Oops! I Did It Again

The one book I did manage to complete over the past few weeks slipped my mind entirely.

Goodbye to All That, by Robert Graves.

Odd that I should forget it, because Graves’s memoir of his time at public school and in the army during the First World War is, while obviously not unforgettable, a taut and significant description comparable to All Quiet on the Western Front, albeit from the perspective of a British officer rather than a German private. Moreover, that perspective couldn’t contrast more in attitude and philosophy to Erich Maria Remarque’s. Graves is an ex–public school officer who believes in the war, in the cause, and in the superiority of the British in general. Few qualms are expressed about the slaughter around him; Graves is not a tormented artist in the way that other war poets clearly were. Perhaps it's just that he is a less delicate flower than they. From my reading, though, I could not help but be reminded of Hugh Laurie’s lieutenant, George Colhurst St. Barleigh, in Blackadder Goes Forth. On occasion, Graves is little more than a better-educated version.

To be fair to Graves, around two-thirds of the way through the book he does begin to think that the war has passed its sell-by date, but only because he has learned that there had been peace feelers extended as early as 1915 with the possibility of negotiations on the basis of a return to the status quo ante, negotiations that were scuppered by Lloyd George. And although he begins around this time to consider himself a socialist, the book is littered with what would now be considered offensive offhand remarks about the Welsh, the Irish, and, particularly, the French.

But the book is significant precisely because it is a book of its time. It offers a genuine window into a particular period and the views of a particular class, whether or not that was Graves’s intention. It is also an amusing book; While the war is grisly and presented in all its gory detail, anecdotal oases appear throughout the narrative, such as the occasion when, thanks to a Morse Code typo, Graves’s home battalion is sent to Cork, not York, and this soon after the Easter Rising (I’m afraid even the humour has a colonial feel to it).

I notice that reviewers on Amazon almost universally adore this book. Despite its shortcomings, and its clear lack of impact on me, anyone who wants a better picture of the upper class at war should check it out.