Memories: Beatings and Bullying at Eton

The writer and critic Cyril Connolley set out his life at Eton College in his 1938 book Enemies of Promise. He calls his first two years at the school as the ‘Dark Ages’, where he was subjected to arbitrary beatings and bullying.

Here is an extract from the book which is out of copyright and available free of charge at Internet Archive here.

The beatings were torture. We were first conscious of impending doom at Prayers when the eyes of Sixth Form would linger pointedly on us. They had supper in a room of their own and a special fag, “senior” who was excused ordinary duties, like other police spies, was sent from there to fetch the “wanted” man. From Upper Tea Room

“Senior” set out on his thrilling errand, past the boys chatting outside their rooms. “Who’s ‘wanted?’” “Connolly.”

“What, again?” At last he reached the fags who were shivering with terror — for this was always an agonising quarter of an hour for them — their distant stalls in Chamber. Those who were sitting in their tin baths paused with the sponge in the air — they might have to get out again to dress. 'The talkers ceased their chorus simultaneously, like frogs, even the favoured who were being tickled in their stalls by the Master in College stopped giggling and fear swept over the wooden partitions. “It’s Connolly.”

“Connolly, you’re ‘wanted’.” “Who by?” “Wrangham.” “That’s all right. He won’t beat me, only tick me off. He’s my fagmaster.”

“He’s going to beat someone. He’s got the chair out.”

The chair was only put in the middle of the room when beatings were to take place and sometimes the fag was sent beforehand to get the canes with which he would himself be beaten.

The worst part was the suspense for we might make a mistake the day before and not be beaten for it till the following evening. Or we could get a day’s grace by pleading a headache and getting “early bed leave” or going out to the shooting range, the musical society or to a mysterious evening service, had once a week to expedite the war which was much frequented by guilty consciences, called Intercession. The huge chapel was dark and deserted, the gas mantles plopped, the stained-glass windows glittered, the headmaster droned the prayers from the altar. I too was praying. “Please God may Wrangham not ‘want’ me, please please God may Wrangham not ‘want’ me or may he forget about it by to-morrow, and I will clean my teeth. And make me see Wilfrid. Amen.”

Often mass executions took place; it was not uncommon for all the fags to be beaten at once. After a storm of accusation to which it was wiser not to reply since no one, once the chair was out, had been known to “get off”, the flogging began. We knelt on the chair bottoms outwards and gripped the bottom bar with our hands, stretching towards it over the back. Looking round under the chair we could see a monster rushing towards us with a cane in his hand, his face upside down and distorted — the frowning mask of the Captain of the School or the hideous little Wrangham. The pain was acute. When it was over some other member of Sixth Form would say “Good night” — it was wiser to answer.

These memories are associated for me with the smell of Sixth Form supper and with the walk back through the spectators to the bed that pulled down from the wall, with the knowing enquiries of the vice-haunted virginal master in college, a Jesuit at these executions and the darkness that prisoners long for.

The Captain of the School, Marjoribanks, who afterwards committed suicide, was a passionate beater like his bloody-minded successors, Wrangham and Cliffe. Meyne began to receive anonymous notes which made certain suggestions and showed “character” by taking them straight to his fagmaster. The Captain of the School was told and the culprit was ordered to confess; nothing happened. Then another note arrived. The sender, clearly very high in the school, was never discovered, but in one satisfactory evening Marjoribanks had beaten all the lower half of college. Thirty-five of us suffered. Another time we were all flogged because a boy dropped a sponge out of a window which hit a master or we would be beaten for “generality” which meant no specific charge except that of being “generally uppish”.

The result of these persecutions, combined with Chamber beatings and bullyings, was to ruin my nerve. My work went off, and I received several “tickets” which I had to present my tutor, in itself a torture. To this day I cannot bear to be sent for or heat of anyone’s wanting to see me about something without acute nervous dread.

My own election were broken under the strain of beatings at night and bullying by day; all we could hope for was to achieve peace with seniority and then become disciplinarians in our turn. But there was one ray of hope. 'The election now in power was a reactionary one which would be succeeded as it passed on by a gentler crowd, and our own senior election, the year above us, whom as yet we hardly knew contained heroic fighters for liberty and justice. It bristled with Pyms and Hampdens and the feudal system was powerless there.

 

Extracted from Enemies of Promise by Cyril Connelly (Routledge and Kegan Paul: 1949)

Picture credit: The Hotspur

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