Rupert Brooke

by Nigel Jones

  Civil war was widely expected to break out in Northern Ireland. It was here with, in the inimitable words of Winston Churchill, the British Cabinet gloomily considering the limited options open to them, caught as they were between the rock of intransigent Ulster Protestantism and the hard place of rising Catholic nationalism, the quiet voice of Sir Edward Grey began reading aloud a document just bought him from the Foreign Office. Churchill recalled:

  It contained the terms of Austria’s fatal note to Serbia. He had been reading or speaking for several minutes before I could separate my mind from the tedious and bewildering debate which had just closed… but gradually, as the sentences followed one another, impressions of a wholly different character began to form in my mind… The parishes of Tyrone and Fermanagh faded back into the mists and squalls of Ireland, and a strange light began immediately, but by perceptible gradations, to fall and grow upon the map of Europe.

  Available now

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  Acknowledgements

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  First Edition

  The long gestation of this book has created many debts. In no particular order I wish to thank all those who have made its publication possible.

  The Trustees of the Rupert Brooke Estate, Professors Andrew Motion and Jon Stallworthy, distinguished poets and biographers both, supported the project from the outset – and generously allowed me full access to the enormous quantity of Brooke material at the library of King’s College, Cambridge.

  At the archive, the librarian, Jacqueline Cox, and her staff combined cool professionalism with kindness and knowledge.

  In Rugby, I am indebted to Rugby School’s librarian, Rusty Maclean, for allowing me access to Brooke material; and to local historian Dr Peter Miller, a notable authority on Brooke, for his hospitality, and for sharing his knowledge – in particular for an illuminating discussion of Brooke’s health and final illness from the viewpoint of a professional medical man.

  I have drawn deeply and shamelessly on the knowledge of previous Brooke biographers – who have been generous to a fault in discussing our mutual interest. Michael Hastings gave me fascinating letters and photos, and shared his own memories of meetings with Noel Olivier, one of the loves of Brooke’s life. Mike Read likewise disclosed a generous fraction of his own vast knowledge of Brooke in many long conversations, and I am grateful also to Professor Paul Delany for his encouragement.

  Dr Keith Clements, biographer of Brooke’s nemesis, Henry Lamb, was endlessly helpful, and put me in touch with Lamb’s daughter, Mrs Henrietta Phipps, who, despite the ancient antipathy, was more than kind. Frances Spurling, biographer of Duncan Grant, discussed with me his relationship with Rupert Brooke; and Richard Shone, an authority on Brooke’s hated ‘Bloomsberries’, kindly allowed me to reproduce a rare nude photograph of Brooke’s soul mate, Ka Cox.

  Mr Peter Ward discussed memories of his father Dudley Ward, perhaps Brooke’s closest friend. Ann Olivier Bell, daughter of Bryn Olivier, was most frank in discussing the relations of her mother and aunts with Brooke.

  Ms Charlotte Deane was an indefatigable picture researcher, and Mr Tim Freeborn of the Daily Mail’s financial staff helped me compare Edwardian currency values with those of today.

  D. M. Thomas, poet, novelist, mentor and friend, showed me Brooke’s grave on Skyros and greatly encouraged me when this project was but a gleam in my eye.

  Andrew Roberts, a historian with a special knowledge of Edwardian England, was kind enough to read the manuscript.

  Lastly, it is no mere convention to thank my partner, Lally Freeborn. She lived the book with me, and, not least, reminded me to enquire into who cooked and cleaned for Rupert. I still don’t know.

  Nigel Jones, 1999

  Second Edition

  For this second edition, published by Head of Zeus, I am grateful to the late Paul Newman for supplying me with some of the details in connection with the death of Ka Arnold-Forster (née Cox) and to Jake Arnold-Forster for allowing me access to those family papers and photographs in his possession. Jane Winter, who is writing a biography of Ka and Will Arnold-Forster, was also helpful – although she disputes that there was anything unnatural about Ka’s death.

