Editing Good-Bye to All That

{{Short description|1929 autobiography by Robert Graves}}
{{About|the autobiography of Robert Graves|the 2014 film|Goodbye to All That (film)}}
{{Use British English|date=September 2013}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2020}}
{{Infobox book
| name          = Good-Bye to All That
| title_orig    =
| translator    =
| image         =
| image_size = 200px
| caption = Cover of the first edition
| author        = [[Robert Graves]]
| illustrator   =
| cover_artist  =
| country       = United Kingdom
| language      = English
| series        =
| genre         = Autobiography
| publisher     = [[Jonathan Cape]]
| release_date  = 1929<br />1957 (2nd Edition)
| media_type    = Print (hardback & paperback)
| pages         = 368 (paperback)
| isbn          = 0-385-09330-6
| dewey= 821/.912 B 20
| congress= PR6013.R35 Z5 1990
| oclc= 21298973
| preceded_by   =
| followed_by   =
}}

'''''Good-Bye to All That''''' is an autobiography by [[Robert Graves]] which first appeared in 1929, when the author was 34 years old. "It was my bitter leave-taking of England," he wrote in a prologue to the revised second edition of 1957, "where I had recently broken a good many conventions".<ref name="bye">{{cite book
| author=Robert Graves
 | title=Good-Bye to All That
|publisher=London: Penguin
| year=1960
|page=7}}</ref> The title may also point to the passing of an old order following the cataclysm of the [[First World War]]; the supposed inadequacies of [[patriotism]], the interest of some in [[atheism]], [[feminism]], [[socialism]] and [[pacifism]], the changes to traditional married life, and not least the emergence of new styles of literary expression, are all treated in the work, bearing as they did directly on Graves's life. The unsentimental and frequently comic treatment of the banalities and intensities of the life of a British army officer in the First World War gave Graves fame,<ref name="bye" /> notoriety and financial security,<ref name="bye" /> but the book's subject is also his family history, childhood, schooling and, immediately following the war, early married life; all phases bearing witness to the "particular mode of living and thinking" that constitute a poetic sensibility.<ref name="bye"/>

[[Laura Riding]], Graves's lover, is credited with being a "spiritual and intellectual midwife" to the work.<ref>Richard Perceval Graves, 'Graves, Robert von Ranke (1895–1985)’, [http://www.oxforddnb.com Oxford Dictionary of National Biography], Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, October 2006.</ref> Graves, in a 1969 interview, claimed that he "entirely rewrote" the book—"every single sentence"—when it was reissued in the 1950s, suggesting that the process of co-writing ''[[The Reader Over Your Shoulder]]'' had made him more conscious of, and determined to rectify, deficiencies in his own style.<ref>"The Art of Poetry XI: Robert Graves," in ''Conversations with Robert Graves'', ed. Frank L. Kersnowski (1989), University Press of Mississippi, p. 101.</ref>

==Pre-war life==
Graves undertook [[climbing]], stating "the sport made all others seem trivial."  His first climb was [[Crib y Ddysgl]], followed by climbs on [[Crib Goch]] and [[Y Lliwedd]].<ref name=Graves/>{{rp|61–66}}

Graves goes on to claim, "In English preparatory and public schools romance is necessarily homosexual.  The opposite sex is despised and treated as something obscene.  Many boys never recover from this perversion.  For every one born homosexual, at least ten permanent pseudo-homosexuals are made by the public school system: nine of these ten as honourably chaste and sentimental as I was."<ref name=Graves/>{{rp|19}}

==Wartime experiences==
A large part of the book is taken up by his experience of the First World War, in which Graves served as a lieutenant, then captain in the [[Royal Welch Fusiliers]], with [[Siegfried Sassoon]]. ''Good-Bye to All That'' provides a detailed description of [[trench warfare]], including the tragic incompetence of the [[Battle of Loos]], including the use of [[chemical warfare#World War I|gas]], and the bitter fighting in the first phase of the [[Somme Offensive]].

Graves claimed, "At least one in three of my generation at school died; because they all took commissions as soon as they could, most of them in the infantry and Royal Flying Corps.  The average life expectancy of an infantry subaltern on the [[western Front (World War I)|Western Front]] was, at some stages of the War, only about three months; by which time he had been either wounded or killed."<ref name=Graves/>{{rp|59}}

Regarding trench conditions and [[Cuinchy]]-bred rats, Graves stated, "They came up from the canal, fed on the plentiful corpses, and multiplied exceedingly."<ref name=Graves/>{{rp|138}}

===Wounds===
In the Somme engagement, Graves was wounded while leading his men through the cemetery at Bazentin-le-petit church on 20 July 1916. The wound initially appeared so severe that military authorities erroneously reported to his family that he had died. While mourning his death, Graves's family received word from him that he was alive, and put an announcement to that effect in the newspapers. Graves later regretted omitting from the book the name of the soldier who had rescued him, Owen Roberts. The two met again fifty years later in a hospital ward to which both had been admitted for surgery, after which Graves signed Roberts's copy of the book, giving Roberts full credit for saving his life.<ref>[https://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/good-bye-to-all-that ''Good-bye to All That''], by [[Roger Ebert]], 4 December 1966 (published online on 22 December 2010</ref>

