Rupert Brooke

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Rupert Chawner Brooke (3 August 1887 – 23 April 1915) was an English poet known for his romantic war sonnets published during the First World War, particularly "The Soldier."

He was also known for his boyish good looks, which were said to have inspired Irish poet W. B. Yeats to describe him as "the handsomest young man in England."

Early life

Brooke was born on 5 Hillmorton Road, Warwickshire, and named after a notable doctor descended from the regicide Thomas Chaloner (1750–1836). He was the third of four children of William Parker "Willie" Brooke, a schoolmaster (teacher), and Ruth Mary Brooke, née Cotterill, a school matron. When they met, both parents were studying at Fettes College in Edinburgh. They married on December 1879. Since the couple wed, William Parker Brooke had to resign as there were no beds for married masters. The couple then moved to Rugby in Warwickshire, where Rupert's father became Master of School Field House at Rugby School a month later. Richard England "Dick" Brooke (1881-1907), his sister Edith Marjorie Brooke was born in 1885 and died the following year, and his youngest brother William Alfred Cotterill "Podge" Brooke (1891-1915) was his uncle.

Brooke attended a preparatory (prep) school in Hillbrow and then moved to Rugby School. He was romantically involved with fellow students Charles Lascelles, Denham Russell-Smith, and Michael Sadleir at Rugby. He became friends with St. John Lucas in 1905, and he became something of a mentor to him.

He went to King's College, Cambridge, in October 1906 to study Classics. He served as president of the University Fabian Society and taught the Marlowe Society drama club and appeared in the Cambridge Greek Play. He made friends at school and university, and many of the individuals he encountered, including George Mallory, fell under his spell. When Virginia Woolf and Brooke were in Cambridge together, she told Vita Sackville-West that she had gone skinny-dipping with Brooke in a moonlit pool. Dick Dick Dick Dickenson, his older brother Dick Dicken died of pneumonia at the age of 26 in 1907. Brooke decided to suspend his studies to help his parents cope with his brother's death, but his parents insisted that he return to college.

At The Orchard, where he lived and wrote, there is a blue plaque. The phrases read: "Rupert Brooke Poet & Soldier 1887-1915 Lived and wrote at The Orchard 1909-1911, as well as "The Old Vicarage 1911-1912"

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Life and career

Brooke made acquaintances among the Bloomsbury group of writers, some of whom adored his writing abilities while others were more impressed by his good looks. He belonged to another literary group, the Georgian Poets, and was one of the most influential of the Dymock poets, and was active with the Gloucestershire village of Dymock, where he spent some time before the war. Both Robert Frost and Edward Thomas were members of this group. He lived at the Old Vicarage in Grantchester, which inspired one of his best-known poems, which was written with homesickness when the house was first published in Berlin in 1912. He wrote "John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama" while traveling in Europe, which earned him a Fellowship at King's College, Cambridge, in March 1913.

Brooke had his first heterosexual encounter with Élisabeth van Rysselberghe, the daughter of painter Théo van Rysselberghe, at Trémon van Rysselberghe. They met in Munich in 1911. Elisabeth's affair was the closest to being consummated than that of any other man so far. In May 1913 in Swanley, it is likely that the two became lovers in a "full sense." It was in Munich, where he had met Elisabeth, that he finally succeeded in intercourse with Ka Cox a year later (Katherine Laird Cox).

Brooke suffered with a serious emotional crisis in 1912, mainly as a result of sexual confusion (he was bisexual) and envy, which culminated in the breakdown of his long friendship with Ka Cox. Brooke's inconvince that Lytton Strachey planned to stifle his Cox friendship by urging her to see Henry Lamb's dissolution of his Bloomsbury group mates and subsequent recovery trips to Germany.

Brooke traveled to the United States and Canada to write travel diaries for the Westminster Gazette as part of his recuperation. He came home, sailing across the Pacific and staying in the South Seas for several months. It was revealed much later that he may have fathered a daughter with Taatamata, a Tahitian woman with whom he appears to have had the most intimate attachment. Many more people were in love with him. Brooke was deeply involved with the artist Phyllis Gardner and actress Cathleen Nesbitt, and she was once engaged to Nol Olivier, whom he met when she was 15 years old at the progressive Bedales School.

In August 1914, Brooke was enlisted at the outbreak of war. Early this year, he came to national prominence as a war poet ("IV: The Dead") and "V: The Soldier") were published in The Times Literary Supplement on September 11th; the former was then read from the pulpit of St Paul's Cathedral on Easter Sunday (4 April). 1914 & Other Poems, Brooke's most popular collection of poetry, debuted in May 1915 and sold out of 11 more impressions that year and sparked renewed interest by June 1918, a phenomenon unquestionably fuelled by posthumous concern.

Brooke's outstanding poetry attracted many enthusiasts and followers, and Edward Marsh, who introduced him to Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, attracted his notice. Brooke was accepted into the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a temporary subordinate shortly after his 27th birthday and participated in the Royal Naval Division's Antwerp expedition in October 1914.

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