Chapter 2 Summary and Analysis

Amalie von Ranke desired to travel abroad and perform humanitarian service. When she met Alfred Graves, single father of five children, she felt that she could remain at home, become his wife, and perform humanitarian service of another kind. She subsequently bore two daughters and three sons. Robert Graves was thus the 8th of ten children. When Robert was born, his mother was forty years old and his father forty-nine; the large age difference between the latter children and the parents caused Graves and his full siblings to feel their parents were more grandparents than parents, though they got along well enough. Their upbringing during infancy was proper and normally strict. Graves was baptized into the Church of England and possessed religious fervor through about age sixteen. His father always encouraged an interest in literature.

Graves first became aware of class...