Eton continued to be intently tied to the British monarchy. King Henry VIII visited quickly after his accession, and his daughter Queen Elizabeth visited and was regularly entertained by Eton’s college students. King George III was such a fan that the varsity nonetheless celebrates his birthday with the Fourth of June vacation (it’s not held on June 4 however after the end-of-Could financial institution vacation), which incorporates boat processions, speeches, and cricket.
Eton may very well be a harsh place for boys who didn’t slot in. Throughout his enrollment within the early 1800s, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was the goal of fixed bullying. “Shelley-baiting was an pleasing and well-recognized pastime,” The Chronicle reportedly recounted in 1968, “and lurid accounts are handed all the way down to us of his being pursued screaming around the Cloisters by hordes of bloodthirsty Collegers.”
Nevertheless, Eton appears to stay a magical place for its alumni, even Shelley himself. In keeping with Cust, shortly earlier than his demise, Shelley warmly reminisced about his time at college, hankering for the brown bread and butter college students used to get on the journeys into city, and recalling a wonderful woman they’d usually see.
Although Shelley shouldn’t be recognized to have ever written a poem devoted to Eton, the 18th-century poet Thomas Grey immortalized the varsity in “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton Faculty.”
Ah, blissful hills, ah, pleasing shade,
Ah, fields belov’d in useless,
The place as soon as my careless childhood stray’d,
A stranger but to ache!
Because the non-noble center and higher courses rose in England throughout the 19th century, getting your son into Eton meant ascendancy within the rigidly class-conscious society. In keeping with Cust, the well-known actor Charles Kean’s entrance into Eton was because of his father’s sudden windfall. “When his father, Edmund Kean, made his nice success as ‘Shylock’ at Drury Lane, he hurried dwelling to his spouse,” Cust writes, “and mentioned ‘Mary you shall experience in your carriage, and also you, Charley, shall be an Eton boy.’”
Whereas Eton was changing into barely extra democratic, members of the British royal household have been additionally starting to ship their sons to highschool as an alternative of training them at dwelling. Eton, after all, was essentially the most becoming place, regardless of occasional scandals alongside the way in which. In 1928, American actress Tallulah Bankhead prompted a nationwide scandal when it was claimed that she seduced a number of Eton college students, spiriting them away below a rug in her automotive to the close by Resort de Paris. The report so troubled officers that the federal government despatched a consultant to find the reality of the rumors. Unsurprisingly, Eton was uncooperative.
These wild rumors did nothing to cease the stream of minor royal relations and aristocrats to Eton. Queen Elizabeth II’s cousins Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, and Prince Michael of Kent all attended Eton, as did Princess Diana’s father, John, eighth Earl Spencer, and her brother, Charles Spencer. Princess Diana’s familial hyperlinks to Eton have been a part of the explanation 13-year-old Prince William turned the primary senior royal to enroll there in 1995.
Eton turned a haven for Prince William within the midst of his mother and father’ public feuds, which reportedly left him deeply embarrassed. Not like different royals, he was a diligent, intelligent pupil and took his research severely. He additionally cast a detailed bond with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, strolling to Windsor on Sundays for tea, the place the royal grandparents lavished help on the younger man.
