Rupert Chawner Brooke (August 3, 1887 – April 23, 1915) was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during World War I, such as "The Dead" and "The Soldier." He was also known for his boyish good looks, which led the Irish poet W. B. Yeats to describe him as "the handsomest young man in England." He died from septicaemia after a mosquito bite while on a French hospital ship near the island of Skyros in the Aegean Sea.
Early life
Brooke was born on 5 Hillmorton Road, Rugby, Warwickshire. He was named after Rupert Chawner (1750–1836), a well-known doctor and descendant of Thomas Chaloner, a regicide. Sometimes, his middle name has been mistakenly written as "Chaucer." He was the third child of William Parker "Willie" Brooke, a schoolteacher, and Ruth Mary Brooke (née Cotterill), a school nurse. Both parents worked at Fettes College in Edinburgh when they met. They married on December 18, 1879. After their marriage, William had to leave his job because Fettes College did not provide housing for married teachers. The family then moved to Rugby, Warwickshire, where Rupert’s father became Master of School Field House at Rugby School one month later. His siblings included Richard England "Dick" Brooke (1881–1907), Edith Marjorie Brooke (born in 1885, who died the following year), and William Alfred Cotterill "Podge" Brooke (1891–1915).
Brooke attended a local preparatory school at Hillbrow before joining Rugby School. At Rugby, he had romantic relationships with classmates Charles Lascelles, Denham Russell-Smith, and Michael Sadleir. In 1905, he became friends with St. John Lucas, who later became an important mentor to him.
In October 1906, Brooke went to King’s College, Cambridge, to study classics. At Cambridge, he joined the Apostles, became president of the university Fabian Society, helped start the Marlowe Society drama club, and acted in plays, including the Cambridge Greek Play. The friends he made during school and university shaped his adult life, and many people he met, such as George Mallory, were influenced by him. Virginia Woolf once told Vita Sackville-West that she had gone skinny-dipping with Brooke in a moonlit pool while they were in Cambridge together. In 1907, his older brother Dick died of pneumonia at age 26. Brooke wanted to pause his studies to help his parents deal with the loss, but they encouraged him to return to university.
A blue plaque at The Orchard, Grantchester, marks the place where Brooke lived and wrote. It states: "Rupert Brooke, Poet & Soldier (1887–1915) Lived and wrote at The Orchard, 1909–1911, and at The Old Vicarage, 1911–1912."
Life and career
Brooke became friends with members of the Bloomsbury group of writers. Some admired his talent, while others were more impressed by his appearance. He was also part of another literary group called the Georgian Poets and was one of the most important members of the Dymock poets, a group connected to the Gloucestershire village of Dymock. He spent time there before the war. This group included writers Robert Frost and Edward Thomas. He also lived at the Old Vicarage in Grantchester, which inspired one of his most famous poems, named after the house. He wrote this poem while feeling homesick in Berlin in 1912. During his travels in Europe, he worked on a thesis titled "John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama," which earned him a fellowship at King's College, Cambridge, in March 1913.
Brooke had his first relationship with Élisabeth van Rysselberghe, the daughter of painter Théo van Rysselberghe. They met in 1911 in Munich. His relationship with Élisabeth came closest to becoming physical than any other relationship he had before. It is possible that they became lovers in May 1913 in Swanley. A year later, in Munich, where he had met Élisabeth, he finally had a physical relationship with Katherine Laird Cox.
Brooke experienced a serious emotional crisis in 1912, which ended his long relationship with Katherine Cox. He believed that Lytton Strachey had tried to harm his relationship with Cox by encouraging her to see Henry Lamb. This belief caused him to end his friendship with members of the Bloomsbury group and contributed to his mental breakdown and later trips to Germany for recovery.
As part of his recovery, Brooke traveled to the United States and Canada to write travel writings for The Westminster Gazette. He took a long route home, sailing across the Pacific and spending several months in the South Seas. Later, it was discovered that he may have had a daughter with a Tahitian woman named Taatamata, with whom he shared his most complete emotional relationship. He was also romantically involved with artist Phyllis Gardner and actress Cathleen Nesbitt. He was once engaged to Noël Olivier, whom he met when she was 15 at the progressive Bedales School.
Brooke’s well-written poetry gained many followers, and Edward Marsh helped bring his work to the attention of Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty. After the war began in August 1914, Brooke joined the Royal Navy and was appointed as a temporary sub-lieutenant shortly after his 27th birthday. He was assigned to the Royal Naval Division, an infantry group made up of Royal Navy and Royal Marine members not needed at sea. He participated in the siege of Antwerp in early October.
Brooke became well-known as a war poet in early 1915 when The Times Literary Supplement published two sonnets ("IV: The Dead" and "V: The Soldier") on 11 March. The second sonnet was read from the pulpit of St. Paul’s Cathedral on Easter Sunday (4 April). His most famous poetry collection, 1914 & Other Poems, which included all five sonnets, was first published in May 1915. It was very popular, with 11 additional printings that year. By June 1918, it had reached its 24th printing, likely due to continued interest after his death.
