1913 The Poet Rupert Brooke

THE PINK & LILY

The poet Rupert Brooke, loved to visit and walk with his friends in this area, using the Pink and Lily as his base.   He was one of the leading WW1 poets, probably the pub’s most famous regular.  His most famous lines, from “The Soldier”, run:-

“If I should die, think only this of me

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is forever England.”

He did die from septicaemia from a mosquito bite, as he travelled to fight in the Allied landings at Gallipolli.   He is buried on the Greek island of Skyros.

LETTER

In March 1913, Rupert penned a letter to an old friend in what we now call The Brooke Bar:

“I write in the Pink and Lily.   The hill drops a few hundred feet in front, and beyond is half of Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire.   In this little room is the publican, asleep and rather tipsy”!

DOGGERAL

With his friend, the painter Jaques Raverat, Rupert composed an apposite piece of doggerel:

“Never came there to the Pink

Two men such as we I think

Never came there to the Lily

Two men quite so richly silly.”

It ended –

“And thoughts of love are just as silly

And just as frequent, just as sweet

As bitter at the Pink and Lily.”

One poem he wrote began:-  

“Ah Pink, ah pub of my desire,    Ah Lily for my meandering feet!”

Researcher's comment

"Our pub is perhaps unique in being celebrated in two poems written by one of Britain’s leading poets."

Editor’s comment

This is taken from a report by Nigel Henburst in 2015 on a celebration at the pub on the anniversary of Brooke’s death.