who failed to bathe on more than seven days in the year. Several elaborately kept volumes of Proceedings have been entrusted to the writer by Canon W. Selwyn and the Evans family, but there is no space here to deal with these. The Society continued to exist for many years, but appears, from a note by William Evans, to have lost much of its vitality when G. A. Selwyn left England. The principal volume was presented by Evans to John R. Selwyn on his leaving Eton in July, 1862, and is now the property of Canon Selwyn.
t See Life^ by H. W. Tucker, 2 vols. For list of members of the Selwyn family who were at the House, see p. 415. It is worthy of being added here that the last link with these days was broken only quite recently. When G. A. Selwyn married in 1839, the year the House was founded, he and his wife went to live in the Old House ' over- the- way.' Mrs. Selwyn survived him for many years. She was the Bishop's companion in all his struggles and hardships during twenty-five years in the South Seas, and she died as recently as March 24, 1907, in the ninety-eighth year of her age.
32 MEMORIAL TO THE SELWYNS
of the House were cut on their leaving the School, the 1
wording running thus : ■
In loving memory of
George Augustus Selwyn, D.D., b. April 5, 1809 ; d. April ir, 1878; 1st Bishop of New Zealand, and Bishop of Lichfield.
Also
John Richardson Selwyn, D.D., 2nd Bishop of Melanesia, and Master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, b. May 20, 1844 ; d. Feb. 12, 1898.
Also
William George Selwyn, Curate of Bishop's Auck- land, b. July 28, 1865 ; d. Oct. 5, 1893.
' Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honours, especially they who labour in the Word and Doctrine.' — i TiM. v. 17.
Below this there follows on a wooden panel :
The above brass is placed in this passage because Bishop G. A. Selwyn lived in these rooms during the time he was private tutor to Lord Powis' sons. The expense was defrayed (with the consent of the subscribers) by some of the surplus money from the Presentation Portrait Fund, 1898.
CHAPTER III
WILLIAM EVANS' FIRST YEARS AS A DAME — THE CON- STRUCTION OF THE HALL — MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE BOYS OF THE PERIOD — ANNIE AND JANE EVANS — THE INSTITUTION OF * PASSING '
That William Evans made a very bad bargain with the former holder of the House is sufficiently proved by the figures he has left. Into these it is unnecessary to go at any length. He had to pay for the so-called goodwill ; he had to buy the furniture, which proved ' utterly useless,' at a high price ; he had to rebuild a very large part of the house, besides enlarging and improving it;* and he had to purchase the unexpired portion of the lease. In doing these things he ex- pended a sum of over ;^7,ooo, and brought himself within measurable distance of ruin. He speaks of the undertaking as ' a great experiment ' : it was nothing less. The house had held from twelve to fourteen boys. Of these, four had slept in one room, three in another. The establishment consisted of a man- servant, a cook, a Boys' maid and a housemaid, the wages of these four totalling ;^38 a year. The house he describes as being ' unfit for the reception of boys,' and adds that he had * to reconstruct it altogether.* That anything tangible remained, when he had done,
* The last addition made to the house by William Evans was that of the upper floor, facing Keate's Lane. This was done in 1867, the upper floor at the east end of the house being added by Jane Evans in 1879.
33 3
34 EVANS' DESCRIPTION OF VALLANCP:Y'S
of what had once been Vallancey's may well be doubted : the place was destined to wear quite another face under the title of ' Evans'.*
Here is what he writes himself of the opening of his work :
* My House (Vallancey's) was formerly a miserable place built by Blenkinsop to last his time as Conduct* and Dame. It was badly built, out of all repair, and rented to Mrs. Vallancey for £2>S a year as a yearly tenant. I had had little opportunity of seeing it, and when I went over it at Easter I found it so unsuitable for a house of the kind that I was in despair. There was neither kitchen, larder, nor dining-room (sanded) fit for boys, nor, indeed, anything required for the work. The sanitary arrangements were disgraceful, and I had to spend ;i^20o at once in building a kitchen and offices of all kinds. During the summer parents came to see the house, and told me they could not allow their sons to occupy the rooms. I had nothing to do but to spend a further large sum, and I borrowed for this ;i^i,8oo. The longer things went on, the greater reason had I to regret my bargain. I saw that I must either plunge deeper in or fail in my attempt to establish a House. I accordingly built nme more rooms and altered the whole interior arrangements. Then, as the demand for single rooms increased, I built six more, also the boys' library, altering, at the same time, many of the double rooms into single ones. Some years later, the demand still increasing, I built seven more, and lastly five more — the last straw on the camel's back, for the money I had borrowed will oppress my family to the day of my death. I have converted the premises from being of no value to a rental of at least £3$^ ^ year.
* I ought to state that, in reference to the remunera- tion. Dr. Hawtrey gave me carte blanche. I was afraid to start on the Masters' charges, the feeling being so strong against the Dames. I named 80 guineas; he assented at once.f Then I thought, as provisions
* One of the chaplains who conduct the daily services in Chapel, t This was subsequently increased. The authorized charge now is ;ij;io5.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE HALL 35
were reasonable, I could afford to give up the Rolls and Butter people (40 boys at 2 guineas a term, 240 guineas), and so suffered no extra charge to dis- grace my accounts, not even the legitimate pay for the staying-out Collegers.'
And here it is time that mention was made of one momentous alteration that Evans effected in the structure of the house itself When the former dining-room, with a number of rooms above it, was being cleared away, an idea occurred to him that was destined to give his future house a character of its own, and at the same time to furnish its inmates with something that was in its way unique.
'While the workmen,' writes Jane Evans, 'were engaged on this portion of the alterations, my father and some of his artist friends were much struck with the appearance of this part of the building. The walls and beams and roof remained, but the whole of the inside had been cleared out. It was at once agreed that it ought not to be choked up with rooms for boys, but left as it was and formed into a dining- hall, additional rooms being built beyond it.
* The beams were accordingly covered with dark oak and the walls with tapestry, and, by degrees, with the help of many friends and visits to Wardour Street, the hall was furnished in harmony with the rest of the room. My father also had some long oak tables and forms made, and I have often seen him superin- tending the men, armed with green-baize rubbers and beeswax, polishing these. To this day they remain the same, and the grain unspoilt by stain or varnish.'
This Hall became the pride and delight of the House. Old arms and pieces of armour and William Evans' trophies of the chase, with others sent by former members of the House from distant lands, were hung upon its walls;* the ceiling was decorated by Evans'
* Evans' diary records : ' August, '66 : Major Power gave Jennie the arms and armour from India, sabres and matchlocks. We have had them put up at the end of the Hall, arranging them round the shield.'
3—2
36 THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE HALL
own hand ; a great fireplace with ingle nooks was constructed in the West wall, with the following inscription over its archway : Patrice fiimus igni alieno luculentior ; and two flags from the last Montem ever celebrated were added to the rest. High up, too, under the old oak wall-plate at one end, and in ancient characters, there ran this verse :
' Whatever fare you hap to find, Take welcome for the best, That having this disdain thou not For wanting of the rest ' ;
while in a similar position on the East side, as a reminder to youth to have done with humbug and to be no ' trimmer,' to be true to himself and to his inmost conscience, were these words :
' Who seeks to please all men each way, And not himself offend, He may begin his work to-day, But God knows where he'll end.'
Thus, by a happy inspiration, was our old Hall constructed and made beautiful for us. As the years went by, generations of boys passed in and out here, taking a seat at first at the lowest table and working their way up, till at length they went out through the quaint door for the last time, to face the unknown world. Some rose, some fell, and some returned as men that all men knew and whose names were house- hold words. It was here that we met daily; it was the scene of the earlier, famous Breakfasts. On its tables were ranged the Cups that the House won, and that showed the fluctuations in its prowess ; its walls resounded, times out of number, to the cheers that greeted every fresh success, and when a liberal hospi- tality was dispensed by the family that ruled there ; it witnessed the meetings of old friends on great holidays, and it was as the very centre of our Eton lives. We
THE COTTAGE 37
dined, we supped here, and in the evenings we met here for prayers, read by one of our number — the Captain of the House.
But the House itself was not the only thing Evans had to think of; he had also to provide accommodation for his family. Just outside the west wall of the Hall there stood a cottage of two rooms and a kitchen occupied by a carpenter and builder. The house across the Lane still remained in Evans' possession, together with the rooms there which he used for his drawing classes;* but he now decided to obtain pos- session as well of this cottage, to connect it with the House by a covered passage, and so to add to it that it could be turned into a home for his family. In a lease of this date the ground here is described as ' a large yard, part whereof was formerly used as the back passage to the Christopher Inn, part whereof is the site of a Malthouse and certain buildings now pulled down, and part whereof was formerly the Christopher garden, the whole having been in the occupation of William, George, and James Lane since deceased.'!
Of all this Jane Evans writes :
' The Cottage in which we were all brought up was rented at the same time as the House. It had been occupied by a carpenter till then, and the ground near it was used as a timber-yard. My father turned this last into a very pretty garden, and at the same time added a number of rooms, and by degrees the Cottage became one of the prettiest features of the place.
* This house was subsequently let to W. A. Nesfield, the artist, in 1837; then to the Rev. G. A. Selwyn, on his marriage; in 1850 to Rev. C. Wolley ; and, later, to Lady Young. When Samuel Evans married, in 1863, he took up his residence there, and the house became known then among the boys as ' Sam's.'
+ The site, including that of Hodgson House, was, for nearly 1 50 years, let to the Slatter family, who again sub-let it. The Blatters also rented Clock Close from the Crown ; and the small tenement or wash-house, afterwards Evans' pupil-room or studio, on the opposite side of Keate's Lane, seems always to have been let to the occupants of • Evans'.'
38 NUMBER OF BOYS IN THE HOUSE
'There was a yard between the House and the Cottage which was once a public passage and led to the old Christopher Inn, a place well known in those days, and for some time after we came to live at the Cottage small boys used to run through here on their way to the Inn to fetch beer ! This yard was turned by my father into a miniature farm ; there were pig- styes and cowhouses (the latter still exist), a dairy, thatched and picturesque, and a pigeon-cote. The pigs were groomed and kept beautifully clean, and all the arrangements were of the best. Naturally, it was thought better, after a while, to move the pigs, so these were taken to a small cottage and buildings elsewhere.'
Evans had his private studio in the Cottage, and lived there with his family ; but, as by degrees his sons left home and his daughters married, three of the rooms were used by the boys of the House, and were much sought after by some of us, for the Cottage was, in its way, an ideal little place.
The House at this time contained not more than thirty boys, the number gradually increasing until, occasionally, the totaj exceeded fifty. Fifty may, how- ever, be taken as the normal figure, and at this it stood, with little fluctuation, throughout its history.* It was usual for a limited number of the new-comers to be placed two in a room. There were six of these double rooms, and if several of them were often occupied by pairs of brothers, right to a single room usually went by seniority. To look through the books of candidates for admission is to realize how much a place in the House was sought after, and if this is the normal condition at Eton in the case of all the best houses, at Evans' there were seldom less than two or
* The above number, 50, is given as a fair average ; but the largest number of boys in the House appears at one time to have been 54, or even 56. This was, however, exceptional, and lasted for a short time only. It was Jane Evans' habit to contrive to have fewer boys in the House in the Easter half, sickness and epidemics being more likely to occur at that time of year.
THE HOUSE LIST 39
three boys waiting to fill every vacancy that occurred. Thus, many who were anxious to come were in the end disappointed. For a great number of years, indeed, it was almost impossible to enter Evans' unless a boy's name had been down for a very long time, or his family had had some previous connexion with the House. Names were entered on Evans' list when their possessors were in long clothes, and one father is spoken of who, when a son was born to him in India, galloped off at once to the telegraph office, and, as it was called, *put his name down.' For the last ten years of the House's existence, Jane Evans declined to keep any list at all, except for the sons of Old boys, and even then she characteristically advised them to ' go elsewhere.' Nevertheless, her book shows that she had entered the names of these up to 1916, and probably because the applicants would not take ' No ' for an answer.*
It must not be supposed that Evans accomplished all he had set himself with the wand of a magician, and that he merely walked in and said, ' Let this thing be.* Far from it. Apart altogether from the gradual enlargement of the house, he had, if it may be so ex- pressed, to civilize the boys. The whole tone of Eton was much rougher in those days than it became later, and if, in the main, the dominant characteristics of boy-nature are ineradicable, and he is destined to remain an enigma for all time, even to those who think they know him best, a vast change has taken
* By the Regulations of the New Governing Body, 1872, the number of Boarders in a House was, without the special permission of the Governing Body, limited to 35, the maximum being 40. An exception was made in Jane Evans' case. A further Rule was laid down that each boy was to have a separate room, though two brothers were still allowed to share one together. Jane Evans always believed that her father knew best, and adhered, to the last, to the benefit she considered that small boys derived from being put two together on their first arrival. Several members have written saying what an advantage they found this, but others have equally condemned it.
