Rupert Chawner Brooke was born on 3 August 1887 at Rugby.
The son of a master at Rugby, he was also educated at that
school. Whilst there, he began writing poetry, and even before he
left there, he had already begun to take himself seriously as a
poet, entering for various prizes, and receiving an award for his
poem on The Bastille in 1905.
Late in 1906 he entered King's College, at Cambridge University,
as a scholar, and by 1911, his first published volume was in print.
It was while he was at Cambridge that he began to take an intense
pleasure in the country, and he is recorded as having variously
stayed in Dorset and Wales. In the summer of 1909, he had taken
his degree at Cambridge, and soon afterwards, he left his college
rooms and went to live in lodgings at Granchester, not far from
Cambridge, for one year, before moving into the
Old Vicarage there in 1910.
Throughout his University years, and afterwards, Rupert Brooke
wrote numerous poems. In May 1913 he left England on a long
journey through America and New Zealand to the South Seas, not
returning to England until June 1914. "Although he had been
away for over a year, and had drunk in countless new
sensations and experiences, his output of poetry had"
apparently "been disappointingly small".
Perhaps the impressions stored in his mind might have enriched
the poetry of future years had the poet lived to enjoy them, but in
the event there was little that was written after his return except
the famous War Sonnets. The quality of these is such that it
seems certain that the small output was not due to the failure of a
youthful faculty for verse, but to circumstances.
These gave him only a brief period for thought before the outbreak
of war (in 1914) changed everything and shattered all prospect of
the academic life for which he seemed to be heading.
After a short time of uncertainty, he obtained a commission in the
Anson Battalion of the Royal Naval Division which, at the
beginning of October (1914), took part in the defence of Antwerp.
This however, was an abortive effort, and was followed by more
training at Blandford, Brooke having now been transferred to the
Hood Battalion, in which he was one of a band or remarkable
young men, most of whom were not destined to be
anything but young and unfulfilled.
The five '1914' War Sonnets were written in the
last two months of 1914.
Within a few weeks of the publication of the Sonnets, the Hood
Battalion left England to engage in the gallant failure of the
landing in Gallipoli, but Brooke was not to
take part in this enterprise.
There was the inevitable waiting about to be endured, and, in the
unhealthy conditions prevailing, amoebic dysentry was almost
universal. Rupert Brooke was among those who were attacked
and his strength was seriously undermined by the disease,
although having seemingly having improved, he was able to
accompany his battalion in their ship through the
Aegean Sea to the island of Skyros.
After a brief 3 days in lovely surroundings, he fell ill once again,
and with all resistance to bacterial infection having gone, just two
days later he succumbed to an acute condition.
Rupert Brooke died on 23 April 1915. His body was buried in a
plain oak coffin at a brief midnight ceremony among the olive
groves of Skyros, the place being marked with improvised
crosses and a cairn of stones (in later years, the cairn was
replaced by a massive marble slab)
The above details include extracts
from the Introduction of
"Poems of Rupert Brooke" ed. G. Keynes,
(Thomas Nelson, London, 1952)
1674. He was a Lieutenant aboard the ship Henrietta - the flagship of Sir John Narborough, another Cockthorpe man.