Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Yesterday on Radio 4 Sir Ranulph Fiennes read from his autobiography the chapter dealing with his time at Eton. He was, he says, a 'pretty boy', and had a very hard time as a result, it being assumed (wrongly, he avers) that he dispensed sexual favours, so he was called a 'tart'.

Now I was definitely not a pretty boy, so have no personal experience, but at CH of course I knew quite a few -- some very publicly so (there was the Thornton A 'hot five', whom I shan't name). I also know for (almost) certain that some (not the aforementioned AFAIK!) did dispense sexual favours. But I never heard that any (innocent or not so innocent) pretty boys were given the grotesquely hard time that Sir Ranulph claims to have had. Would any pretty boys out there like to cast any light on this?

michael scuffil wrote:Yesterday on Radio 4 Sir Ranulph Fiennes read from his autobiography the chapter dealing with his time at Eton. He was, he says, a 'pretty boy', and had a very hard time as a result, it being assumed (wrongly, he avers) that he dispensed sexual favours, so he was called a 'tart'.

Now I was definitely not a pretty boy, so have no personal experience, but at CH of course I knew quite a few -- some very publicly so (there was the Thornton A 'hot five', whom I shan't name). I also know for (almost) certain that some (not the aforementioned AFAIK!) did dispense sexual favours. But I never heard that any (innocent or not so innocent) pretty boys were given the grotesquely hard time that Sir Ranulph claims to have had. Would any pretty boys out there like to cast any light on this?

Even if there are, I'm sure they would NOT care to cast any light on the subject.

(AND NO - I wasn't one either !)

One from my generation was so pretty that he had to rename himself.

Nick Duffell (as usual) is interesting on this subject in The Making of Them. Some good-looking boys (often on the fringe of puberty when they sometimes exhibit an almost feminine beauty) become the object of desire of older boys. If they don't respond to the advances they are sometimes unfairly labelled as tarts, in order to excuse the longings of others. I can remember both situations when I was at CH. Some rejected the interest and some responded to it. At that age of course youngsters may be testing their own, barely conscious, sexual allure. In a single-sex boarding school it seems to develop into a veritable hothouse of gossipy intrigue. As Michael Scuffil says elsewhere, in this sort of situation it's the only sex there is, so it's probably inevitable.