It is the world’s best known school. It carries with it many stereotypes – some of them accurate. At its worst it is held to be attended by super rich toffs who run the United Kingdom through nepotism and it sanctifies snobbery. There is a small degree of truth in this. Time was that Eton was a finishing school for the gentry and would take any boy however short on the grey matter he was so long as he had the right connections and measured up financially.
A French academic said Eton taught, ”Homosexuality and cruelty to animals.” That is only half-true. Although homosexuality was apparently rife as recently as the 1970s a healthy supply of porn has kept the boys almost all straight. I can count on the finger of one hand the Old Etonians I know who are gay. It is not a higher proportion than in the general population. Oddly, as society at large has become more accepting of gays Eton has become more condemnatory.
As for cruelty to animals – the school has a beagle pack with which to hunt hares. The attitude of most boys towards hunting with hounds is very much in favour.
Winsor & Eton Riverside station
I had been apprehensive before I went to Eton. Would I fit in at this stratospherically posh school? I went to a woeful prep school near Inverness that had never sent anyone to Eton. Did Etonians even wear jeans? Was that too working class? I saw a programme about Eton and it showed boys in jeans. I breathed easy.
There was a lot of contempt for people who went to state school. Before chav was added to the lexis our patois was sprinkled with opprobrious terms such as pleb, lebbage, Kev and prole. Our accents were almost without exception decidedly public school. The long vowels of received pronunciation were there but one had to be careful not to overdo it because that would reveal affectation. Some were very fruity indeed. We used the right social markers – ‘loo’, even ‘bog’ or ‘shithouse’ but never, ever, ever ‘toilet’ – that would make faces fall. ‘Pudding’ and never ‘dessert’ – calling it ‘sweet’ like a dinner lady would was the worst of all.’ ‘Napkin’ and never ‘serviette’. Anyone who used a non-U word would be mercilessly ribbed. I became rather embarrassed that my parents did not use the right vocabulary.
I was atypical. I come from a mere middle class Irish family. No-one in a previous generation had attended a school like this. This is not unique now. The boys are white Britons in 9/10 cases. There are some British Indians and so forth as well as a leavening of Hong Kong Chinese and Russians. One needs to be signed down years in advance so that means that few who are not British citizens come to the school.
Eton is tremendously well-equipped as well as having some opulent buildings. It is 17 miles west of Marble Arch, which is the centre of London.
The school is very self-important with its own lingo. Pupils who achieve things get to have letters put behind their name! Looking back on it this seems horridly pretentious.
People did not exclude me for being from a middle class family but I felt a little out of it. There were other boys who were the sons of doctors. I felt status anxiety – am I posh enough? The other boys had fathers who worked in almost every case – some were independently wealthy or retired. I guess about half the mothers worked. What did the parents do? Many were army officers, barristers, solicitors, bankers, dentists, journalists, publishers, jewellery dealers, architects, gentleman farmers, teachers, MPs and plantation owners.I would say the first four occupations were the most common.
Your average Etonian has parents who are financiers. They live in the Home Counties. They are non-religious and vaguely Conservative in their political sympathies. He comes to the school for family and social reasons. If his father did not attend Eton he went to a public school of about the same rank. The boy has attended one of about half a dozen prep schools that send droves of boys to Eton annually. The boy will go on to one of the top 10 universities and probably not Oxford or Cambridge.
Most boys seemed not to give much thought to being at Eton. They came from upper class families and considered it perfectly normal to attend such a school. They felt they were guaranteed success. I suspect that many had, as I did, a painful collision with reality.
I was fascinated by history and by Eton’s political and literary legacy. Most Etonians were willfully ignorant about this. Sporting prowess was social success. In that respect Eton is just like almost any other school.
I was very cut off from most people my age. We were allowed to watch telly only on Saturday evenings. This was before computers could show telly from the internet. I was fascinated and frightened by what ordinary adolescents got up to on weekends. I longed to be able to go to nightclubs like them. I imagined as an ordinary boy I would be able to at least try and score with a girl each Saturday night.
The one way the wider world did come to Eton was through drugs. Some boys walked off to Windsor or Slough rather than going to games of an afternoon. These entrepeneurs would make a healthy profit on the merchandise they brought back. I know of two Old Etonian who were small-time dealers in London in their early 20s.
Prince William attended the school as I did. While he could never totally blend in there he was treated more normally there than he would have been able to at any other school.
I seldom socialise with other old boys of the school. My chums are from Varsity days or since. I have been back twice since the year I left. In my teenage years school was my world far more than any other school could have been but means surprisingly little to me now. Now I am I – Eton does not influence me. As I approach a third of a century I am very comfortable with myself. I know my likes and dislikes. I dress down and prefer informality.
