Rupert Brooke

56 REVIEW: RUPERT BROOKE The Letters q£ Rupert Brooke, edited by Sir Geoffrey Keynes. London: Faber and Faber, I968. £5. 5s. There is almost always something mildly unsatisfactory about volumes of letters. This volume is more unsatisfactory than most in that the reader has the constant suspicion that the letters which prompted those from Brooke were more interesting, more genuine, more alive than those from the "young Apollo" himself. The whole selection is, frankly, somewhat boring. It is over half a century since Brooke died of septicaemia and was romantically buried on the island of Skyros. At the time of his death his literary achievement was small, his promise perhaps somewhat greater, but the magnetism of his personality appears to have been incredibly strong. His many friends seem to have preserved every line he ever wrote to them. This 688-page volume represents merely a selection, since "there were far more letters than could ever be printed ir\ extenso" (p. x). At this point the reader begins to wonder whether he is not after all back to square one once more. Our whole knowledge of Brooke during the past fifty years has been bedevilled by the fact that he was shown to us not as his friends and acquaintances saw him, but as certain friends and acquaintances wished "Posterity" to see him. In 1964 the massive biography by Christopher Hassall was published. Reviewing that book for ELT I commented at the time that, despite the liberal use of new material. Hassall had somehow failed to give us a clear picture of Brooke. Three years later, Michael Hastings, attempting to redress the balance, gave us yet another partial picture. The Letters elicit the same comment . First, an important body of letters is essentially missing: Dr. Noel Olivier Richards withheld the letters written to her. While we sympathise with her action we cannot believe that any volume of Brooke's letters can be truly representative which omits those written to Noel, for whom alone he had any feeling after his anguishing affair with Ka: "I've no feeling for anybody at all except the uneasy ghosts of the immense reverence and rather steadfast love for Noel, and a knowledge that Noel is the finest thing I've ever seen in the world. . ." (p. 378). Letters were also withheld "by one or two others of Brooke's friends" (p. xv) - but who? presumably the other Olivier sisters? James Strachey ? and who else? Next, the whole book is bespattered with asterisks indicating omissions. These we are told "have usually [my italics] been made because the material was of small interest. . . or. . . to omit repetitions." - But less usually? What are the other reasons for omissions? Finally, on this theme we must return to the selection of the 57 letters. Sir Geoffrey Keynes was a friend of Brooke from the age of fourteen and like Brooke's other friends kept his letters, however trivial, condescending, or banal, yet during the vital period of Brooke's emotional growth and breakdown, from mid-1911 to mid-1912 Brooke appears not to have corresponded with him. Has he, we wonder, selected a picture of Brooke which fits in with the image in his own mind, for the Brooke who emerges from the letters of this central period is as shadowy as the Brooke of this period presented by Hassall and it is quite clear that a number of letters written during this period have been suppressed. Perhaps only when and if all the letters are deposited in the Brooke archive at King's College, Cambridge, shall we come to know the real Brooke. The publication of the Letters does not add anything to the reputation of Brooke; rather, it confirms our suspicions that maturity came late to him. The letters written during his University years are, most of them, somewhat puerile; his love letters to Katharine Cox are banal; his best letters are written to people such as Jacques Raverat and Frances Cornford, friends with literary and artistic interests like his own. Brooke appears to begin to mature as he emerges from his emotional crisis with Ka - but the war came and he was not given enough time. If...