ABSTRACT
This chapter indicates a relation between Brooke's poetry and the portrait, called by Christopher Hassall in his biography Rupert Brooke 'A visual image that met the needs of a nation at a time of crisis'. Brooke was not obviously fitted for the role of patriot. He had, it is true, certain social advantages. He struck a figure at Rugby and Cambridge, his poetic powers rapidly won attention, and he mixed with leading personalities in literature and politics. His sex life was difficult. Living within the presexual or super-sexual, Nietzschean and lonely, integration at an age of physical maturity may be hard. The bare-shouldered portrait was Brooke's own idea. Michael Hastings writes (48): 'When Brooke posed for Sherril Schell, the photographer claimed it was Brooke's idea to have, out of the twelve frames, a picture of himself naked from the waist up'.
