Goodbye to All That

After marrying Alfred with the intention of caring for his five children, Amalie and Alfred have five children of their own, including Robert. As older parents, Graves feels he relates to Alfred and Amalie more as "grand-parents" (12) than parents. Alfred spends most of his time working as "an inspector of schools" (12) or writing poetry. He spends some time with the children, telling them stories and correcting their grammar. Amalie runs the house and fulfills her "social obligations" (12) as Alfred's wife. Thus, the children spend most of their time with each other and a hired nurse maid.

Graves recalls how he became "class-conscious" (14) as a young boy. Stricken with scarlet fever, Graves’s parents sent him to a "public fever hospital" (14) to recover. Graves was one of two "bourgeois" (14) children among "twenty little proletarians" (14). Even as a boy, Graves understood the difference in treatment of himself and the other boy by the nurses and fellow patients. Later, at home, Graves comes to understand that the household staff call him and his siblings "Master Robert" (14) and "Miss Rosaleen" (14) out of duty. However, Graves says he did not "discard" (15) his dogmatic acceptance of "class separation" (15) until he was in his early twenties.

The Graves’s nurse maid, Emily Dykes, provides the so-called "bridge between the servants" (15), whom young Graves considers "not quite human" (15), and the Graves children. Emily cares for each of the Graves children as a beloved nurse until Graves, at age 12, comes to despise Emily's lack of education and her belonging to the Baptist Church. 

Graves describes the "several preparatory schools" (17) he attends in Wimbledon from ages 6 to age 13. Alfred often removes Graves from schools for their lack of academic rigor, and also Graves’s use of "naughty words" (17).

During these years, Graves has two experiences that he feels "set back" (19) his "normal impulses" (19) with women for years. First, the headmaster's daughter at Penrallt tries to look down Graves’s shirt to "find out about male anatomy" (18). Second, while waiting for his older sisters in their all-girls school cloakroom, "hundreds and hundreds" (19) of girls pass by him, giggling.

Finally, Graves settles into Copthorne, "a typically good school in Sussex" (20), which Graves’s younger brothers will also attend. At Copthorne, Graves learns to "keep a straight bat at cricket, and to have a high moral sense" (21). Graves does well enough in his classes to receive a scholarship to Charterhouse, a prestigious boarding school in Sussex. 

Between the ages of 2 and 12, Amalie takes the children to stay with her father in Germany five times. Amalie's father lives in "a big old manor-house" (22) ten miles outside of Munich. Graves has fond memories of those summers, which he spent exploring the forests, visiting with his grandfather and uncles, fishing, and eating Bavarian food. Though thrilled by his family's countryside existence, Graves expresses revulsion at Munich. He finds the "disgusting fumes of beer[…][and] enormously stout population" (27), along with the "ferocious officials" (27), sinister, not to mention the practice of allowing corpses to "sit in state for a day or two" (27) with bells tied to their fingers, in case they are not actually dead.

Though Graves once felt his German heritage and rudimentary German language skills were "interesting" (27), at Charterhouse, Graves comes to feel his German heritage is "a social offence" (27). While at Charterhouse, and continuing through the end of World War I, Graves forsakes his mother's nationality and insists "indignantly on being Irish" (27). Graves admits to his acceptance of "the whole patriarchal system of things" (27) so that only his father's nationality "counted" (27). 

Graves describes how the family spent their summers during his childhood. Though the family home stood in Wimbledon, just outside of London, Graves spent little time there after age 11. He spent the school year at boarding school and the summers with his family in Germany, later in Wales. Amalie had had a house built in Harlech, North Wales, "a very quiet place and little known" (32). As a boy, Graves loves to explore the "desolate, rocky hill-country" (33) behind Harlech village with his sisters. 

Graves begins his account of his time at Charterhouse by recounting a conversation with a fellow student on their last day at the school. Both Graves and his friend, Nevill Barbour, express anguish over moving from Charterhouse directly to St. John's College at Oxford. Graves thinks this will be "merely a more boisterous repetition of Charterhouse" (36) and schemes with Nevill on how to avoid, or at least prolong, their education at Oxford.

Graves describes how he "suffered an oppression of spirit" (38) from his first moment at Charterhouse. As a naïve, middle-class "scholar who really liked work" (38), Graves finds himself alienated from his classmates, most of whom come from wealthier families and enjoy bawdy humor more than academics. Additionally, Graves’s full name—Robert von Ranke Graves—proves a problem. On the eve of World War I, the students talk of "a trade war with the Reich" (39). They constantly ridicule "dirty German" (39) goods, customs, and people. The 'von' in Graves’s name betrays his German heritage and makes him a target for bullying. Though Graves claims to be Irish, the only other Irish boy in his dormitory house begins bullying Graves to save himself from ridicule.

Graves explains that he got used to "bawdy-talk" (40) during his last few years at Charterhouse and didn't become "hardened" (40) to insults until during his military service. Graves also characterizes the romantic relationships between the boys at Charterhouse as "amorous" (40) and not "erotic" (40). By Graves’s definition, “amorous” relationships occur between "boys of the same age who were not in love" (40) rather than between a boy and "the object of his affection" (40). 

Halfway through his second year at Charterhouse, Graves writes to his parents to complain about the atmosphere. Graves tells them they must let him leave at once. Graves’s parents, however, feel "their religious duty would be to inform the Housemaster" (41) of what Graves has written to them. Graves feels relief only that he didn't include "any account of sex irregularities in the House" (41). The Housemaster gives a speech during evening prayers to discourage bullying, saying he has received a complaint from a student's parents. The Housemaster also makes clear that he dislikes "informers and outside interference in the affairs of the House" (41). No one knows that Graves wrote the letter.

That year, Graves gets his own study—without a locking door—and must stop playing football (soccer) due to a heart condition. The other boys stop harassing Graves, convinced of his "insanity" (42), and he begins spending time alone, writing poetry. On the strength of a poem he submits to the school's literary magazine, Graves receives an invitation to Charterhouse's Poetry Society. There, Graves meets a half-dozen other boys from different years and houses—a rarity for Charterhouse. Graves strikes up a friendship with Raymond Rodakowski, a younger boy from a different dorm than Graves.

Raymond, targeted by bullies because of his Polish heritage, invites Graves to box with him. Encouraging Graves to make his own way at Charterhouse and stand up to his bullies, Raymond reminds Graves of the three students who bucked tradition by standing up to the Bloods, an elite social group made up of cricket and football players who ruled Charterhouse by fear. The Bloods never retaliated, and the three students made "the prestige of the Bloods" (45) decline significantly. Boosted by Raymond's story, Graves pulls himself together and begins to have an easier time at Charterhouse. 

Several major events mark Graves’s last two years at Charterhouse. First, his once steadfast relationship to the Church of England begins to fade. Graves receives his confirmation with the preparation of a "zealous evangelical master" (47). The ceremony, however, passes without spectacle and disappoints Graves. His friend, Raymond, a self-professed atheist, asks Graves how the Church can condemn people for not believing something that is "impossible to understand" (48). To avoid compromising his shaken faith completely, Graves distances himself from Raymond.

In Graves’s fourth year at Charterhouse, he falls "in love" (48) with a boy three years his junior, whom Graves calls “Dick.” Graves and Dick meet in school choir and though Graves claims he felt "unconscious of any sexual desire" (48) for Dick, he feels preoccupied by thoughts of him nonetheless. Their relationship causes concern and the Headmaster confronts Graves about it. Graves offers up the "advantage of friendship between elder and younger boys" (48), as exhibited by Plato, Shakespeare, and others, and the Headmaster dismisses him.

In Graves’s fifth year, he becomes a dorm monitor, along with five other boys. Among them, Graves only gets along with Jack Young. One day, Jack asks Graves to participate in an "inter-House boxing competition" (49) in order to weaken the opponents so that another boy, Alan, can win the competition. Graves agrees and, with the help of some stolen cherry whiskey, competes. Graves ends up securing silver cups in both the welter- and middle-weights.

Graves also meets a young schoolmaster from Cambridge named George Mallory, who introduces Graves to modern writers like George Bernard Shaw and Edward Marsh. Together with Mallory and Raymond, Graves publishes a literary magazine called Green Chartreuse, in which Graves publishes a satirical story about hazing rituals.

During Graves’s last term at Charterhouse, his housemates discover his "manuscript note-book" (56) in which he's written poems, including love poems about Dick. Graves demands a written apology from the boys and says if they don't give him one, he'll knock down "the first monitor" (56) he sees in the hall. Graves doesn't receive an apology and punches the head monitor in the hall, drawing blood. The Headmaster scolds Graves, who remains intransigent about his violence. Graves confuses the Headmaster "by the frankness with which" (57) he confesses his love for Dick. The Headmaster agrees that this "rare friendship" (57) seems "moral" (57).

A week after this incident, the choir master scolds Graves for "exchanging glances with Dick in chapel" (57). This infuriates Graves. Another choir boy tells Graves that he saw the choirmaster kissing Dick on a choir trip. Graves confronts the choirmaster with this information and the man denies it. He tells Graves to bring Dick to him to confirm the story. Dick, sensing Graves may be in trouble, confirms the story of the kiss. The choirmaster retires that summer, "on grounds of ill-health" (57).

Graves recalls one of his last memories at Charterhouse as a debate "on the motion 'that this House is in favour of compulsory military service’" (58). Graves, feeling "in revolt against the theory of implicit obedience to orders" (58) is one of six boys who object. Of those six, only Graves and Nevill Barbour will survive the war. 

George Mallory, the young master with whom Graves becomes friends, begins taking Graves with him on rock- and mountain-climbing expeditions. They often go to Snowdon, a place near the Graves’ vacation home in Harlech. Graves explains that George is "still rated as one of the three or four best men in climbing history" (61), though he will later lose his life on an expedition up Mount Everest after WWI.

Graves feels George's brilliance is "wasted at Charterhouse" (62), where his casual, amiable attitude does not fit with the disciplinarian attitude of the other masters. Though George tries to be friends with the boys, they are not receptive. Only Graves and a few other boys became friends with George.