Travers left Charterhouse in 1904 and was sent by his parents to live in Dresden, for a few months, to learn German. While he was there he saw performances by the leading French actors, Sarah Bernhardt in "La Tosca", and Lucien Guitry in "Les affaires sont les affaires", which inspired him with a passion for the theatre. His parents were unimpressed by his ambition to become an actor; he was sent into the family business, the long-established wholesale grocery firm Joseph Travers & Sons Ltd, of which his father was a director. He found commercial life tedious and incomprehensible: "I had no more idea what it was all about then than I have now and vice versa." He served first at the firm's head office in Cannon Street in the City of London, which was dominated by dauntingly-bearded Victorian patriarchs. From there, to his and the patriarchs' relief, he was soon transferred to the company's offices in Singapore and then Malacca.