According to one observer, the feminine, or
passive, part was always played by a boy of girlish form and
complexion, and the relationships were somewhat like those of
normal lovers, with kissing, poems, love-letters, scenes of
jealousy, sometimes visits to each other in bed, but without
masturbation, pederasty, or other grossly physical
manifestations. From his own youthful experience Hoche records
precisely similar observations, and remarks that the lovers were
by no means recruited from the vicious elements in the school.
(The elder scholars, of 21 or 22 years of age, formed regular
sexual relationships with the servant-girls in the house.) It is
probable that the homosexual relationships in English schools
are, as a rule, not more vicious than those described by Hoche,
but that the concealment in which they are wrapped leads to
exaggeration. In the course of a discussion on this matter over
thirty years ago, "Olim Etoniensis" wrote (_Journal of
Education_, 1882, p. 85) that, on making a list of the vicious
boys he had known at Eton, he found that "these very boys had
become cabinet ministers, statesmen, officers, clergymen,
country-gentlemen, etc.
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