Forever England (26 page)
Authors: Mike Read
Reports were gradually coming in of his own friends being killed or wounded; he informed Eileen Wellesley that his best friend at Rugby had been reported wounded and missing. He began brooding over the fact that if he were killed there was no one to carry on his name: no immortality; no sons; no grandsons; no descendants.
His emotions were poured into a third sonnet âThe Dead'. Peculiarly, two of Brooke's five war sonnets bear this title. The first borrows a little from a poem he knew well by W. E. Henley, which ran:
What have I done for you,
England, my England?
What is there I would not do,
England, my own?
With your glorious eyes austere,
As the Lord were walking near,
Whispering terrible things and dear
As the Song on your bugles blown,
England â
Round the world on your bugles blown!
Where shall the watchful Sun,
England, my England,
Match the master-work you've done,
England, my own?
When shall he rejoice agen
Such a breed of mighty men
As come forward, one to ten,
To the Song on your bugles blown,
England â
Down the years on your bugles blown?
Ever the faith endures,
England, my England: â
âTake and break us: we are yours,
England, my own!
Life is good, and joy runs high
Between English earth and sky:
Death is death; but shall we die
To the Song on your bugles blown,
England â
To the stars on your bugles blown!'
They call you proud and hard,
England, my England:
You with worlds to watch and ward,
England, my own!
You whose mailed hand keeps the keys
Of such teeming destinies
You could know nor dread nor ease
Were the Song on your bugles blown,
England,
Round the Pit on your bugles blown!
Mother of Ships whose might,
England, my England,
Is the fierce old Sea's delight,
England, my own,
Chosen daughter of the Lord,
Spouse-in-Chief of the ancient sword,
There's the menace of the Word
In the Song on your bugles blown,
England â
Out of heaven on your bugles blown!
Brooke's poem was originally entitled âThe Slain'.
Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
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.
Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.
Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,
And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
And we have come into our heritage.
After a brief transfer to the Nelson Battalion at Portsmouth he moved, with Eddie Marsh's influence, to Blandford Camp in Dorset, as sub-lieutenant in charge of No. 5 Platoon, A Company, Hood Battalion, commanded by Colonel Quilter. The company commander was Colonel Bernard Freyberg, a former Cambridge man, who had accompanied
Captain R. F. Scott on his South Pole expedition as a biologist. At the camp he lived in a wooden hut measuring 15 feet by 8, with seven other men, home comforts being provided by the likes of Brooke's mother and Ka Cox. His fellow officers included Denis Browne, Oc Asquith and Oxford man Patrick Shaw-Stewart, from Barings Bank, whom Brooke knew from Raymond Buildings. At Blandford, Rupert crafted his second sonnet called âThe Dead' â his favourite of the five war sonnets.
These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.
There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.
The December edition of
New Numbers
was delayed, which gave Brooke time to work on another sonnet. With his equipment in Antwerp he had lost a poem about Mataia, the little township on Tahiti, which he had been working on and just before Christmas
had had a disturbing dream about Taatamata, in which he was told she was dead by her own hand. She was not, and in mid-January he would have the first news of her for nine months.
At the beginning of January, Brooke stayed, at Violet Asquith's behest, at Walmer Castle in Kent, where he worked on what was to become his most famous sonnet, initially called âThe Recruit', before he changed it to âThe Soldier'.
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
The seeds of the idea for âThe Soldier' were undoubtedly sown by Hilaire Belloc's
The Four Men
which Brooke read in 1912. Belloc himself, as the main narrator, recounts a journey across his beloved Sussex, with three companions: Grizzlebeard, the Sailor, and the Poet â a
fictional tale based on geographical actuality. It was the first verse of a poem at the end of the farrago that was the inspiration for âThe Soldier'.
He does not die that can bequeath
Some influence to the land he knows
Or dares, persistent, interwreath
Love permanent with the wild hedgerows;
He does not die, but still remains
Substantiate with his darling plains.
After Walmer, Rupert lunched with Denis Browne, the Churchills and Herbert Asquith at the Admiralty. On 5 January, he heard that his friend the poet James Elroy Flecker had died in Switzerland and he was asked to write his obituary. This he did at the table at Raymond Buildings where the two of them had last sat together. To Eileen he wrote, âHe was my friend. Who'll do
The Times
for me, I wonder? Damn them.'
On his return to Blandford, a letter was waiting from Taatamata, dated 2 May 1914. It had been forwarded from Ottawa, having been recovered by divers from the
Empress of India
, the wreck he had heard about on his arrival from New York the previous spring. It seems that she had given it to someone to post, which was duly done in Vancouver, the letter being sent eventually on the
Empress
, which had gone down in the St Lawrence Seaway. The letter lay at the bottom until December, and was rather washed out and frayed by the time it reached him.
