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Letters from America
In May 1913, Rupert Brooke embarked on a year-long expedition of North America, visiting the United States, Canada, and finally the South Seas. He sent his impressions home in a series of letters, written for publication in the Westminster Gazette , describing all his various experiences and the beauty of arriving by boat at night in New York; the novelties of a baseball game; the awesome grandeur of Niagara Falls and the Canadian wilderness; and "the full deliciousness of traveling in an American train by night through new scenery." He is blunt in his judgments on society, business, and cities; playful in his accounts of Anglo-American relations; and finally humbled by the vastness of the landscape in which he finds himself. Henry James's foreword to the collection on its publication in 1916 is included here as an afterword.
- GenresTravelNonfictionHistory
124 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1916
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79 people want to read
About the author
Rupert Brooke
223 books114 followersRupert Chawner Brooke (middle name sometimes given as Chaucer) was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially The Soldier. He was also known for his boyish good looks, which it is alleged prompted the Irish poet W.B. Yeats to describe him as "the handsomest young man in England."
Brooke was born at 5 Hillmorton Road in Rugby, Warwickshire, the second of the three sons of William Parker Brooke, a Rugby schoolmaster, and Ruth Mary Brooke, née Cotterill. He was educated at two independent schools in the market town of Rugby, Warwickshire; Hillbrow School and Rugby School.
While travelling in Europe he prepared a thesis entitled John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama, which won him a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, where he became a member of the Cambridge Apostles, helped found the Marlowe Society drama club and acted in plays including the Cambridge Greek Play.
Brooke made friends among the Bloomsbury group of writers, some of whom admired his talent while others were more impressed by his good looks. Virginia Woolf boasted to Vita Sackville-West of once going skinny-dipping with Brooke in a moonlit pool when they were at Cambridge together.
Brooke belonged to another literary group known as the Georgian Poets and was one of the most important of the Dymock poets, associated with the Gloucestershire village of Dymock where he spent some time before the war. He also lived in the Old Vicarage, Grantchester.
Brooke suffered a severe emotional crisis in 1912, caused by sexual confusion and jealousy, resulting in the breakdown of his long relationship with Ka Cox (Katherine Laird Cox). Brooke's paranoia that Lytton Strachey had schemed to destroy his relationship with Cox by encouraging her to see Henry Lamb precipitated his break with his Bloomsbury Group friends and played a part in his nervous collapse and subsequent rehabilitation trips to Germany.
As part of his recuperation, Brooke toured the United States and Canada to write travel diaries for the Westminster Gazette. He took the long way home, sailing across the Pacific and staying some months in the South Seas. Much later it was revealed that he may have fathered a daughter with a Tahitian woman named Taatamata with whom he seems to have enjoyed his most complete emotional relationship. Brooke fell heavily in love several times with both men and women, although his bisexuality was edited out of his life by his first literary executor. Many more people were in love with him. Brooke was romantically involved with the actress Cathleen Nesbitt and was once engaged to Noel Olivier, whom he met, when she was aged 15, at the progressive Bedales School.
Brooke was an inspiration to poet John Gillespie Magee, Jr., author of the poem "High Flight". Magee idolised Brooke and wrote a poem about him ("Sonnet to Rupert Brooke"). Magee also won the same poetry prize at Rugby School which Brooke had won 34 years earlier.
As a war poet Brooke came to public attention in 1915 when The Times Literary Supplement quoted two of his five sonnets (IV: The Dead and V: The Soldier) in full on 11 March and his sonnet V: The Soldier was read from the pulpit of St Paul's Cathedral on Easter Sunday (4 April). Brooke's most famous collection of poetry, containing all five sonnets, 1914 & Other Poems, was first published in May 1915 and, in testament to his popularity, ran to 11 further impressions that year and by June 1918 had reached its 24th impression; a process undoubtedly fueled through posthumous interest.
Brooke was born at 5 Hillmorton Road in Rugby, Warwickshire, the second of the three sons of William Parker Brooke, a Rugby schoolmaster, and Ruth Mary Brooke, née Cotterill. He was educated at two independent schools in the market town of Rugby, Warwickshire; Hillbrow School and Rugby School.
While travelling in Europe he prepared a thesis entitled John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama, which won him a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, where he became a member of the Cambridge Apostles, helped found the Marlowe Society drama club and acted in plays including the Cambridge Greek Play.
Brooke made friends among the Bloomsbury group of writers, some of whom admired his talent while others were more impressed by his good looks. Virginia Woolf boasted to Vita Sackville-West of once going skinny-dipping with Brooke in a moonlit pool when they were at Cambridge together.
Brooke belonged to another literary group known as the Georgian Poets and was one of the most important of the Dymock poets, associated with the Gloucestershire village of Dymock where he spent some time before the war. He also lived in the Old Vicarage, Grantchester.
Brooke suffered a severe emotional crisis in 1912, caused by sexual confusion and jealousy, resulting in the breakdown of his long relationship with Ka Cox (Katherine Laird Cox). Brooke's paranoia that Lytton Strachey had schemed to destroy his relationship with Cox by encouraging her to see Henry Lamb precipitated his break with his Bloomsbury Group friends and played a part in his nervous collapse and subsequent rehabilitation trips to Germany.
As part of his recuperation, Brooke toured the United States and Canada to write travel diaries for the Westminster Gazette. He took the long way home, sailing across the Pacific and staying some months in the South Seas. Much later it was revealed that he may have fathered a daughter with a Tahitian woman named Taatamata with whom he seems to have enjoyed his most complete emotional relationship. Brooke fell heavily in love several times with both men and women, although his bisexuality was edited out of his life by his first literary executor. Many more people were in love with him. Brooke was romantically involved with the actress Cathleen Nesbitt and was once engaged to Noel Olivier, whom he met, when she was aged 15, at the progressive Bedales School.