  Nigel Jones, 2014

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  Picture Section

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  1. A clutch of Brookes: Rupert (front row, second left) is sandwiched between elder brother Dick and younger brother Alfred, c.1901/2. Their mother, Ruth Mary, sits behind (second row, left), while their moustached father William Parker Brooke stands at the rear. With them are the Cotterills, the family of Ruth’s brother. (King’s College Library, Cambridge)

  2. Mother’s boys: Mrs Ruth Brooke – the ‘Ranee’ as Brooke invariably described her – with Rupert (left) and Alfred in fancy dress, 1898. Brooke’s flair for theatricality was in evidence at an early age. (King’s College Library, Cambridge)

  3. First love: Brooke (right) with Denham Russell-Smith, in a detail from a grainy photograph taken near Denham’s home in Brockenhurst, Hampshire. Denham’s untimely death in 1912 prompted a remarkable confessional letter from Brooke, describing their lovemaking in 1909.

  4. The student: A clean-cut Brooke, with the centre parting that preceded the floppy hair, embarks on undergraduate Cambridge life and a rising chorus of approval for the beautiful and talented young man, c.1906.

  5. The actor: Brooke’s first outing in Cambridge theatricals was in 1906 as a herald in Aeschylus’ Eumenides, a role in which his good looks and flesh-revealing costume brought male and female admiration alike. (King’s College Library, Cambridge)

  6. High priest of Bloomsbury: Lytton Strachey, central to both Bloomsbury and the ‘Apostles’, was charmed by Brooke but always thought him peripheral to these coteries. Brooke later blamed Lytton, in part, for his ‘Lulworth crisis’, and war made the break complete, as Brooke spurned the pacifist Strachey.

  7. Virginia before Woolf: The ‘Bloomsberry’ Virginia Stephen (in 1902), before she achieved literary fame under her married name, was part of Brooke’s circle. It was she who recorded the sensual delights of Brooke’s manly form during a midnight skinny-dip with him at Byron’s Pool, Grantchester.

  8. Guardian of reputations: Geoffrey Keynes, younger brother of Maynard, was one of Brooke’s oldest friends. Reliable and stalwart, he was picked by Brooke’s mother as executor of Brooke’s estate, going on to keep the poet’s reputation from tarnish for decades.

  9. Confidant and admirer: James Strachey, younger brother of Lytton, had a long-lasting if unfulfilled sexual yearning for Brooke, yet they still shared a close friendship that went back to prep-school days in 1898. Tarred with the brush of Bloomsbury, he too was rejected by Brooke in 1914. (Painting by Duncan Grant, 1910; Tate London)

  10. Jolly boating weather: Brooke enjoys the River Cam, c.1910, with (grimacing) Dudley Ward and others. Ward was an enduring and loyal friend, who, after the poet’s death, handled some delicate matters, including following Brooke’s instructions to destroy letters from two of his lovers. Ward inherited the Old Vicarage, Grantchester. (King’s College Library, Cambridge)

  11. The showman: Brooke practises for a re-run of his most recent theatrical involvement, Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, to an attentive audience of Dudley Ward and Jacques Raverat, 1910. If his strength did not lie in his stage voice, his spectators seem entranced nonetheless. (King’s College Library, Cambridge)

  12. Lazy days with the ladies: In an image that seems to capture the Edwardian summer, Brooke picnics during May week 1908 with (left to right) Frances Darwin (later Cornford), Francis Cornford, Eva Spielman and Margery Olivier, eldest of the Olivier sisters. (King’s College Library, Cambridge)

  13. The spiritual centre: The Old Vicarage, Grantchester, in a 1918 woodcut by Noel Rooke. Brooke’s unalloyed love for Grantchester and the house that became his home inspired one of his best poems and contrasts with his often volatile feelings towards people and other places.

  14. Wise beyond her years: Noel Oli
vier, pictured here in 1909 (aged 15), was still at Bedales School when Brooke’s obsession with her began, pursued extensively by letter and (when possible) in person. Noel’s sharp matter-of-factness frequently punctured Brooke’s grandiloquence.

