Forever England by Mike Read Read Free Book Online Page B

interest me much.’
    As well as being a member of the Carbonari and acting in theADC, Brooke became a co-founder of the Marlowe Society, formed with the object of staging Elizabethan plays. By October, the finishing touches were being put to their debut production, Marlowe’s
Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
, due to be performed on Monday 11 November, and Tuesday 12 November. Rupert was not only playing the part of Mephistopheles but had agreed to take on the role of President of the Society. Among the first-night audience were Prince Leopold of Belgium, the former Cambridge don E. J. Dent, and Rupert’s mother. Hugh Russell-Smith played one of the Seven Deadly Sins, Gluttony; Geoffrey Keynes, the Evil Angel; Justin Brooke, Doctor Faustus; W. Denis Browne, Rugby’s star music pupil, Lucifer; and George Mallory, who was later to lose his life on Everest, the Pope. The chorus was directed by Clive Carey, of Clare College.
    Later that month, Brooke was elected to the Fabian Society, as an associate member. As such he had not as yet signed the Basis (a commitment to the party), but his interest in politics was increasing. His Uncle Clem, an advanced socialist, had just published
Human Justice for Those at the Bottom; An Appeal to Those at the Top
, prompting Brooke to write to him, while staying with his aunts in Bournemouth, with the news that socialism was making great advances at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. He had read his uncle’s book and wondered whether ‘this Commercialism or Competition or whatever the filthy infection is, hasn’t spread almost too far, and that the best hope isn’t in some kind of upheaval’. Despite being
    an Associate (not an actual member) of the Cambridge Fabian Society I have lately been coming across a good many Socialists, both at the University and without, as well as unattached sympathisers like Lowes Dickinson. I wish I could get more of these, especially among the Fabians, to accept your definition of Socialism. Most of them, I fear, would define it as ‘EconomicEquality’ or the ‘Nationalisation of Land and Food Production’, or some such thing.
    The one Society that was decidedly ambivalent about Brooke was the Apostles. Founded in 1820 by a group of friends dedicated to working out a philosophy for life, its hierarchy would mark out suitable young men, undergraduates mainly from Trinity and King’s, to swell its ranks by two or three a year – if that. The Society was intimate, secretive and often predominantly homosexual. ‘Born’ into the inner circle at various times before Brooke’s day were: Bertrand Russell, Eddie Marsh, Maynard Keynes, G. E. Moore, Leonard Woolf, Oscar Browning, Clive Bell, Saxon Sydney-Turner and Lytton Strachey. James Strachey had suggested Rupert to Lytton as a possible candidate, before Brooke even came up. The Society meetings, invariably on Saturday evenings, were often graced by the occasional appearance of an ‘angel’ or retired Apostle, but it was Lytton and Maynard Keynes who were the main deliberators in the decision as to whether to enlist Brooke. Lytton felt that Rupert’s influences at Rugby – Arthur Eckersley and St John Lucas – had not helped his literary style, expression or quality of thought, and the idea that the young Rugbeian had not read the novels of the celebrated American writer Henry James was too abhorrent to Strachey for him to further consider the application.
    It was at this time that Lytton, who had met Brooke briefly, dubbed him ‘Sarawak’, as there was some talk of his family being related to James Brooke, the British administrator who became the ‘White Rajah of Sarawak’. This led to Brooke referring to his mother as ‘The Ranee’, a nickname that he was to use for the rest of his life.
    By 30 October 1907, Maynard Keynes, too, was still undecided about electing Rupert to the Apostles. Of the others who were in on the discussion, Harry Norton didn’t really know Brooke,