SCHOOLBOY FARE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLVI, Issue 10670, 15 February 1926, Page 7

SCHOOLBOY FARE

SOME REMINISCENCES. Schoolboy meals, glanced at in a reference to Coleridge's experience at Christ's Hospital, have some curious stories attached to them. But few headmasters can have ventured to boast, with Dr. Busby, that their pupils were made ill by "drinking beer when they were very hot and eating too much also." There is a quaint Eton stary of a "tug" who tried to take advantage of the Statute of Henry VI. under (which, on one day of the year, every boy on the foundation was given the alternative of threepence or half a sheep. The Bursar would come round doling out threepenny bits, but the overbold tug, on this occasion, said that he would prefer "his half-sheep." This was too much for the Bursar, and the unfortunate boy was soundly flogged for claiming his statute right. Eton annals also contain the story (but not I the name) of the remarkable hoy who at seven on a bitterly cold and foggy morning was observed in a "seek shop" consuming a light breakfast of meringues and cream and lemonade. At Westminster, in the mid-Victorian era, breakfast used to bo quite passable, but the character of the dinners may be judged from Alfred Plowden's f 'The dinners were execrable. They disgusted me so much that as soon as grace was said I used to'make my way out of Hal! to the pastrycook's and there consoled myself with pork pies and a liberal second course of pastry and tartlets."