Item 208 - Letter from Ruth to George Mallory, 10 - 11 December 1916

Robert Graves attended Charterhouse School where Mallory taught before the war. He sang in the choir, where he met an aristocratic boy three years younger, G. H. "Peter" Johnstone, with whom he began an intense romantic friendship. The scandal led ultimately to an interview with the headmaster. Graves himself called it 'chaste and sentimental' and 'proto-homosexual,' and though he was clearly in love with Peter (disguised by the name Dick in Good-Bye to All That), he denied that their relationship was ever sexual. He was warned about Peter's morals by other contemporaries.