No doubt he owed a good part of the popularity which, in spite of his sternness, he eventually obtained to the attractions of Mrs. Keate, who was a very fascinating woman. In the year 1814, during a match with Epsom, the Eton champion, John Harding, scored 74--an extraordinary number in those days, when the bowling generally beat the bat. It called forth a poem from a clever Colleger (“Marshal” Stone), in which were the following lines. The Doctor saw them and was vastly amused:--
No vulgar wood was the bat of might That swung in the grasp of Harding wight; No vulgar maker’s name it wore, Nor vulgar was the name it bore. It was a bat full fair to see, And it drove the balls right lustily; Without a flaw, without a speck, Smoothe as fair Hebe’s ivory neck-- It was withal so light, so neat, The Harding called it--Mrs. Keate.
When the allied sovereigns were present at a fête in the gardens at Frogmore in 1815, the King of Prussia is said to have gone up and kissed Mrs. Keate, making the excuse of her remarkable likeness to his Queen.
All sorts of stories have been told of Keate’s fondness for wielding the birch. “Remember, boys,” he is once supposed to have said, “you are to be pure in heart, or I’ll flog you till you are.”
He certainly did castigate an enormous number of Etonians, amongst them, it is said, half the Ministers, Secretaries, Bishops, Generals, and Dukes of the earlier portion of the nineteenth century; but, nevertheless, the boys in his own division were usually punished by having to write out impositions, and were not flogged except for some very flagrant offence, such as intoxication.
Keate, as Headmaster of Eton, it must be remembered, was chief executioner, and had to do justice when a boy was complained of by any assistant master.
The school had drifted into very slack ways, and Keate, who possessed a very intimate knowledge of Eton, realised that leniency would merely make matters worse. Consequently he rather favoured drastic measures, and in spite of adverse criticism his system had a good effect. It has often been urged that it failed because the boys at times openly defied his authority. In the earlier days of his rule this was occasionally the case, and gross insubordination prevailed, though it never reached such a point as it had attained in the days of Keate’s predecessors. On the other hand, when the stern old Headmaster handed over the reins of power to Dr. Hawtrey, the school had become quite orderly and controlled.