One of the keys to understanding the Regency gentleman, and indeed is mentioned in many a Reg Rom descriptions of a hero’s formative years, is the public school he attended.
Just as Cambridge and Oxford have enjoyed a long standing rivalry, Eton and Harrow have since at least the 1500s been the premier private boarding schools for young men 13-17 or 18 (Bryon, to his chagrin, left Harrow just turned 17 while in the same decade Harrow housed a boy as young as 6). Harrow boasts no fewer than eight Prime Ministers as former students, and while the school has always educated for free boys within the parish, the large number of attendees by the 1700s were from the upper echelon of society who could pay bench fees and boarding (according to the wiki, by 1701 it was two to one in favor of paying students).
Harrow is situated in a town of its namesake in the northwest of London. Like many schools and Universities, its buildings are incorporated into the village fabric so that school and public buildings are intermingled. Currently, Harrow houses approximately 800 boys with a staff of approximately 200, according to some sources in the Regency era it housed between 250-300 students.
Indeed, the Regency era seemed to usher in a new success for Harrow:
A recent history of Harrow (A History of Harrow School, 1324-1991, Christopher Tyerman) tells us the average expectation on a parent’s pocket book would be about 50 GBP per annum, which did not include pocket money a young man foisted upon the world would require. Naturally, this fee would have excluded all but the wealthier households from sending their young men to boarding school, and is doubtless why many opted for local tutors or even resident tutors to see to a young man’s schooling.
Living in boarding houses, the boys would have been educated in a variety of subjects including Latin, Greek, literature, philosophy and religion with a lighter emphasis on hard sciences. Sport and social instruction, including dancing lessons, would have beena part of a young gentleman’s education. According to Tyerman, Harrow’s masters were more social figures, examples of good breeding and decorum, than considered intellectuals. The classical education, as it is called, would eventually give way in the Victorian era to something more recognizable to modern education.
Bullying was frequently a problem, and while Harrow approached its students with an eye towards egalitarianism, there was most likely snobbery of all kinds.
Harrow school and its surroundings By Percy Melville Thornton
