Robert Graves
...whom he could get valuable advice in order to pursue his writing career. There was no question that he had the ability to write because of the traits that had been passed on to him. He just needed certain role models to look up to and to make sure his natural abilities were developed to the utmost. As was the case of every male in England of a certain class in that era, Graves was sent away to school at a very young age. Most of one’s character has not yet formed at the time this separation from home occurs. The ideas of other students and one’s teachers can very easily shape a young boy’s thoughts, ideals, and ultimately who he will become. This was true for Graves at one of the many schools Graves attended, Rokeby. While he was there he “began playing games seriously, grew quarrelsome, boastful, and domineering” (Graves 17). He began to act, feel, and talk like everyone else in that school. His father cared so much for Robert’s education that he, as he did at all the schools Graves attended until he found the right match, withdrew him. His father, being the “educational expert”, (Graves 17) valued his son’s education, for he knew it would play a vital part in who and what his son would become. Whether one is a great poet, university professor, or a specialist of education, he must first be known as and achieve the status and ways of a gentlemen. This was a crucial element in a young English man’s education of that day. All of Graves’s relatives were known as upstanding gentlemen. Graves says that “the most useful and, at the same time, most dangerous gift that I owe to my father’s side of the family…is that I am always able, when dealing with officials, or getting privileges from public institutions which grudge them, to masquerade as a gentleman” (Graves 10). The character of a gentleman was passed down to him from his ...