My dear Love darling
I just wrote you some lines to let you know about Tahiti to day whe have plainty people Argentin Espagniole, and whe all very
busy for four days. Whe have good times all girls in Papeete have good times whit Argentin boys. I think they might go away to day to Honolulu Lovina are giving a ball last night for them, beg ball, they 2 o'clock this morning.
I hope to see you here to last night, Lovina make plainty Gold Money, now. About Mrs Rosentale she is went to [indecipherable]. whit crower by Comodore before they go away to whe been drive the car to Lage place. Enton and I. Mrs Rosental Crower Williams Banbridge to whe got 12 Beers Bred Sardines only whe tout come right away to lage the car Break and whe work down the beach, have drinking beer. Music and whe come away 5 o'clock morning â¦
pas dormir
.
I wish you here that night I get fat all time Sweetheart you know I always thinking about you that time when you left me I been sorry for long time, whe have good time when you was here I always remember about you forget me all readly oh!
Mon cher bien aime je l'aimerai toujours.
Le voilà Cela partir pour San Francisco je lui ais donne quel cadeau pour lui he told me to send you his regards je me rappeler toujour votre petite etroite figure et la petite bouche qui me baise bien tu m'a percea mon coeur et je aime toujours ne m'oubli pas mon cher maintenant je vais finir mon lettre. parceque je me suis tres occupée le bateau par a l'instant
.
cinq heurs
excuse me write you shot letter, hope you good health and good time.
I send my kiss to you my darling
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx mlle kiss
Taatamata
Brooke was already aware that he was not sterile, following his relationship with Ka, so what chance had Taatamata had of not falling pregnant after two months of unprotected sexual relations with Rupert? The clue is there in her letter: âI get fat all time sweetheart'. Was he genuinely oblivious to the comment, or did he deem it best to ignore it and bury the guilt within himself? After all, what would have been the Ranee's reaction to a half-Tahitian grandson or granddaughter? Later developments would suggest that if he did have concerns, he confided only in Dudley Ward.
By mid-January he and the platoon were informed that a major campaign was afoot, but in the meantime he would be able to submit his five sonnets for
New Numbers
: âSafety', âThe Dead', âThe Dead', âThe Soldier' and âPeace'.
Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!
Oh! We, who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending.
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there
But only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.
He tried to persuade John Drinkwater to enlist: âCome and die â it'll be great fun. And there's great health in the preparation. The theatre's no place now. If you stay there you'll not be able to start afresh with us all when we come back.' He also confessed that he felt it was:
Not a bad place to die, Belgium, 1915? I want to kill my Prussian first. Better than coughing out a civilian soul amid bedclothes and discomfort and gulping medicines in 1950 ⦠I had hopes that England'ld get on her legs again, achieve youth and merriment, and slough the things I loathe â capitalism and feminism and hermaphroditism and the restâ¦
He also tried to get Browne to enlist: âCome over and fight when you get bored with the theatre. England's slowly waking, and purging herself of evil things.' He wrote of Blandford:
The camp lies between Eastbury House, where George Bubb Doddington lived, and Badbury Rings, where Arthur defended the Saxons. And on the chalk down where our huts are, was a Roman camp once, and a Celtic before that, and before that, an Iberian. â And we march through thousand-year-old English villages. England! England! I'm very happyâ¦
In Rupert's semi-autobiographical prose piece, âAn Unusual Young Man', which represents his own feelings on the declaration of war in 1914, his thoughts turn to his favourite English views: âHe seemed to be raised high, looking down on a landscape compounded of the western view of the Cotswolds, and the Weald, and the high land
in Wiltshire, and the Midlands seen from the hills above Princes Risborough.'
Your hands, my dear, adorable,
Your lips of tenderness
â Oh, I've loved you faithfully and well,
Three years, or a bit less.
It wasn't a success.
Thank God, that's done! and I'll take the road,
Quit of my youth and you,
The Roman road to Wendover
By Tring and Lilley Hoo,
As a free man may do.
For youth goes over, the joys that fly,
The tears that follow fast;
And the dirtiest things we do must lie
Forgotten at the last;
Even Love goes past.
What's left behind I shall not find,
The splendour and the pain;
The splash of sun, the shouting wind,
And the brave sting of rain,
I may not meet again.
But the years that take the best away,
Give something in the end;
And a better friend than love have they,
For none to mar or mend,
That have themselves to friend.
I shall desire and I shall find
The best of my desires;
The autumn road, the mellow wind
That soothes the darkening shires,
And laughter, and inn-fires.
White mist about the black hedgerows,
The slumbering Midland plain,
The silence where the clover grows,
And the dead leaves in the lane,
Certainly, these remain.
And I shall find some girl perhaps
And a better one than you,
With eyes as wise, but kindlier,
And lips as soft, but true.
And I dare say she will do.