Friends and Apostles: The Correspondence of Rupert Brooke and James Strachey, 1905-14 [Hardcover]

Brooke's heart-stopping good looks are the essence of this epistolary account of the romantic friendship between James Strachey and England's eternal Golden boy. He who penned the heroically mawkish yet strangely thrilling lines: '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 is unrequited.

Strachey is bedazzled by Brooke during their first year at Cambridge, and frankly admits that the initial attraction is based on carnal allure - the effect of Brooke's Adonis-like looks on virtually everyone who met him are well documented - but the subsequent correspondence reflects the intensity, longevity and passion of his love. In turns importunate, 'declaring' 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: '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...', Strachey maintains his steadfast devotion for the duration of Brooke's lifetime, despite the latter's often flippant if not downright unkind remarks.

Keith Hales' painstakingly edited and annotated edition of the correspondence vividly presents Strachey's personal drama of unstinting devotion to 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 casually at Lamb House as if he were the neighbour 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 the fascination is 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 jolt that one reads Brooke's own account of his seduction of a former school-friend. One wonders what the besotted Strachey could have made of Brooke's 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 is indeed the case as is only since Keynes' death that they have been allowed to see the light of day.

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 last recorded words on Brooke years after his untimely death in 1915, ironically of blood poisoning - he never saw active service - encapsulate him: 'He was not nearly as nice as people now believe him, but a great deal cleverer.'