The author and critic Cyril Connolly, who was a pupil at Eton in the 1920s, wrote the following musings on the school's influence at the conclusion of his book, "Enemies of Promise":-
"Were I to to deduce any system from my feelings on leaving Eton, it might be called The Theory of Permanent Adolescence. It is the theory that the experiences undergone by boys at the great public schools, their glories and disappointments, are so intense as to dominate their lives and arrest their development."
George Orwell, who was Connolly's contemporary and friend at Eton, reacted to this with scorn in "Inside the Whale", his long essay on writing between the wars:-
"When you read this passage, your natural impulse is to look for the misprint. Presumably there is a "not" left out, or something. But no, not a bit of it! He means it! And what is more, he is merely speaking the truth, in an inverted fashion. 'Cultured' middle-class life has reached such a depth of softness at which a public-school education - five years in a lukewarm bath of snobbery - can actually be looked back upon as an eventful period".
Connolly went on to say, "... it results that the greater part of the ruling class remains adolescent, school-minded, self-conscious, cowardly, sentimental, and in the last analysis homosexual". I doubt if Orwell would have disagreed with this!
It is not widely know that Orwell originally went from his prep school to Wellington College in Berkshire (where he is, of course, registered under his real name of Eric Blair) before transferring to Eton after a few weeks. Cyril Connolly in "Enemies of Promise" admits that, as a socialist, he feels guilty about having enjoyed life at Eton, but then reflects "If you wanted retarded development in unfriendly surroundings, you should have gone to Wellington." When I taught at Wellington, about 20 years ago, the then headmaster asked me to look up literary references to the college for his use, but I doubt if he used this one!
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