we're all saying
goodbye to something
robert
graves
an autobiography
1929
allthat
01
unlearn
innocent
My earliest recollections are of being brought up to speak the truth, to be punctual, to obey without question, and to avoid looking
self-conscious. My father’s view of life was entirely moral and my mother’s was entirely religious. Between the two of them,
I grew up under a tyranny of conscience.
02
Shape
Identity
At Charterhouse, I learned to survive rather than to shine. Bullying was accepted as part of education. There was a right way to walk, to talk, to think — all the rest was weakness. I began to write verses secretly, as though I were committing a crime. When the war came, I thought it might free me from the endless discipline of school.
We had been told it would be glorious
It was not
03
trap
glory
We had believed in courage, in duty, in the cleanliness of battle.
But the trenches were a world of rot — of rats, wire, and mud that swallowed the living and the dead alike. There were days when the guns did not stop for hours, and you forgot your own name in the noise.
The men who went over the top came back changed,
or did not come back at all.
I was wounded and left for dead.
When I woke in the hospital, I found my name printed
in the casualty lists. They had already buried me.
04
dear god
goodbye
03
oh god
faith?
THE HOSPITAL CHAPLAIN CAME TO PRAY BY MY BED. HE THANKED GOD FOR MY RECOVERY, THOUGH I KNEW I HAD NOT RECOVERED AT ALL. I HAD BEEN TAUGHT THAT PAIN HAD A PURPOSE, THAT SACRIFICE REDEEMED. BUT IN THE WARDS THERE WAS NO REDEMPTION, ONLY THE ENDLESS COUNTING OF NAMES. WHEN I WAS STRONG ENOUGH TO WALK, I WENT INTO THE CHAPEL. THE GLASS WAS CRACKED, THE FLOOR COVERED IN DUST. I STOOD THERE AND TRIED TO PRAY, BUT THE WORDS WOULD NOT COME. I REALISED THEN THAT THE GOD I HAD BEEN TAUGHT TO OBEY HAD STAYED BEHIND WITH THE DEAD.
I was taken back to England by hospital ship.
I had sent my parents a wire that I would be arriving at Waterloo Station
the next morning. The way from the hospital train to the waiting ambulances was roped off; as each stretcher case was lifted off the train
a huge hysterical crowd surged up to the barrier and uttered a new roar.
Flags were being waved. It seemed that the Somme battle was regarded at home as the beginning of the end of the war. As I idly looked at the crowd,
one figure detached itself; it was my father, hopping about on one leg, waving an umbrella and cheering with the best of them.
I was embarrassed, but was soon in the ambulance.
I was on the way to Queen Alexandra’s Hospital, Highgate. This was Sir Alfred Mond’s big house, lent for the duration of the war, and a really good place to be in; having a private room to myself was the most unexpected luxury. What I most disliked in the army was never being alone, forced to live and sleep with men whose company in many cases I would have run miles to avoid. I was not long at Highgate; the lung healed up easily and my finger was saved for me. I heard here for the first time that I was supposed to be dead; the joke contributed greatly to my recovery. The people with whom I had been on the worst terms during my life wrote the most enthusiastic condolences
to my parents: my house-master, for instance. I have kept a letter dated
the 5th August 1916 from The Times advertisement department
" Captain Robert Graves. Dear Sir, We have to acknowledge receipt of your letter with reference to the announcement contradicting the report of your death from wounds…
Having regard, however, to the fact that we had previously published some biographical details, we inserted your announcement in our issue of to-day (Saturday) under “Court Circular” without charge, and we have much pleasure in enclosing herewith
cutting of same.
The cutting read: Captain Robert Graves, Royal Welch Fusiliers, officially reported died of wounds, wishes to inform his friends that he is recovering from his wounds at Queen Alexandra’s Hospital, Highgate, N. ”
the
self
i
left
behind
home
04 goodbye
to my home
I left England because I no longer belonged to it. The war had turned my friends into strangers, and the streets into a language I could no longer speak. I went south, to the sun and to quiet.
In Majorca, the air was clean again, and the sea looked the same as it had before the world broke. I thought that distance would empty me, but it filled me instead with room to breathe
Farewell, England
I had loved you once and love you still
but I could not
stay.
I met Nancy Nicholson soon after the Armistice.
She was the daughter of the painter William Nicholson, a tall,
straight girl with a strong chin and a disarming laugh.
We married in January 1918; she was nineteen, I was twenty-two.
Nancy believed that after the war we must live differently — no servants,
no uniforms, no pretence. She would cut her hair short, wear sandals,
and work with her hands. I agreed with her; we wanted a life
with nothing false about it. We took a small cottage at Boar’s Hill
near Oxford, and tried to make it a home. She painted, I wrote
and we grew vegetables in the clay soil. We had little money
but we were sure that simplicity
would make us whole again.
Beyond
the
goodbyes
came
ordinary days
and in them,
enough.
After so much shifting about during the war
I disliked leaving home,
except to visit some well- ordered house
where I could expect reasonable comfort.
But Nancy was always proposing sudden
"bursts for freedom"
and I used to come with her
and usually enjoy them.
In 1922 we used a derelict baker’s van for a caravan ride down to the south-coast. We had three children with us, Catherine as a four-months-old baby. It rained every single day for the month we were away… It was near Lewes that we drew up on a strip of public land alongside the horse and van of a Mr. Hicks, a travelling showman from Brighton. He told us many tricks of the road and also the story of his life: "Yes, I saw the Reverend Powers, Cantab, of Rodmell last week… For you must know, I was once a master at Ardingly College."
The war had left me with a sense that nothing was ever truly secure; that every certainty could crumble in a day. But it had also made the ordinary precious. I no longer looked for greatness, only for small decencies.
The children’s noise, the smell of paint and bread, the sound of the sea beyond the window — these were things enough.
I found myself writing again, not about the war, but about living: the simple persistence of people who go on, whatever their wounds. I could not forget, yet I no longer wished to. Forgetting seemed another kind of death.”
to
all that
i had said goodbye
to the war
to England
to the person I had been.
Yet even in leaving
I found the same world waiting
quieter, but unchanged
in its depth.
The past did not vanish;
it walked beside me
like a companion
I no longer feared.
I learned that leaving
did not mean forgetting
The landscapes followed
me in dreams, in pages
in the smell of sea air
that felt like home
though it was not England’s.
to
all that
The days became
ordinary again.
I wrote, I walked, I loved.
In the ordinary
I found a kind of peace
the war had taught me
to doubt.
maybe
Every goodbye
leads here
not to ending
but to the quiet start
of seeing again
