The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke: With a Memoir/Memoir/Part VI

All the old threads were picked up at once. "To the poor stay-at-home," writes Walter de la Mare, "the friend who placidly reappeared from the ends of the earth seemed as little changed as one who gaily and laughingly goes to bed and gaily and laughingly comes down next morning after a perfectly refreshing sleep." He was still exactly the 'Young Apollo' of Mrs Cornford's Cambridge epigram; though the glint of quite peculiarly real shining gold that had always been in his hair had been tanned out of it by the Southern sun; and though one felt, in a hundred indefinable ways, that he was now more than ever 'prepared'; not, as it turned out, for the 'long littleness of life,' but rather for its brief greatness.

The morning after his return he hurried off to Rugby for a few days with his Mother. Then he had six crowded, happy weeks, mostly in London, seeing old friends and making new ones—including Lascelles Abercrombie, whom he met for the first time, though they had long been friends by proxy and by correspondence. His shyness, which had always been a part of his rather curious modesty and 'unspoiltness,' was wearing off; and I am told he confessed, on being asked, that it had now dawned upon him for the first time that when he came into a room where there were new people the chances were that they would like him, rather than not.

At the end of July came the war-cloud—and then the war. He has described his feelings when he heard the news in the essay An Unusual Young Man (the setting is imaginary—he was not returning from a cruise, but staying with the Cornfords in Norfolk). At first he was just unhappy and bewildered. "I'm so uneasy—subconsciously," he wrote. "All the vague perils of the time—the world seems so dark—and I'm vaguely frightened. I feel hurt to think that France may suffer. And it hurts, too, to think that Germany may be harmed by Russia. And I'm anxious that England may act rightly. I can't bear it if she does wrong."

"I've just been to a music-hall," he wrote early in August. "It was pretty full. Miss C. Loftus was imitating somebody I saw infinite years ago—Elsie Janis—in her imitation of a prehistoric figure called Frank Tinney. God! how far away it all seemed. Then a dreadful cinematographic reproduction of a hand drawing patriotic things—Harry Furniss it was, funny pictures of a soldier and a sailor (at the time I suppose dying in Belgium), a caricature of the Kaiser, greeted with a perfunctory hiss—nearly everyone sat silent. Then a scribbled message was shown: 'War declared with Austria 11.9.' There was a volley of quick, low hand-clapping—more a signal of recognition than anything else. Then we dispersed into Trafalgar Square and bought midnight War editions. . . . In all these days I haven't been so near tears; there was such tragedy and dignity in the people. . . . . ..

"If there's any good in anything I've done, it's made by the beauty and goodness of . . . a few I've known. All these people at the front who are fighting muddledly enough for some idea called England—it's some faint shadowing of goodness and loveliness they have in their hearts to die for."

For the first day or two he did not realise that he must fight—one of his ideas was to go to France and help get in the crops. But before we had been at war a week he was back in London, seeking out the best way to serve as a soldier. "I've spent a fortnight," he wrote on August 24th, "in chasing elusive employment about. For a time I got drilled on the chance of getting into a London corps as a private, but now I really think I shall get a commission, Territorial probably, through Cambridge. The whole thing, and the insupportable stress of this time, tired me to a useless rag."

Early in September Winston Churchill offered him a commission in the Royal Naval Division, then forming; and he and Denis Browne joined the Anson Battalion on September 27th. I saw them off to Betteshanger Camp from Charing Cross—excited and a little shy, like two new boys going to school—happy and handsome in their new uniforms, and specially proud of their caps, which had very superior badges.

The Anson soon went to Chatham for musketry, and there he wrote: "Often enough I feel a passing despair. I mean what you meant—the gulf between non-combatants and combatants. Yet it's not that—it's the withdrawal of combatants into a special seclusion and reserve. We're under a curse—or a blessing, or a vow to be different. The currents of our lives are interrupted. What is it? . . . I know—yes. The central purpose of my life, the aim and end of it now, the thing God wants of me, is to get good at beating Germans. That's sure. But that isn't what it was. What it was, I never knew; and God knows I never found it. But it reached out deeply for other things than my present need. . . . There is the absence. Priests and criminals—we're both—are celibates . . . and so I feel from my end sometimes that it is a long, long way to Tipperary. And yet, all's well. I'm the happiest person in the world."

