The poet Rupert Brooke is probably best remembered for this line of poetry from his sonnet The Soldier:
“If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England.”
He wrote much poetry, well-regarded in its time, filled with thoughts of the glory of England and the honor of going to war in defense of her people. These attitudes from the youth of England were cut short by the realities of the horrors of World War I.
But for a while Rupert Brooke was quite the man of the hour. Yeats said that he was the handsomest man in England and several commentaries that I’ve read have made note of his good looks and his romances.
From 1911 to 1914 he had eyes for only one. Her name was Cathleen. One source says that they were engaged. He wrote beautiful love letters to her. I think there were 80 or 90 of them. He looked forward to a simple and romantic future with her all to himself.
Brooke got his war. And he continued to write to Cathleen and to send her poetry and love letters. But there would not be a future together. He died in 1915 of an infection that began with a mosquito bite. He is buried on the Greek island of Skyros.
Cathleen was also a very creative person. She was quite a beauty herself and had begun a career as an actress before the war. But one of her most memorable roles for future generations was as a much older actress in a film classic in the 1950s. Do you remember Janou, the older woman who played the piano for her grandson Nickie (Cary Grant) in “An Affair to Remember”? It’s been more than half a century since that movie came out. I’m so pleased to know of Cathleen Nesbitt’s love affair to remember.
This English major was slow to catch on.