Friends and Apostles: The Correspondence of Rupert Brooke and James Strachey, 1905-1914 [Hardcover]

Dr. Keith Hale (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 11, 1998

The correspondance between the poet Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) and his friend James Strachey, later the primary English translator of the works of Sigmund Freud, here appears in print for the first time. These various letters - often irreverent, sometimes humorous, and so revealing that Brook's literary executors long resisted their publication, illuminate one of the last pieces of the complex puzzle of Brooke's life. Brooke wrote more frequently to Strachey than to anyone other than his mother, and was more candid than in letters to others in which he often assumed a variety of carefully constructed poses. Friends from boyhood, Brooke and Strachey were undergraduates at Cambridge when James fell in love with his handsome, charming companion. As well as their shared interest in politics, literature, art, and theatre, the letters deal often and explicitly with the subject of homosexuality and with the sometimes scandalous activities of many of their close circle. Brook and Strachey compare observations of fellow members of the exclusive Cambridge "Apostles", of mutual Bloomsbury friends, and of such fellow Fabian Socialists as Hugh Grant and Beatrice Webb. The correspondance provides biographical, psychological and cultural insights into Rupert Brooke and his poetry, and reveals the complexities of the man behind the heroic legend that his early death inspired.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Rupert Brooke is one of the 20th century's best examples of image management. After he died of blood poisoning en route to Gallipoli in 1915, the poet's valor and godlike good looks were soon immortalized. He never had the chance to prove the former save in a handful of verses that are far from his finest, but photographic proof of the latter was unassailable. When Brooke's letters were originally published in 1968, his executor and editor, Geoffrey Keynes, kept well clear of his extensive correspondence with James Strachey (brother of Lytton and now best remembered for his translations of Freud). Keynes went so far as to claim that they would appear in print "over my dead body." Nothing less than homosexual panic was at the heart of such hysteria: Brooke was to be forever deified, not damned as a sodomite.

Now Keith Hale has whittled down Brooke and Strachey's letters and postcards between 1905 and 1914 into a volume in which the inconsequential ("Thursday lunch will be admirably suitable") bumps up against history, emotion, and desire. The last few years of their friendship were decidedly rocky, and Strachey's final words on his complex friend are apposite: "Rupert wasn't nearly so nice as people now imagine; but he was a great deal cleverer." Whether you read their correspondence as proof positive of Brooke's bi- or homosexuality will depend on your views of the construction of sexual identity. But it must be said that the poet's account of one schoolboy seduction is written with an icy objectivity that even Edmund White would envy. These letters remain a fascinating record of longtime companionship--no matter how you use that term. --Kerry Fried

From Publishers Weekly

Hale, a professor of English at the University of Guam, assembles here a long overdue compilation of the correspondence between two Bloomsbury figures: the poet and WWI martyr Rupert Brooke and James Strachey, brother of the more famous writer Lytton but important on his own as Freud's main English translator. As a Cambridge undergraduate, James Strachey fell in love (unrequited) with the golden Brooke. Their letters sometimes discuss aspects of homosexuality, which kept them unpublished for many decades. Now they seem tame, and indeed, the collection may be appearing too late; few take Brooke very seriously as a poet anymore, and many readers may be sated by the glut of books about the Bloomsbury set. In addition, neither man was a born letter writer. Still, the letters provide an essential and frank documentation of the Cambridge goings-on of a powerful generation of intellectuals and artists, including Leonard Woolf, John Maynard Keynes and Lytton Strachey. As anyone who has waded through the numerous lives of these people knows, among them categories of sexual desire and conduct could be rather free-flowing and difficult to define. Brooke, despite enjoying a number of girlfriends, also nursed romantic passions for male schoolfellows; he wrote to a lady friend, "Do you understand about loving people of the same sex?... Of course most sensible people would permit." Until now, none of his editors would permit it, so readers owe thanks to Hale for his labors in compiling and thoroughly annotating this correspondence.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (December 11, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300070047
• ISBN-13: 978-0300070040
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #291,225 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars candid and erotic, December 7, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Friends and Apostles: The Correspondence of Rupert Brooke and James Strachey, 1905-1914 (Hardcover)