40 JANE EVANS' RECOLLECTIONS
place since the days of which we write. We may doubt whether it was possible, seventy years ago, to tell an Eton boy by qualities apart from the cut of his clothes. It is certainly not always possible to do so now, though many lay claim to such powers of dis- cernment. Nevertheless, it may well be questioned whether ' the Eton tone ' then really existed, and Evans' House at the outset, and for some years, was no better than its neighbours, remaining * rough ' according to the testimony of the few survivors of those days.
Here is Jane Evans' account of the manners and customs of the boys at the outset :
' When my father took over the House the discipline was nil, and the following will explain what I mean. In those days the Captain of the House had no authority over the boys, and one day, hearing a noise, he found a big Lower boy had knocked down the Captain of the House, Lewisham, because he had told him to go on some errand for him. My father told him he must send for the Lower boy and box his ears. The Captain was physically the weaker of the two, and upon attempting to do this was promptly knocked down again. My eldest brother, a big Colleger, for whom my father had sent, surprised the Lower boy by walking in, seizing him by the collar, and march- ing him into College. There he received the severe punishment of a ' College hiding,' which I believe meant that he had to run up and down between a row of boys with knotted towels, with which they hit him as he passed. The Captain had no more trouble in maintaming the discipline of the House after that.
* Another instance I also remember. My father and Mr. Selwyn decided to have morning and evening prayers, an unheard-of thing at that time. The bell was rung, after due notice had been given, and down came the whole House, but each boy marked with a black streak on one side of his face. No notice was taken of this, much to their surprise, and when the bell rang in the evening they all appeared again, but without the streaks, showing that they understood and
EVANS' LIBERALITY 41
were ashamed of their former conduct. My father always felt that boys were easy to manage when they were justly and firmly dealt with.
* My father was very particular to have everything of the very best for the boys. Of course, there were difficulties sometimes. One of the old customs was to give the boys a glass of wine on Sundays,* and on one occasion the butler told my father there was not enough of the brown sherry to go round. He accord- ingly gave the butler orders to take the best, which was very pale. When the boys saw their glasses, they at once made up their minds it was wine and water, and left the wine untasted, much to my father's amusement, who simply had the wine put back into the bottles !'
All these innovations on Evans' part, and the liberality with which he was treating his boys, soon became known throughout the School, and it dawned upon many that his doings certainly threatened their pockets, if not their existence. It is related that one of the Dames of this period, possessed, perhaps, of more spirit than the rest, used to watch for Evans at her window, and, when she saw him, never failed to call out, ' Oh, William Evans, William Evans, you are ruining us all P
And here it is necessary to say that there was nothing of luxury in the way Evans was treating the boys of his House. The Hall, with its tapestry and furniture, the silver spoons and forks, the food supplied, and the glass of wine on Sundays, might give this im- pression ; but it would be a false one, and this will be borne out by boys of all the earlier dates. The House became known for the way in which its inmates were fed ; but this was in later days altogether, and applied more especially to the time when breakfast was pro- vided for the whole House. In all the earlier years the food was plain and plentiful, and the beer, perhaps
* This was the custom at several Houses at this date, and down to '69.
42 LUXURY IN THE SCHOOL
rightly, of the mildest. Even forty years ago there was, of course, grumbling — to that the schoolboy has apparently a prescriptive right — but it was not justified. The luxury that Evans' afforded, if, indeed, there could be said to be any, was at the outset relative only. In the Houses of those days carpets in the rooms were not general, and arm-chairs were un- known, while out of doors the use of umbrellas was denounced, and twenty years had to elapse before great-coats were permitted to be worn. Evans raised the standard of comfort, that was all. He was no panderer to luxury ; he did not believe in it. Such luxury as eventually crept in came from outside. Its advance was insidious ; it was the reflection of the outer world, and did not belong to his day at all. Neither had it a recognized place in the House at any time. Here and there, throughout the School, we hear of it in these later days ; but where, at Eton, a simple comfort has been ousted and a measure of luxury has taken its place is not in the house, but in the boys' room, and the wisdom of such worship may be doubted.
To help him in carrying on the internal affairs of his House, Evans engaged one of that most useful class of persons at Eton, a Matron, who always slept in the boys' part of the House, and whose duty it was to attend to them in cases of slight illness. The Matron also had a room called the 'Staying-out Room,' where invalids were allowed to spend their time if they liked when unable to go into school. Evans' first Matron was a Miss Gilbert, who was followed by a Mrs. Hopgood, about whom many stories are told. She had been a companion to one of the Ladies-in- Waiting at the Castle, and was fond of relating how George III. had once ridden up to the carriage in which she was driving to speak to her Lady, and noticing Mrs. Hop- good, said: 'And who is that remarkably fine woman ?
EVANS' FIRST MATRONS 43
When Mrs. Hopgood left to become Matron of the Sanatorium, she was succeeded by the widow of a Captain Whifield, and then followed the reign for many years of Mrs. Kenyon, who was universally beloved by the boys, and of whom many still speak with the utmost affection.
Evans was, of course, very greatly dependent upon his Matrons, and if he himself then took a far larger personal interest in all the details of his House than he did subsequently, he could look for real help only to those he employed. It was customary at that date, and for many subsequent years, for a Master from outside to come in and call Absence at Lock-up, and among those who did this were two who afterwards occupied the position of Lower Master in the School — F. E. Durnford and E, C. Austen-Leigh. They used to stand with their backs to the window of the boys* kitchen which looks on to the passage of the boys' entrance, cooking, with its customary exhalations, being in full swing behind them in the gas-lit den that was yet dignified by so august a title.
A great sorrow fell on Evans not long after he had established himself in the House. This was the loss of his eldest son. William Vernon Evans had gone out to New Zealand with Bishop Selwyn in 1841 with the intention of taking Orders and working as a Missionary. But it was not to be. He was prostrated by fever shortly after landing, and died at Auckland, to the bitter grief of his father and the rest of the family.
Of the two sisters, Annie* and Jane, at this date, Mrs. Fenn gives the following account :
'Annie was about thirteen when our mother died, and, having been the eldest girl, was more often with
* Annie Evans, though christened Ann, was never called by this name, and had a great dislike to it. She was known always in the family as Annie, or Nancy. The boys of the House were accustomed to refer to her amongst themselves as Annie, and it is at the express wish of the family that she is so called in these pages.
44 ANNIE AND JANE EVANS
her than the rest. She was tall, slight, with auburn hair and eyes of the same colour; not exactly pretty, but with a bright expression. She had a very sensitive mouth, which she could not control when annoyed about anything or with anybody. She had to come home earlier from school than the others, being very much out of health. The death of our mother and then, so soon afterwards, of her eldest brother, who was all in all to her, had preyed upon her mind, and she was never the same after his death. She was supposed to be consumptive, and for more than a year she lived in two rooms in the Cottage, and was never allowed to go out at all. Then she grew stronger, and enjoyed her life more. She was engaged to be married at one time, but this was broken off at her own wish. After some years given up to the ordinary routine of family life, without taking any part in the management of the boys, she, as 1 have mentioned elsewhere, eventually turned her attention to this. She was extremely affectionate, highly sensitive, strictly conscientious, and most truthful. The idea of deception was abhorrent to her, and this made her take to heart anything the boys did that she did not consider perfectly straightforward, and led her some- times to speak so strongly to them that they at first resented it, and occasionally hurt her feelings more than they knew or intended. It was here that the difference in the character of the two sisters showed itself. Jane spoke out freely to them without taking too much to heart what they said to her. She knew they would not intentionally wound her, and she took care to make them understand why she thought it right to speak when she had to find fault with them.
'Jane, as a child, was tall and big for her age, and so good-natured and sociable that she made more friends among the neighbouring children than the rest of us. She was always generous to a fault, and she could never hear of anyone in need of help to whom she would not have given her uttermost farthing. She could not do a mean thing, or understand mean- ness in others. She was devoted to our father and he to her, and always wondered at anyone being afraid of him. Her character was one of genuine sim- plicity, and being totally without jealousy, she took
JANE EVANS 45
the greatest delight in the successes of others. She was always a great hero-worshipper. No two people could have been more unlike eacn other than the two sisters. There was a very strong tie of affection between them always, and they would each have re- sented anyone speaking depreciatingly of the other, but, like many young* people, they had many tussles, ending occasionally, as children, in a free fight !'
To add to this, we have the following delightful piece of autobiography by Jane Evans herself:
* While we were children, my father had a suc- cession of matrons : some very good and helpful and others not so successful. No man could have done more for his family. We were sent first to a school at Turnham Green, where we were kindly treated and taught how to behave. This last was necessary, as we had been so used to playing with our brothers, and without a mother's gentle influence, that we had become somewhat rough and unmanageable. I re- member how I was called up once before the whole school, and made to empty my pockets and lav the contents on the table : the result yielded a top, a knife, a ball of string, and my Bible. No wonder the pocket bulged ! Another time the schoolmistress was heard to say, " Is that a chimney-sweep, or Miss Jane Evans whistling in the passage ?" We were decidedly happier at Bonn a few years later, where we stayed until we were old enough to come home altogether. In reading Villette, I have been often struck by the likeness of our school to the one Charlotte Bronte describes, and especially, too, in the case of the conduct of the English girls. But we were, I suppose, prepared for more civilized ways by our experiences at Turnham, and my father was always most particular about our trying to grow up thoughtful and considerate for others.'
One of the most momentous changes Evans was largely instrumental in bringing about at this period was the institution of * Passing.' Amongst the anomalies still existing at this time, none was more strange than the way in which those in authority in
46 THE INSTITUTION OF 'PASSING'
the School regarded boating. Previous to 1840 they had systematically ignored it, looking upon it indeed with a blind eye. The river itself was in Bounds, but the road to it was out of Bounds, a condition of things that was as demoralizing to the boys as it was to the Masters, for, in fact, every boy on the river had broken the rules of the School in order to get there.* It was not until i860 that this was remedied. Bounds, as a whole, not being finally abolished until five years later. With little or no kind of supervision exercised over the wet-bobs, cases of drowning were not in- frequent, and while Evans and Selwyn had long endeavoured to remedy this state of affairs, matters were not brought finally to a head until a boy named Charles Montagu was drowned in full sight of Windsor Bridge in May, 1840.
It apparently fell to Evans to carry the news to the boy's parents, for in a paper headed * Passing,' written just thirty years after, May, 1870, he says :
' I left in a postchaise about 9 p.m., and got to (^lapham soon after 12. There was some difficulty in finding the house.
* I had been for some time endeavouring, with George Selwyn, to do something to lessen the danger of the river. He promised to remain in my study until my return, when we were to talk over our plan having this object. I got home about 3 a.m., and found him in my study with the scheme which has ever since been adopted in its entirety. The next morning we went together to the Head Master, and submitted the plan. He was only too thankful for the suggestion, and placed it in our hands to carry out! The first and great difficulty was with " The Boats," a large portion of the members being unable to swim. This was compromised by an arrangement that if they
* Hence the recognized system of ' Shirking ' — i.e., the duty of every boy proceeding to the Brocas to hide in the nearest shop if he saw a Master approaching. To such ridiculous lengths was this carried that it is said an intervening lamp-post was deemed sufficient cover on occasions.
THE INSTITUTION OF 'PASSING' 47
desired to " pass," it should be done privately and leniently ; but that no fresh Oars should be accepted from the '^ non-nants."* The second and enormous difficulty was with the Watermen who claimed '* Patent Appointments." However, we insisted on testing their powers of swimming and diving, dismissing some and appointing others, and insisting on fines for neglect of duty. For some years we had to carry out a kind of police duty to prepare the system for the reception of the School. Both boys and Watermen had some respect for Selwyn and myself as good swimmers, and the thing was completed. There has since been no alteration in the system, although the efficacy has been much increased by the vigilance of the committee. From that day to this, May 7, 1870, God has so blessed the plan that there has never been an accident. t There were three narrow escapes, and all good swimmers. Lord Tullamore, who desired to emulate the Bishop, etc., was nearly drowned at Bovney Weir ; John Greenwood, some time after ; and a third case, in which Tremlett was engaged, also happened.'
* Boys were classed as * Nants ' and * non-Nants ' — those who could and those who could not swim.
I It is believed that the only case of a boy being drowned at Eton since ' Passing' was instituted is that of S. J. L. Donaldson, who lost his life on May 24, 1882.
CHAPTER IV
REMINISCENCES OF THE EARLIER YEARS OF THE HOUSE — LETTERS FROM A. D. COLERIDGE, LORD COTTESLOE, AND THE DEAN OF RIPON
Of all those who joined the House as its original members scarcely one remains, yet, fortunately, there are still some who belong to the earlier years, and who are able to give us many interesting facts about their day. To correspond with these has been a delightful experience. The response has been so ready ; the interest shown so eager ; the love for Eton and the House is evidently so strong. The tone of all the letters has been the same, and it has often not been difficult to read between the lines, and to trace in them something of the old spirit that, in years now long gone by, lay at the back of a sixer at Lord's, in the stroke that carried the boat to a win, or in the more silent struggle for the Newcastle or a place in the Select, one, two, three years running. Evans* was still in its youth, but foundations were being laid that were of supremest importance to its later life.
