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Eton continued to be closely tied to the British monarchy. King Henry VIII visited soon after his accession, and his daughter Queen Elizabeth visited and was frequently entertained by Eton’s students. King George III was such a fan that the school still celebrates his birthday with the Fourth of June holiday (it’s not held on June 4 but after the end-of-May bank holiday), which includes boat processions, speeches, and cricket.
Eton could be a harsh place for boys who didn’t fit in. During his enrollment in the early 1800s, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was the target of constant bullying. “Shelley-baiting was an enjoyable and well-recognized pastime,” The Chronicle reportedly recounted in 1968, “and lurid accounts are handed down to us of his being pursued screaming round the Cloisters by hordes of bloodthirsty Collegers.”
However, Eton seems to remain a magical place for its alumni, even Shelley himself. According to Cust, shortly before his death, Shelley warmly reminisced about his time at school, hankering for the brown bread and butter students used to get on the trips into town, and recalling a beautiful girl they would often see.
Though Shelley is not known to have ever written a poem dedicated to Eton, the 18th-century poet Thomas Gray immortalized the school in “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.”
Ah, happy hills, ah, pleasing shade,
Ah, fields belov’d in vain,
Where once my careless childhood stray’d,
A stranger yet to pain!
As the non-noble middle and upper classes rose in England during the 19th century, getting your son into Eton meant ascendancy in the rigidly class-conscious society. According to Cust, the famous actor Charles Kean’s entrance into Eton was due to his father’s unexpected windfall. “When his father, Edmund Kean, made his great success as ‘Shylock’ at Drury Lane, he hurried home to his wife,” Cust writes, “and said ‘Mary you shall ride in your carriage, and you, Charley, shall be an Eton boy.’”
While Eton was becoming slightly more democratic, members of the British royal family were also beginning to send their sons to school instead of educating them at home. Eton, of course, was the most fitting place, despite occasional scandals along the way. In 1928, American actress Tallulah Bankhead caused a national scandal when it was claimed that she seduced multiple Eton students, spiriting them away under a rug in her car to the nearby Hotel de Paris. The report so troubled officials that the government sent a representative to discover the truth of the rumors. Unsurprisingly, Eton was uncooperative.
These wild rumors did nothing to stop the flow of minor royal family members 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, 8th Earl Spencer, and her brother, Charles Spencer. Princess Diana’s familial links to Eton were part of the reason 13-year-old Prince William became the first senior royal to enroll there in 1995.
Eton became a haven for Prince William in the midst of his parents’ public feuds, which reportedly left him deeply embarrassed. Unlike other royals, he was a diligent, clever student and took his studies seriously. He also forged a close bond with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, walking to Windsor on Sundays for tea, where the royal grandparents lavished support on the young man.
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Hadley Hall Meares
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