Goodbye to all That by Robert Graves — Read

I SPENT a good part of my early life at Wimbledon. We did not get rid of the house, a big one near the common, until soon after the end of the war; yet I can recall little or nothing of significance that happened there. But after the age of eleven or twelve I was always at some boarding school, and in the spring and summer holidays we went to the country, so that I saw Wimbledon only at Christmas and for a day or two at the beginning and end of the other holidays. London lay half an hour away, yet I seldom went there. We were never taken to the theatre, even to pantomimes, and by the middle of the war I had been to the theatre exactly twice in my life, and then merely to children's plays, by courtesy of an aunt. My mother brought us up to be serious and to benefit humanity in some practical way, but allowed us no hint of its dirtiness, intrigue, and lustfulness, believing that innocence would be the surest protection against them. She carefully censored our reading.

I was destined to be 'if not a great man, at least a good man'. Our treats were educational or aesthetic: to Kew Gardens, Hampton Court, the Zoo, the British Museum, or the National History Museum. I remember my mother, in the treasure room of the British Museum, telling us with bright eyes that all these wonderful things were ours. We looked at her astonished. She said: 'Yes, they belong to us as members of the public. We can look at them, admire them, and study them for as long as we like. If we had them back at home, we couldn't do better. Besides, they might get stolen.'