And then, again, it is remarkable to notice what a number of the boys of this decade (1840-1850) rose to distinction, both in the School and in after-life. They took the lead as boys, and in the years to come many were destined to be leaders of men. Here are the names of some of these : Lord Justice Chitty, Lieu- tenant-General Sir Henry Newdigate, K.C.B., Lord
48
A. D. COLERIDGE'S REMINISCENCES 49
Cottesloe and his two brothers, the Dean of Ripon and Sir Charles Fremantle, K.C.B., Sir R. White Thomson, K.C.B., Sir A. Wollaston Franks, K.C.B., the two brothers F. J. and A. D. Coleridge, Sir William Eliott, who fought under Lord Gough in India, Lord Rendel, Lord Welby, Lord Redesdale, Lord Brougham and Vaux ; and a number of soldiers, such as Langhorne Thompson, C.B., one of the gallant defenders of Kars ; H. S. Adlington, who was with the Heavy Brigade at Balaklava ; Colonel Bagot Lane and Horace Cust, both of the Coldstream Guards, the latter falling at the Alma; Hely-Hutchinson of the 13th Light Dragoons, who died at Scutari; Henry Wyndham-Quinn of the Grenadiers ; John Colborne, who served in the Crimea, the Indian Mutiny, China, and Egypt; E. G. Waldy and F. N. Fiennes, of the Welch Fusiliers, who all went out to the wars, and did good service for their country. Evans' was ever a House that sent many of its boys into the Army.
Among the earlier members of the House who have written of their Eton days are Arthur Duke Coleridge,* Lord Cottesloe, and the Dean of Ripon. The first of these was for some time at Evans' before he entered College, as was also his elder brother, F. J. Coleridge. Both were distinguished cricketers and athletes as well as scholars, and here is what the former writes of William Evans and of his contem- poraries at the House :
* To aliens there seems to be an incongruity and enigma in such a title as " my Dame " when applied to a stately, well-built gentleman like William Evans. He was on terms of close intimacy with my uncle, Edward Coleridge, and George Augustus Selwyn, whose name is now a name to conjure with. I am proud to this day of having passed before Selwyn at
* Went to Eton in '40 ; was a member of Chitty's famous Eleven, in '47 ; late Fellow of King's College, Cambridge ; now Clerk of the Crown, Midland Circuit ; author of Eton in the Forties,
50 WILLIAM EVANS AND ROWING
Cuckoo Weir. My brother, Fred Coleridge, a very popular boy at Evans', and ultimately Captain of the Eleven, was in his day quite the first swimmer in the School. His best performance was his swim from Athens round Rushes. Boating men will remember the force of the stream below that famous goal, and the relief when the ship rounded for the downward journey.
* I think that Evans' reputation as an artist had some natural attraction for parents whose sons showed aptitude with pencil or brush. Certain it is that Clive, Forster, and my elder brother were all three at Evans' at the same time, and later on my dear friend, Herbert Herries. All four were Evans' pupils, and three out of the four became really good artists under their teacher's supervision. I should not class my brother as with any of them, for his talent lay hid in a napkin. He shirked his lessons, and Evans, rather than take my father's cheque for teaching offered and not received, sent it back with a fine water-colour picture, which is still the property of my family. This was a generous act.
' Except to do some kindness, Evans seldom inter- fered with us. Now and then he read prayers of an evening, but the duty of calling Absence of a night fell to Durnford. We believed, and probably cor- rectly, that the death of his eldest son had wounded him incurably. If Evans left us pretty much to our- selves, he was invariably in evidence at boat races. Erect in a punt, with a long pole in his hands, he was an excited witness of the race, rather bewildering the rowers, scullers, and steerers with his loud and gratuitous advice so liberally bestowed on the con- tending parties. I believe ne never missed a race between us and Westminster, and I well remember his dejected face when we were disgracefully beaten : Luttrell was Captain, and Adlington of the House one of the crew. W^e Tost any chance we had by taking the advice of Billy Goodman instead of William Evans, and sticking to the old-fashioned tub, which lagged disgracefully in the rear of the Westminster outrigger.*
'The real government of my Dame's was centred * This was the race of '45.
THEATRICALS IN THE HALL 51
in a small oligarchy of four or five boys. I record their names with pleasure — Lewisham, Clive, Wolley, Houstoun, Newdigate. They were large slave-owners, and they were really excellent masters. I think the door of their mess-room bore four, if not all five, of their names carefully cut or burned into the panel, and the late Lord Dartmouth told me that he had persuaded Miss Evans to let him carry away the door and keep it as a trophy at Patshull. My favourite of this party was Wolley. The story was that he had changed his name from Hurt to Wolley, and that the boys, when he appeared at school under a different name, gave him a gentle kick, with "Are you hurt, Wolley?"
' We were a very sociable household, much addicted to theatricals and charades in the winter evenings. I was supposed to have a turn for stage management, and arranged for rehearsals of Julius Ccesar and Addison's Cato. Frank Rogers was the Cato ; I con- tented myself with Syphax ; I forget who acted Juba. After our Baronial hall was built we had plenty of room for our play-acting, and foraged for actors out- side my Dame's. We had quite a gala performance of Bombastes Furioso, attended by John Hawtrey and two others of " the brave army." Sam Evans, as Bombastes, rode into the Hall on an imported Scotch pony. Dr. Hawtrey was an invited guest at more than one of our performances, and I still have Frank Tarver's picture of the scene.
' Before I call up visions of old schoolfellows, I must say a word about our excellent Mrs. Hopgood, the lady who was responsible for the household in my early days, before the full sovereignty of Miss Evans began. She mothered us small boys. Once, when I had fallen on my head in the School-yard as I fled from two tormentors, I was brought to my Dame's like the fleeing soldiers in Macbeth. Mrs. Hopgood, before applying leeches to my wounds, kissed me. I didn't mmd it.
* Fourth Form speeches I never heard of at Eton except at my Dame's. Our speeches consisted ot doggerel poetry and satire not cloaked or veiled, for I remember plenty of ribaldry. The curious thing was that the libelled and slandered now and again
52 CRICKET IN \^
composed their own indictments. Wolley ma., in a poem of 900 lines in various metres, wrote my speech for me, and it was really witty and inoffensive. Still, the custom was a dangerous one, and when it fizzled out no harm was done.
' Far and away the first boating man at Evans' was poor dear Bagshawe, my friend at School and College, whose melancholy end I have described in Eton in the Forties* The Fremantles won high honours in our time, and we Evans' boys can point with pride and satisfaction to their achievements.
* Chitty — athlete, scholar, lawyer, judge — should be " busted " in the old House and in upper School, for he was famous in boyhood and manhood. In this connexion I must do myself an act of justice, as it has been denied me elsewhere. There were two Captains of the Eleven in those days, a College and an Oppidan Captain, and I was College Captain in '48, and Harry Aitken Oppidan Captain. This was the rule in my time, and I fancy it was favoured by the Authorities from the hope of softening the old enmity between Tugs and Oppidans. One year there was an impasse, for, with only thirty-five boys in College, and no Colleger in the existing Eleven, a Colleger Captain had to be invented. His name was Hoskins, KS., a good fellow enough, though never actually in the Eleven, or sent to play at Lord's.
* I was a member of Chitty's Eleven in '47, and glory in the fact. It was the best Eleven I ever saw at Eton, as the following year was the worst. Joe was no braggadocio. I remember saying to him before we went up to Lord's, "Joe, what do you think of our chances ?" " My dear fellow, we can't be beaten," was his answer, and he was right, for we lowered the crests, on land and water, of Harrow, Winchester, and Westminster. Barnett (also at my Dame's) and I were the only two new choices in this Eleven. Detained in Election Chamber by an Examination, I had the ill-luck to miss the Winchester match ; Thompson, in the Eight and first choice out of the Eleven, played for me, and, oddly enough, Wiss fielded for Thompson a part of the time.
'William Cottman must not be omitted from my * Killed in a poaching affray in '54.
THE FREMANTLES 53
list. Rather awkward and slovenly in appearance, he had within him what Kinglake ascribed to Keate — "the pluck of ten battalions." ^ I remember to this day his slowly emerging from a dejected group of a beaten side in a football match, and charging desperately a Goliath of Gath, getting the ball from him, and saving the game. In early boyhood he had begged his parents to be allowed the chances of a naval career. He was a perfectly reliable authority on Blake, Duncan, and every famous seaman. We called him "Old Ships" and " Centaur." Cottman ripened into an able matne- matician. Equity Draftsman, and a rare good officer in the " Devil's Own." He was distinctly an honour to my Dame's. Clissold became an adventurous traveller and Nimrod. Adlington was one of Scarlett's Brigade at Balaklava. A. W. Franks, a famous antiquarian and one of the Custodians of the British Museum, was knighted for his services and the splendid gifts he bestowed on the Nation. Dampier did good service as a Civil servant in India. Eliott fought under Lord Gough. Churchill, a scion of the famous Marlborough, is only a memory to me. My intimate friend in boy- hood, youth, and manhood was Edward Henry Rogers. A good scholar at Eton, he became a distinguished Hellenist at Cambridge.
' I have gossiped enough about boys and men who belonged to my Dame's, but I believe the best influence and most abiding memory connected with the House will be that of a woman — dear Jane Evans.'
Lord Cottesloe, better known in those days as Tom Fremantle, was at the House from '42 to '48.* Like
* Sir Charles W. Fremantle has supplied the writer with the following list of the members of his family who were at the House : Thomas Francis F., now Lord Cottesloe ; William Henry F., now Dean of Ripon ; Charles William F., Deputy Master of the Mint, '68-'94 ; Stephen James F., Newcastle Scholar, d. '74 — all sons of the first Lord Cottesloe. Then come three sons of the above, second Lord C. : Thomas Francis, Cecil F., and Walter F. ; William Archibald Culling F., eldest son of the Dean of Ripon, and the eldest and second sons of Sir Charles Fremantle — Maurice Abel F., afterwards Coldstream Guards, d. 1892, and Ronald Aubrey F. These number ten in all. But, besides these, Sir Charles mentions that ' there have been no less than seven Fremantles at Eton (sons of my three brothers Cottesloe, the Dean and the Admiral), but they were all in College. Cottesloe's eldest son, T. F. F., has done much in Rifle-shooting, has
54 LORD COTTESLOE'S REMINISCENCES
many another member, he distinguished himself at the desk as well as in the field of athletics, being in the Select for the Newcastle for two successive years and Medallist in a third, besides being at the same time in the Eleven and in the Field, and President of Pop before the old house, Mrs. Hatton's, the confectioner's shop {popina\ was pulled down. He is able to tell us much of the gradual growth of the House as well as of the games in his day, and he and his three brothers must always remain amongst those who were of the greatest credit to the House in the days of their boy- hood, and who, by their subsequent careers, have earned a lasting place in its history and its annals.
'When I went to Eton in 1842,' he writes, 'Evans' House was a poor place to what it became afterwards. There was an untidy, square yard towards Keate's Lane on the East side, and an old malting at the back towards the old Christopher Yard. In a year or two Evans made great improvements. The dming-room, now turned into a nice drawing-room next the street, was superseded by the large Hall, contrived by Evans out of some old buildings. Evans lived in the Cottage opposite what was then Coleridge's House, and passed most of his time in the study across the road, and with which there was communication by means of a speak- ing-tube or pipe under the road from the pantry. Through this the servant would call to him if he was wanted to stop any row going on in the House at night. We always had prayers at nine o'clock, and at Lock-up Durnford came in, and Absence was called by the Captain of the House.
* As a bigger boy I recollect the great kindness of Annie and Jane Evans to me when I was "staying out" for a long time. We used to play battledoor and shuttlecock in the Hall, and they took me to Burnham Beeches, where Evans had hired a labourer's cottage for sketching. I must not forget Dorothy Hopgood, the Matron, a good old soul and great
been in the Eton and England shooting Eights, and was A.D.C. to Lord Wolseley when Commander-in-Chief; he is now Lieutenant- Colonel 1st Volunteer Battalion of the Bucks'
W. L. G. BAGSHAWE 55
character, but somewhat illiterate. She used to give us " Orders " for things, and among others to have our hair cut — thus, "Fremantle, //, C," and belov^, "Z>. //." She was a great admirer of the old Duke of Wellington, and called him her Duke. She left in a year or two to be Matron of the Sanatorium, built for boys who had scarlet fever, and after a severe outbreak had taken place in the School. She was always accused of calling it the "Sandytorium."
* We had each three rolls for breakfast and an order of tea and sugar each week. Breakfast was not ready or beds made till towards 9,30 often, and what with fagging for big boys and construing at one's Tutor's, there was often little or no time for small boys to get any breakfast at all. In those days we were fagged to go, or went on our own account, for sausages or kidneys to the Christopher, then close by.
