Robert Graves (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

Miranda Seymour’s ROBERT GRAVES: LIFE ON THE EDGE is an engrossing biography. Duty and obligation are its themes, from distinguished service in World War I to supplying material needs of two wives, two families, and a series of mistresses. The first of these marriages was to Nancy Nicholson, a painter and designer who was still in her teenage years when she married Graves.

Nicholson was an unusual woman for her time. She never used Graves’s name, and dressed (becomingly by modern standards) in military-styled clothing of her own design. Graves rushed into this marriage. Possibly, this was to distance himself from the homosexual Georgian poets, among them Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, with whom he had associated during the war. To provide an artistic collaborator for himself and a companion for Nicholson, Graves invited the American poet Laura Riding to share their home.

What began as a platonic relationship became a love affair between Graves and Riding. It ultimately destroyed Graves’s marriage. Having won Graves, Riding declared their own relationship platonic and proposed a menage a trois with her own lover. When this failed, she attempted suicide. Notoriety and guilt led Graves to bring Riding to Mallorca, Spain.

After Riding left Graves, he lived with and later married Beryl Pritchard Hodge, wife of writer Alan Hodge. They moved to Mallorca after World War II. By this time GOODBYE TO ALL THAT: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY (1929; rev. ed., 1957), I, CLAUDIUS (1934), and CLAUDIUS THE GOD AND HIS WIFE MESSALINA (1934) had assured Graves’s popular success and financial security.

Sources for Further Study

Booklist. XCII, September 15, 1995, p. 129.

Boston Globe. December 3, 1995, p. 72.

The Economist. CCCXXXVI, July 8, 1995, p. 83.

London Review of Books. XVII, September 7, 1995, p. 26.

The Nation. CCLXI, November 20, 1995, p. 634.

The New York Times Book Review. C, November 5, 1995, p. 10.

The Observer. July 2, 1995, p. 15.

Publishers Weekly. CCXLII, September 11, 1995, p. 69.

The Wall Street Journal. October 24, 1995, p. A20.

The Washington Post. October 6, 1995, p. B2.