Being thrown entirely on myself I began to write poetry. This was considered stronger proof of insanity than the formal straws I wore in my hair. The poetry I wrote was not the easy showing-off witty stuff that all the Graves’ write and have written for the last couple of centuries. It was poetry that was dissatisfied with itself. When, later, things went better with me at Charterhouse, I became literary once more. I sent one of my poems to the school magazine, _The Carthusian_. On the strength of it I was invited to join the school Poetry Society. This was a most anomalous organization for Charterhouse. It consisted of seven members. The meetings, for the reading and discussion of poetry, were held once a month at the house of Guy Kendall, then a form-master at the school, now headmaster of University College School at Hampstead. The members were four sixth-form boys and two boys a year and a half older than myself, one of whom was called Raymond Rodakowski. None of them were in the same house as myself. At Charterhouse no friendship was permitted between boys of different houses or of different years beyond a formal acquaintance at work or organized games like cricket and football. It was, for instance, impossible for boys of different houses, though related or next-door neighbours at home, even to play a friendly game of tennis or squash-racquets together. They would never have heard the last of it. So the friendship that began between me and Raymond was most unconventional. Coming home one evening from a meeting of the society I told Raymond about life in the house; I told him what had happened a week or two before. My study had been raided and one of my more personal poems had been discovered and pinned up on the public notice board in ‘Writing School.’ This was the living-room of the members of the lower school, into which, as a member of the upper school, I was not allowed to go, and so could not rescue the poem. Raymond was the first person I had been able to talk to humanly. He was indignant, and took my arm in his in the gentlest way. ‘They are bloody barbarians,’ he said. He told me that I must pull myself together and do something about it, because I was a good poet, he said, and a good person. I loved him for that. He said: ‘You’re not allowed to play football; why don’t you box? It’s supposed to be good for the heart.’ So I laughed and said I would. Then Raymond said: ‘I expect they rag you about your initials.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘they call me a dirty German.’ ‘I had trouble, too,’ he said, ‘before I took up boxing.’ Raymond’s mother was Scottish, his father was an Austrian Pole.