There were humours in the life; for instance, a false alarm of invasion at Chatham, when "elderly men rushed about pulling down swords from the messroom walls, and fastened them on with safety-pins"; or this incident in the day's routine: "I had to make an inventory the other day of all their kit, to compare with what they should have. I soon found that questions about some of the articles on the lists were purely academic. 'How many handkerchiefs have you?' The first two men were prompted to say 'none.' The third was called Cassidy. 'How many phwat, sorr?' 'Handkerchiefs.'—'?'—'Handkerchiefs, man, handkerchiefs.' (In a hoarse whisper to the Petty Officer) 'Phwat does he mane?' P.O. (in a stage whisper), 'Ter blow yer nose with, yer bloody fool.' Cassidy (rather indignant), 'None, sorr!' They were dears, and very strong, some of them."

On the 4th of October they sailed for Antwerp. When it was all over, and he was having a little leave in London, he wrote to a friend: "I've been extremely slack and sleepy these last few days. I think it was the reaction after the excitement. Also I caught conjunctivitis, alias pink-eye, in some of the foul places we slept in; and my eyes have been swollen, red, unlovely, exuding a thick plum-tree gum, and very painful. I hope they're getting better. . . . . . . It's only a fortnight ago! We were pulled out of bed at 5 a.m. on the Sunday, and told that we started at 9. We marched to Dover, highly excited, only knowing that we were bound for Dunkirk, and supposing that we'd stay there quietly, training, for a month. Old ladies waved handkerchiefs, young ladies gave us apples, and old men and children cheered, and we cheered back, and I felt very elderly and sombre, and full of thought of how human life was a flash between darknesses, and that x per cent of those who cheered would be blown into another world within a few months; and they all seemed to me so innocent and pathetic and noble, and my eyes grew round and tear-stained. . . . . . . [Arrived at Dunkirk] we sat in a great empty shed a quarter of a mile long, waiting for orders. After dark the senior officers rushed round and informed us that we were going to Antwerp, that our train was sure to be attacked, and that if we got through we'd have to sit in trenches till we were wiped out. So we all sat under lights writing last letters, a very tragic and amusing affair. It did bring home to me how very futile and unfinished my life was. I felt so angry. I had to imagine, supposing I was killed. There was nothing except a vague gesture of good-bye to you and my mother and a friend or two. I seemed so remote and barren and stupid. I seemed to have missed everything.

"We weren't attacked that night in the train. So we got out at Antwerp and marched through the streets, and everyone cheered and flung themselves on us, and gave us apples and chocolate and flags and kisses, and cried Vivent les Anglais and 'Heep! Heep! Heep!'

"We got out to a place called Vieux Dieux (or something like it) passing refugees and Belgian soldiers by millions. Every mile the noises got louder, immense explosions and detonations. We stopped in the town square at Vieux Dieux; five or six thousand British troops, a lot of Belgians, guns going through, transport-waggons, motor-cyclists, orderlies on horses, staff officers, and the rest. An extraordinary and thrilling confusion. As it grew dark the thunders increased, and the sky was lit by extraordinary glares. We were all given entrenching tools. Everybody looked worried. Suddenly our battalion was marched round the corner out of the din, through an old gate in the immense wild garden of a recently-deserted villa-château. There we had to sleep. On the rather dirty and wild-looking sailors trudged, over lawns, through orchards, and across pleasaunces. Little pools glimmered through the trees, and deserted fountains; and round corners one saw, faintly, occasional Cupids and Venuses—a scattered company of rather bad statues—gleaming quietly. The sailors dug their latrines in the various rose-gardens, and lay down to sleep—but it was bitter cold—under the shrubs. By two the shells had got unpleasantly near, and some message came. So up we got—frozen and sleepy—and toiled off through the night. By dawn we got into trenches—very good ones—and relieved Belgians.

"This is very dull. And it doesn't really reflect my state of mind. For when I think back on it, my mind is filled with various disconnected images and feelings. And if I could tell you these fully, you might find it wonderful, or at least queer. There's the excitement in the trenches (we weren't attacked seriously in our part) with people losing their heads and fussing and snapping. It's queer to see the people who do break under the strain of danger and responsibility. It's always the rotten ones. Highly sensitive people don't, queerly enough. I was relieved to find I was incredibly brave! I don't know how I should behave if shrapnel were bursting over me and knocking the men round me to pieces. But for risks and nerves and fatigues I was all right. That's cheering.

"And there's the empty blue sky and the peaceful village and country scenery, and nothing of war to see except occasional bursts of white smoke, very lazy and quiet, in the distance. But to hear—incessant thunder, shaking buildings and ground, and you and everything; and above, recurrent wailings, very thin and queer, like lost souls, crossing and recrossing in the emptiness—nothing to be seen. Once or twice a lovely glittering aeroplane, very high up, would go over us; and then the shrapnel would be turned on it, and a dozen quiet little curls of white smoke would appear round the creature—the whole thing like a German woodcut, very quaint and peaceful and unreal.

