Almost twelve years Yvo’s senior, Hugo Francis Charteris, ‘Ego’ to the family, was born prematurely on 28 December 1884 at his grandparents’ house. As a little boy his angelic long, flaxen hair, big blue eyes and long lashes belied shrewdness and a sensible manner that coloured the way he saw the world. He was at a birthday party at the age of 5 when one old lady went overboard in her appreciation of him and his looks which led him to ask his mother, ‘I’m not such a sweet as that lady says am [I]?’ Soon afterwards she was hat shopping with him in town and he was listening to the staff (‘Oh Moddom, you do look well in this’ or ‘Oh Moddom, this suits you fine’). When they stepped out on to the street all little Ego could say, with intense scorn was ‘vile flatterers’. The age gap between Ego and Yvo meant that the former was away at school by the time his younger brother was born and so they were not close. Ego’s confidant was the brother in between them. If Ego was pragmatic and sensible, then Guy, eighteen months younger, was a dreamer.
