There is a gap in Siegfried Sassoon's published diaries between 1918 and 1920, but of course we know what he was doing during that period. Jean Moorcroft Wilson's biography is always my first port of call when I want to find out details of Siegfried's activities at a specific time, such as February 1919, when he was beginning to fall out of love with Gabriel Atkin and was wondering what he was going to do with the rest of his own life. His respected mentor, W H R Rivers, had suggested that he study political economy, but Sassoon's character was not apt to submit itself to the self-discipline of a course of "independent study" at Oxford, the location he had chosen largely because of the proximity of his friends, Robert Graves, Frank Prewett and Lady Ottoline Morrell.
Although the sojourn in Oxford was fleeting, it introduced him to another literary circle, for the nearby village of Boars Hill was already becoming known as "Parnassus" because of the number of poets who had settled there. Since he was already confused about his own political views, his attempt at the academic study of politics and philosophy was almost doomed to failure, despite his best efforts. Far more interesting to him were the individuals he met in and around the city. The arrival of Robert Graves to take up the undergraduate place he had been obliged to forego when he joined the armed forces was eagerly anticipated, despite the fact that Graves had married Nancy Nicholson the previous year, much against Sassoon's wishes. By the time Graves arrived, the couple were the parents of a daughter.
Early in February, Sassoon set off to visit one of the most notable members of the Boars Hill community, John Masefield, who had been a hospital orderly in France and now spent his spare time keeping bees, goats and chickens. Masefield had his own theatre, designed for him by local architect Thomas Rayson, for which both Graves and Sassoon were encouraged to write plays, though it does not appear they ever did. The Graves family soon settled near Masefield.
Sassoon's other Oxford friend, Prewett, introduced him to the young William Walton, who had come up to Christ Church as an undergraduate at the unprecedentedly early age of sixteen but would be sent down in 1920. Sassoon's love of music is well known, and he would become a patron of Walton, who dedicated a later piece to him. He in turn introduced Walton to the Sitwell brothers, already friends of Sassoon's, and they returned the favour by introducing Sassoon to the novelist Ronald Firbank, who was more or less the same age but behaved so eccentrically that even the Sitwells - never noted for their conventionality - were nonplussed. Beverley Nichols, a fellow undergraduate of Sacheverell Sitwell, was twelve years Sassoon's junior, but they formed a brief relationship based on mutual attraction. Jean Moorcroft Wilson astutely points out that Sassoon's probable one-night-stand with Nichols was an indication of his increasing acceptance of his own sexuality.
Although Sassoon was becoming concerned that his poetic inspiration was drying up, one of his most famous poems, "Aftermath", comes from this period; this on its own may be considered to have made his stay in Oxford worth while. In mid-March, only a few days after writing it, he was offered a job by the Daily Herald, and this caused him to take the decision to leave Oxford, where he had realised he was never going to fit in. But the time he had spent there was far from wasted.