* About gam^s in my time — the great boating hero of that day at Evans' was Bagshawe. He made his mark first by winning the School Pulling sweepstakes (pair oars) with Sam Evans. They were both young boys and had a good start, being in the first row, the boats being handicapped and placed in rows. The race was round Rushes and back ; the boats were old funnies (skiff's), as outriggers were not invented till a year or two later. They gained great credit for winning from Ethelston and another — a pair of boys in the Eight who were favourites. There was a story of one of the Brocas cads being asked who was winning. The answer was : " Ivins' is fust, and the old un a bellowing like sin on the bank." Evans was, of course, at the Brocas to see the finish. Bagshawe in his last year won everything — the Pulling, the Sculling, the double sculling, the punting, and anything else there was to win."*
Besides Bagshawe, the House possessed another good oar in H. C. Herries, who rowed in the Eight in '48. J. W. Chitty,t who came to Eton the same year as Lord Cottesloe and those just mentioned, was
* Bagshawe was also in the Eight in '46 and '47, and rowed for Cambridge in '48 and '49. He died in 1854.
t Afterwards the Right Hon. Sir Joseph WilUam Chitty (Lord Justice), P.C.
56 J. W. CHITTY
not at that time an oar ; he was a dry-bob and gave himself wholly to cricket, and he certainly became one of the most famous men the House produced. He played in the Eleven from '44 to '47, being Captain in the latter year. In each of those years Harrow was beaten, and in three out of the four by an innings and many runs. Chitty was also Captain of Oppidan Wall and President of Pop. At Oxford he played in the Eleven in '48 and '49, rowing in the Eight the same years and as stroke in '51 and '52, besides taking a First Class in Lit. Hum. When called to the Bar in '56, he also tried his hand at soldiering, and was a Major in the Inns of Court Volunteers. Later on he repre- sented Oxford City in Parliament, and finally became a Lord Justice of the Court of Appeal, while for no less than twenty-three years he was umpire at the University Boat Race.
The House had two other members of the famous Eleven of '47 besides Chitty and A. D. Coleridge* — W. E. Barnettf and E. W. Blore,J a famous bowler, who took thirty-five wickets in Winchester matches and thirty-three in the matches against Harrow in his three years, '45-'47, besides being at the same time Tomline prizeman and in the Select for the Newcastle. Lord Cottesloe became a member of the Eleven in '48, , and of cricket at this date he writes :
* We had House matches occasionally, but no regular system. The House held its own well latterly, with Chitty, a great wicket-keeper, Blore, a very good bowler, and Barnett. These three were all in the Eleven which beat Harrow for about three consecutive years, and generally in one innings. The three matches, Eton, Harrow, and Winchester, each against each, were played at Lord's in the first ten days of the summer
♦ It will be seen, subsequently, that the House rightly claimed A. D. Coleridge as one of its members (see p. 113). t Played for Cambridge in '49 and '50. j Afterwards Dean of Trinity College, Cambridge.
CRICKET IN THE FORTIES 57
holidays, Lord's being then in the state portrayed in a picture in Punch to illustrate Mr. Pip's Diary* — a small assembly of amateurs and members of the Club in the Pavilion, low benches put in a circle round the ground at a good distance, and on which sat a few spectators, and pot-boys coming round and calling out, "Give your orders, gents." There would be a few carriages with boys' relations and friends. That was all. You could hit and run out a sixer then, and if this was to leg or to the off, to the extreme corner, the ball went into an immense pile of half-made bats, piled there to get seasoned.
*We beat Winchester pretty well in '48, and then got beaten by Harrow by forty-one runs. Arthur Coleridge and Harry Aitken were the heads of the Eleven. I was long-stop, and did fairly well in each innings, though only getting some twenty-two runs. Almost all those composing the strong eleven of the year before had left, though Coleridge and Barnett of my Dame's were still in it. You ask about colours : there was no such thing in my day in the cricket or football field. No one but those in the Eleven wore flannels, and that was their distinguishing privilege. Most of us wore light blue waistbands and straw hats, but there was otherwise no uniformity of dress even in the Eleven. One put on old ordinary clothes to play football in, and such light clothes as one had, with a straw hat, to play cricket in.f
* 'Manners and Customs of ye English in 1849: "A View of Mr. Lord hys Cryket Ground"' {Punchy vol. xvii., p. 12).
f The actual date when the Eleven adopted the present cap is uncertain, but J. F. F. Horner gives the following interesting par- ticulars about colours generally : ' I don't know when the Eleven began to wear light blue. It was no new thing when I went to Eton in '55. Probably the Eight began it ; but there must have been some sort of arrangement for the Eight to wear a blue coat and white cap, and the Eleven 7nce versa. Boating colours were older than cricket colours — e.g., the Oxford Eight wore dark blue, and all the Colleges had colours before I went to Oxford in '61. The Oxford Eleven did not wear colours in '61, though Cambridge did, Oxford beginning to do so in '62 or '63. As bearing on School colours, there is a Winchester tradition, which possibly may not be true, that at one time there was a dispute between Winchester and Harrow as to which should wear the dark blue, and it was agreed that whoever won the match that year should be entitled to wear it. I think you will find that the last time Winchester beat Harrow was in '52 (they only played them twice more — in '53 and '54), and this, therefore, points to the fact that Eton
58 FOURTH FORM SPEECHES
' About football : We played in South Meadow, often joining in a mixed game with other Houses. There were House Matches creating great interest, but though there were no cups or colours in those days, it was generally decided and known which House was cock of the walk. The House held its own very well, and was sometimes also cock of the walk. 1 remember in one football half two boys breaking their collar-bones and one putting out his knee. Chitty was one of the three.
* I ought to say something about the curious in- stitution of Fourth Form Speeches that existed in the House when I came into it. The boys who had got out of fagging by getting into Fifth Form were each expected to write a set of doggerel verses chaffing and cutting up, each in turn, the whole of the fag- masters, who assembled on a certain night to hear the verses read. In my first year Wolley* (the elder brother of WoUey-Dod, the late master), a great boat- ing hero, then just leaving, "stayed out" for some days in order to write an elaborate Fifth Form speech to be recited by Dampier.f It had a great success. I had to write and read one of these speeches in my turn ; but the custom dropped soon alter, and though, as Captain of the House, I revived it in '47 and '48, it finally fell through altogether. The chaff directed at the bigger boys was pretty free, but not ill-natured. It was, perhaps, useful as reminding the bigger boys of their real faults and failings, and amusing as show- ing the often entirely erroneous views which the smaller boys took of their characters.
* We wasted much time in talking nonsense, and we played football on winter nights in the passages. At one time we took greatly to singing songs. Evans, hearing of this, invited some of us to sing one night
had monopolized the light blue before that date. Very likely it was earlier still, the Winchester and Harrow story being earlier also.' It may be added that the well-known story of the boys sending a large dog to the Head Master decked out with light blue ribbon points to the year 1831 as the date when light blue was adopted as the Eton colour, as it was immediately previous to the race with Westminster that year that this event occurred.
* John Wolley, the distinguished naturalist. He rowed in the Eight in '41, and died in 1859.
■f Henry Lucius Dampier, C.I.E., I.C.S.
W. H. FREMANTLE'S REMINISCENCES 59
after giving us supper. To his surprise, one of us immediately responded. It was afterwards explained that his idea was that all our songs would be of a character unfit for decent ears, and that therefore we should be put to shame and decline to sing. This illustrates the state of things very shortly before my day. Our better tone was very much due to Chitty, who would have nothing of that sort, and was said to have once got up and walked out of the tent when, at a supper after a cricket match, the Captain of the Eleven struck up an improper song.
* I think there was a very good tone in the House and a strong esprit de corps. Evans certainly exerted himself greatly in this direction, and he was the pioneer of a general improvement, especially in the Dames' houses. He had a great love of neatness and order in all his arrangements, and the example and tone he set were of great value to the House and to Eton.'
That two brothers should have been Newcastle Gold medallists in two succeeding years is somewhat remarkable ; but so it was with the Fremantles, and Lord Cottesloe's success in '48 was followed by that of his brother W. H. Fremantle in '49. Better known now as the Dean of Ripon, W. H. Fremantle sends the following notes about his Eton days :
• I was at Evans' from Easter '44 to the end of '49, and was Captain of the House in succession to my brother. This period included the last Montem, the time when the School reached the unprecedented number of 777,* and the latter days 01 Hawtrey's Headmastership. It was a time when Evans* con- tained a singular number of boys distinguished both in scholarship and athletics.
' I was happy in having a brother already at Evans', as I thus came to know the elders as well as my own contemporaries. The fine Hall had recently been completed, with its tapestries and mottoes and arms and ingle nooks. The oak tables shone
* The number is now, Summer half, 1907, 1,024.
6o W. H. FREMANTLE'S REMINISCENCES
like glass; and the mottoes fixed themselves in my mind.
* The living was good, though not so luxurious as in later times, when, 1 am told, there was coflfee before early school, a meat and marmalade breakfast in Hall afterwards, cake and milk served out at a sort of wmdow-hatch at 12, dinner at 2, tea at 6, and supper at 9 ! In my time we had to get our own coffee at a shop, or, when near the top of the School, at * Pop.' Breakfast was composed of three hot rolls and butter and tea, also supplied from a shop. In the evening a small * order ' was given out, consisting of a hunch of bread and a pat of butter on a paper, on which one's name was written.
* I was assigned as fag to the Captain of the House, George Herbert, Lord Powis' son, a stately personage, afterwards Dean of Hereford. His mess-mates were his brother, Robert Herbert, and Norman Rogers, son of a well-known barrister.
' My eldest brother got the Newcastle Medal in '48, the Scholarship being won by Herbert Coleridge, wrongly as we thought, for though Coleridge had a great range of knowledge, he was by no means so elegant a classical scholar. They had both been elected scholars of Balliol in November, '47, amidst great enthusiasm. I, on the contrary, got the New- castle Medal the next year, '49, by a wonderful chance — namely, that all the Select but two of the previous year had left. One of these, Lewis, took the Scholar- ship, and the other fell out. My true rival was Robert Herbert,* afterwards Sir Robert, Under Secretary for the Colonies. He was far the better scholar, but very deficient in Divinity. The examiners went over the papers four times, and finally put me four marks above Herbert, He, however, beat me for the Balliol Scholar- ship of that year, and got the Hertford and Ireland Scholarship, and a first class in Moderations; while I caught him up and passed him by gainin^^ a First Class in Greats and the English Essay Prize. We ended our rivalry by being elected the same day to Fellowships at All Souls.
' My brother, Lord Cottesloe, has given a good
* Boarded at Coleridge's; died 1905. He must not be confused with the above named Robert Herbert.
ATHLETES AND SCHOLARS 6i
account of the athletics, but has omitted himself from the list of those distinguished in them. He was an excellent behind at football. What made the set of boys of his standing so remarkable was that they were mostly as keen in scholarship as in athletics. Cottes- loe, besides being the best bowler in the Eleven, was high up in the Newcastle Select, and became eventu- ally a Fellow of Trinity, Cambridge, and vice Master ; Chitty got a First Class in Greats at Balliol, and became a Fellow of Exeter College; Herries was a
good scholar, and also rowed in the Eight ; Arthur oleridge, who was a College member of Evans', was a good scholar, and got King's and was in the Eleven. I missed being in the Eleven, after playing in several of the matches, by overbowling myself and becoming useless, so that I was first choice out. All whom I have mentioned were high up in the Football list, Chitty being one of the Keepers of the Field. The Aquatics were not much given to scholarship. Neither Bagshawe nor Duffield, a light weight who, I think, won the first heat of the Sculling, did more than passably.
* One of the head boys when I was first at Evans', Adlington, was in the Eight at an unfortunate moment, '45, when we were beaten so terribly by Westminster. The fact is that the outrigger had just been invented, and a fine outrigger had been got by the Westminsters. Compared with this our boat, though the best of its kind, was a mere tub. I saw the race, the result of which may be seen in a picture kept in the College dormitory at Westminster, the Westminster boat coming in triumphantly in the foreground, while the Eton boat is represented by a mere speck in the extreme distance.
•After my eldest brother left, our House team was weak the first year but strong the second. The house that had been "cocks of College " the previous year was supposed to hold the same position until challenged, and there were two houses that stood above us — Coleridge's and Goodford's — each of which contained one of the Keepers of the Field, Coltman and Ethel- ston.* We boldly challenged them in turn, and beat them both. Our success came, I think, partly from * These were Keepers in '49.
62 FOOTBALL AND FIVES IN '47
our understanding one another so well, having played together in my Dame's ground in South Meadow assiduously. One feature of our side was the remark- able playing of Pemberton, who took the post of Long behind, which was supposed to be our weak point. He stopped the ball with his hands, which at that time was allowable, and never failed to kick it promptly, and with good aim, to places where our side could carry it forward.
'The game of Fives, when I went to Eton, could only be played in the space on the North side of Chapel, where the Head Master calls Absence. The game for two could be played in the other spaces between the buttresses, and an excellent game it was. I made an attempt to introduce it at Oxford, but it did not succeed. The courts at Eton on the Dorney road were built about '47, and were opened with some ceremony, and with various jeu d'esprit in Latin. These courts afforded an infinite pleasure in the dull time before Easter, and many were the races to secure them as we came out of Chapel, the Collegers having the best chance, as sitting near the West door.
