Floreat Etona: Anecdotes and Memories of Eton CollegeNevill, Ralph
History
Floreat Etona: Anecdotes and Memories of Eton College
Nevill, Ralph
Eton College
Up to the early ’sixties of the last century, certain divisions of
Third Form retained some quaint old titles--the first sections being
called Upper Greek, Lower Greek, “Sense” and “Nonsense.” Lower Remove,
Upper and Lower Remove in the Second Form and First Form completed the
tail-end of the school. “Sense” and “Nonsense,” it should be added,
received their quaint titles because boys in the latter were doomed to
a sort of “poetical purgatory,” and only wrote “nonsense” verses; that
is, Latin compositions which scanned as verse, but contained no ideas;
in which respect the effusions in question resembled the productions of
some living bards.
[SN: LOWER SCHOOL]
When Mr. John Hawtrey was an Eton master, Lower School, somewhat
altering its constitution, became larger again; the boys in it, mostly
very young, being all together in his house at the corner of Keate’s
Lane, where he kept what was practically a private school apart. His
boys were not allowed the same amount of liberty as those in other
houses: they took breakfast and tea in common, and generally played
their games in Mr. Hawtrey’s private field. On reaching the Upper
School they usually went to other houses.
The curriculum of Lower School was entirely different from that
followed by the Upper Forms. In “Nonsense” the boys, besides being
taught to write nonsense verses, grappled with intricacies of the old
“Eton Latin Grammar.” After this they were promoted to “Sense,” when
the nonsense verses were discarded; Lower Greek and Upper Greek did
very elementary work.
After Mr. John Hawtrey had left Eton to set up a preparatory school
at Aldin House, Slough, Lower School once more became small. In 1868,
just previous to its abolition, it contained 69 boys. The school
list had then ceased to give the old terms, Upper Greek, “Sense,” and
“Nonsense.” Shortly after First and Second Forms were abolished and
Fourth Form placed under control of the Lower Master, the Reverend
Francis Edward Durnford, so well known as “Judy” to several generations
of Etonians. Third Form still continued to exist in the writer’s day
(1879 to 1883); but it then seldom contained more than two or three
boys. Since that time it has varied in number, sometimes amounting to
ten or a dozen, or, as at present (1911), eight. It is interesting to
note that there are now more than sixty assistant masters, as compared
with ten in 1834. In the same time the number of boys at Eton has more
than doubled.
[SN: SHIRKING]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Floreat Etona: Anecdotes and Memories of Eton College — John Shaqi
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