Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography
Robert Graves
Language: English
Pages: 347
ISBN: 0385093306
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In this autobiography, first published in 1929, poet Robert Graves traces the monumental and universal loss of innocence that occurred as a result of the First World War. Written after the war and as he was leaving his birthplace, he thought, forever, Good-Bye to All That bids farewell not only to England and his English family and friends, but also to a way of life. Tracing his upbringing from his solidly middle-class Victorian childhood through his entry into the war at age twenty-one as a patriotic captain in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, this dramatic, poignant, often wry autobiography goes on to depict the horrors and disillusionment of the Great War, from life in the trenches and the loss of dear friends, to the stupidity of government bureaucracy and the absurdity of English class stratification. Paul Fussell has hailed it as ""the best memoir of the First World War"" and has written the introduction to this new edition that marks the eightieth anniversary of the end of the war. An enormous success when it was first issued, it continues to find new readers in the thousands each year and has earned its designation as a true classic.
made him most unpopular. His consolation was a real one, that he had done it all for love, to avenge the public insult done to the boy. And he was a decent fellow, really. The Poetry Society was dissolved in disgrace by the headmaster’s orders. Guy Kendall was one of the few masters who insisted on treating the boys better than they deserved, so I was sorry for him when this happened; it was an ‘I told you so’ for the other masters, who did not believe either in poetry or in school uplift
sentimental glory of the landscape. The first time I went with George to Snowdon we stayed at the Snowdon Ranger Hotel at Quellyn Lake. It was January and the mountain was covered with snow. We did little rock-climbing, but went up some good snow slopes with rope and ice-axe. I remember one climb the objective of which was the summit; we found the hotel there with its roof blown off in the blizzard of the previous night. We sat by the cairn and ate Carlsbad plums and liver-sausage sandwiches.
trenches, but the mines are still working. As we came out of the trenches the Germans were shelling the wood by Cambrin village, searching for one of our batteries. I don’t think they got it, but it was fun to see the poplar trees being lopped down like tulips when the whizz-bangs hit them square. When we marched along the pavé road from Cambrin the men straggled about out of step and out of fours. Their feet were sore from having had their boots on for a week – they only have one spare pair of
on my skin and said that when it reached a certain point they would have to aspirate me. This sounded a serious operation, but it only consisted of putting a hollow needle into my lung through the back and drawing the blood off into a vacuum flask through it. I had a local anæsthetic; it hurt no more than a vaccination, and I was reading the Gazette de Rouen as the blood hissed into the flask. It did not look much, perhaps half a pint. That evening I heard a sudden burst of lovely singing in the
serving your country as a very gallant gentleman prepared to make even the supreme sacrifice. I only wish I were your age: how willingly would I buckle on my armour and fight those unspeakable Philistines! As it is, of course, I can’t be spared; I have to stay behind at the War Office and administrate for you lucky old men.’ ‘What sacrifices I have made,’ David would sigh when the old boys had gone off with a draft to the front singing Tipperary. ‘There’s father and my Uncle Salmon and both my