' I have mentioned already a good many of my con- temporaries at Evans'. In many cases one might say of their careers, are these not written in the Eton lists? The Penrhyns, one of whom became Chairman of Quarter Sessions for Surrey, and the other Rector of Winwick in Lancashire and Honorary Canon of Liverpool and a Proctor of Convocation ; Croft, after- wards Sir John, who, with his Kent neighbour Wykeham-Martin, won the first heat in the Pulling; the Coltmans, one of whom was at Evans' and the other at Coleridge's, who were noted for an extreme toughness that seemed to make them insensible to pain, so that they would not hesitate at football to stop the kick of an opponent by putting their own leg between him and the ball ; Thomson, afterwards Colonel Sir Robert, a special friend of my own ; the Mitfords, of whom tne youngest is now Lord Redesdale ; Horace Cust, who was killed at the Alma ; and W. Hely-Hutchinson, who died before Sevastopol.
• There are two others, however, to whom all lovers of Evans' and of Eton cannot but turn. One is Chitty.
J. W. CHITTY AND R. L. PEMBERTON 63
He was the strongest character I ever knew, in whose presence meanness, falsehood, or any low feeling could not live. He came of a legal family, and seemed to have learnt prematurely the power of weighing things dispassionately, and of being absolutely just in such matters as the application of the rules of games. Yet there was nothing of arrogance about him. His splendid physique was impaired, as regards appear- ances, by a fever which had destroyed every hair upon his body, eyebrows and eyelashes included. To play football in a wig was not easy. He met with many accidents through his prowess in games. I always heard that before 1 came to Eton he broke his collar-bone in a football match, but, tying his hand to his side, continued to play till the end. Certainly, when wicket-keeping at Lord's, he broke one of his fingers, but got it spliced in a few minutes, and re- turned to his post. He became a first-rate lawyer, and for many years divided with the late Lord Davey the chief practice in the Rolls Court when Jessel was the Master. When made a Judge, he was somewhat too ready to make observations from the Bench, which caused him to be nicknamed Mr. Justice Chatty. But he became Lord Justice; and an incident in his career should be recalled as showing his calmness as well as his wit. A large part of the ceiling close above him fell in, and he was asked to adjourn the Court ; but he quietly ordered the debris to be removed, and resumed his seat, saying, ^^ Fiat Justitia, ruat caelum" The premature death of so strong a man caused a painful wonder to his friends.
* The other man I wish to mention was Richard Laurence Pemberton. He came of a wealthy family in Durham, of which he was the only survivor, and was under the care of a distant cousin. His pre-Eton days had not been happy, and Evans' became a true home to him, and his companions there his brothers. He was not distinguished in School work ; his prowess at football I have mentioned. But his whole life was bound up with Eton, and with my Dame's. He used regularly to entertain his friends on various anniver- saries in his beautiful home in the County of Durham, and in London on the days of the Eton and Harrow match. He was to be seen as soon as the sun rose on
64 EVANS AND HIS BOYS
St. Andrew's Day at Eton, and was the friend of every one, from the Provost to the youngest sons of his old friends. He passed away some few years ago.*
*I ought to have said more about WiUiam Evans himself. He was a man of ^rand build, with a broad, healthy face, and a most kindly disposition. I was not brought closely into touch with him till I became Captain in '48, and I then learnt how much pains he gave himself for the welfare of his boys. He noticed little things in their behaviour as bearing on their characters, and he had a very just judgment as to matters which might be interpreted prejudicially against any of his boys. My brother has mentioned Evans' doubts about the songs we used to sing : I fancy they were suggested to him by Durnford, the Master. My brother's room had a window by which we could gain access to the roof, and in the hot summer nights some of us used to get upon the tiles and sing choruses. The negro minstrels had lately come over from America, and one of the most popular of their choruses ran :
" ' High Ho I the boatmen row,
Floating down the river of the Ohio."
Durnford had only heard the last line of the verse, and complained to Evans that "his boys could be heard all over College singing ribald songs, ending with "Go home with the girls in the morning." I doubt whether Evans suspected anything wrong, but he certainly had a judicious way of testing us.
* Evans treated me, as his Captain, with great con- fidence, and would ask me to come over to the Cottage and talk over any difficulty that arose. If a boy was in danger of a flogging, and he thought there were extenuating circumstances, he would put himself to any inconvenience in interceding for him. There occurred while 1 was Captain a case of stealing money. Evans, by his inquiries, ascertained that a boy whom I suspected received a quite insufficient allowance from his father. He made inquiries what
* R. L. Pemberton was at the House from '45 to '51 ; he rowed in the Eight in '51, and ran a dead-heat in the School Mile. He died June 21, 1901.
EVANS AND HIS CAPTAINS 65
things of an expensive kind had been sent into the house, and by this means brought about a conviction. There was httle fuss about it; the boy quietly dis- appeared. I remember that the chief things the poor fellow had bought were a comfortable chair and an illuminated prayer book !
* I may mention one or two facts about the trust- fulness that William Evans showed to his Captains. It was the rule that anyone going out should have a ticket showing where he was going, the hour, and that of his expected return. Evans let me go out freely, and without asking any questions. Porcnester, afterwards the Statesman, Lord Carnarvon, was my greatest friend at that time, and I spent most of my evenings with him, going out and in without a ticket. I was allowed also free access to the garden — a great privilege ; and I remember going there to practise for the great Speech day, when a little boy, Lord Tullibardine, whom I hadn't noticed, ran into the house crying out that there was a madman in the garden ! On the whole, there was a good tone amongst us ; a fair amount of work was done ; there were few outbreaks of disorder; we were all loyal to "my Dame," as we called the stalwart gentleman whose house we lived in; and the brotherly feeling pro- moted by one like Pemberton was a real influence for good.
CHAPTER V
1844-52 — EXTRACTS FROM THE ETON DIARIES OF SIR R. T. WHITE-THOMSON AND LORD WELBY — LETTERS FROM LORD REDESDALE, C. J. CORNISH, AND LORD RENDEL
Not many boys keep a diary in their School-days, even in obedience to a mother's wishes ; nor do many suffer their small records to survive in after-years. The best security for such contemporary documents is the litter that inevitably accumulates in the course of a long life, and that is often of less interest than the slender note-books that lie buried beneath. Now and then, unfortunately, it chances that in a general tidy up on a wet day such volumes are brought to light, with the result that they are scanned, perhaps with an amused smile or a whispered ' Rubbish,' when the hand, all too ready now to tear, destroys, or the fire receives what would certainly be of interest, if not of value. It has, however, been a surprise to find how many a boy at the House did manage to keep a diary. Some of these have been lost, others destroyed, but three or four have survived, and, belonging to the late 'forties and the earlier 'fifties, there are two of especial interest, and from which extracts have been supplied by their authors.
The first of these, taking them in School order, is by Sir R. T. White-Thomson,* who was at the House from '44 to '46, kept a diary regularly while there, and has not destroyed quite the whole of it. From
♦ Then Thomson ; afterwards Major, King's Dragoon Guards.
66
LIST OF HOUSE IN '44
67
what remains he sends the following, including two complete lists of the members of the House in '44 and '46 :
1844: April 20th. — My Mother took me to Eton. There I boarded at Mr. Evans' (the Drawing Master), and Mr. Luxmoore was my tutor.
June $th. — Whole holiday for Emperor of Russia.
June 6th. — Ascot. Not allowed to go with Cousin !
June 20th. — Prince Albert laid first stone of New College Buildings.
July — List of my Dame's.
Herbert ma.
Herbert mi.
Adhngton.
Croft.
Coltman.
Dampier.
Clissold.
Harries.
Becher.
Penrhyn ma.
Penrhyn mi.
Palmer ma.
Palmer mi.
Bagshawe.
Legge.
White.
Newdigate, A.
GrenfeTl ma.
Grenfell mi.
Grenfell min.
Blore.
Atkin.
Fursdon.
Barnett.
Duflield.
Cust.
Cobbold.
Hamilton, G. F.
Philips.
Hutchinson.
Quin.
Colborne. Shaw. Evans ma. Evans mi. Bryant ) Fifth Chitty j Form. Watson. Fremantle ma. Fremantle mi. Arkwright. Bacon. Hardinge. Thomson.
Rogers away ill (in all 44).
July igth. — My Dame's sculling sweepstakes : Becher i ; Bagshawe 2.
July 2^rd. — My Dame's sweepstakes: Bryant and Cust I.
October. — My Dame's had two games daily, also matches; notably one against Ward's, which ended in a tie.
October 12th. — Whole holiday for Louis Philippe's visit. The Duke of Wellington, the Queen, and Prince Albert came to Eton with him.
Miss Furlong at this period assisted in the charge of the House.
1845 : April 21st. — Boating began.
5—2
68 SIR R. T. WHITE-THOMSON'S DIARY
May. — My Dame's sweepstakes : Grenfell ma. and Barnett i ; Bagshawe and Grenfell mi. 2 ; myself and W. H. Fremantle mi. 3.
July 4th. — A triumph for Evans' ! Sam Evans (son of my Dame) and Bagshawe won the School Pulling.
1846 : January. — Rounders, prisoner's base, jumping, paper-chases.
March. — Boating for the ' Boats.' Had an oar occasionally in Bagshawe's boat.
May. — Got into Lag-boat (St. George).
June 12th. — Triumph for Evans'! Bagshawe won School Single Sculling.
June 26th. — Bagshawe (with Greenwood bow) won the School Double Sculling.
July lyth. — My Dame's sweepstakes: myself and Hardinge i ; Fursdon and Cobbold 2 ; Grenfell and Fremantle mi. 3 ; Barnett and Buller 4 ; Chitty and Grenfell 5 ; Colborne and Crosse 6.
Later. — My Dame's Sculling : Fursdon 1 ; Myself 2 ; Quin 3. My Mother being m Scotland, Mr. Evans kindly * took me in tow,' and we travelled via Fleet- wood and Ardrossan to Helensburgh.
September to December. — My last half. Football, fives, and paper-chases. At football my Dame's won a glorious victor}^ over the combined eleven of Cookesley's and Rishton's. Rustic sports (?) in our rooms ; football and hi cockolorum in the passages were not interfered with by my Dame; but on one occasion John Colborne roused his ire by exploding detonating powder up the chimney of one of the rooms (not his own)! The noise was great, and, of course, in came my Dame, and there was nothing to be said ; but he kindly contented himself with 'blowing up' those of us who, being on the spot, naturally shared the blame.
List of my Dame's, Christmas, 1846, when I left Eton.
Sixth Form. Fremantle ma.
Fifth Form. Blore. Chitty.
|
Herries. |
Grenfell mi. |
|
Newdigate ma. |
Rogers, |
|
Grenfell ma. |
Cobbold. |
|
PhiHps. Bagsnawe. |
Barnett. |
|
Legge. |
|
|
Fremantle mi. |
Hamilton. |
LIST OF HOUSE IN '46
69
Fifth Form.
Watson.
Thomson.
Fursdon.
Hardinge.
Duffield.
Colborne.
Arkwright.
Crosse.
Quin.
Newdigate mi.
Remove.
Shaw. Duller. Pemberton. Fremantle min.
Fourth Form.
Willes. Fursdon mi.
Burgoyne. Barnard. Mitford ma. Mitford mi. Wilberforce ma. Wilberforce mi. Maynard. Bayley.
Lower School. Rolt.
The match between Evans' and Cookesley's and Rishton's, referred to above, appears to have been a famous one, and to linger even now in the minds of those who witnessed it. The Football Books of the House had not been started in those days ; and it is all the more interesting to find, therefore, that the writer of the above diary was so moved by the event that he sat up till his candle was taken away to record this stirring contest of sixty years ago in verse ! Here is a copy of the original :
Description of a Match at Football, between my
Dame's and Cookesley's joined with Rishton's,
IN which my Dame's won. Oct. '46.
Evan^ XL
Mock Heroics.
Cookesley's and Rishtor^s XI.
Chitty, Fremantle ma,, Fre- mantle mi., Bagshawe, Blore, Barnett, Watson, Duffield, Quin, Grenfell ma,, Herries.
Miller, Baillie, Board, Ham- mond, Maugham, Hamilton, Fowkes, Heygate, Maugham, Nicholls, Lucas.
A challenge went from Evans' ('twas an October
day) That Rishton's joined with Cookesley's, brave Evans'
should play. The challenge was accepted, a day was straightway
fixed On which the two elevens should meet, the single and
the mixed.
