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Robert Graves |
Biography
of Robert Graves
Robert Graves was born in 1895 in Wimbledon, a suburb
of London. Graves was known as a poet, lecturer and novelist. He was also known
as a classicist and a mythographer. Perhaps his first known and revered poems
were the poems Groves wrote behind the lines in World War One. He later became
known as one of the most superb English language 'Love' poets. He then became
recognised as one of the finest love poets writing in the English language.
Members of the poetry, novel writing, historian, and classical scholarly
community often feel indebted to the man and his works. Robert Graves was born
into an interesting time in history. He actually saw Queen Victoria’s Diamond
Jubilee procession at the age of two or three. His family was quite patriotic,
educated, strict and upper middle class.He saw his father as an authoritarian.
He was not liked by his peers in school, nor did he care much for them. He
attended British public school. He feared most of his Masters at the
school. When he did seek out company, it was of the same sex and his
relationships were clearly same sex in orientation.
Although he had a scholarship secured
in the classics at Oxford, he escaped his childhood and Father through leaving
for the Great War. Graves married twice, once to Nancy Nicholson, and they had
four children, and his second marriage to Beryl Pritchard brought forth four
more children. Graves married Nancy Nicholson before the war.
Graves' own poetry and prose is the best source for a description of his war
experiences. It suffices to say that Graves never found what he was looking for
leaving for war, but rather, terror and madness in the war. He was wounded,
left for dead and pronounced dead by his surgeon in the field and his
commanding officer in a telegram to his parents but subsequently recovered to
read the report of his own demise in The Times. He amazingly recovered and was
given home service for the rest of the war.However, like many of his fellow
soldiers who were disabled by war, he could not get over the guilt he had
leaving the other soldiers to fight without him. Somehow, he insisted he be
posted back to the front lines. The military surgeon threatened him with court
marshall if he didn’t get off the front. Graves returned to England trained
troops, while maintaining contact with his poet friends behind the lines. In
this way he was able to save one friend from court martial after he published
an antiwar manifesto.
Though their relationship was initially happy and productive (Nancy and Robert
worked on a children's book together), the stress of family life, little money
and Robert's continual shell-shocked condition caused them troubles. Laura
Ridding arriving on the scene finished off their marriage.Laura Riding and
Robert Graves' relationship was immensely influential upon both of their lives
and careers. After
Riding's arrival in England, she began to exert an influence on more than just
Graves' writing. Following a sequence of events so crazy that they seem more
suitable to fiction than reality (including, for example, Laura Riding leaping
from a third floor window and breaking her pelvic bone in three places), Graves
abandoned his family and moved with Riding from England to Spain. The events of
this period were so momentous that all three biographers that have covered his
story, dedicate a large part of their studies to this couple.It's easy to
vilify Laura Riding. Graves was but one victim of her controlling personality
and her ambition. But then, Graves had his victims too. What cannot be
questioned is the value of some of the work that they did together. Much of it
remains important to both literary history as well as to scholarship.
In 1943 Robert Graves received the news that his son, David, was missing in
action. While he and Nancy held out hope that he would be found alive or that
he might have been taken prisoner, later reports suggested otherwise. David,
Robert and Nancy learned, had been shot while attempting to single-handedly
take out a well-defended enemy position. The chances that he had survived were
not good.By 1946 as England and Europe began to survey its post-War state,
Graves managed to secure transport for his family back to Majorca. Once safely
back there, then other than annual trips to England, occasional visits to the
continent and even rarer trips to America, the Graves' made Deya their home for
good. After 1948 and the publication of The White Goddess, as Graves' fame and
celebrity grew, Graves began a period of discovering muses who provided him
with a flesh-and-blood manifestation of his poetic and mythic muse. Some of
these relationships were short, others seemed largely innocent and more
flirtatious than serious or deeply poetic; however, four were, without doubt,
significant to Graves' life and, subsequently, to his work.
Graves' first muse after Nancy Nicholson, Laura Riding and Beryl Graves, the
first after he his White Goddess theories, was Judith Bledsoe. Judith was a
naïve young girl who found in the older Graves something of a father figure
Graves found in her the embodiment of the White Goddess.Graves had many
celebrity friends including film stars like Ava Gardner and Ingrid Bergman,
fellow writers like T. S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein. Robert Graves ceased
writing after his 80th birthday and his celebrity status slowly began to fade.
However, where his own career stopped, the critical and academic industry was
just beginning. He died in 1985 in Deja, a Majorcan village that he had moved
to and lived in since 1929.
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