Brooke made friends among the
Bloomsbury group of writers, some of whom admired his talent while others were more impressed by his good looks. He also 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. This group included both
Robert Frost and
Edward Thomas. He also lived at the
Old Vicarage,
Grantchester, which stimulated one of his best-known poems,
named after the house, written with homesickness while in Berlin in 1912. While travelling in Europe, he prepared a thesis, entitled "
John Webster and the
Elizabethan Drama", which earned him a fellowship at
King's College, Cambridge, in March 1913. Brooke had his first relationship with
Élisabeth van Rysselberghe, daughter of painter
Théo van Rysselberghe. They met in 1911 in
Munich. His affair with Élisabeth came closest to be consummated than any other he ever had so far. It is possible that the two became lovers in a "complete sense" in May 1913 in
Swanley. It was in Munich, where he had met Élisabeth, that a year later he finally succeeded in a sexual liaison with
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. Many more people were in love with him. Brooke was romantically involved with the artist
Phyllis Gardner and the actress
Cathleen Nesbitt, and was once engaged to
Noël Olivier, whom he met, when she was aged 15, at the progressive
Bedales School. Brooke's accomplished poetry gained many enthusiasts and followers, and he was taken up by
Edward Marsh, who brought him to the attention of
Winston Churchill, then
First Lord of the Admiralty. He joined the
Royal Navy after the outbreak of war in August 1914, and was commissioned into the
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a temporary
sub-lieutenant shortly after his 27th birthday. Brooke was assigned to the
Royal Naval Division, an infantry division consisting of Royal Navy and
Royal Marine personnel not needed at sea, and took part in the
siege of Antwerp in early October. Brooke came to public attention as a war poet early the following year, when
The Times Literary Supplement published two sonnets ("IV: The Dead" and "V: The Soldier") on 11 March; the latter was then read from the pulpit of
St Paul's Cathedral on Easter Sunday (4 April). His 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 fuelled through posthumous interest. ==Death==