Early Life
He was the only son of Frank Clayton, wine merchant's assistant, and his wife, Flora, née Gilibanks. His parents had a struggle to support themselves because his father, originally a clerk, had been invalided out of the services in the First World War and could seek only outdoor work. Thoughts of emigration to Canada were thwarted by his father's early death and Clayton's mother had to make a meagre living as a dressmaker. In later years he said that in effect he had been brought up by the Boy Scouts, convincing him that he could succeed by his own efforts. Clayton won two county scholarships leading to a major scholarship at Christ's College, Cambridge, specializing in physics.
Read more about this topic: Robert James Clayton
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.
He knew that he heard it,
A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men may steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)