  15. Deceptively alluring: ‘I’m glad you’re so beautiful’ Brooke told Brynhild – Bryn – Olivier, confirming the widely held perception of Noel’s older sister. Unsurprisingly, Bryn was cast as Helen of Troy in the Marlowe Society’s Dr Faustus. She, too, was an object of Brooke’s affections.

  16. Neo-Pagans under canvas: Noel Olivier (foreground) and Ethel Pye make camp at Beaulieu, where Noel and Brooke were secretly ‘engaged’, summer 1910. The camps, inspired by the Bedales belief in the great outdoors, allowed the sexes to mingle in an environment free of the era’s starchier conventions.

  17. Ka at work: Fabian Society treasurer Ka Cox provided a striking contrast with many in Brooke’s milieu, which, for all its social progressiveness, was often self-absorbed. She was indefatigably and selflessly supportive to those around her throughout her life.

  18. Ka at play: Ka poses, in a candid moment, 1912. In finally falling for Brooke and satisfying his ardent physical desire, she unknowingly acquired, in his mind, a moral stain. Thereafter Brooke could only take flight from her. It was nevertheless Brooke’s central, if most troubled, relationship. (Charleston Trust, Richard Shone)

  19. ‘The Creature’: Brooke’s contemptuous nickname for Henry Lamb (pictured in 1908), his artist rival for Ka’s affections, sums up his jealousy of a lover who he feared was more virile than himself.

  20. A day by the sea: Frances Cornford (née Darwin) strikes a Neo-Paganesque pose on a beach in Norfolk, c.1914. A fellow poet and friend of Brooke since the Cambridge production of Milton’s Comus, it was she who versified him as ‘A young Apollo, golden haired’.

  21. Friends and lovers: Neo-Pagans (left to right) Jacques Raverat, Ka Cox, Gwen Raverat (née Darwin, cousin of Frances) and Frances Cornford, 1912. The Raverats were a rock for Brooke during and after his months of crisis in 1911–12; they were close to Ka, too, despite the fact that Jacques had pursued her before marrying Gwen.

  22. The prime minister’s daughter: There was nothing Neo-Pagan about Violet Asquith, the daughter of Liberal prime minister Herbert Asquith. She represented glamour, power and sophistication, new circles in which Brooke was happy to swim. They were closest during Brooke’s last weeks in England, in 1915.

  23. The patron: Eddie Marsh poses as St Sebastian. As Churchill’s Private Secretary and a former ‘Apostle’, he was well connected and passionate about poetry and the arts. He provided Brooke with a London base, social entrée, platforms for his verse, and became the tireless fixer for Brooke’s life and welfare, eventually penning his Times obituary.

  24. The aristocrat: Lady Eileen Wellesley, friend of Violet Asquith, met Brooke in 1914. By the time that war loomed they were lovers, meeting at Marsh’s flat. Brooke chivalrously asked Dudley Ward to destroy her letters to him in the event of his death, though she unsentimentally sold his letters to buy a car.

  25. The actress: Cathleen Nesbitt, pictured in 1912, represented Brooke’s most seriously cultivated attachment after Ka, although it seems to have remained platonic. He could not persuade her to abandon her acting career, which he dreaded might lead her into sexual temptation, even when – to his eyes – war required everyone to be useful.

  26. The Englishman abroad: Brooke takes tea in Ontario, 1913. Arriving with a touch of stardust, he invariably won over his North American hosts with his Old World charm and what he once called his ‘fresh, boyish’ act. ‘I have seen Shelley plain!’ exclaimed one awestruck editor. (King’s College Library, Cambridge)

  27. The Tahitian mistress: Taatamata, in a 1914 snapshot by Brooke. Halfway across the world, Brooke found a relationship and environment quite unlike anything he had experienced. He was grateful to ‘wash the mind of foolishness’, as he put it in his eloquent poem in praise of her. (King’s College Library, Cambridge)

  28. Pacific days. Taatamata (far left) and Brooke (second right, standing) in Tahiti, 1914. With Taatamata, in this tropical paradise, the poet who came to embody the idea of England may have fathered a daughter – though whether he suspected so is unclear. (King’s College Library, Cambridge)

  29. The ‘Argonauts’: Brooke (standing, left), Johnny Dodge (standing, right), Patrick Shaw-Stewart (standing, third from right), Arthur ‘Oc’ Asquith, son of the prime minister (at foot of steps, sitting right) and other Royal Naval Division officers pose for the camera aboard SS Grantully Castle, as it leaves Avonmouth Docks for Gallipoli, 1915.

  30. To arms: A photo call at Blandford Camp, Dorset, for officers of the Hood Battalion, 1914. Among them are: back row – Arthur ‘Oc’ Asquith (left); second row – Sub-Lieutenant Brooke (second left), now commanding ‘A’ Platoon, Johnny Dodge (fourth left) and Denis Browne (fifth left); front row – Lt Commander Bernard Freyberg (third left) and Lt Colonel John Quilter (centre, moustached). (Imperial War Museums)

  31. The invalid: Brooke, stricken with sunstroke, lies under an awning outside Port Said, Egypt, 2 April 1915. His health, always fragile, had begun its final disintegration. This is the last known photograph of Rupert Brooke. (King’s College Library, Cambridge)

  32. ‘Forever England’: Two wooden crosses adorn Brooke’s original grave, as constructed by his fellow officers in an olive grove on Skyros. In the end, an early death did befall the poet who loved Peter Pan and who had a morbid fear of ageing. (King’s College Library, Cambridge)

  33. ‘Built of Fire’: Phyllis Gardner had met Rupert when his crises were most acute. But he made space for a passionate affair that remained secret until the twenty-first century. Although disillusioned with his inconstancy, she remained besotted until her own death in 1939. By then, she had become a breeder of famous Irish wolfhounds.

  34. Abiding images of Brooke – England’s soldier-poet: Posthumously, and with Churchill’s tribute ringing in the public’s ears, Brooke’s war sonnets became bestsellers, defining the man. War crystallized Brooke, but also simplified him and his poetry.

  35. Abiding images of Brooke – a latterday Adonis. It was W.B. Yeats who called Brooke the ‘handsomest young man in England’, and arguably inside Brooke’s restive, troubled personality lay a very modern question: how does an intelligent mind grapple with such adoration?

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  Sources and Further Reading

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  For the First Edition I decided not to burden further an already lengthy book with a detailed list of the sources of each and every quotation. That principle still seems sound. Instead I will here outline the archives, libraries and the most important of the many books I have consulted, so that the interested reader will be able to locate the material on which I have drawn.

  The primary source of original written material on Rupert Brooke is the Rupert Brooke Archive of King’s College Library, Cambridge. This is a massive and still-growing collection of documentation and photographs recording in microscopic detail almost every aspect of the poet’s life from infancy until death (and beyond – there is much on the upkeep of his grave in Skyros). The archive contains school reports, early poems, manuscript notebooks, locks of hair and, above all, letters to and from Brooke. Foremost among the correspondents whose letters to and from Brooke I have quoted are Ruth Mary Brooke, Francis and Frances Cornford, Erica Cotterill, Ka Cox, Hugh Dalton, Arthur Eckersley, Geoffrey Keynes, John Maynard Keynes, St John Lucas Lucas, Eddie Marsh, Cathleen Nesbitt, Jacques and Gwen Raverat, and Dudley Ward.

  The letters to and from Noel and Bryn Olivier remain in private hands. Those to and from Noel appeared in Song of Love (Bloomsbury, 1990), edited by Noel’s granddaughter, Pippa Harris.

  The correspondence with Phyllis Gardner, which only came to light in 2000, is in the British Library.

  The letters to and from James Strachey are held in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library. They were edited by Keith
Hale and published under the title Friends and Apostles (Yale University Press, 1998).

  Letters to and from Lady Violet Asquith were included in Champion Redoubtable (OUP, 1998), edited by Mark Pottle.

  Brooke’s Collected Poems are still in print from Faber, in an edition that also includes Eddie Marsh’s memoir. Faber also issued Geoffrey Keynes’s voluminous though still incomplete Collected Letters (1968) and continue to issue reprints of Christopher Hassall’s official life, Rupert Brooke: A Biography, which first appeared in 1964.