This is probably the closest thing to a Brooke autobiography that the world will ever see. Because of Hale's useful editorial material and his thorough annotations, the letters provide as complete a story of Brooke as most of his biographies. And because Brooke shows sides of himself to Strachey that have been hitherto suppressed by his executors, the book provides a more complex, personal view of Brooke than do his previously published letters or his travel journals. Of particular interest are his graphic description of seducing the younger brother of one of his friends; Strachey's account of a sexual rendezvous involving Duncan Grant, John Maynard Keynes, and a Cockney youth; the account of Strachey being pursued by the famous mountain climber, George Mallory; and Brooke's insane, vulgar, and disturbing ramblings following his nervous collapse in 1912. It's quite an interesting read, really.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A period piece worth reading, May 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Friends and Apostles: The Correspondence of Rupert Brooke and James Strachey, 1905-1914 (Hardcover)

Much is being made about what this book reveals about Brooke's sexuality, but the main reason for reading it is that it is simply very interesting and educational. One learns so much one never knew about so many of the major literary and political figures in Georgian England. Hale's impressive footnotes are as enjoyable as the letters themselves.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Epistles of Unrequited Love: 'Friends and Apostles', October 9, 2001

By 

[e-mail] Caroline Banks (Hong kong) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Friends and Apostles: The Correspondence of Rupert Brooke and James Strachey, 1905-1914 (Hardcover)

Brooke's heart-stopping good looks are the essence of this epistolatory account of the romantic friendship between James Strachey and England's eternal Golden boy. He who penned the heroically mawkish yet strangely thrilling:'If I should die/ Think only this of me/That there is some corner of a foreign field/ That is forever England' is here revealed through Strachey's eyes in the guise of romantic muse, love object, sex god. Unfortunately for Strachey, his passion was unrequited.

Strachey is be-dazzled by Brooke during their first year at Cambridge, and the subsequent correspondence betrays all the hallmarks of adolescent infatuation: in turns importunate, with Strachey's 'declaration' early in 1906; adulatory:'You were so beautiful tonight';desperate: 'I suppose you know what's wrong with me...I'm in love with you'; ever hopeful: 'Why not come quietly to bed with me instead?' in response to Brooke's request for contraceptive information; finally hopeless: 'The sudden sight of him across a room made my heart...bound ... it's no use...' But it is with a start that one realises that this is no adolescent, but rather a scion of the Stracheys - long time members of the intelligentsia, darlings of the Bloomsbury set - assistant editor of 'the Spectator', putative translator of Freud.

And herein lies the fascination. Keith Hale's painstakingly edited and annotated edition of the correspondence vividly presents Strachey's personal drama of unstinting adulation of the man seemingly pursued by a host of admirers of both sexes, but also features most of England's literati and glitterati in supporting roles. Here are Vanessa and Clive Bell, Virginia Woolf, Maynard Keynes, society hostess Lady Ottoline Morrell, together with representatives of an older order - Thomas Hardy, not to mention Henry James who, for goodness sake, Brooke cycles off to call on at Lamb House as casually as if he were the man next door! And interspersed with these semi-mythical figures are the domestic details that form an integral part of Brooke and Strachey's lives. The trivia is engrossing, with its train timetables, motorbuses and postal orders: 'I'll enclose the tickets and a postal order for 10/6.'

But we never stray far from the central motif - that of Strachey's heart-sickness for Brooke. Coupled with our fascination, though, is also the uncomfortably voyeuristic sensation of being privy to Strachey's intimate yearnings and his longing makes for painful reading: 'It is You and my love that makes the universe magical....' and one finds oneself wishing that Brooke could have been kinder.

Hence it is with a start that one reads Brooke's own account of his seduction of a former university acquaintance. One wonders what the besotted Strachey could have made of his graphic and lengthy account of the physical details of his night in bed with Denham Russell-Smith. Brooke's literary executor Geoffrey Keynes vowed that the uncensored Brooke letters would be published 'over my dead body.' And such has certainly been the case as it is only since Keynes' death that the letters have been released.

Brooke's image makers certainly knew how to 'spin', and it is really only now, nearly 90 years later, that we have a clearer view of Brooke the man as opposed to the legend. Perhaps Strachey's words on Brooke , many years following his death, are the most revealing: 'He was not nearly as nice as people now believe him, but a great deal cleverer.'