Richard Halliburton - Private Writing

Private Writing

Halliburton admired English poet Rupert Brooke (1887–1915), whose Apollonian beauty and patriotic verse captivated a generation. Serving his country in World War I, Brooke died of a fever on his way to Gallipoli, and was buried on the Greek island of Skyros. The legend of the poet who perished in his prime grew, and he became one of the most heavily anthologised of the World War I poets. Brooke was bisexual and became infatuated several times, and the end of one of these affairs caused him to leave England to travel around the world. He settled for a time in the South Seas and "went native" to some extent; he documented parts of this trip with columns published in the Westminster Gazette. These elements—celebrity, travel writing, the beauty of youth, covert sexuality—would explain Halliburton's desire to know more of Brooke. Halliburton intended to write his biography and kept ample notes for the task, interviewing in person or corresponding with prominent British literary and salon figures who had known Brooke, including Lady Violet Asquith Bonham-Carter, Walter de la Mare, Cathleen Nesbitt, Noel Olivier, Alec Waugh, and Virginia Woolf. Halliburton never began the book, but his notes were used by Arthur Springer to write Red Wine of Youth—A Biography of Rupert Brooke (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952).

Halliburton wrote over a thousand letters to his parents. Bobbs-Merrill published (1940) a selection which his father had edited, as Richard Halliburton: His Story of His Life's Adventure As Told to His Mother and Father.