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S war poems go, The Soldier now seems mawkish, but in the poet’s defence, he did spend his halcyon days in the best parts of England.
Hiring a punt by The Anchor pub, I negotiated Silver Street Bridge on my haunches and set off down the Backs. Cambridge was filled with mid-summer tourists, the river was packed with punts and the bridges were lined with spectators eagerly anticipating disasters.
For the uninitiated, punts are flat-bottomed, rectangular wooden vessels, which the pilot propels with an unwieldy 5m-long pole while precariously balanced on a raised deck at the stern. Though they sound guaranteed to cause embarrassment, they’re ideal for lazily gliding along the River Cam, admiring the colleges — at least for the passengers reclining on cushions, quaffing wine.
Reaching King’s College without any personal mishap, I admired the rolling lawns, classical stone buildings and soaring Gothic chapel. In October 1906, 19-year-old Rupert Brooke came here to study Classics.
Tall and athletic with floppy golden hair, he was dubbed “the handsomest young man in England”, and otherwise sensible men and women fell hopelessly in love with him. Indeed, his social life became so hectic that in his third year he moved to Grantchester, a small hamlet 4km away, to salvage his studies.
Likewise finding the city too busy, I exchanged my punt for an Indianstyle canoe on the upper river, having rustled up some friends to accompany me. Initially, the river had a sinister feel as we passed beneath a dark canopy of trees, with half-submerged logs poking from the water, like alligators. Soon, however, the foliage opened out and we were paddling through meadows, past cows and couples canoodling on the bank. At Grantchester Meadow, we tethered our canoe and headed across the cricket field for the village.
Set amidst rambling gardens and apple trees, The Orchard has been serving cream teas since 1897. Brooke rented rooms here in May 1909, though plans to focus on his books were derailed by a stream of visitors, who joined him for poetry readings and naked moonlit bathing.
Though his poetry later immortalised Grantchester as an idyllic village, at the time his bohemian ways upset his landlady and he had to move down the road.
The Old Vicarage commemorates Brooke’s residence with a bronze statue in the driveway. Now the country pile of author Jeffrey Archer, the house looks much more salubrious than it must have during Brooke’s stay, when it was infested with fleas and woodlice.
Retrieving our kayak, we followed the river up to Byron’s Pool, where Brooke and friends skinny-dipped. The oily, stagnant water didn’t look inviting. Nonetheless, I stripped off and slithered down the bank, sinking up to my calves in mud. It was cold and, after a few hurried strokes, I clambered out, failing to reproduce Brooke’s famed party trick of emerging with a full erection.
From Cambridge, I travelled by train and then taxi to Lulworth Cove, a semi-circular bay in Dorset which Brooke called “the most beautiful place in England”. Between 1907 and 1911 he visited several times.
I hiked along the coast: eastwards to Mupe Rocks and the abandoned village of Tyneham; and westwards to Durdle Door, where I swam through the famous sea arch. With its white cliffs, undulating green fields and shimmering sea, this stretch of Dorset is indeed inspirational.
It was here that Brooke suffered a nervous breakdown, when a love interest jilted him. After recuperating on a diet of stout and compressed bull’s blood, he assiduously wooed her back and proposed (only to soon lose interest and dump her).
Thereafter, his love life became increasingly messy with several simultaneous affairs and an illegitimate child (fathered in Tahiti).
He saw it as a chance for salvation when war broke out in August 1914, joining the Royal Naval Division as an officer. While waiting to sail for Gallipoli, he penned five war sonnets, including The Soldier.
I took a short, bumpy flight from Athens to Skyros, the southernmost of the Sporades Isles. There, beneath the bald, grey pate of Mount Khokilas, I found Tris Boukes Bay, where the Grantully Castle anchored in April 1915. With the bay now commandeered by the Greek Navy, I followed a dry river gorge up to an olive grove. Here, beneath gnarled trees, amid shaggy goats, was a white marble tomb, with the poem The Soldier engraved on a plaque.
Brooke, who hadn’t yet fired a shot in anger, contracted acute blood poisoning from a mosquito bite, fell into a coma and died on April 23, St George’s Day. He was buried in the olive grove at midnight, before his division sailed the next day. Three of the five officers who attended his funeral were to die in battle, as was his younger brother, Alfred, in France that June.
I spent my final evening on Skyros in a beach taverna, drinking wine with Iannis, a gregarious fishermancum-artist. He told me his octogenarian godfather owned the olive grove housing Brooke’s grave and had caused quite a stir by announcing his intention to be buried there alongside the poet.
Following representations from several dignitaries and officials, however, he’d diplomatically decided to be cremated instead, with his ashes scattered at sea. After all, that particular corner is forever England. — © Matthew Holt