Rupert Brooke Short Biography

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Born in Rugby on August 3rd 1887, Rupert Chawner Brooke went on to become one of the most famous poets of the first world war, due largely to the success of his poem The Soldier that expressed the patriotic feelings of a generation at the time of his death. However, as this poem is only one of a handful of war poems that Brooke wrote, in relation to over a hundred life-time works that deal with subjects other than war, it is fair to say that Rupert Brooke has a lot more to offer as a poet than most people first assume.

A prominent figure of school and university life through his involvement in movements such as the Fabian society, and with a growing reputation as a handsome, charming poet and intellectual during his school and Cambridge years, there were plenty of indications of the path that Brooke’s life was about to follow. When one considers how this persona was further embellished by the words of his friend Frances Darwin (the granddaughter of the naturalist Charles Darwin), who described him as a “Young Apollo, golden-haired” in a 1908 poem, it is easy to see how Brooke’s destiny to become a romantic poet, best remembered for his noble and patriotic views, was assured.

However, the path towards Brooke's official recognition as a poet was not to occur until 1911 when his work was published in two volumes: "Georgian poetry", an anthology written in collaboration with his friend Edward Marsh, who would later write Brooke’s memoir, and his own book of poetry "Poems 1911". Before these books were published, Brooke had already begun to search the world for new sensations to write about with travels to Germany and Italy and later, in 1913, with further worldly travels to America, Canada, the south seas and New Zealand in his role as a travel correspondent for an English newspaper. Whilst on these travels Brooke met and fell in love with a Samoan girl called Taatamata, for whom the poem Tierre Tahiti was written.

Afterwards, in 1914, on the verge of a life as a fine writer of both poetry and prose, the most well-known, and unfortunately the shortest, chapter of Brooke's memoir began with the outbreak of war and his commission as a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval division in September of that same year. Within a month he had been involved in troop training exercises in England and in a largely non-combatant role in Antwerp where he witnessed the exodus of Belgian refugees and described the experience in a letter to a friend ..

"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..”

By February the following year, carrying signs of a nagging illness, Brooke set sail with the Mediterranean Expeditionary force en-route to fight the Turks in the Dardanelles, living up to Frances Darwin’s "Apollo" image on the voyage by recounting Greek myths to his fellow officers and with statements such as the following, made in one of his final letters:

"Do you think they'll meet us on the plains of Troy? I've never been

quite so happy in my life, I think. Not quite so pervasively happy;

like a stream flowing entirely to one end. I suddenly realise that

the ambition of my life has been - since I was two - to go on a military

expedition against Constantinople."

Sadly for Brooke, he was never to experience this longed-for meeting with the Turks, nor deliver anything more than a taste of the promise his poetry had offered, because at 4:46pm on the 23rd April 1915, the day of Shakespeare and St George, Rupert Brooke died of blood poisoning on a French hospital ship moored in the bay of the Greek island of Skyros.

After looking for a place to bury him, and in a hurry due to having to embark for the shores of Gallipoli the following morning, Brooke's friends hastily arranged a burial party and it was agreed that he should be buried in a place that he had visited only a few days before his death and that he had been enamoured with So it was, that around 11pm on 23rd April 1915, a torch lit procession of Brooke’s closest friends and fellow officers carried his body along a dried-up river bed of pink and white marble to be laid to rest in a scented olive grove full of wild poppies and dwarf holly. At this point the words of one of those friends seem to be the most appropriate ..

“We buried him in the same evening in an olive-grove where

he had sat with us on Tuesday - one of the loveliest places on

this earth, with grey green olives round him, one weeping above

his head; the ground covered with flowering sage, bluish-grey,

and smelling more delicious than any flower I know ..

We lined his grave with all the flowers we could find, and

after the last post the little lamp-lit procession went once again

down the narrow path to the sea.”

Within days, news of Brooke's death had reached England and the myth, led by Winston Churchill with the words:

"A voice had become audible, a note had been struck, more true,

more thrilling, more able to do justice to the nobility of our youth

in arms engaged in this present war, than any other.."

had well and truly begun.

Notes on this biography

Although I have tried to keep this biography factually correct, it should be treated for what it is, namely a brief outline of Brooke’s life and work centred around the poetry that he produced, as for me this is far more important than considerations such as whether he had tea at five pm or six pm on the evening before his death. This is why each paragraph refers to a Brooke poem or particular line.

Also I have purposely avoided references to Brooke’s love life, aside of the mention of his affair with Taatamata, because to include this area of his life and the speculation and counter-speculation that has surrounded it would in my opinion have detracted from any personal interpretations and reactions to his poetry in this small space, despite the fact that many of his poems were written for or about lovers.

For the same reasons, another part of Brooke’s life that I have omitted here is his involvement with the Bloomsbury group, but the links to other sites listed below and on the Links page refer to both these areas plus many more aspects of Brooke’s life and work. I hope you enjoy the bio and find it useful.