Brooke was an inspiration to poet John Gillespie Magee, Jr., author of the poem "High Flight". Magee idolised Brooke and wrote a poem about him ("Sonnet to Rupert Brooke"). Magee also won the same poetry prize at Rugby School which Brooke had won 34 years earlier.
As a war poet Brooke came to public attention in 1915 when The Times Literary Supplement quoted two of his five sonnets (IV: The Dead and V: The Soldier) in full on 11 March and his sonnet V: The Soldier was read from the pulpit of St Paul's Cathedral on Easter Sunday (4 April). Brooke's most famous collection of poetry, containing all five sonnets, 1914 & Other Poems, was first published in May 1915 and, in testament to his popularity, ran to 11 further impressions that year and by June 1918 had reached its 24th impression; a process undoubtedly fueled through posthumous interest.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 13, 2016
Rupert does have a way with words. He is at his best in his letters describing what he sees around him. One full chapter (Chapter 8) contains descriptions of his impressions of Niagara Falls. The next chapter describes travelling, at night, by train from Sault Ste. Marie to Winnipeg:
"To taste the full deliciousness of travelling in an American train by night through new scenery, you must carefully secure a lower berth. And when you are secret and separate in your little oblong world, safe between sheets, pull up the blinds on the great window a few inches and leave them so. Thus, as you lie, you can view the dark procession of woods and hills, and mingle the broken hours of railway slumber with glimpses of a wild starlit landscape."
But there is also the Edwardian English prejudices on full display:
From Chapter 10 "Outside":
"The problem of immigration here reveals that purposelessness that exists in the affairs of Canada even more than those of other nations. The multitude from South or East Europe flocks in. Some make money and return. the most remain, often in inassimilable lumps. There is every sign that these lumps may poison the health of Canada as dangerously as they have that of the United States. For Canada there is the peril of too large an element of foreign blood and traditions in a small nation already little more than half composed of British blood and descent."
Overall, this book is an interesting pre-World War I travelogue of Northern USA and Canada. Brooke's Edwardian English prejudices may prevent some readers from fully enjoying his writing. (I read that part as, well, that's how upper-class Englishmen pre-World War I thought.)
"To taste the full deliciousness of travelling in an American train by night through new scenery, you must carefully secure a lower berth. And when you are secret and separate in your little oblong world, safe between sheets, pull up the blinds on the great window a few inches and leave them so. Thus, as you lie, you can view the dark procession of woods and hills, and mingle the broken hours of railway slumber with glimpses of a wild starlit landscape."
But there is also the Edwardian English prejudices on full display:
From Chapter 10 "Outside":
"The problem of immigration here reveals that purposelessness that exists in the affairs of Canada even more than those of other nations. The multitude from South or East Europe flocks in. Some make money and return. the most remain, often in inassimilable lumps. There is every sign that these lumps may poison the health of Canada as dangerously as they have that of the United States. For Canada there is the peril of too large an element of foreign blood and traditions in a small nation already little more than half composed of British blood and descent."
Overall, this book is an interesting pre-World War I travelogue of Northern USA and Canada. Brooke's Edwardian English prejudices may prevent some readers from fully enjoying his writing. (I read that part as, well, that's how upper-class Englishmen pre-World War I thought.)
June 28, 2007
interesting. i think i rated it so highly because i envisioned myself the receiver of these letters. thus, heart palpitating madly, i was quite pleased with myself.
April 1, 2020
For anyone (like me) who only knew Brooke's wartime poetry, this comes as a bit of a shock. He writes with an enormous amount of sarcasm/levity, especially in his comparisons between Britain and America. It's also interesting to read his descriptions of the beautiful forests and lakes he encounters in Canada. He want to distance himself from the romanticism of the Victorian age, but he is also painfully aware that he shares their reverence for nature. One last note - this is definitely of its time, as casual racism abounds, especially in the section on his time in German Samoa.
March 5, 2017
As a life-long fan of the poetry of Brooke, i had expected his prose to be of a lyrical loveliness, much like the prose of his contemporary Siegfried Sassoon, and lovely indeed, it is. His descriptions of fleeting moments in nature are usually gorgeous, often sublime, what i didn't expect however, was for Brooke to be so funny and for his humour to be so relevant over 100 years after publication.
January 13, 2019
There is a lengthy introduction by Henry James which I didn't care for. However, once I started reading Brooke's letters I was entranced. They are full of understated humour which had me laughing aloud. They offer an interesting perspective on Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, Winnipeg, and the countryside but sympathetically. I felt he meant no harm even when excoriating some aspect, of maybe areas of a town or facets of personality. Was he fair? I don’t know but his letters certainly make me want to go there.
While not meeting fully the criteria for a prose poem all the writing had a poetic voice with any negatives treated with gentle affectionate humour. There is a tenderness and other-worldly magic in his writing. Something terms he uses are a bit shockingò but Brooke was writing 105 years ago and we need to read it in that language rather than that of the 21st century. The final chapter is one of pathos as the 1914-18 war was about to begin.
Whatever books and Tv shows I have read or seen that touch upon the St Lawrence Waterway nothing has previously given me a sense of its vastness.
While not meeting fully the criteria for a prose poem all the writing had a poetic voice with any negatives treated with gentle affectionate humour. There is a tenderness and other-worldly magic in his writing. Something terms he uses are a bit shockingò but Brooke was writing 105 years ago and we need to read it in that language rather than that of the 21st century. The final chapter is one of pathos as the 1914-18 war was about to begin.
Whatever books and Tv shows I have read or seen that touch upon the St Lawrence Waterway nothing has previously given me a sense of its vastness.
June 12, 2012
Really well written and manages to sum up a continent and her people in only a dozen or so letters.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews