 After he was expelled from Charterhouse School for drinking and sneaking out, he joined his father’s regiment for a short while, but found that army life was too restrictive.The family decided that the British Colonial Civil Service might be a more agreeable alternative but he was too young to write the exams.He went, in the meantime to Seattle, Washington at the invitation of an uncle who had married a Seattle woman, promising his mother he would come back when he was eligible for the civil service.