In 1929 Robert Graves went to live abroad permanently, vowing 'never to make England my home again'. This is his superb account of his life up until that 'bitter leave-taking': from his childhood and desperately unhappy school days at Charterhouse, to his time serving as a young officer in the First World War that was to haunt him throughout his life. It also contains memorable encounters with fellow writers and poets, including Siegfried Sassoon and Thomas Hardy, and covers his increasingly unhappy marriage to Nancy Nicholson.
'Goodbye to All That', with its vivid, harrowing descriptions of the Western Front, is a classic war document, and also has immense value as one of the most candid self-portraits of an artist ever written.
Reviews
A memorable account of conditions in the trenches of WW1.
This book largely set during the First World War and described as a permanently valuable work of literary art. I’m sure it is but for me the humour Graves wrings out of the sometimes desperate and other times ridiculous situations in which he finds himself reminds me irresistibly of the Punch cartoon in which a red tabbed staff officer addresses a somewhat bedraggled soldier who forgot to salute him. ‘And how long have you been in the army, my man?’ he asks. ‘All bloody day, guv.’ comes the reply.
In 1915, an adjutant refused to send Graves to fight in France on three counts. 1. He had visited an inefficient tailor. 2. He had a soldier-servant who neglected to shine his buttons and polish his belt. 3. He was the only officer who hadn’t applied for leave to watch the Grand National in which a horse belonging to the adjutant was running. It was only after Graves proved he was a good sport by taking part in a boxing match, he was allowed to go to war at all.
His romance with Nancy Nicholson, sister of Ben Nicholson the poet, took him back a little when she declared her feminism and added of Christianity that ‘God is a man so it must be all rot.’ A few hours before their wedding in January 1918 at St James’s Church, Piccadilly, Nancy read the marriage service for the first time and was so horrified that she all but refused to go through with the wedding. As it was, he marched up the red carpet wearing field boots, spurs, and sword. To be met by his furious bride wearing a blue check silk wedding dress. ‘There were packed benches on either side of the church full of relatives, aunts using handkerchiefs, choirboys out of tune, Nancy savagely muttering the responses, myself shouting them in a parade ground voice.’ The embarrassments of their wedding night (both Robert and his bride being virgins) were somewhat eased by an air raid. ‘Zeppelin bombs dropping not far off set the hotel in an uproar.’
Another irresistible snippet comes in 1932 when Robert meets the bishop of Liverpool at Harlech. ‘The unfortunate bishop came out of the sea uttering cries of pain having been stung in the thigh by a jellyfish. He gladly accepted a cup of tea, tut-tutting miserably that he had been under the impression that jelly fish stung only in foreign parts.’
Brilliantly written and first published by Jonathan Cape, my Penguin edition cost me three shillings and sixpence in old money and is a constant bedside companion.
