Forever England (27 page)

From Blandford Camp he was putting feelers out as to who might produce and perform in
Lithuania
, and was mentally gearing himself to writing a play about Antwerp during his sick leave. He communicated with Violet Asquith, his mother and Dudley Ward. After the Division being inspected by King George V and Rupert dining with Winston Churchill and Eddie Marsh at Admiralty House, he informed his mother:

O
N
27
FEBRUARY
, Brooke's battalion moved to Shillingstone, some 10 miles away, before catching a train to Avonmouth, and boarding the SS
Grantully Castle
. On 1 March 1915, Rupert, Denis Browne, Oc Asquith, Patrick Shaw-Stewart, F. S. ‘Cleg' Kelly and Co. slipped away from the shore. Violet Asquith saw them off.

Browne and Kelly, both gifted musicians, used the ship's piano to lead community singing. Browne, who Rupert had known through their years at Rugby and Cambridge, was a great fan of the composer Scriabin, and no doubt would have gone on to greater things. He collaborated with Clive Carey and set some of
Brooke's poems to music. Kelly's musical genius was overshadowed during his time at Eton and Oxford by his extraordinary prowess as an oarsman. The triple Diamond Sculls winner was not only regarded as a sporting hero, but his talents on the piano were such that he performed at both Queen's Hall and Aeolian Hall, both major London venues; he was also a friend of such eminent composers as Percy Grainger and Edward Elgar. However, he was not above playing the popular songs of the day for his fellow officers and their men.

On board the crew exercised and wrote letters home, as did Brooke, who wore around his neck, along with his identification disc, an amulet that had been sent to him anonymously, via Eddie Marsh, to bring him luck. He knew who it was from, but even in thanking her in a letter to Eddie, he couched his gratitude in the anonymous manner in which it had been given. It was almost certainly a gesture from either Cathleen, Lady Eileen Wellesley or Violet Asquith.

Rupert had taken Sir Charles Eliot's book
Turkey in Europe
with him to familiarise himself with the territory, customs and people he would be likely to encounter. Published in 1908, it included chapters on the Turks, Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbs, Albanians and Armenians. On board ship, north of Tunis, he wrote to Eddie Marsh: ‘I've read most of
Turkey in Europe
. But what with parades and the reading of military books I've not written anything.'

The contents of the book, with its simple cover of the crescent moon and five-point star, inspired him to admit in a letter to Dudley Ward, ‘I think of joining the Orthodox Church…'

By 9 March the SS
Grantully Castle
was off Greece and the reality of the situation started to set in. He began to put his literary and personal effects into order. To Marsh he wrote:

Before going abroad he discussed with Cathleen the fact that he ought to make a will. ‘He said: “Would you like me to leave it to you?” – and I said: “Leave what to me?” – and he said: “The proceeds of my poems”, and we both laughed, and he said: “Oh, it might be £20 a year, you never know”.'

With a sense of impending doom he also wrote to Ka.

Rupert clearly felt that Eddie should be his literary executor, with the manuscripts only going to his mother and then to Ka on her death. An element of panic might well have been setting in, with regard to certain correspondence which would be among his papers, and which he would not have wished anyone else to see. To the faithful Dudley Ward he wrote:

And to Jacques Raverat: ‘I turn to you. Keep innumerable flags flying. I've only two reasons for being sorry for dying – (several against) – I want to destroy some evils, and to cherish some goods. Do it for me. You understand. I doubt if anyone else does – almost…'

By the beginning of April, he was laid up at the Casino Palace Hotel at Port Said, Egypt, with what he thought was sunstroke. Patrick Shaw-Stewart had the same symptoms – headache, sickness and diarrhoea – but he was soon up and about while Rupert was still laid low. On the first day of his illness, the new Commander-in-Chief, General Sir Ian Hamilton, offered Brooke a staff job, but he turned it down, preferring to stick it out with his men and see the war through.

The fourth edition of
New Numbers
had now been published, far later than the December 1914 date that the cover bore. It included ‘The Treasure', and all five of Rupert's war sonnets. He complained to Abercrombie, ‘A. saw a notice of
N. N
. in
The Times
; by a laudatory half-wit. He didn't seem to realise that it was “goodbye”.'

By the time the SS
Grantully
had gained Lemnos, Rupert had begun to feel he had shaken off his illness, but he still undertook only light duties. His heart was not really in an impromptu fancy dress ball held on the ship on 5 April, and he had an early night. Two days later a party from the ship landed on, and explored, the Greek island of Skyros, the vessel being anchored in Trebuki Bay.

