Childhood
Morton was born at Park Lodge, Mitcham Road, Tooting, England. He was an only child, and his father, Edward Morton, was a serious journalist and dramatic critic. He introduced Morton junior to (watered-down) wine before he went to school, and to the sons of his friend Leslie Stuart. His mother, Rosamond Bingham, died when he was 12.
From the age of eight Morton attended Park House prep school in Southborough, London. In 1907 he moved on to Harrow School and hated it. Harrow later provided the inspiration for the fictional Narkover, a school full of theft, gambling, drinking, and corruption. Morton was admitted to Worcester College, Oxford but failed to win a scholarship, and had to leave after a year to support his father after a stroke.
Morton did not have an outstanding academic career, and left Oxford wanting to be a poet.
Read more about this topic: J. B. Morton
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“Oh! mystery of man, from what a depth
Proceed thy honours. I am lost, but see
In simple childhood something of the base
On which thy greatness stands; but this I feel,
That from thyself it comes, that thou must give,
Else never canst receive. The days gone by
Return upon me almost from the dawn
Of life: the hiding-places of man’s power
Open; I would approach them, but they close.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“When we raise our children, we relive our childhood. Forgotten memories, painful and pleasurable, rise to the surface.... So each of us thinks, almost daily, of how our own childhood compares with our children’s, and of what our children’s future will hold.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)
“Children who are pushed into adult experience do not become precociously mature. On the contrary, they cling to childhood longer, perhaps all their lives.”
—Peter Neubauer (20th century)