Fatal Glamour (53 page)

19
Rupert Brooke to Ka Cox [?18 July 1912],
BA
.

20
Hale,
Friends and Apostles
, 261.

21
Rupert Brooke to Ka Cox [?18 July 1912],
BA
.

22
J.M. Keynes to Duncan Grant, 26 July 1912,
BL
.

23
Hugh P. Popham to Brynhild Olivier [27 July 1912], in possession of A.E. (Tony) Popham, Hugh Popham's son.

24
Hugh P. Popham to Brynhild Olivier [?11 July 1912], in possession of A.E. Popham.

25
SOL
, 197–8.

26
Rupert Brooke to Brynhild Olivier, Monday evening [29 July 1912], Eton College Library.

27
Rupert Brooke to Elisabeth van Rysselberghe, 31 July 1912, private collection.

28
Ka Cox to Frances Cornford, 21 June 1912,
BA
.

29
LRB
, 390; Rupert Brooke to Ka Cox [?6 August 1912],
BA
.

1
LRB
, 437.

2
Jacques Raverat to Frances Cornford [?April 1911],
BL
.

3
Frances Cornford to Gwen Riverat [?7 Sept. 1912],
CUL
.

4
Hale,
Friends and Apostles
, 258–9; James Strachey to Lytton Strachey, 17 Aug. 1912,
BL
.

5
Rupert Brooke to Ka Cox [?11 Oct 1912],
BA
. In an interview with the author, Mary Newbery remarked, “She was dead right to mind. He didn't love Ka deeply, but went off with her because someone else wanted to.”

6
Rupert Brooke to Jacques Raverat, omitted from
LRB
, 397 [misdated; should be 7 Sept.].

7
SOL
, 220.

8
Rupert Brooke to Ka Cox [?11 Oct 1912],
BA
.

9
SOL
, 201.

10
Ibid., 210.

11
Ibid., 172.

12
Rupert Brooke to Brynhild Olivier, 21 Aug. 1912; Brynhild Olivier to James Strachey, 4 Sept. [1912],
BL
.

13
Anne Olivier Bell, interview with the author, 1980.

14
Rupert Brooke to Brynhild Olivier, end September 1912, Eton College Library.

15
Lady Ottoline Morrell to Bertrand Russell, 10 July 1912, Bertrand Russell Archives, McMaster University.

16
Frances Cornford to Gwen Riverat [?17 Aug. 1912],
CUL
.

17
Gwen Riverat to Frances Conford [?24 Sept. 1912],
BL
.

18
Brooke, “In Xanadu Did Kubla Khan,”
BA
.

19
Omitted from
LRB
, 422.

20
LRB
, 445, 30/31 March 1913.

21
SOL
, 224.

22
Hale,
Friends and Apostles
, 55.

23
Hassall,
Edward Marsh
, 188. Mrs Elgy was Marsh's housekeeper and talented cook; she lived out.

24
Leonard Woolf was paying £11–£12 per month for his board and lodging at Brunswick Square.

25
Mumps can also cause testicular atrophy, which may account for Marsh's high squeaky voice.

26
Novello was not openly gay, though, given the state of the law before 1967. Novello lived with the actor Bobbie Andrews. Their house near Maidenhead, “Redroofs,” became a centre for gay men in the arts, including Noel Coward. Marsh was a frequent visitor. Christopher Hassall, Brooke's biographer, had a similar relationship with Marsh.

27
At this stage, there was a good deal of fraternisation across the lines. For example, Rupert wrote a generally favourable review of Pound's
Personae
in December 1909: “he may be a great poet. It is important to remember his name.” Brooke,
Prose of Rupert Brooke
, 113.

