He was educated at Bedales School, Westminster School and Allhallows School, Honiton. These public schools were more liberal than the conventional Victorian Public Schools, and provided an open-minded environment. Bedales, in those days, attracted nonconformists, agnostics and liberal Jews. It had connections to Fabian intellectual circles, and to the Wedgwoods, Darwins, Huxleys and Trevelyans. At the age of 14, while still in school, he began to read hieroglyphs. He then went to a tutor in Wiesbaden, but returned to London at the age of 18, due to a change in family finances.