Skyros is divided into two nearly equal parts by a low-lying isthmus, with Trebuki, or Tris Boukes Bay (bay of the three mouths), being one of its natural harbours. The north half of the island is the more fertile, and contains the capital, Skyros, and Mount Olympus. Beyond the forests of oak, pines and beeches are numerous herds of sheep and goats, the latter descendants of the animals that were once highly prized. As a classical scholar, Brooke would have been well aware of the importance of the island in Greek mythology. Skyros was the refuge of Achilles, who, disguised as a girl, was sent by his mother Thetis to the court of Lykomedes, King of Skyros, to prevent his going to the Trojan War. Her precaution was in vain, for Ulysses lured him to Troy, where he was killed before it fell. It was in Skyros that Lykomedes treacherously killed Theseus, King of Athens, who had sought asylum with him.

In the mail came a letter from Eddie Marsh, containing a cutting from
The Times
of 5 April reporting on Dean Inge's sermon at St Paul's in which he had read ‘The Soldier' to the congregation, ‘a sonnet by a young writer who would, he ventured to think, take rank with our great poets.' The report also commented on a glowing review of
New Numbers
in the
Times Literary Supplement
of 11 March:

His hour had arrived, his poetry was being acclaimed and his name was on people's lips. For Rupert, though, it was too late.

He was not feeling in particularly good spirits when he took his platoon on an exercise on the island of Skyros, and he was glad of a brief rest with Shaw-Stewart and fellow officer Charles Lister, in a small olive grove. After operations, the others decided to swim the mile back to the ship, but Rupert, usually the keenest of swimmers, declined; he returned in a small fishing boat. During a party on board that evening, he retired early as he could feel his lip swelling. The following day the swelling had increased and was accompanied by back and head pains, which he attributed to general exhaustion. The battalion surgeon noted a temperature of 101°F. By the following day, 21 April, his temperature had risen to 103°F, and his resistance, never good at the best of times, was very low. His condition was now considered grave enough to send for the fleet surgeon and the battalion medical officer. They discussed the situation with the battalion surgeon and agreed that the swelling had emanated from a mosquito bite on the lip and it was agreed that they should make an incision to determine the type of poison. Brooke's condition worsened and he was moved to a French hospital ship, the
Duguay-Trouin
, anchored near by. He was laid in a little white cabin in the round-house, and the whole of the ship's medical staff was mobilised to monitor his condition and cope with any complications. Brooke stirred just enough to say ‘Hello' to Denis Browne and later ask for water. Denis went to the lead ship, the
Franconia
, where he wrote out Marconigrams to Sir Ian Hamilton and Winston Churchill in case the worst happened: ‘Condition very grave. Please inform parents and send me instructions re. disposal of body in case he dies and duplicate them to
Duguay-Trouin.
' Denis and Patrick felt sure Rupert would
rather be buried on the island he'd been so taken with as opposed to being buried at sea. Cleg Kelly in his journal wrote, ‘I have a foreboding that he is one of those like Keats, Shelley, and Schubert, who are not suffered to deliver their full message.' Churchill passed on the grave news to Eddie Marsh, who telegrammed Mrs Brooke. She replied, ‘If message of love can be sent send it please at once waiting anxiously for the news Brooke.'

Early on 23 April 1915, French surgeons began an operation to cauterise the infection, and although he briefly regained consciousness at lunchtime he was not able to speak. His condition worsened and at 2 p.m. Denis Browne returned to Brooke's side with the chaplain from the
Franconia
. Browne was with him when he died at 4.46 p.m. of septicaemia.

While a coffin was being prepared, news came in that the fleet was to sail that night, so the simple wooden box was hurriedly covered with an English flag and sixteen palms. On it the French officers laid a bunch of flowers collected from the island and tied with the French colours. Asquith seared the words ‘Rupert Brooke' into the oak. A launch put out with the coffin. J. Perdriel-Vaissières described the atmosphere:

His fellow officers had decided to bury him in the olive grove on Skyros, where he had sat with Lister and Shaw-Stewart a few days before. Denis marked out a spot for the grave, on the western
slope of Mount Kokhilas, and twelve bearers carried the coffin some 1.5 miles up the hill, to where the digging party had been at work. Twelve large Australians in their broad-brimmed felt hats carried Brooke's coffin.

Patrick Shaw-Stewart commanded a guard of honour and a rough wooden cross was hastily put together. The chaplain performed the service; three volleys were fired into the air and Malachi William Davey, the eighteen-year-old bugler, sounded the Last Post. The rifle shots rolled