28
LRB
, 402.

29
Gardner, Memoir, 7.

30
LRB
, 340, ?19 Jan. 1912. “Schuchtern”: coy.

31
LRB
, 397.

32
Gardner, Memoir, 40–1.

33
Rupert Brooke to Elisabeth van Rysselberghe [30 Oct. 1912], private collection.

34
Rupert sent James a postcard from Exeter on 1 November. Probably he and Elisabeth went somewhere near Dartmoor.

35
LRB
, 392. Letter is dated 7 August, but this must be a mistake; probably 7 November 1912.

36
Ferguson,
Short Sharp Life of T.E. Hulme
, 30.

37
Ibid., 137.

38
In his biography of Hulme, Ferguson misses the connection with “The Night Journey,” and therefore finds Rupert's train metaphor inexplicable.

39
Noel made fun of the demand, to which Rupert replied, “don't joke about kidnapping.”
SOL
, 231, 236.

40
The Heretics Society, co-founded by the Magdalene undergraduate C.K. Ogden, hosted many prominent speakers.

41
The second volume appeared in November 1915, after Rupert's death. By 1923 it had sold sixteen thousand copies at six shillings each, and the first volume had sold fifteen thousand.

42
SOL
, 233.

43
Gardner, Memoir, 47.

44
Rupert Brooke to Elisabeth van Rysselberghe, 25 Dec. 1912.

45
The play was Galsworthy's
The Eldest Son
.

46
Hassall,
Edward Marsh
, 42.

47
Nesbitt,
A Little Love
, 63, 69.

48
Ibid., 68. Cathleen married Cecil Ramage, soldier, barrister,
MP
, and then actor. He had played Anthony to her Cleopatra in an Oxford production.

49
Gardner, Memoir, 69.

50
Ibid., 74, 77.

51
Phyllis Gardner, letters to Rupert Brooke, no. 48, 54, ?Jan.–Feb. 2013,
BL
.

52
Ibid., no. 55.

53
LRB
, 427.

54
It is not known whether Eddie paid for this sitting, or whether Schell felt he could profit by adding Rupert to his roster of actors and
socialites. After Rupert's death, at least one of the portraits was published by Emory Walker of Clifford's Inn.

55
LRB
, 447. Wyndham died prematurely two months later of a heart attack, in Paris.

56
Marchand's fiancée was Elsie Russell-Smith, Hugh's sister.

57
Rothenstein had been the designer for the Granville-Barker production of
The Winter's Tale
.

58
Rupert Brooke to Elisabeth van Rysselberghe, Wed. [16 April 1913?], private collection.

59
Rupert Brooke to Elisabeth van Rysselberghe, ?31 May 1913, private collection. However, Catherine Gide (Elisabeth's daughter) believed that Rupert and Elisabeth may have become lovers in a complete sense at Swanley in May 1913. Interview with the author, 1981.

60
LRB
, 456.

61
Ibid., 421, misdated; should be 30 March 1913?

62
Ibid., 455, “Tuesday” ?15 April.

63
The total cost for this travel might be about £100. At his death, a year after his return, Rupert was overdrawn by about £400.

64
LRB
, 457, misdated; should be mid-May.

65
SOL
, 238.

66
Rupert Brooke to Mary Gardner, 21 May 1913,
BL
.

67
Cedric
was built by Harland and Wolff in 1902 for the White Star Line. When launched she was the biggest ship in the world, though by 1912 the
Titanic
was more than twice as big.

1
He sent a snippy letter to Noel, saying he had been concerned by her “sallow and hideous appearance” when they met. This was not designed to rekindle any warmth between them.

2
LRB
, 463; last sentence from Nesbitt,
A Little Love
, 70.

3
Brooke,
Letters from America
, xxxii.

4
Ibid., xxxii

5
Now demolished, Broadway Central Hotel was at Broadway and Bleecker St in Greenwich Village.

6
LRB
, 468–9.

7
On Rupert's Canadian experience, see Martin and Hall,
Rupert Brooke in Canada
.

8
Brooke,
Letters from America
, 52.

9
Scott quoted in Leslie,
Historical Development of the Indian Act
, 114.

10
SOL
, 240–1, 244.

11
Ibid., 245–6.

12
Ibid., 250, 255.

13
Brooke,
Letters from America
, 95–6.

14
Ibid., 111–12.

15
Ibid., 112, 113.

16
Ibid., 137–8, 143.

17
SOL
, 263–4.

18
LRB
, 500.

19
This Chateau Lake Louise hotel was not the present building but a mock-Tudor one designed by Francis Rattenbury, later destroyed by fire.