"But the retreat drowned all these impressions. We stole away from the trenches, across half Antwerp, over the Scheldt, and finally entrained in the last train left, at 7.30 next morning. The march through those deserted suburbs, mile on mile, with never a living being, except our rather ferocious-looking sailors stealing sulkily along. The sky was lit by burning villages and houses; and after a bit we got to the land by the river, where the Belgians had let all the petrol out of the tanks and fired it. Rivers and seas of flames leaping up hundreds of feet, crowned by black smoke that covered the entire heavens. It lit up houses wrecked by shells, dead horses, demolished railway-stations, engines that had been taken up with their lines and signals, and all twisted round and pulled out, as a bad child spoils a toy. . . . . . . The glare was like hell. We passed on, out of that, across a pontoon bridge built on boats. Two German spies tried to blow it up while we were on it. They were caught and shot. We went on through the dark. The refugees and motor-buses and transport and Belgian troops grew thicker. After about a thousand years it was dawn. The motor-buses indicated that we were bound for Hammersmith, and might be allowed to see Potash and Perlmutter."

Another letter, written on Christmas Day to Russell Loines of New York, perhaps his greatest friend among his kind American hosts, shows how deeply the sight of the refugees had moved him. "I started a long letter to you in August and September, in my scraps of time; a valuable letter, full of information about the war and the state of mind of pacifists and others. The Germans have it now. It went in my luggage to Antwerp, and there was left. Whether it was burnt or captured, I can't be sure. But it was in a tin box, with—damn it!—a lot of my manuscript. And it was fairly heavily shelled.

"I don't know if you heard of my trip to Antwerp. A queer picnic. They say we saved the Belgian army, and most of the valuable things in the town—stores and ammunition, I mean. With luck, we might have kept the line fifty miles forward of where it is. However, we at last got away—most of us. It really was a very mild experience; except the thirty miles march out through the night and the blazing city. Antwerp that night was like several different kinds of hell—the broken houses and dead horses lit up by an infernal glare. The refugees were the worst sight. The German policy of frightfulness had succeeded so well, that out of that city of half a million, when it was decided to surrender Antwerp, not ten thousand would stay. They put their goods on carts, barrows, perambulators, anything. Often the carts had no horses, and they just stayed there in the street, waiting for a miracle. There were all the country refugees, too, from the villages, who had been coming through our lines all day and half the night. I'll never forget that white-faced, endless procession in the night, pressed aside to let the military—us—pass, crawling forward at some hundred yards an hour, quite hopeless, the old men crying, and the women with hard drawn faces. What a crime!—and I gather they've announced their intention of keeping Belgium if they can.

"England is remarkable. I wish I had the time to describe it. But this job keeps one so darned tired, and so stupid, that I haven't the words. There are a few people who've been so anti-war before, or so suspicious of diplomacy, that they feel rather out of the national feeling. But it's astonishing to see how the 'intellectuals' have taken on new jobs. No, not astonishing; but impressive. Masefield drills hard in Hampstead, and told me, with some pride, a month ago, that he was a Corporal, and thought he was going to be promoted to Sergeant soon. Cornford is no longer the best Greek scholar in Cambridge. He recalled that he was a very good shot in his youth, and is now a Sergeant-Instructor of Musketry. I'm here. My brother is a 2nd Lieutenant in the Post Office Rifles. He was one of three great friends at King's. The second is Intelligence Officer in H.M.S. Vengeance, Channel Patrol. The third is buried near Cambrai. Gilbert Murray and Walter Raleigh rise at six every day to line hedgerows in the dark, and 'advance in rushes' across the Oxford meadows.

"Among the other officers in this Division whom I know are two young Asquiths; an Australian professional pianist who twice won the Diamond Sculls; a New Zealander who was fighting in Mexico and walked 300 miles to the coast to get a boat when he heard of the War; a friend of mine, Denis Browne—Cambridge—who is one of the best young English musicians and an extremely brilliant critic; a youth lately through Eton and Balliol, who is the most brilliant man they've had in Oxford for ten years; a young and very charming American called John Bigelow Dodge, who turned up to 'fight for the right'—I could extend the list. It's all a terrible tragedy. And yet, in its details, it's great fun. And—apart from the tragedy—I've never felt happier or better in my life than in those days in Belgium. And now I've the feeling of anger at a seen wrong—Belgium—to make me happier and more resolved in my work. I know that whatever happens, I'll be doing some good, fighting to prevent that."

