BIB_ID
436123
Accession number
MA 23620.1
Creator
Brooke, Rupert, 1887-1915.
Display Date
Rugby, England, 1907? March 25.
Credit line
Purchased on the Drue Heinz Fund for Twentieth-Century Literature and the Kenneth Lohf Fund, 2020.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 17.7 x 11.5 cm
Notes
On mourning stationery with the letterhead "School Field, / Rugby."
Brooke does not date the letter, but based on the use of mourning stationery and the contents, it was most likely written in 1907. Brooke's older brother Richard died of pneumonia on January 13, 1907.
Transcription available in the Collection File.
Part of a collection, MA 23620.1-5, consisting of Brooke's letter to Goldschmidt, drafts of letters from Goldschmidt to Brooke, and notes by Goldschmidt. Each item in the collection is cataloged individually.
Brooke does not date the letter, but based on the use of mourning stationery and the contents, it was most likely written in 1907. Brooke's older brother Richard died of pneumonia on January 13, 1907.
Transcription available in the Collection File.
Part of a collection, MA 23620.1-5, consisting of Brooke's letter to Goldschmidt, drafts of letters from Goldschmidt to Brooke, and notes by Goldschmidt. Each item in the collection is cataloged individually.
Provenance
E.P. Goldschmidt; Jacques Vellekoop. Purchased from Maggs Bros. Ltd, March 2020.
Summary
Referring to how long it has taken him to respond to Goldschmidt; explaining that while he was at Cambridge he was busy writing a paper "for a society of youths of this school"; saying that when he arrived in Rugby, he found that his father (William Parker Brooke, a housemaster at Rugby) was very ill; adding that he is recovering but that Brooke has had to do his father's work in the meantime; describing the weather and commenting on Rugby; adding that it has been a bad season for illness at the school and two boys have died of pneumonia: "To die at 15 with all the best of their life unlived! Is there a greater tragedy than for a boy to die, except for him to grow old, to live?"; adding that he is sorry that Goldschmidt has put him on a pedestal: "It is a mistake I made myself, once."
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