Poor Tommy
John Hinton on Isaac Rosenberg, the most neglected of the First World War poets
9 May 2008

Isaac Rosenberg: The Making of a Great War Poet by Jean Moorcroft Wilson,
Weidenfeld & Nicholson £25

They remain deep in our national consciousness, the poets of the First World War. Of course, we remember them. There is a corner of a Greek island where lie the remains of Rupert Brooke, the gilded youth whose "honey still for tea" evokes a leisured era broken forever by the war. Siegfried Sassoon is among the front rank with his general's famous "plan of attack". And Wilfred Owen's question, "Was it for this the clay grew tall?" continues to haunt us.

But, lest he be forgot, who was Isaac Rosenberg, a serving soldier-poet, whom T S Eliot called "the most extraordinary of the Great War poets"?

He died on the Western Front in 1918, a typical tragic early death at only 27. He differed from the other well-known poets of the conflict in almost every other respect - race, class, education, upbringing and experience.

The son of impoverished Russian Jews, Rosenberg served not as a young infantry officer like Sassoon but as a private in the army, a "poor bloody Tommy". He not only endured the shellfire and the terror of trench warfare but also punishing duties behind the lines in a nightmare of mud: repairing bridges, delivering barbed wire, taking the wounded to hospital and burying the dead.

Throughout, he never forgot to write, to exercise his calling. "The increased liveliness of my clothes" begs our sympathy as he decides to dump most of his clothes in winter "as I thought it wisest to go cold than lousy".

What do we make of Rosenberg? Not much physically. He was unremarkable looking, small in stature, mumbled in a curious way and was socially awkward. He spent so much time in libraries and was so single-minded about his poetry that his family believed he was mentally unstable.

His father left Russia to avoid military service and set off for America ahead of the family to find the promised land. Lack of funds meant he got only as far as Hull.

They moved to Leeds and then Bristol, where Isaac was born, and - now a family of seven - found themselves in a single room behind a rag-and-bone shop in London's East End so they could be near the Jewish Free School at Spitalfields. Isaac was barred from entering the school - already full - but eventually got a place at a state school in Baker Street.

Here, he learned Hebrew and for a time became interested in religion. But when the dismal standards of the school failed him and he left at just 14, his family stepped in.

A sister borrowed library books for him; a librarian advised him on poetry. Apprenticed to an engraver after leaving school, he wrote verses in his meal breaks.

After a time he attracted interest from publishers and other poets began to recognise his talent, among them Laurence Binyon whose hopeful poem - "age shall not weary them nor the years condemn" is read at every Armistice Day service.

Then came the war. Joining up in time for the 1916 Battle of the Somme, he began to write in earnest - about battle, sudden death, the poppy fields of Flanders, rats and the soldiers' constant struggle to rid themselves of lice. Poor rations and bullets whizzing overhead were bad enough but his ill-fitting boots rubbed all the skin off his feet so that his heels were constantly in agony.

He writes with a raw sense of realism of the privations of the ordinary soldier, and also with an artist's eye, for he was a gifted painter.

As far away as Chicago Ezra Pound was among those who noticed and encouraged his talent.

This is the poet's fourth biography and the second by Jean Moorcroft Wilson, who is married to the nephew of Leonard and Virginia Woolf.

She has written a biography of Virginia Woolf and other acclaimed biographies of Siegfried Sassoon and Charles Hamilton Sorley, now standard texts in First World War studies. She lectures at Birkbeck College, London, and has wide experience of speaking both here and in America. This latest biography, beautifully illustrated, is published to mark the 90th anniversary of Rosenberg's death and the end of the 1914-18 war.

We will remember the soldier-poet in future, for a book is surely far better than a forgotten grave.