===Reputed atrocities===

Graves also discussed atrocities committed during the war in ''Good-Bye to All That''. He wrote that among his fellow troops, Allied [[atrocity propaganda]], such as reports of the [[rape of Belgium]], was widely disbelieved (defining "atrocities" in the book as [[wartime sexual violence]], [[mutilation]] and [[torture]] instead of [[summary execution]]s). Graves also noted that if "the atrocity-list had to include the accidental-on-purpose bombing or machine-gunning of civilians from the air, the Allies were now committing as many atrocities as the Germans." Observing French and Belgian civilians showing British soldiers body parts allegedly mutilated by German troops, he argued that these were more likely the result of indiscriminate shelling.<ref name=Graves/>{{rp|183–184}}

Though the German use of [[Seitengewehr 98|serrated knives]] and British deployment of [[expanding bullet]]s were regarded by the other side as "atrocious", Graves claimed that the opportunity for soldiers on both sides to commit "true atrocities" only occurred when escorting [[Prisoner of war|prisoners of war]] to the rear lines. "Nearly every instructor in the mess", he wrote, "could quote specific instances of prisoners having been murdered on the way back. The commonest motives were, it seems, revenge for the death of friends or relatives, jealousy of the prisoner's trip to a comfortable [[Prisoner-of-war camp|prison camp]] in England, military enthusiasm, fear of being suddenly overpowered by the prisoners or, more simply, impatience with the escorting job."  Similarly, "If a German patrol found a wounded man, they were likely as not to cut his throat." However, if POWs arrived at their destination, they were treated well during interrogations.<ref name=Graves/>{{rp|131,183–184}}

In the book, Graves stated that Australian and Canadian troops had the worst reputation for atrocities against German POWs. He recounted two first-hand anecdotes from a [[Scottish Canadians|Scottish-Canadian]] and an [[Australians|Australian]], who told him how they murdered German prisoners while escorting them using [[Mills bomb]]s. Canadian soldiers were motivated to commit atrocities against POWs due to the story of "[[The Crucified Soldier]]", which Graves and his fellow soldiers also refused to believe. He also added that the use of "semi-civilized coloured troops in Europe was, from the German point of view, we knew, one of the chief Allied atrocities. We sympathized."<ref name=Graves/>{{rp|184–185}}

===Postwar trauma===
Graves was severely traumatised by his war experience. After being wounded in the lung by a shell blast, he endured a squalid five-day train journey with unchanged bandages. During initial military training in England, he received an electric shock from a telephone that had been hit by [[lightning]], which caused him for the next twelve years to stammer and sweat badly if he had to use one. Upon his return home, he describes being haunted by ghosts and nightmares.<ref name=trickster>[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:yhpAPPEXBNcJ:digitalcommons.trinity.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D1017%26context%3Dtrickstersway+ "The Other: For Good and For Ill"]{{Dead link|date=June 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} by Prof. Frank Kersnowski in Trickster's Way, Volume 2, Issue 2, 2003</ref>

According to Graves, "My particular disability was [[neurasthenia]]."  He went on to say, "Shells used to come bursting on my bed at midnight&nbsp;... strangers in daytime would assume the faces of friends who had been killed."  Offered a chance to rejoin [[George Mallory]] in climbing, Graves declined, "I could never again now deliberately take chances with my life."<ref name="Graves">{{cite book |last1=Graves |first1=Robert |title=Good-Bye To All That |date=1985 |publisher=Vintage International Edition |isbn=9780385093309 |pages=249, 267–268, 272, 287, 289, 296, 314}}</ref>

==Critical responses==
[[Siegfried Sassoon]] and his friend [[Edmund Blunden]] (whose First World War service had been in a different regiment) took umbrage at the contents of the book. Sassoon's complaints mostly related to Graves's depiction of him and his family, whereas Blunden had read the memoirs of [[J. C. Dunn]] and found them at odds with Graves in some places.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.robertgraves.org/issues/36/7282_article_13.pdf |title=Hugh Cecil, "Edmund Blunden and First World War Writing 1919–36" |access-date=6 November 2012 |archive-date=21 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220121154619/http://www.robertgraves.org/issues/36/7282_article_13.pdf |url-status=dead }} Dunn's memoirs were not published until 1938.</ref> The two men took Blunden's copy of ''Good-Bye to All That'' and made marginal notes contradicting some of the text. That copy survives and is held by the [[New York Public Library]].<ref>[http://www.nypl.org/blog/2010/06/04/engaging-text-literary-marginalia-berg-collection Anne Garner, "Engaging the Text: Literary Marginalia in the Berg Collection", June 4, 2010. Accessed 6 November 2012.]</ref> Graves's father, [[Alfred Perceval Graves]], also incensed at some aspects of Graves's book, wrote a riposte to it titled ''To Return to All That.''<ref name="google">{{cite book|title=To return to all that: an autobiography |author=Graves, A. P. |date=1930 |publisher=J. Cape |url=https://archive.org/details/toreturntoalltha0000grav |url-access=registration |access-date=7 December 2014}}</ref>

It was included in [[Robert McCrum]]'s ''Guide to the 100 greatest nonfiction books in English'' published by ''[[The Guardian]]''.<ref>{{Cite news |last=McCrum |first=Robert |date=2016-11-28 |title=The 100 best nonfiction books: No 44 – Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves (1929) |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian|location=London|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/28/100-best-nonfiction-books-no-44-goodbye-to-all-that-robert-graves-1929 |access-date=2023-11-08 |issn=0261-3077}}</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.80670/page/n7/mode/2up Full text of ''Good-Bye to All That''] at Internet Archive

{{Robert Graves}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Good-Bye To All That}}
[[Category:1929 non-fiction books]]
[[Category:Literary autobiographies]]
[[Category:History books about World War I]]
[[Category:Books by Robert Graves]]
[[Category:Personal accounts of World War I]]
[[Category:Royal Welch Fusiliers]]