"The Old Vicarage, Grantchester" is a light poem by the English Georgian poet Rupert Brooke (1887–1915), written in Berlin in 1912. Initially titled "The Sentimental Exile", Brooke, with help from his friend Edward Marsh, renamed it to the title the poem is now commonly known as. The title refers to the Old Vicarage, a house Brooke briefly lived in the village of

Grantchester Grantchester () is a village and civil parish on the River Cam or Granta (river), Granta in South Cambridgeshire, England. It lies about south of Cambridge. Name The village of Grantchester is listed in the 1086 Domesday Book as ''Granteset ...

near

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

. The poem's references can be overly obscure because of the many specific Cambridgeshire locations (such as "

Haslingfield Haslingfield (''haiz''-ling-field) is a village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in South Cambridgeshire, South Cambridgeshire, England. The village is about six miles south-west of Cambridge, between Harston, Barton, Cambridges ...

and Coton") and English traditions to which the poem refers. Some, including

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to a ...

, have seen it as sentimentally nostalgic, while others have recognised its satiric and sometimes cruel humour. Using octosyllabics—a metre Brooke often employed—Brooke writes of Grantchester and other nearby villages. It is very much a poem of "place": the place where Brooke composed the work, Berlin and the Café des Westens, and the contrast of that German world ("Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot") with his home in England. Yet it is more than just the longing of an exile for his home, nostalgically imagined. The landscape of

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfor ...

is reproduced in the poem, but Brooke, the academic, populates this English world with allusions and references from history and myth. He compares the countryside to a kind of Greek Arcadia, home to nymphs and fauns, and refers to such famous literary figures as

Lord Byron George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824) was an English poet. He is one of the major figures of the Romantic movement, and is regarded as being among the greatest poets of the United Kingdom. Among his best-kno ...

Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer ( ; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...

, and

Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (; 6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's ...

. Homesick for England, a land "Where men with Splendid Hearts may go", it is Grantchester, in particular, that he desires. The poem ends with the specificity of place, referring to the Church of St Andrew and St Mary and the tea garden known as The Orchard.

Legacy

Landmarks

The house of Old Vicarage now has a statue of Brooke by Paul Day, which was unveiled by

Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013), was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of th ...

in 2006.

Musical settings

Charles Ives Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, actuary and businessman. Ives was among the earliest renowned American composers to achieve recognition on a global scale. His music was largely ignored d ...

set a portion of the poem to music in 1921.

Quotes

The final two lines of the poem are quoted

Sinclair Lewis Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature, 1930, he became the first author from the United States (and the first from the America ...

's novel ''

It Can't Happen Here ''It Can't Happen Here'' is a 1935 dystopian political novel by the American author Sinclair Lewis. Set in a fictionalized version of the 1930s United States, it follows an American politician, Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, who quickly rises to pow ...

'' (1935) and in Frank Muir and Denis Norden's comedy sketch '' Balham, Gateway to the South'' (1949). The Greek phrase ''εἴθε γενοίμην'' (formally "would I were", or in more modern idiom, "I wish I was") from the poem is quoted by Patrick Leigh Fermor in Iain Moncrieffe's essay for the epilogue to

W. Stanley Moss Ivan William Stanley Moss Military Cross, MC (15 June 1921 – 9 August 1965), commonly known as W. Stanley Moss or Billy Moss, was a British army officer in World War II, and later a successful writer, broadcaster, journalist, and traveller. ...

's '' Ill Met by Moonlight'' (1950), as well as in John Betjeman's poem "The Olympic Girl" (1954).

Titles

Iris Murdoch Dame Jean Iris Murdoch ( ; 15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her fi ...

's novel '' An Unofficial Rose'' (1962) and the ''

Dad's Army ''Dad's Army'' is a British television British sitcom, sitcom about the United Kingdom's Home Guard (United Kingdom), Home Guard during the World War II, Second World War. It was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft (TV producer), David Crof ...

'' episode " Is There Honey Still for Tea?" (1975) take their titles from phrases in the poem.

References

External links

Memoir A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based on the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autob ...

by Edward Marsh, including Brooke's letter to Geoffrey Fry, 1911, describing his feelings about being parted from England and Cambridge.
Full text
in ''The Complete Poems of Rupert Brooke'' (Sidwick & Jackson, Ltd, London, 1934), p. 93. {{DEFAULTSORT:Old Vicarage, Grantchester, The 1912 poems Grantchester