20
Rupert's letters to Agnes are in the Brooke Archive as expurgated transcripts, made either by her or by Geoffrey Keynes. The originals are not accessible.

21
She gave her date of birth as 7 December 1879, but a later ship's register gives 1871.

22
LRB
, 502.

23
Rupert Brooke to Sir Edward Marsh, 6 Sept. 1913, omitted from
LRB
, 505.

24
Rupert Brooke to Agnes Capponi, ?23 Nov., 25 Dec. 1913,
BA
. One supposes that “one place” is in bed, naked?

25
Brooke,
Letters from America
, 155–6.

26
The phrase “Aeterna Corpora” (referring to the fixed stars) was used in the sonnet “Mutability,” written before Rupert left for the United States.

27
LRB
, 514.

28
Schoolcraft, “I Touched the Hand of Phoebus,” 254.

29
Ibid., 256.

30
LRB
, 513.

31
After the first article, the
Gazette
ran eight more at weekly intervals. The last four appeared from February to July 1914.

32
LRB
, 516–17. The experience is re-worked in “Retrospect”; see Chapter 14.

33
Keynes transcribed the place incorrectly as “Kanai.”

34
LRB
, 525.

35
Ibid., 531. “The Porter” is an allusion to
Macbeth
II.3.

36
Brooke,
Letters from America
, 166–8.

37
The title was “Some Niggers,” quoting an American woman who said on their arrival at Pago-Pago, “Look at those niggers! Whose are they?”

38
Lawrence,
Collected Letters
1:393. After he had seen the South Seas, in 1922, Lawrence took a more skeptical view of the European myth, writing about Melville's
Typee
: “There on the island, where the golden-green great palm-trees chinked in the sun, and the elegant reed houses let the sea-breeze through, and people went naked and laughed a great deal, and Fayaway put flowers in his hair for him . . . O God, why wasn't [Melville] happy? Why wasn't he? Because he wasn't . . . The truth of the matter is, one cannot go back . . . At the age of twenty-five
he came back to Home and Mother, to fight it out at close quarters. For you can't fight it out by running away.”
Studies in Classic American Literature
, 148, 153.

39
LRB
, 551, 553, 560–1.

40
Ibid., 550.

41
Tetuanui's legal name was Ariioehau Moeroa, b. Mataiea 1857, d. Pirae 1916. His wife was Haamoeura Moeroa, b. 1856, d. 1924, Mataiea.

42
O'Brien,
Mystic Isles of the South Seas
, 411–12.

43
Ibid., 421, 448. The thyrsus reference is to Euripides,
The Bacchae
.

44
Ibid., 66, 233.

45
Ibid., 564.

46
Keable,
Tahiti Isle of Dreams
, 115. Keable was a clergyman and Cambridge graduate. He became a propagandist for free love, and died in Tahiti in 1927.

47
At least seven young women died, presumably of the flu, at Mataiea in 1918. The only one with a name resembling Mamua or Maaua was Isabelle Alice Maraeura, b. 1897.

48
Tahitians did have a crowded Pantheon of Gods, demons, ghosts, etc., but there was nothing abstract about any of them.

49
“
Tau here
” means “My love.”

50
LRB
, 565, last sentence omitted by Keynes in
LRB
.

51
O'Brien,
Mystic Isles of the South Seas
, 381.

52
LRB
, 564; Keynes omitted text after “very spry now.”

53
Ibid., 568.

54
Hélène, born 1905; Louis, 1906; Alice, 1908; Charles, 1911. Mike Read comments that “the Tahitian records of births and deaths are fairly non-existent” (278). They are in fact existent and thorough, once you find the appropriate Mairie.

55
LRB
, 565.