In the number published on March 5, 1884, a purely imaginary list of the officials of the various school departments was given. There were the Captains of the “Broach” and the “Slunch,” the two College boats; the Captain of Cricket Tassels, R. J. Lucas;[12] Captain of Fives Tassels, Havager Boroughdale; Captain of the Musical Department, R. A. S. Berry-Young; Captain of the Curling Club, T. T. Vator; Captain of the Spelican Team, Tute Goodhart; Captain of Ushers, J. Goodwin; Steward of the Paddocks, H. Beecham Wolley; Choragus, C. Wofflington. This was followed in the next number by the news that the Spelican team had played their first match of the season on March 11 against the Dorney Dubes. The Collegian Brigade, an admirable corps, which marched out as far as Brocas Hedges, was later on described as having met with a catastrophe, for “a bull loose in Weston’s Paddock, which they passed through on the way, attacked the line, and a boy named Swage was knocked over and slightly bruised.”
This went on for six months, when the Editor wrote and expressed a desire to come down to Eton and see the place for himself. He was duly shown a hockey match between B. Wolley’s “Field Mice” and Flenderbatch’s “Jolly Boys,” the match being played with tassels on the caps and all, which so impressed him that he returned to London and wrote an account of what he had seen, giving at the same time a new and original version of the School Song, addressed to “Pulcra Etona” and praying among other things that:
Slunna fluat, Semper ruat Capti fundamentum.
“Slunna” is slunch, “capti fundamentum” is sound Latin for prisoner’s base. In high good temper he added that “our Eton correspondence is supplied by a gentleman who is a universal favourite in College, and the Editor is pleased to state that he has received letters from Etonians all over the world, signifying their approval of his reports.” He was disillusioned soon after, and no more space was devoted to Eton and the strange doings of its students.
Though at that time something of the old-world spirit still lingered, there survived few of the quaint “characters” who had once been fairly numerous at Eton. The ever-gentle, suave, and urbane Giles of Williams’ (afterwards Ingalton Drake’s, and now Spottiswoode’s) will, however, be remembered by many. How this good-natured man managed to book the orders at the beginning of a school-time and keep his temper is a mystery which will never be solved. He had, I remember, a red-headed assistant, who, though a shade more inclined to frivolity than Giles (who was scholastic gravity itself), seemed to have been born to serve out broad rule and derivation paper without being ever in the least perturbed by the chatter of crowds of Lower boys.