70 EVANS' V. COOKESLEY'S AND RISHTON'S
The day was fine, the field was full, the goal-sticks
they were set, The twenty-two then marched forth, and in the middle
met. Barnett is Evans' 'behind'; gaunt Quin their goals
doth keep ; Fremantle stands between the two, a player very deep. Behind the other's bully, * Glum ' Baillie tries his foot With Nicholls, while long Heygate to guard their
goals is put. They quickly form a bully; they form it close and
tight. And then begin to shin and rouge with all their main
and might. Oh ! 'twas a thing right rich to see, and to hear the
kicks so loud, While for a moment brief the ball was kept within the
crowd. But now the bully's broken, the ball is kicked away, Fremantle sends it o'er their heads, and shows some
pretty play ; Staunch Lucas quickly sends it back, opposing crowds
rush too, But Chitty takes it from the midst in spite of all
they do, He runneth with it to their goals, in vain does Miller
rush, Fleet Chitty sends him over with a very little push. Yet soon he gets upon his legs, but while to goals he
goes He stumbles over Bagshawe's legs, and falls upon his
nose; Now Maugham closely backs him up, 'blind fury' fills
his mind, He shins poor Barnett off his legs, and kicks the ball
'behind'; Then, between Quin and Maugham, to touch it was
a race. But Quin he spun by Maugham at a most tremendous
pace ; The ball is touched, the rouge is saved ; his side at
Maugham scoff, Quin looketh mighty pleased, and then prepareth to
kick off;
EVANS' V. COOKESLEY'S AND RISHTON'S 71
Gaunt Quin he took ten little steps, gaunt Quin he
gave a kick, The ball went whizzing through the air over the bully
thick. And now both sides in earnest work, the game more
savage grows, Bold Bagshawe shinning all he meets, a way before
him mows ; Now Barnett gives a mighty kick, the ball's behind
their goals. And keeping on its even course behind some hurdles
rolls. And now there is a splendid race, to touch it Baillie
tries. But Chitty passes him right quick, and o'er the hurdles
flies. Hurrah for * Mr. Ivens',' a rouge they've surely got. And not a soul of all the throng shall dare to say
they've not. About a yard before their goals they place the well- blown ball, And then a bully round it form, a bully strong though
small. Chitty then putteth on the steam, and rusheth in
between, But John Board somehow works it out, right craftily,
1 ween ; Now some one sneaking kicks the ball ; cries Chitty,
' that won't do !' And rushing in gives him a purl enough for any two, But spite of winding up and jeers he rises up again. And boiling over goes to aid his side's endeavours vain ; For vain they are ; now half-past one, old Lupton's
clock chimes out. Brave Evans' the victory hail with many a joyful shout.
R. T. Thomson, Eton College, Nov. 12th, 1846.
(Sitting by a dull fire with candle burning in socket.)
My muse has flown, kind reader, so good-night, And here comes Martha to put out my light ; Yet ere we part you'll join with me and say ' Floreat Etona ' hip ! hip I hip ! hurrah !
72 LORD WELBY'S REMINISCENCES
The other contemporary diary is that of Lord Welby, who was at Eton as R. E. Welby from '45 to '51. He was one of the earlier Captains of the House, and the mark he made as an Eton boy foreshadowed, in some ways, what he was destined to achieve in later life. He was in the Newcastle Select in '51, he was President of ' Pop,' he was in the Field and Wall elevens, and in the summer half he rowed in the Boats and was known as a good oar.
The extracts from his diary, that he has been good enough to make himself, give a distinct picture of the manners and customs of Eton in his day, and though many of the details are well known and a risk of some repetition here, as elsewhere, is involved, they are of great interest, and certainly deserve a place in their entirety.
In a letter accompanying them, Lord Welby writes :
* I had some difficulty in finding them (the diaries), and I certainly had not looked at them for half a century. I have made up the enclosed memorandum of all sorts of matters pertaining to Evans' and the School in my time, and tnis sketch of Eton, taken from a contemporaneous diary, may amuse you.
* I don't know that Evans himself was very popular in the sense, for instance, that, in my time, Balston was popular in his house. He certainly was not the contrary, and he managed his house well and liberally, and ruled judiciously, desiring to be on good terms with the boys. I had much to do with him, having been Captain for a year and a half. Personally, I liked him and had a great regard for him.'
The following is Lord Welby's memorandum :
' I have found a diary which I kept at intervals while I was at Eton. Its daily record is of little interest, but I note here passages bearing on Evans' House in my time. I went from Parker's to Evans' in 1849. Mrs. Parker had a Dame's House, then recently built, between the old Christopher Inn and Williams', the
WILLIAM EVANS 73
bookseller, facing the gate into the churchyard. Mrs. Parker had become very old ; we did there pretty much what we liked, and the House was not gaining in reputation when she retired at Christmas, 1848. Ivo Fiennes, afterwards in a Hussar Regiment, two Dennes, and I, then went to Evans'.
' At the beginning of 1849, William Fremantle (now Dean of Ripon) was Captain of the House, John Pattison Cobbold, the Ipswich Banker, was second, I was third. Denne ma., Richard Laurence Pember- ton, well known afterwards to many generations of Etonians as one who for fifty years never missed the Lord's Matches, or the Collegers and Oppidans match at the Wall ; Fiennes, Charles Fremantle (now Sir Charles), and Rendel (now Lord Rendel) were others at the top of the House.
' Evans treated us very well. Dames' Houses were not growing in favour, though at this time there were eleven Dames' to fourteen Tutors' Houses, and Evans in consequence was very anxious for the reputation of his House, then, I think, decidedly the largest in Eton, and perhaps on that account regarded with some jealousy by the Masters. He trusted to his Captain and head boys to prevent mischief and keep order. I think I may fairly say that the House was orderly, and I can recollect nothing during the time I was at the House that could be called mischief. The House had been at the height of its reputation, both for scholarship and games, two or three years previously (I am speaking of William Evans' time, because I presume it never was so great as it was afterwards under his daughter), and the healthy tone and tradi- tion inherited from our immediate predecessors still held force. Evans himself was kindly disposed and wished to make friends with his boys, especially the upper ones, asking us to come to him in the evening, in the Hall or in the garden, while he smoked. He meddled very little with us in the House, and certainly did not play, what we should have called, the spy. Occasionally he came round in the evening, but quite openly. He hated card-playing. We were not very hard-working, for I find whist and backgammon a constant entry ; but the accounts I kept show, I think, that we did not play for money. I remember his anger
74 BOATING, CRICKET AND FOOTBALL
one evening when he caught us. We heard his voice and had only time to pocket the cards, but could not get away from our wnist-table, where we sat facing each other with nothing before us. I should not be able to say that he was generally popular, but he was not unpopular. Personally, I saw a good deal of him, and I can heartily give him a good word. He was a good master of his House. The boys were imme- diately under the superintendence of Mrs. Kenyon, a kindly lady and popular with us. Evans, if I recollect rightly, had met with a severe fall out deer-stalking at Blair Athol, which had severely injured the bone of his jaw, and which caused him great and recurring pain. We knew, of course, his daughters ; but at that time they did not, I think, take any active share in the management of the House.
' In the closing 'forties and the beginning of the 'fifties Evans' held a good all-round position in the School. In '47 we had Blore and Fremantle ma. (Lord Cottesloe) Select for the Newcastle. In '48 we had Fremantle ma. as Newcastle Medallist ; and in '49 we had Fremantle mi. (Dean of Ripon) Newcastle Medallist. We had no one in the Select in '50. I was one of the Select in '51. In boating we showed well, for in '46 we had Bagshawe and Thompson in the Eight ; in '47 Bagshawe and Thompson again ; in '48 Herries; in '49 and '50 no one; in 51 Pemberton ; in '52 Rendel would have been in the Eight, but he was obliged to go down in the summer half from ill-health. We sent a good many into the boats : in '49 Crosse and Fiennes were good choices ; in '50 we had Pem- berton in the Victory, and Fremantle (Charles) steered the third upper; in 51 Meade King was seconci Captain of the Boats, Pemberton was Captain of the Britannia, with Rendel and Mynors under nim. We had Rolt in the third upper, and I was in the ten, which Charles Fremantle steered. Passing to Cricket, we had Blore one of the Eleven in '45, '46, '47, and Barnett and Fremantle ma. in '48 ; William Fremantle also in '49 ; but Evans' was unrepresented in the elevens of '50 and '51. In Football we were always strong. In '47 we had Fremantle ma. and Barnett in the first eleven of the Field, and Fremantle mi, Crosse, and Herries as choices. In '48 Fremantle ; in '49 Fremantle, Fiennes,
FOOTBALL IN '49 75
myself, and Pemberton in choices ; in '50 myself and Pemberton in choices. At the Wall Fiennes played against the Collegers in '49; Pemberton, Meade King, and I in '50.
' In 1849 the Houses stood in Football order thus :
1. Evans', Cocks 8. Pickering's.
of College. 9. Okes'.
2. Coleridge's. 10. Balston's.
3. Goodford's. 11. Young's.
4. Durnford's. 12. Eliot's.
5. Dupuis'. 13. Joynes'.
6. Johnson's. 14. Angelo's. 7 Carter's.
* The houses unplaced were : Robert's, Vavasour's, Cookesley's, Edwards', Middleton's, Horsford's, Vidal's, Drury's, Holt's, Stevens' (formerly Ward's), Lux- moore's.
* Our football eleven in this year, when we were " cocks," was made up as follows :
Fremantle, W., corner. Denne mi., bully.
Fiennes, bully. Mynors, bully.
Welby, corner. Hewett, bully.
Pemberton, long-behind. Fremantle w^'., goalkeeper.
Denne ma., bully. Rolt, bully. Maynard, short-behind.
* In the Easter half of '49 Fremantle our Captain was Newcastle Medallist. The Queen came to see the Boats go up on the 4th of June. All the Boats had a supper laid out on the meadow opposite Surley Hall, and the Captain of each boat got a "sitter," who stood them champagne. The Sixth Form had a supper- table, but the rest of the boys got their friends in the boats to " sock" them. The like took place on a smaller scale on Election Saturday, and between these dates were some couple of "duck and green-pea" nights,* when the Upper Boats went up to Surley and supped, and were met by the Lower boats at locks.
' In the Christmas half of '49 cholera was bad in London, and it extended to Windsor and Eton. There
* Commonly called * Check Nights ' when the boats used to go up to Surley in full dress. This custom was abolished in i860.
^e COLLEGERS AND OPPIDANS
were seven deaths in Brocas Lane ; but the chief attack was in Beer Lane (I think it was called) in Windsor, running down from the High Street to the Thames. On the 26th a general fast was ordered in mitigation of the visitation ; there were three services in the Chapel, and at Evans' we fasted on cold beef and pudding. Football was only allowed after 4. A General Thanksgiving followed on the cessation of the cholera, 15th November; but I find no note in my diary of the thanksgiving dinner. My Dame's had arranged to play Goodford's on that day after 12 ; but the Doctor would allow no play till after 4. This half we collected £df in my Dame's for football. On appor- tioning fags this half, Fremantle had five, Cobbold and I four each, and so on down to Middle Division. The Lower-boys were very numerous. 25 th September we had a special football game to train the Lower- boys. Fives began, ist October. On 17th November my Dame's played Goodford's for second Cocks of College and beat them by 8 rouges to i, and on the 2ist we played Coleridge s (Cocks of College the pre- vious year| and beat them by a goal and ;4 rouges, becoming Cocks of College ourselves. The following day we had a " sock " of my Dame's eleven at " The Christopher" to celebrate the event with songs and toasts. On the 27th my Dame's second eleven played Coleridge's second eleven, ending in a tie. This year, after Collegers and Oppidans on the 30th November, there was a row between Collegers and Oppidans ; a lot of Lower-boys and some Fifth Form began shying stones at the Collegers, who returned the compliment. Hawtrey summoned the Oppidan Sixth Form and slanged them for this outbreak of animosity. This year also the Doctor took note that the Collegers and Oppidans elevens had a " lush " at " The Christopher" in celebration of the match ; one of the few occasions on which Collegers and Oppidans met convivially. He summoned the Captains of the two elevens and inquired about it. They explained it was for the pur- pose of promoting a good understanding, and he over- looked it this year.
' 1850. This year Charles Dickens came down to Eton, and came to the boys' dinner at Evans'. He was bringing his son to our House, a nice lad, whom
EAST WINDOW IN CHAPEL 'jy
I took as a fag, if my recollection is right. Easter half : We boys used to provide ourselves with hot things for breakfast. This was forbidden, and cold meat also. Evans replied that he had just provided a safe for the boys' cold meat ! Small-pox broke out, and a College Proctor caught it. We were all vac- cinated in the House. William Fremantle, our Captain, was to have stayed till the end of this half, but his health gave way and he did not return after the Christmas holidays. He was a good all-round boy, a hard-working, good scholar, though not a scholar on a level with his older brother (now Lord Cottesloe), whom one of the trust regarded as an eminent type of good Eton scholarship. William Fremantle was also a fine cricketer, and an excellent football player. Cobbold left at the end of the Easter half, and I became Captain of my Dame's, and remained so till midsum- mer, '51, when I left. I was succeeded as Captain by Freeman, or Marindin. I am not sure whether they had left ; Rendel, in that case, would have been Captain. Evans was busy this summer, and often in London on a Commission connected with the Great Exhibition of '5 1 .
'This year the East Window in the Chapel was finished. It was put up by the boys, or, rather, if I remember aright, by their fathers, a five-shilling sub- scription being included in the accounts. This con- cluding year, however, a subscription was got up among the boys for its completion, and I record that between twenty and thirty boys in Evans' subscribed. In June, Hawtrey gave a dinner in Upper School in commemoration of Montem. This year, Coleridge gave a dinner to a great assemblage of his old pupils on his fiftieth birthday, and after dinner the party ad- journed to Evans', and a few of us were invited down to meet them. I note that on the 5th of June the old Duke of Cambridge came to Chapel, and that we laughed at the way in which he made the responses. He sat in Upper Club after 4 talking to the boys. He died a few weeks later. This summer half my Dame's was weak both on the river and at cricket.
