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Updated: May 3, 2025
The chief difficulty which besets a school friendship between two boys is that of being alone together. In Form, in the playing-fields, in the boarding-house, life is public. Even in the most secluded lane, a Harrow boy is not secure against the unwelcome salutations of heated athletes who have been taking a cross-country run, or leaping over, or into, the Pinner brook.
The suburbs form a small town, composed of a few large and indispensable shops, together with the houses of the masters and dames, at whose houses the boys, not on the foundation, and who are denominated "oppidans," board and lodge. "The playing-fields" are very extensive, and subdivided into the playing-fields, "upper-shooting-fields," and "lower-shooting-fields."
These three divisions, the school-yard, suburbs, and playing-fields, form in theory "the bounds," which in practice are boundless, an Etonian's movements being curbed by time, rather than by space. Eton, at its foundation, was a charity-school for seventy boys. In time, it received other pupils.
The apparatus required is generally stored at the playing-fields for the common use of all schools attending, but small articles such as balls, bats, sticks are supplied to each school.
And so he goes on to give a truly appreciative and affectionate sketch of young Arthur Mynors; and then he quotes the sentence about the Master of the Beagles, and on this he comments thus: "The aged Barbarian will, upon this, admiringly mumble to us his story how the battle of Waterloo was won in the playing-fields of Eton.
A neat bundle was produced, and for about twenty minutes the master perused it, while the invalid kept watch on his face. Rooks cawed out in the playing-fields, and close under the window there was the sound of delightful, good-tempered laughter. A boy is no devil, whatever boys may be. The letters were chilly productions, somewhat clerical in tone, by whomsoever written.
Generosity, justice, disdain of animosity-these virtues were learnt on the playing-fields and race-courses. England knows their value; she treats war as a sport because so she will fight better. For her that approach to adversity is normal. With us war is a sport. With the French it is a martyrdom. But with the Americans it is a job. "We've got four years to do this job.
I am sure that football is going to play a great part in the physical salvation of Tom, Dick and Harry, but they must have other places than the streets in which to learn and practise the game. We have heard a great deal about the playing-fields of public schools; we are told that we owe our national safety to them; perhaps it is correct, but I really do not know.
It is true that, when he gave rein to his critical instinct, he could not help observing that Public Schools are "precious institutions where, for £250 a year, our boys learn gentlemanlike deportment and cricket"; that with us "the playing-fields are the school"; and that a Prussian Minister of Education would not permit "the keepers of those absurd cock-pits" to examine the boys as they choose, "and send them jogging comfortably off to the University on their lame longs and shorts about the Calydonian Boar."
The King's College lads, who, indeed called themselves 'men, were of a lower social rank than the Etonians, and, as Fitzjames adds, unmistakably inferior in physique. Boys who had the Strand as the only substitute for the playing-fields were hardly likely to show much physical prowess. But they had qualities more important to him.
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