Death
Brooke joined the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on February 28, 1915, but became seriously ill with a stomach disease while stationed in Egypt. This illness was followed by a severe infection from a mosquito bite. French doctors performed two surgeries to remove the abscess, but Brooke died of blood poisoning at 4:46 p.m. on April 23, 1915, on the French hospital ship Duguay-Trouin, which was anchored in a bay near the Greek island of Skyros in the Aegean Sea. He was on his way to the Gallipoli landings at the time of his death. Brooke was 27 years old when he died. Because the expeditionary force had orders to leave immediately, Brooke was buried at 11 p.m. in an olive grove on Skyros. His close friend, William Denis Browne, chose the burial site. Browne wrote about Brooke’s death:
"I sat with Rupert. At 4 o’clock, he became weaker, and at 4:46, he died, with the sun shining around his cabin, and the cool sea breeze blowing through the door and shaded windows. No one could have wished for a quieter or calmer end than in that lovely bay, protected by mountains and filled with the scent of sage and thyme."
Another friend and war poet, Patrick Shaw-Stewart, helped with Brooke’s quick funeral. His grave remains on Skyros, with a monument built by his friend Stanley Casson, a poet and archaeologist. In 1921, Casson published a book titled Rupert Brooke and Skyros, which is a short essay illustrated with woodcuts by Phyllis Gardner.
Brooke’s surviving brother, William Alfred Cotterill Brooke, died in battle on the Western Front on June 14, 1915, as a junior officer in the 1/8th (City of London) Battalion of the London Regiment (Post Office Rifles). He was 24 years old and had been in France for nineteen days before his death. His body was buried in Fosse 7 Military Cemetery (Quality Street), Mazingarbe.
In July 1917, Field Marshal Edmund Allenby learned about the death of his son, Michael Allenby. This news caused Allenby to break down in tears publicly while reciting a poem by Rupert Brooke.
Commemorations
On November 11, 1985, Brooke was one of 16 First World War poets honored on a slate monument revealed in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey. The stone's inscription was taken from Wilfred Owen's "Preface" to his poems and reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."
His name is listed on the village war memorial in Grantchester.
The wooden cross that marked Brooke's grave on Skyros, which was painted and carved with his name, was removed when a permanent memorial was built there. His mother, Mary Ruth Brooke, had the cross moved to Rugby, where it was placed in the family plot at Clifton Road Cemetery. Due to damage from weather, the cross was taken from the cemetery in 2008 and replaced with a more lasting marker. The Skyros cross is now displayed at Rugby School with memorials of other Old Rugbeians.
The first stanza of "The Dead" is written on the base of the Royal Naval Division War Memorial in London.
The Cenotaph in Wellington, New Zealand, includes lines from "The Dead" on its top part: "These laid the world away; poured out the red/Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be/Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,/That men call age; and those who would have been,/Their sons, they gave, their immortality."
In 1988, sculptor Ivor Roberts-Jones was asked to create a statue of Brooke at Regent Place, a small triangular open space in his birthplace of Rugby, Warwickshire. The statue was revealed by Mary Archer.
A 2006 portrait statue of Rupert Brooke in army uniform by Paul Day is located in the front garden of The Old Vicarage in Grantchester.
In 2023, artist Stephen Hopper painted a portrait in oils celebrating Brooke's life and included references to his grave on Skyros and his service with the Hood Battalion, part of the 63rd (Royal Naval) Division. (See detail on the pencil in his hand and the blank sheet of paper, symbolizing work left unfinished.)
Since the 1970s, a restaurant in Grantchester named The Rupert Brooke has honored Brooke. In August 2024, Pasquale Benedetto took over the restaurant.
Legacy
In the afterword of his Collected Poems (1919), Lord Alfred Douglas wrote: "… never before in the history of English literature has poetry sunk so low. When a nation … can seriously lash itself into enthusiasm over the simple and childish poems (when they are nothing worse) of a Rupert Brooke, it simply means that poetry is despised and dishonoured and that sane criticism is dead or nearly gone."
American adventurer Richard Halliburton planned to write a biography of Brooke but died before he could. Halliburton's notes were used by Arthur Springer to write Red Wine of Youth: A Biography of Rupert Brooke (1921). Brooke was an inspiration to Canadian fighter pilot John Gillespie Magee Jr., known for his poems "Sonnet to Rupert Brooke" (1938) and "High Flight" (1941). Brooke also appears as a minor character in A. S. Byatt's novel The Children's Book (2009).
Frederick Septimus Kelly wrote his "Elegy, In Memoriam Rupert Brooke for harp and strings" after attending Brooke's death and funeral. He also kept Brooke's notebooks, containing important late poems, for safekeeping and later returned them to England. Brooke's poems have been turned into songs by groups and individuals including Charles Ives, Marjo Tal, and Fleetwood Mac.
Brooke's poems are quoted in F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel This Side of Paradise (1920), Princess Elizabeth's Act of Dedication speech (1947), TV series including MASH episode "Springtime" (1974) and the third episode of season one of SAS: Rogue Heroes (2022), as well as in films including Making Love* (1982).