'When we came back for the Christmas half our football strength was sadly weakened, and it was evident we should not be able to hold our place as Cocks of College, Fremantle, Fiennes, Denne ma.^
78 'POP'
had left, and poor Maynard had died in the holidays. On the other hand, Meade-King, the second Captain of the Boats, came to us from his former Dame's, who had given up. Johnson's House became second Cocks of College, and on the 31st they played us for Cocks of College and they won. On the 14th November, Goodford's played us for second place, and they won by four goals and three rouges. On the 9th December, Durnford's played us for third place, but we won. My Dame's football eleven this year, Xmas half 1850, was :
Welby, flying-man. Fremantle, goalkeeper.
Pemberton, long-behind. Hewett, bully.
Denne, bully. Mynors, short-behind.
Meade-King, bully. Parish, corner.
Cornish, corner. Rendel, bully. Fiennes, bully.
When we came back this half we found several new rooms added to Evans'.
• Some attention was given in the Easter half of '51 to lectures on Chemistry and the like, the first attempt of the kind that I remember. Also in '50 or '5 1 attend- ance at Stephen Hawtrey's school was made compul- sory, but mathematics had not become part of the serious curriculum of the School when I left. At Easter, '51, examinations at the end of the half, called "Collections,"* were instituted. "Pop," which used to be open on Sundays, was closed to the members on that day. Evans' was fairly represented in " Pop." Fremantle (William) was long time a member. We had three Officers, a President, Chairman (or Treasurer), and an auditor, and Fremantle at the close of his time was, if I recollect rightly. Chairman. I became Chair- man in 1850, and was President for the summer half of '51. Pemberton and Charles Fremantle were also members. At the close of 1850, or beginning of '51, Pennington, the founder of the Society, who held the honorary post of Trustee, died, and the Society debated as to the old member w^ho was now most celebrated. The choice lay eventually between Lord Derby, " the Rupert of debate," and Mr. Gladstone.
♦ Collections were abolished by Dr. Warre when he became Head Master in 1884.
CELLAR 79
The eventual vote was in favour of Lord Derby, and we asked him if he would succeed Mr. Pennington, but he declined. The Society maintained its reputa- tion fairly at this time, though I cannot say it was conspicuous for eloquence. In '51 the Queen and Prince Consort came to Eton, and we of the Sixth Form spoke before them in Upper School. June 17th, Evans took Sam Evans and nine of us from his House to Henley Regatta ; this ten was as follows :
Pemberton, stroke. Sam Evans.
Rolt. Denne.
Fiennes. Rendel.
Welby. Mynors.
Meade-King. Fremantle.
We drove to Maidenhead, rowed up to Henley, and rowed back to Eton in the evening, a capital expedi- tion, which we fully appreciated.
* At Evans' a great part of the House, used, from time to time, to meet in one of the larger rooms and sing. Charles Fremantle, who had a good voice, was our principal songster, but we preferred songs with good choruses.
* It is singular how little attention was given to gymnastics. Angelo had a fencing school; but it was paid for as an extra, and, I think I am right, very few attended it. An old Corporal Mundy had a room, or barn, up town, where he used to teach singlestick. We used to go there of an " after 4," most of us, not to learn singlestick, but to have the pleasure of whacking each other over the head or legs in the most unscientific fashion.
' One relic of Montem survived in the person of a half-crazy chap dubbed " the Eton poet," who, on Montem anniversaries, appeared in a fantastic dress. When we met him we used to chaff him, and make him give us rhymes. The Pohce of Eton consisted of two old fellows. Bolt and Macallim, old soldiers, I think, but quite superannuated.
* One of the institutions of Eton at this time was " Cellar," held in the upper room of Jack Knight's " tap," a little way up town. Jack had been old Keate's coachman, and in the " tap " hung the old silhouette picture of Keate, which ^ave rise to, or justified, King-
8o OPPIDAN DINNER
lake's celebrated description of Keate in Eothen, as something between Napoleon Buonaparte and an old apple-woman. Certain of the big boys went by right to Cellar, which was held in the Summer half, in one " after 2 " in the week. I think the Eight, the Eleven, and the Sixth Form Oppidans, had the right. Others went by invitation. At the first invitation one had to drink the " long glass," a tube of glass with a bulb at the end, holding about a pint of beer. The neophyte had to finish it without withdrawing the glass from his lips. It required skill to so lift and then lower the glass that only a moderate quantity flowed from the tube, but most of us were nervous on the occasion, and lifting the glass unskilfully, deluged ourselves by the rush of beer from the tube, to the satisfaction of the lookers-on. At " Cellar " we ate bread and cheese, and drank beer or cider; but as the beer given us in our Houses was very poor stuff, we hardly touched it at dinner, and hence what we drank at Cellar involved no excess. " Cellar " was an old institution of which I never heard the origin. Probably the name was derived from it being held in some corner of the old "Chris- topher," where, while it existed as an inn, "tap " was held. * Another institution existing at this time, but very rightly stopped a few years later, was Oppidan Dinner at the White Hart Hotel, Windsor, in the Summer half. The dinner took place after four, and we re- turned to dessert after Absence at a quarter-past six. It was managed, if I recollect rightly, by the Captain of the Boats, and only the Eight, the Eleven, and the big boys dined, on invitation by the Captain. I note that this year (1850) forty of us dined, and that it cost us i6s. apiece. Innumerable toasts, and, I think, songs, were given, and of course the wine got into the heads of some of the diners. After this dinner, or on " duck and green-pea " nights, it was the custom to form what we called " big levy," that is to say, we walked arm in arm, forming a row which stretched quite across the High Street, till we got into College. " Upper tap " was a very select society. If I recollect rightly, the Eight were members, and a few, very few others, invited by the Captain of the Boats. " Upper tap " was held after 2 in a room at Jack Knight's, whither we went to eat bread and cheese, and drink a glass of beer.
'THE CHRISTOPHER' 8i
'In the winter half of 1850, Dr. Hawtrey and the Masters had reason to believe that boys frequented " The Christopher " too much, and they resolved rightly to put a stop to it. The Masters accordingly made several incursions into the Inn, but matters came to a crisis over the " lush " which the Oppidan and Colleger Elevens always held there two or three days after the match. The Doctor formally forbade us to hold it. We, however, resolved not to give up the old custom, and in spite of the prohibition we held it. Goodford, Balston, and Carter, came in and desired us to open the door, which was locked. They took our names, and the following day the two Elevens, two or three excepted, who were not present, were sentenced to be kept back at the beginning of the holidays, going away with the Lower-boys ; and we also had a book of Milton to write out.
'i find a list of the boys in the House — viz., the card from which Absence was called, in the Christmas or Easter half of 1850, with the end unluckily wanting:
|
Welby. |
Rendel. |
Parish. |
|
Pemberton. |
Mynors. |
Watkins. |
|
Fremantle. |
Rolt. |
Brougham. |
|
Freeman. |
Mitford. |
Dickens. |
|
Denne ma. |
Cornish. |
Congreve. |
|
Meade-King. |
White Cowell. |
Denne mi. |
|
Marindin. |
Tyrrell. |
Fiennes. |
' This took the House down to Remove ; the part of the card with the Lower-boys is wanting.*
Lord Welby's reminiscences close here. Almost kaleidoscopic in their local colour and interesting con- temporary detail, they bring to the mind something of the busy outdoor life of Eton, and the part in it that Evans' never failed to play ; but to obtain a full im- pression of the tone and character of the House it is necessary to look at it, so to speak, from many sides, and what we want now is a view of the inside, and especially of one particular feature of it — the happy intercourse that always existed between those who
6
82 LETTER FROM C J. CORNISH
held the House and the boys who boarded there. From one end of the history to the other they were friends, and the following letter from C. J. Cornish* gives a good description of how boys were received by the Evans family, and made to feel a part of it :
' I went to Eton,' he writes, * in the summer half of '47 at twelve years of age. I had never left Devon- shire before, and never before had travelled by rail. My father and mother took me to London first that I might see it, and after a few days we went to the Castle Hotel, Windsor. That was on a Saturday. On Sunday morning, after service at St. George's Chapel, we went down to Eton, and dined in the Hall at Evans'. I can see it all vividly before me now, and remember that W. M. Thackeray and his two little daughters were there also. Then I was taken to the Head Master, Hawtrey, and entered on the books. My tutor was H. M. Birch.f I was a very fair scholar, but not being advanced in verses, was shoved down into Lower Fourth. I mention this that you may see how much the condition of Evans' helped me to ameliorate my position. Many of the boys came from rich homes, whereas at Ottery, where I had been before, the boys were chiefly the sons of ordinary country gentlemen, the clergy, or of professional men. There was certainly not much of it at that day at Eton ; still, I had a certain taste of what the veoTrXovroi might be. There was at Evans', however, hardly any of that snobbishness. The Captain of the House was Tom Fremantle. Herries and Newdigatet came next on the roll.
' The feature of the House was the wonderful dis- cipline Evans kept without seeming ever to exercise it. He would send for boys individually, and talk to them by themselves about their faults. There was also a very kind matron, Mrs. Kenyon, to whom we owed much. She, too, had a wonderful power of
* Afterwards Rector of Childrey^ Wantage.
t An Assistant Master from 1844 to '49.
X There were three Newdigates at the House, the eldest being one of the original members in '38. The above was the Rev. A. N., and the third Lieutenant-General Sir H. N., K.C.B., who served in the Crimea, Indian Mutiny, and Afghan campaigns.
THE EVANS FAMILY AND THE BOYS 83
dealing with boj^s. And then, side by side with all this, was the family life which we shared — we were treated as part of the family. And of this family, Jane was the one I clung to; she was my friend, and through life I have always looked at this friendship, from childhood, as one of the marked features of my existence.
* I think it was the family life I speak of which did so much to make Evans' what it was — the whole family dining with the boys, the social advantages, to the elder ones especially, of the high table, at which we often met distinguished men who were there as guests. Among these last I can remember Charles Dickens, Lewis, the Oriental painter. Lord Brougham, and other men of mark. But besides this there were the invitations to breakfast, where we were then even more closely part of the family. I look back with the greatest in- terest to these parties. Then, lastly, there was my Dame's room, where the new and younger boys often went and sat, and enjoyed the happiness almost of home life.
' I do not think there was then any of the luxury in the boys' rooms that one hears of in these days. An arm-chair was an almost unknown thing: most of us were content with the old Windsor chair. It was not an unusual thing, too, for a boy, for the sake of economy, to mess by himself, or even to join another because he felt the one he was in too expensive. The House was never one where the mere fact of a boy being rich gave him any position at all. F. E. Durn- ford* had the post of calling Absence in the House at Lock-up, and I have always felt that to him, to Jane Evans, and to J. L. Joynes,t who became my Tutor when Birch left, I owe most of my happiness at Eton.*
Of W. M. Thackeray and Charles Dickens, both of whom are mentioned in these letters, it may be added that the former was one of William Evans' more intimate friends, and was a constant visitor, while
* Tutor and House Master 1839-64, and Lower Master 1864-77. t Tutor and House Master 1849-77, and Lower Master 1877-87.
6—2
84 LETTER FROM LORD REDESDALE
Charles Dickens, after a first visit to the House, was so much impressed by what he found that he sent his son there in 1850, instead of to the house he had pre- viously intended.*
One of Lord Welby's and C. J. Cornish's contem- poraries was A. B. Freeman-Mitford, who was at the House for some time before he went into College, and who was also destined to distinguish himself in after-life, being better known now as Lord Redesdale.
' I think,' he writes, * this is perhaps a record. Three boys, who were in the House at one and the same time, have been raised to the Peerage — Lord Rendel, Lord Welby, G.C.B., and Lord Redesdale, G.C.V.O., K.C.B. Three also, at Evans' together, were heads of Government Departments at the same time — Lord Welby (Treasury), Sir Charles Fremantle, K.C.B. (Mint), and Lord Redesdale (Office of Works). I think these are remarkable cases of absolute contem- poraries.'!
It is a happy circumstance that all these should still survive, and be able to show by their letters the warm corner they preserve in fheir hearts for the old House. Sir Charles Fremantle has been often mentioned,} and this chapter must therefore close with a letter from the only one of the number who has not hitherto been quoted.
Few have taken greater interest in the preparation of this volume than Lord Rendel. His letters glow
* See A. C. Benson's Fasti Etonensei^ p. 432, ' Letters from Charles Dickens.'
f Lord Redesdale had two elder brothers at the House — Percy M. afterwards in the Scots Guards, and Henry M. — also two sons, C. B. and J. P. B. O. Freeman-Mitford. It may also be worth noting, as a parallel case, that three contemporary pupils of Dr. Wane — viz., the Earl of Elgin, Lord Wenlock, and Lord Harris — held the posts of Viceroy of India, Governor of Madras, and Governor of Bombay respectively at the same time.
X The writer has received many letters from Sir Charles Fremantle, who offered help in any way that he could. The two letters from his brothers in the previous chapter give already, however, all the information of his period for which space can be found.
