Item 174 - Letter from Ruth to George Mallory, 6 November 1916

1 Item, paper

Expresses her wish for him to be on leave. Describes her activities of the previous afternoon. Discusses the possibility of him learning book binding. Updates him on Clare’s progress. Describes the visit from the boy Johnstone [friend of Robert Graves] and the conversations they had. Asks him if he needs any more butter.

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.