With its Praepostors, Pop Wall and Georgics, Prince George’s choice of school has as much in common with J K Rowling’s Hogwarts as the real world.
Eton has accrued so many traditions since it was founded in 1440 that it has its own lexicon of rewards and punishments that give the impression of an impenetrable club.
Even as a former public schoolboy who went to Marlborough College, a school hidebound to a system of coloured chits, I struggle with how arcane Eton’s rules are.
One of George’s first trials will be his “colours test”, for which he must memorise the location of school buildings and the official colours of each of its 25 boarding houses.
If he hands in a bad piece of school work, he will receive a “rip”, named after the tradition of a master tearing the top of a page, and if he has too many rips he will get a “white ticket” (being subjected to a progress report).
Attempting to explain the jargon involves scrabbling down a rabbit hole as further pieces of abstruse language pop out.
Any breaches of the school rules will land him in “The Bill”, which is a prelude to a punishment rather than the long-running British cop drama. He will be notified of this by a “praepostor”, a prefect drawn from the academic elite of the school, or as Eton describes it: the top Collegers and Oppidans in B Block.
What?
Collegers are scholars, who live in a special boarding house (College) and have the initials KS (for King’s Scholar) after their name in any official listing. Oppidans are everyone else. B Block is not something you take to lower your heart rate, but simply the final year of school, which runs from F Block (which George will join in September) to B Block. There was once an A Block for boys staying on to complete their applications for Oxford or Cambridge universities.
Odd though the system is, it is positively sensible compared with the names for classes at Marlborough, which began with the Shell and progressed through the Remove and the Hundred before the will for obscure names ran out and pupils moved to the lower and then upper sixth.
Back at Eton, George will also need to arrive on time to avoid the Tardy Book, a punishment requiring pupils to get up early to sign their name in a book kept in the administrative hub, known as the School Office. At Marlborough, which the Princess of Wales and Princess Eugenie attended, this punishment is known as a Blue Chit, as distinct from the Pink Chit, which once involved a run from the Porter’s Lodge to the Wedgewood Stone (an uphill jog on the playing fields) but has been downgraded to writing a letter of apology.
Other Eton punishments include Lines (copying out 100 hexameters of Latin poetry), a Georgic (copying 500 hexameters) and Chores, a form of unpaid labour such as weeding a housemaster’s garden.
But George shouldn’t be downhearted. He can be a Wet Bob (rower) or a Dry Bob (cricketer) or a Slack Bob (neither). If it’s the Michaelmas Half (autumn term), he will be introduced to the Wall Game, a violent cross between rugby and football in which players so seldom gain a point that every major match has ended in a no-score draw since 2016.
© Tim Graham Photo Library via Get
© Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty ImagesEvery morning there will be Chambers, when he will return to his house for a snack and have the chance to buttonhole one of the Masters (teachers).
As he progresses, George will gain access to increasing privileges. In the final two years (C Block and B Block, remember?), he will gain access to food and alcoholic drinks at Rowland’s Tap. For his final year, he may be elected by his peers to Pop, a group of senior prefects granted the privilege of wearing waistcoats of their choosing (his father notably had one decorated with the Union Jack) and sitting on the Pop Wall, a low wall along the Long Walk.
If he becomes a House Captain, he will be entitled to wear a Stick-Up, or wing collar.
And if he progresses to the very top, he may be Captain of the Oppidans, tied in the pecking order with Captain of the School (the top scholar) and the president and chairman of Pop.
If you have been paying attention, HELLO! has compiled its own quiz for whether you might be able to pass as an Etonian. You can play along here.
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