LORD RENDEL'S LETTER 85
with a love for Eton and for the House, and the follow- ing is what he writes of Evans himself in the early days, and of the influence his system of managing the House subsequently had upon his daughter Jane :
' I have but little hope of helping you, but I cannot lose the bare chance of doing so. Yet, if only I could put it into words, no survivor of the earlier days of the famous House could give you a livelier sense of the spirit and character which for sixty years made Evans' House the quintessence of Etonianism, and in some senses even the leaven of the School.
'When I became a boarder in 1847, William Evans was in his prime. In person handsome and stalwart, in manner genial and virile, in taste and habit a com- bination of sportsman and artist : a man of breezy outdoor life, frank, friendly, and sociable, and as far removed from the pedagogue or dominie as a man could be. The good and homely Mrs. Kenyon then filled all those housekeeping duties which would have been out of Evans' way, and upon which his eldest daughter Annie was not as yet robust enough to enter fully.*
* Looking back to this early and, I think, original condition of things, I feel that to it was due the singular influence and subseq^uent success of Jane Evans. She grew up to combme in herself the best qualities of the management of the House in her father's and Mrs. Kenyon's days, and she enhanced the combination by her own most striking personality. In saying this I am not going beyond my own ex- perience, because I was unluckily a delicate boy and exceptionally often ' staying out,' and was thus thrown with the family.
* I believe I was Captain of the House before I left in '51, but, strange to stay, I am not quite sure, the reason being that I was certainly treated as Captain by Evans himself His position, of course, as a Dame
* Mrs. Kenyon had been previously in charge of the children of Lord Lincoln, whose eldest and second boy followed her to Eton. Mention is made of her death in Jane Evans' diaries on February 15, 1881, and also of the fact that allusion was particularly made to her in a sermon by Mr. Joynes in Lower Chapel on the 20th of the same month. She was universally beloved.
86 EVANS' SYSTEM
was wholly exceptional. He knew very well that, were he to assume any outward show of authority as a sort of Master, he would invite the resistance of the boys, always quaintly jealous of formalities on this score. He did not desire recognition as a Master, and the secret of his success was his cleverness in taking full advantage of his detached position. He consulted his boys; he gave no orders and made and enforced as few rules as possible. His art was to govern the boys through the boys who could repay his confidence, and to give this last to them entirely ; to elicit their manly, honourable, generous, and loyal feelings when and only when necessary, and otherwise, as far as possible, to leave them to themselves.
* Sam Evans had much of the best of his father about him, and was all his days a delightfully good fellow ; but it was upon Jane that, more and more, the main- tenance of the House devolved, and as age and experience advanced no doubt she gradually filled the precise part slowly surrendered by her father, as well as retaming her more feminine attributes : she became father and daughter in one.
' Thus it was that the House, for forty years, was, in the opinion of its boarders, a House apart and yet a House pre-eminently Etonian in its best sense. I am naturally laudator temporis acti, and ready to say there will never be quite such another House nor another Jane Evans. I pray that her memory may be pre- served, not alone in affection for and in justice to ner, but in the interests of Eton itself. For I am sure that she embodied the very finest spirit of Eton, and that the maintenance of the traditions of her House is not onl}'' a duty sacred to many hundreds of her Old boys, but one of the best services that can be rendered to the great Foundation itself.'
CHAPTER VI
ANNIE EVANS GRADUALLY ASSUMES CONTROL OF THE HOUSE — THE ADVENT OF BOYS FROM COLERIDGE's — THE TWO SISTERS ANNIE AND JANE EVANS — THE FOUNDING OF THE HOUSE LIBRARY — LETTERS FROM T. F. HALSEY, J. F. F. HORNER, AND THE EARL OF CRANBROOK — THE COMMITTEE OF BOYS KNOWN AS ' THE LIBRARY '
It is not to be supposed that Evans' House escaped the vicissitudes that wait on all human undertakings, or that it passed through the sixty-seven years of its existence without experiencing many a blow from the hand of Fate, if so we prefer to call it. The control of a House containing fifty boys puts an end, in a sentence, to any supposition of the kind, without enumerating the cares and responsibilities that are inseparable from such a task. Few undertakings can be more difficult ; none require more constant vigilance or a fuller measure of the finest tact and judgment. Failure is comparatively easy ; to succeed requires gifts that are bestowed on very few. And if a full measure of success is attainable by a limited number only of all those who put their hand to such a work, and through a combination oi qualities that are as subtle as they are indefinable, it may be doubted whether the in- fluencing of young lives does not offer some of the richest prizes, and whether even a small measure of success does not bring with it some of the happiest moments in a man's declining years.
87
88 EXISTENCE OF HOUSE THREATENED
But it is not in these directions that we have now alone to look. That the history of the House affords one if not two striking examples of the glad acceptance of such responsibilities, of the possession of these subtle characteristics, and of the final reaping of these rich rewards, all of us will be ready to admit, and to admit with gratitude. To other causes than the mere lack of necessary qualities in those who ruled it was the House twice within measurable distance of having to close its doors. That such was the case will presently be shown, and if the fact has hitherto been known to few, there is yet another point connected with it that calls here for very prominent recognition. Twice, through untoward circumstances, the very existence of the House was threatened. On both occasions it fell to a woman's hand to rescue it from an impending fate.
William Evans was a man possessed of many aspira- tions. He was happy in the founding of the House ; events proved him to be happier still in the possession of two daughters such as Annie and Jane Evans showed themselves afterwards to be. He had started with many ideals. He was then in the prime of life and full of vigour, and he was possessed of health and strength, as well as of characteristics eminently calcu- lated to appeal to a boy's nature. Those who knew him best in these days speak of him with regard, with a sense of what they owe him, and tell of his liberality and the help he was to them ; but it was not so, it could not be so with all. A boy's judgment is proverbially hasty, and those in authority over him are dismissed as * decent chaps ' or the reverse on the slenderest evidence. It is no part of our undertaking to deal exhaustively with Evans' character, yet it is important that some endeavour should be made to correct estimates where these seem to need qualifying.
If Evans was a man of many aspirations, he was
WILLIAM EVANS' ACCIDENT 89
certainly one who experienced many trials. For long years he threw himself into the task he had under- taken, sparing neither his time nor his capital, allow- ing his art to occupy a second place and his boys and his House to have his first thoughts. But then by degrees there came a change, and the House saw gradually less and less of him. How was this ? He had suffered many bereavements. His wife and three of his children had been taken from him earlier; his eldest son had died in New Zealand, as we have seen ; and once again, in 1851, death came and claimed his sailor son in Rangoon. But a further misfortune now befell him, though the actual date of the occurrence is uncertain.* Suffice it to say that when sketching — it matters very little where — he stepped back to look at his work, and was precipitated down a steep and rocky 'bank. The injuries he received were of a terrible nature, and there is no need to dwell upon them here. He was then a man in his prime, and though he lived to be nearly eighty, his strength now slowly declined, and his days were more often than not days of acute suffering. The glory of health and strength gradually ebbed away, and Evans came to take less and less share in the active management of the House. For a time he was, in the words of one of his Captains, 'quite capable of exercising authority if it was wanted ' ; but his state of health necessitated periods of absence of gradually increasing length, until at last he was away for many months at a time. So it was that most of us saw little of him, and came to look in other directions for help and guidance in the House that still continued to bear his name.
William Evans was thus very largely the victim of
* The writer has been at great pains to discover the date, but the reports vary to so great an extent that it is impossible to arrive at any definite conclusion. Some speak of the 'forties, others of the 'fifties, and some, again, of the 'sixties. The Dean of Ripon, however, seems positive that the date was '44, and adduces strong evidence to support this.
90 ANNIE EVANS AND THE HOUSE
circumstances, and if the state of affairs was not calcu- lated to benefit the House, it speaks well for the system he had inaugurated that discipline and order continued to be maintained. At one time the strong opinion was held that Evans should resign, and then great pressure was brought to bear upon him to admit a young Master as resident in his House. But he would not entertain the idea of resigning, while he scouted the notion of a Master being imported to keep order. The boys would do that ; he could trust them.
But there were things that the boys could not do, and that could not be left in the hands of a Matron, however capable. Parents had to be thought of, and, if on this side there were difficulties, the further fact had to be faced that there had been a heavy capital outlay, nearly the whole of which would almost cer- tainly be sacrificed if the door was closed.*
It was now that Annie Evans came to her father's assistance, and gradually took up the definite and entire management. That she was not inexperienced is shown in the following note by her sister Jane :
' My eldest sister, Annie, came home when she was about nineteen, and in 1844 began to take part in the management of the House ; but it was many years before she was allowed to have anything to do with the boys. My father considered that some one more experienced was necessary in their case, and always endeavoured to appoint ladies as matrons who were fully competent to undertake such a position. When, however, in 1855, my sister, who was very quick to see and understand what was wanted in such a large house from a woman's point of view, asked my father to let her take the management of the House with him, he gladly agreed, only stipulating that she should have a thoroughly efficient matron to work with her. After trying one or two, she finally chose Mrs. Barns, whose
♦ In his evidence before the Public Schools Commission Evans stated that 'he had paid, besides his renewal fines, £7,300 and up- wards for goodwill and improvements ' (see Report, p. 99).
ANNIE EVANS 91
c[uiet tact and practical ways with the boys were of infinite help to ner.'
Annie Evans at this time had passed her thirtieth year, her sister, Jane, being two years younger. Sensitive and highly nervously organized, she brought to her task the energy and enthusiasm which is often the mark of such a temperament. There was no limit to her kindness, and all who write of her at this time speak of this with gratitude. Many of us can recall the quick way in which she would form an opinion, and when anything was wrong how quickly, too, the words would come from lips that trembled because of her hatred of evil and her keen anxiety for the character and welfare of the House that was in her charge. We little realized what it cost her. To take up such a work required no ordinary courage ; it was beset with difficulties, and everything depended on her success or failure. She was herself far from strong. Her father's health grew worse ; there were brothers and sisters to be thought of; and there was the House, with its fifty or more boys and a whole array of servants. She may not have stood absolutely alone, for behind her was her sister Jane, and to a certain degree her father ; but she would always say that it was impossible for two to manage such an undertaking, and though Jane Evans certainly came to take her full share, it was Annie who, during a period of sixteen years, was the real head of the House, and threw into the work her whole heart, her strength, it may be truly said, her very life.
* I think Annie Evans,' writes Howard Sturgis, 'was a very remarkable character. She was by nature emotional, nervous, almost hysterical at times, the last type of woman whom anyone would have suspected of any aptitude for the work she was called upon to do. Yet she undertook it with dauntless courage, and did it successfully, with what amounted to a touch of
92 THE TWO SISTERS
genius. She had amazing intuition about boys ; it was hke an instinct. The danger was that she came to trust her intuitions too much, and of course they were occasionally wrong; but the marvel was, and remains, how often, on the whole, they were right. Of course what boys will be apt to remember of her will be the little outbursts of anger, or of behaviour inevitable in a person of her excitable temperament ; and there will be a danger of the real good sense and cleverness with which she filled a most difficult position being done less than justice to. There was a kind of electric brilliancy about her, the antithesis of her sister's calm wisdom, but not in its own way less remarkable.'
It is not now, however, that an attempt need be made either to sum up her character or to form an estimate of the influenge she exerted on the House itself. In due time she earned the love of the very best of the boys, as she did the admiration of those who were at the head of the School. These things shall be spoken of in their place, but one further point certainly needs a reference here, because it intimately concerned the continued well-being of the House.
Few can doubt that the one sister possessed what the other lacked in the way of natural characteristics, and that the nervous anxiety consuming Annie was counter- balanced by the quiet strength and sell-possession of her sister Jane. But what they both had, or came to have in a remarkable degree, was an innate perception, an almost intuitive insight into the character of a boy. How important a gift this was in a House governed on the principles of Evans' may be easily understood. The Captains of the House had had their responsibili- ties before, but they came gradually to occupy a more prominent place now, and all through Annie and Jane Evans' fifty years of rule, in no way did these sisters show their wisdom more than in the manner in which they developed their father's original ideas, and threw
THE CAPTAINS OF THE HOUSE 93
the maintenance of the discipHne of the House largely into the hands of the boys themselves.
That Annie Evans was certainly fortunate in her first Captains, the subsequent life-history of these Captains proves. But how was it, when we look back, that Annie and Jane Evans were almost always able to put their hands on boys whom they could absolutely trust, and who were of sufficient strength of character to head their fellows ? The Captains of the House were not all boys of the same calibre : that cannot be supposed for one moment. They varied much : some were the very pick of their kind ; some were born leaders, boys who excelled in all the pursuits of boy-life, who were leaders in the foot- ball field, at cricket, and on the river, boys who showed what they would become though only then in their teens, as well as many others who, while they shone not at all at games, attained the dignity of Sixth Form or occupied a high place in the School. It may have been in part due to the tone of the House and the influence and education that this gave; but however this may be, the Captains of Evans', taking them as a whole, were boys of exceptional calibre, and the trite expression that the boy is father to the man came true in their case again and again.
Whether Annie Evans exerted her influence in preventing boys of poor character remaining till they became Captains cannot be said for certain, though it seems probable that she did