Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-fnpn6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-25T20:09:26.309Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Visit to Eton

English Public Schools

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2011

Get access

Summary

“A Parliamentary return of all that is taught at Eton during ten years of pupilage in the nineteenth century, ought (if anything can) to surprise the public into some uneasiness on the subject.”

Edinburgh Review, Jan., 1845.

It is a singular spectacle for an American to see numbers of youths eighteen or nineteen years old, who in his own country would call themselves and be called young men, leaders of fashionable society perhaps—going about in boyish costume, and evidently in the status of boys. What increases the singularity of the appearance is that the Englishman's physical development is more rapid than that of the American—of the Northern States, at least; thus the Etonian of nineteen is as old in appearance as the New Yorker or Bostonian of twenty-one. They all wear white cravats and black beavers; caps are forbidden, otherwise there is no uniformity of costume, and the juvenile round jacket is as common as the manly coat upon strapping young fellows nearly six feet high. Still, however you may dress persons of that age, it is not possible to confine them entirely to the discipline of boys; the upper forms will walk out into the town of Windsor, and should one of them meet a tutor he takes refuge in a shop, the tutor, by a long established fiction, making believe not to see him.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010
First published in: 1852

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×