"I hope to get through," he wrote about the same time to Mrs Arnold Toynbee. "I'll have such a lot to say and do afterwards. Just now I'm rather miserable, because most of my school-friends are wounded, or 'wounded and missing,' or dead. Perhaps our sons will live the better for it all. I knew of yours, I was very glad. It must be good to have a son. When they told us at Dunkirk that we were all going to be killed in Antwerp, if not on the way there, I didn't think much (as I'd expected) what a damned fool I was not to have written more, and done various things better, and been less selfish. I merely thought 'what Hell it is that I shan't have any children—any sons.' I thought it over and over, quite furious, for some hours. And we were barely even under fire, in the end!"

"There's a lot to talk about," he told Jacques Raverat, "though I'm rather beyond talking. Yes, we are insular. Did you hear of the British private who had been through the fighting from Mons to Ypres, and was asked what he thought of all his experiences? He said, 'What I don't like about this 'ere b—— Europe is all these b—— pictures of Jesus Christ and His relations, behind b—— bits of glawss.' It seems to me to express perfectly that insularity and cheerful atheism which are the chief characteristics of my race.

"All the same, though myself cheerful, insular, and an atheist, I'm largely dissatisfied with the English, just now. The good ones are all right. And it's curiously far away from us (if we haven't the Belgians in memory as I have). But there's a ghastly sort of apathy over half the country. And I really think large numbers of male people don't want to die. Which is odd. I've been praying for a German raid. . . . . ..

"My mind's gone stupid with drill and arranging about the men's food. It's all good fun. I'm rather happy. I've a restful feeling that all's going well and I'm not harming anyone, and probably even doing good. A queer new feeling. The only horror is that I want to marry in a hurry and get a child, before I vanish. . . . . . . There's the question: to ponder in my sleeping-bag, between the thoughts on the attack and calculations about the boots of the platoon. Insoluble: and the weeks slip on. It'll end in my muddling that, as I've muddled everything else."

After they got back from Antwerp, there was a tiresome period of re-shuffling among the different battalions; but by the middle of December, Rupert, Denis Browne, Arthur Asquith, Patrick Shaw-Stewart, Bernard Freyberg and the rest were reunited at Blandford Camp in the 'Hood,' where there were other officers who were either friends already or belonged to conterminous sets; so that a pleasant family party was soon established. The life was strenuous, but not eventful. "I spend Christmas," he wrote, "in looking after drunken stokers. One of them has been drunk since 7 a.m.; he neither eats nor drinks, but dances a complicated step up and down his hut, singing 'How happy I am, how happy I am'—a short, fat, inelegant man, in stockinged feet. What wonders we are! There's no news—occasional scares. On Wednesday I (don't tell a soul) started a sonnet. What a fall!"

The five sonnets called '1914' had been coming for some time, and were finished at Rugby when he went there for a few days' leave just after Christmas. "These proofs have come," he wrote from Canford Manor on January 24th. "My muse, panting all autumn under halberd and cuirass, could but falter these syllables through her vizor. God, they're in the rough, these five camp-children—4 and 5 are good though, and there are phrases in the rest.

"Last night I slept between sheets, and this morning I lay an hour in a hot bath, and so was late for a breakfast of pheasant and sausages and the divinest coffee. Now I sit over a great fire of wood in the hall of a house built by Vanbrugh, with a Scuola di Bellini above me, smoking and reading and writing.

"I've been peacefully reading up the countryside all the morning. Where our huts are was an Iberian fort against the Celts—and Celtish against Romans—and Roman against Saxons. . . . Just over the hills is that tower where a young Astronomer watched the stars, and a Lady watched the Astronomer. By Tarrant Hinton, two miles North, George Bubb Dodington lived and reigned and had his salon. In Tarrant Crawford, two miles South, a Queen lies buried. Last week we attacked some of the New Army—in Banbury Rings—an ancient fort where Arthur defeated the Saxons in—what year? Where I lay on my belly cursing the stokers for their slowness, Guinevere sat, and wondered if she'd see Arthur and Lancelot return from the fight, or both, or neither, and pictured how they'd look; and then fell a-wondering which, if it came to the point, she'd prefer to see."

"The world's going well," he wrote at this time to Jacques Raverat: "better than it did when we were younger. And a Frenchman is the one person in the world with something to be proud of, these days."