fall into the hands of boys, as this ill-fated master had done—and his lot was shared by several others—was to be a captive among savages: they did not kill and eat him, it is true, but that was the extent of their tender mercies, and every day he was brought out afresh to be baited and worried.

Such was the state of affairs when Hornby was made headmaster; and it became worse rather than better under his lax and listless regime. Yet no one who has any knowledge of the history of corporal punishment will be surprised to hear that he was a frequent wielder of the rod. Seldom did a day pass without a visit from the Sixth Form Præpostor to one or more of the Divisions, to bid some culprit “stay after school”; and on those occasions the conduct of the class was a good indication of the light in which the punishment was regarded. As the fatal hour approached, the eyes of all would be riveted on the offender, who maintained a dauntless demeanour to the last; pantomimic gestures would indicate the nature of the penalty which he was shortly to undergo; watches would be held up to emphasize the dreadful fact that, as in the case of Dr. Faustus, time was on the wing; and there would be audible surmises as to “how many” he would get. The victim’s friends, indeed, were hardly so considerate and sympathetic as the circumstances might have been expected to demand.

Flogging is an old institution which has found mention in every book written about the school, and which could never be omitted from any discourse upon Eton. It used to be the custom, in the holidays, for parties of Windsor trippers to be shown over the school buildings under the leadership of a woman—the wife, presumably, of one of the College servants—who gave an oral explanation of the “sights.” When the headmaster’s room was reached, the guide of course drew attention to that awful emblem of authority, the “block”; and after pointing out the part which it played in the correction of offenders, she would add, in a croaking voice befitting the solemnity of the subject: “They receive the punishment upon their seats.” That was a true, but rather inadequate description of a practice which only a very barbarous society could tolerate. A flogging was a disgusting sight even to the two “lower boys” who then had to act as “holders-down”; still more so to the Sixth Form Præpostor whose duty it was to be present; most of all, one would suppose, to the headmaster. It has been described as “an operation performed on the naked back by the headmaster himself, who is always a gentleman, and sometimes a high dignitary of the Church.”[3]

The Lower Master, at the time of which I am speaking, was the Rev. F. E. Durnford, nicknamed “Judy,” described in Eton under Hornby as “a strange, laughable, yet almost pathetic figure, with whimsical puckered visage and generally weather-beaten aspect, like a sort of Ancient Mariner in academic garb.” He, too, used the birch freely in his domain of Lower School, but his castigations were of a more paternal kind, and between the strokes of the rod he would interject moral reproofs in his queer nasal voice, such as: “You nahty, nahty boy!” It was said that during the punishment he would even enter into conversation with the offender, especially when he knew his “people” personally, and that on one occasion he was overheard to inquire of a boy on the block: “Have you seen your uncle lately?” a question which, in the circumstances, would at first sight seem irrelevant, but was probably intended to awaken repentance in the criminal by directing his thoughts to some pious and respected relative. To the upper boys, “Judy” Durnford was a never-failing amusement; his every gesture was noted by them; as when, in correcting exercises, if some word or phrase eluded his memory, he would sit scratching his temples vigorously, and exclaiming: “It runs in me head.”

Among Dr. Hornby’s assistant masters were several others whose eccentricities have been a fruitful subject of anecdote and legend. Russell Day, a quiet and insignificant-looking little man, had a mordant wit and gift of ready epigram, which caused him to be dreaded alike by master and boys. “Friend, thou hast learned this lesson with a crib: a crib is a thing in which thou liest,” was his remark in the course of a Theocritus lesson to a member of his Division, from whom I heard the story full forty years later. There were two boys of the name of Bankes, one known afterwards as a distinguished K.C., the other a lazy youth who never knew his lessons and was wont to mumble the Greek or Latin very slowly in order to postpone the moment of discovery. On one of these occasions Day leaned back in his chair and said in his drawling tones: “Bankes, Bankes, you remind me of the banks where the bees suck and with their murmuring make me sleep.” I remember how a friend and schoolfellow of mine named Swan, who was a pupil of Day’s, showed me a copy of his Latin verses which had drawn the following annotation: “Olor! You cycnus.” Not less characteristic was Day’s curt dismissal of a youth named Cole (report says it was the future director of the Bank of England): “Then, Cole, you may scuttle.” Nor did he hesitate to turn his wit against his colleagues or himself. He called his pony “Lucifer,” because, as he said, “When you see him coming, it announces the approach of Day.”

A still more remarkable teacher was William Johnson, author of “Ionica,” who afterwards took the name of Cory, a man of real genius, whose enforced departure from Eton (for he did not leave, as was currently supposed, from some sudden whim of his own) was the tragedy of his lifetime, a “strange wounding,” as he calls it in one of his published letters. Of “Billy Johnson” many descriptions have been written. Here is a passage from one of them: