Classical
"CURST GREED OF GOLD
WHAT CRIMES THY TYRANT POWER
HAS CAUSED"
VIRGIL
PRIVATE VICTOR LIONEL SUMMERS
Virgil didn't say this precisely; he used the word 'attest' rather than 'caused', not that it makes much difference. Virgil's point was that many crimes attest to, are evidence of, the power not of gold itself but of the greed for gold. The sentiment is similar to the biblical words from Timothy 6:10: "For the love of money is the root of all evil".
If that was Virgil's point, what was the point of W de V Summers, Victor's cousin, who chose the inscription? It sounds very much as though W de V was one of the many people who held the socialist view that the war was the result of imperialist tensions caused by world capitalism: "What was responsible for these wars was the whole world system of capitalism with its competitive struggle for profits and its collection of competing armed states".
It's strange that W de V Summers, the de V representing the family name de Vere, who lived in Berkeley, California should have been his cousin's next of kin but then Victor Lionel's parentage is something of a mystery. Aged four in 1891 he was living with his grandparents, and aged 14 in 1901 he was a pupil at St Saviour's College, Ardingly in Sussex. When he enlisted in Watrous, Saskatchewan on 28 October 1916 he named his grandmother, Elizabeth Summers, as his next of kin. She died in 1923 and perhaps this was before the War Graves Commission sent out the request for inscriptions.
Victor Summers served with the 28th Battalion Canadian Infantry and was killed on 9 August 1918 when the battalion was ordered up from the reserve to go to the assistance of the 31st Battalion in their attack on the village of Rosieres on the second day of the Amiens offensive..
NEC PROPTER VITAM VIVENDI
PERDERE CAUSAS
LIEUTENANT ROBERT QUILTER GILSON
Robert Gilson was one of the four members of the TSCB, the Tea Shop and Barrovian Society, a quartet of school friends of whom the other members were JRR Tolkien, Geoffrey Smith and Christopher Wiseman. Tolkien and Wiseman were the only ones to survive the war, Gilson was the first to die, killed leading his men into action on 1 July 1916.
The four were all pupils at King Edward's School, Birmingham where Gilson's father, Robert Cary Gilson, was the headmaster. He chose his son's inscription, a quotation from the Roman poet, Juvenal (c.55 BC-127 AD) which translates as, 'No, not for life lose that for which I live'. The meaning being that it is not worth saving my own life only to lose that which makes life worth living. And what was it that made life worth living? Robert Gilson probably explained this in his reply to Tolkien's letter of condolence when he wrote: 'you are going to win and restore righteousness and mercy to the councils of mankind I am certain'.
King Edward's have used Gilson's letters as the basis for a moving forty-minute documentary: Robert Quilter Gibson: Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, which is beautifully made and well worth watching. And there is more information about the four friends in Connie Ruzich's blogpost, The First Fellowship, in which she examines a poem Geoffrey Smith wrote in Gilson's memory, Let Us Tell Quiet Stories of Kind Eyes:
Let us tell quiet stories of kind eyes
And placid brows where peace and learning sate;
Of misty gardens under evening skies
Where four would walk of old, with quiet steps sedate.
THEN THE GODS PITIED HIM
AND TOOK HIM TO THEIR MIDST
PRIVATE ARTHUR PROUT
Who dies in youth and vigour dies the best,
Struck thro' with wounds, all honest on the breast
Homer Iliad Bk viii, 1.371
No one knows but that death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man
Plato 'Apologia of Socrates sec. 29
Prout's inscription makes sense if you take the view that to die in youth is to die the best, if death may be the greatest of blessings. It follows on from yesterday's inscription, 'Whom the gods love dies young', and it informs that very popular verse of Laurence Binyon's, now regularly recited at Remembrance Day services:
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Binyon probably meant the polar opposite from the way the verse is taken today - that tragically those who died in the war never had the opportunity to grow old. To Binyon, and to others, those who died young would be young forever unlike the survivors who would end up 'sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything' (As You Like It Act II. Sc. viii, Shakespeare).
Arthur Prout was 22 when he died of wounds in a Casualty Clearing Station on the Somme. His mother, Mrs Jessie Prout, requested information from the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau, which told her:
"This man was admitted to a dressing station administered by this Field Ambulance on the Bray Corbie Road (map reference approximately Sheet. 62D.J.24.b.) suffering from Bullet wound skull - fracture, and died a few minutes after admission. He was buried by an Army Chaplain close by at a spot known as Cemetery Copse, which has since been made an English Cemetery.
[O.C. 2/3rd H.C. Field Amb. R.A.M.C. B.E.F.]
WHOM THE GODS LOVE
SECOND LIEUTENANT DAVID PRITCHARD
'Whom the gods love dies young' (Menander), 'He whom the gods love dies young (Hypsaeus), 'He whom the gods love dies young, while he has his strength and senses and wits (Plautus). Byron echoed the ancient authors when he wrote:
"Whom the gods love die young," was said of yore,
And many deaths do they escape by this:
The death of friends, and that which slays even more,
The death of friendship, love, youth, all that is,
Except mere breath.
Don Juan (Canto iv st. 12)
The same sentiment lay behind the passage in Horace Vachell's 'The Hill' when the Headmaster told the assembled school that one of their number had just been killed in the South African War:
"I would sooner see any of you struck down in the flower of youth than living on to lose, long before death comes, all that makes life worth living. Better death a thousand times, than gradual decay of mind and spirit; better death than faithlessness, indifference and uncleaness."
I'm not suggesting for a moment that these were Dr Joseph Pritchard's sentiments when he chose his son's inscription. The phrase had come to mean that the dead person was beloved of the gods rather than that it was better to be dead, beloved of the gods because he was beautiful, graceful, accomplished, happy ...
David Pritchard's life and death is excellently covered on Bradford Grammar School's memorial site. Pritchard served with the 1st Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers, along with Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon. He was killed by a high explosive shell on the same night as Sassoon's friend, David Thomas. Thomas, Pritchard and another officer, all killed on the same night, were buried the following night with Graves and Sassoon both present.
Many people wrote many complimentary things about young David Pritchard, all lending credence to the idea that he was beloved of the gods, but it was what his father wrote of his son that is the most touching: "David was just an ordinary boy. He was afraid of the dark. He disliked to get hurt ... you will see what an ordinary boy can do if he sets himself to do it, and what one ordinary boy can do any ordinary boy can do".
SUCH A DEATH
AS THESE HAVE WON
GIVES THE TRUE MEASURE
OF THEIR WORTH
SECOND LIEUTENANT ROBERT BRIAN HOLMES
YORKSHIRE POST AND LEEDS INTELLIGENCER
Friday 7 July 1916
Sec-Lieut. Robert Brian Holmes, King's Royal Rifle Corps, who died of wounds on July 1, was the sixth and youngest son of the late Alfred Holmes and Mrs Holmes, of Udimore, Sussex, and Ashfield, Bingley. Educated at Oatlands, Harrogate, and at Haileybury, he was a partner in the firm of J.R.Holmes & Sons, Bingley, and at the commencement of the war enlisted in the Public Schools Battalion. He was granted a commission in the King's Royal Rifle Corps, and was sent to France in October 1915. He was wounded last spring by the accidental explosion of a bomb, but very shortly rejoined his regiment.
Despite the influence of the Classics in British education, especially in the public schools - Holmes was educated at Haileybury - classical authors do not provide many inscriptions. Except of course for Horace whose Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori always remained popular even after the savaging Wilfred Owen gave it in his poem of the same name. In fact, this is the inscription on Hume Sanders Wingard's headstone, just five graves down from Holmes'.
Kate Holmes, Robert's mother, chose his inscription. It comes from Pericles Funeral Oration taken from Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War:
"And of how few Hellenes can it be said of them, that their deeds when weighed in the balance have been found equal to their fame! Methinks that such a death as theirs has been gives the true measure of a man's worth."
J.R.Holmes & Sons, the firm in which Holmes had been a partner, were brewers, taken over by Hammonds in 1919. Was his death a material factor here? They were a prosperous family. The 1911 census shows there were seven people in the household: four members of the family, a cook, a parlour maid and a house maid in a house with eighteen rooms.
CHARACTER IS DESTINY
LIEUTENANT JOHN EDWARD RAPHAEL
The original quote comes from Heraclitus (c.535-475 BC), the meaning being that a man's character shapes his fate. The words appear on 'Jack' Raphael's headstone inscription in Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, and on his memorial in St Jude's Church, Hampstead-Garden-Suburb. His obituary in the Marquis de Ruvigny's Roll of Honour ends with the words, "If character is destiny, then his is assured", which is the dedication in the front of his posthumously published book, 'Modern Rugby Football'.
Raphael was a sportsman, playing both international rugby and county cricket. Educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St John's College, Oxford, he was a barrister at Lincoln's Inn when the war broke out. He joined up immediately, initially taking a commission in the Duke of Westminster's West Riding Regiment and then transferring in June 1915 to the 18th Battalion the King's Royal Rifle Corps, which was raised by his uncle, Major Sir Herbert Raphael. By June 1917 he was ADC to Major-General Lawford, General Officer commanding the 41st Division.
This did not stop him making periodic visits to the front line, which is what he was doing on 7 June 1917, the opening day of the Battle of Messines, perhaps curious to see the results of the nineteen mines blown that day along the Messines Ridge. Injured by a shell that exploded just in front of him, which killed his batman, Raphael died four days later.
There is a postscript to this story. Jack Raphael was his parents only child. His father died during the war. In 2014 a story appeared in the Daily Express. Apparently, one day in 1929 a well-dressed elderly woman made a visit to the cemetery at Lijssenthoek and sought out the gardener. It was Mrs Rapahel, Jack Raphael's mother. She had a request: when she died she wanted her ashes to be buried in her son's grave. She knew this was strictly against the War Graves Commission's rules, which is why she went directly to the gardener and not through any official channels. She died thirteen months later and the gardener on receiving the parcel containing her ashes promptly did as she had asked.
WHOM THE GODS LOVE
DRIVER MEARNS LAWRENCE DUIRS
Those "whom the gods love" die young. It is an ancient aphorism attributed to the Greek playwright Menander, 342-292 BC. The meaning being that the world of the dead is so much better than the world of the living that those whom the gods love aren't made to wait so long to get there.
Why is the world of the dead so much better? Many poets from Byron and Shelley to Binyon have explained:
Envy and calumny, and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not again;
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;
from ADONAIS An Elegy on the Death of John Keats by Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Whom the gods love die young" was said of yore,
And many deaths do they escape by this:
The death of friends, and that which slays even more -
The death of friendship, love, youth ...
from DON JUAN by Lord Byron
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grown old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
FOR the FALLEN by Laurence Binyon
Mearns Lawrence Duirs was nineteen when he died in Kenya on 31 December 1915 whilst serving as a driver with the East African Mechanical Transport Corps based in Voi. I have not found a cause of death but the job of a driver, transporting food and provisions to troops guarding the Uganda railway, was both arduous and dangerous as described by Valentine Dolbey in his book Sketches of the East Africa Campaign. The heat, disease, wild animals (man-eating lions), breakdowns, the state of the roads, land mines and German raiding parties all meant that death lurked along every mile. On 31 December 1915 it found Driver Duirs.
USQUE DUM VIVAM ET ULTRA
CAPTAIN THE HON. JULIAN HENRY GRENFELL DSO
Julian Grenfell, author of the poem 'Into Battle', was the eldest son of Lord and Lady Desborough of Taplow Court in Buckinghamshire. Educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, he joined the army in 1910. On 13 May 1915, he was hit in the head by a shrapnel fragment and died in hospital in Boulogne thirteen days later.
His inscription is part of a longer Latin quotation the origins of which I have been unable to discover: Hieme et aestate, et prope et procul, usque dum vivam et ultra - In winter and summer, near and far, during life and beyond. Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff recorded the inscription in the notes to his diary (1896-1901), saying that it was said to have been found in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. Berchtold Brecht quotes it in his play 'Life of Galileo' written in 1948. The words imply constancy, unchangeableness, - usque dum vivam et ultra.
PER ARDUA AD ASTRA
CORPORAL HERBERT GEORGE MUSTOE
This has been the motto of the Royal Air Force since it first came into being as the Royal Flying Corps in 1912: 'Per ardua ad astra', 'Through rough ways to the stars'. It is not an ancient, classical quotation and no one knows exactly where it came from. The story goes that it was suggested by someone who had read it in Rider Haggard's 'People of the Mist'. There it was the motto of the Outrams of Outram Hall and the inspiration for the two Outram brothers' quest to seek their fortune so as to be able to regain the family's inheritance, lost by their disgraced father:
"Per ardua ad astra," said Tom, absently reading the family motto which alternated pretty regularly with a second device that some members of it had adopted - "For heart, home, and honour."
"'Per ardua ad astra' - 'Through struggle to the stars' - and 'For heart, home and honour'," repeated Tom; "well, I think that our family never needed such consolations more, if indeed there are any to be found in mottoes. Our heart is broken, our hearth is desolate, and our honour is a byword, but there remains the 'struggle' and the 'stars'.
There is a suggestion that the RAF motto was inspired by lines from Virgil's Aeneid, Book IX Line 641 'Sic itur ad astra', 'Thus you shall go to the stars'. Virgil's lines certainly contain the words 'ad astra' but the sentiment bears much more resemblance to Seneca the Younger's 'Confragosa in fastigium dignitatis via est', 'It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness'.
Herbert Mustoe's wife, Daisy, chose his inscription. Mustoe, a house painter from Norwood, London, enlisted in the Royal Artillery during the summer of 1915 as part of the 39th (Deptford) Brigade. The brigade went to France in March 1916 where they continued their training before going into action in December. Mustoe served in D Battery, 186th Deptford (Howitzer) Brigade. We don't know exactly what happened to him but the 'Short History of the 39th (Deptford) Divisional Artillery' reports:
"During the first week in June (1917) the Divisional Artillery co-operated in two demonstrations against the enemy's trench system and batteries, especially during an attack made by troops on the right against Wytschaete-Messines and Hill 60. C/186th were very heavily shelled and compelled to leave their position after having two gun pits set on fire and ammunition blown up." This is followed by another comment: "Early in July (1917) the 186th Brigade was withdrawn having had a most unpleasant time in the past month". It was during this "most unpleasant time" that Corporal Mustoe died of wounds at a Field ambulance dressing station in Brandhoek.
OMNIA VINCIT AMOR
CAPTAIN CHARLES CADWALADR TREVOR-ROPER
The words for this inscription come from Virgil's Eclogue X, line 69, Love conquers all things. They were chosen by Charles Trevor-Roper's wife.
Charles Trevor-Roper was an actor. After taking his degree at Clare College, Cambridge he went on to study at the Academy of Dramatic Art. He toured Australia with Harry Irving's company during 1911, and at the outbreak of war was playing Captain Felix in 'The Grande Seigneur' at the Savoy Theatre.
On the death of his uncle in 1901, Charles had inherited the family estate of Plas Teg in Flintshire together with a large fortune. He was one of twelve children, ten of whom were older than him, but they were all girls. The twelfth child was another boy. Both boys, Charles and Geoffrey, were killed in the war.
Charles' only son, Richard, who had been the rear gunner in Guy Gibson's Lancaster bomber on the Dambuster Raid, 16/17 May 1943, was killed in action in another raid over Germany on 31 March 1944.
TELL ENGLAND
THAT WE WHO DIED
SERVING HER
REST HERE CONTENT
CAPTAIN MARCUS HERBERT GOODALL
Marcus Goodall's inscription is a modification of the one on the obelisk "erected by their comrades in memory of the NCOs and Troopers of the Imperial Light Horse" who were killed in the Battle of Waggon Hill, South Africa on 6 January 1900.
Tell England, ye who pass this monument
We, who died serving her, rest here content.
The epitaph is based on one said to have been written by Simonides, which according to Heroditus marked the graves of the Spartans who fell with Leonidas at Thermopylae in 480 BC:
O passer by, tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here obeying their orders.
[Mackail The Greek Anthology 1906].
William Lisle Bowles had translated the same epitaph in 1833 as,
Go tell the Spartans, thou that passest by
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
In 1856 Ruskin likened the English dead of the Crimean War to the Spartan dead of Thermopylae and suggested that the message they would have wanted sent home was, "Oh stranger, go and tell the English that we are lying here, having obeyed their words".
The Imperial Light Horse epitaph was said to have been written by the English born South African politician Edmund Garrett. A version of the epitaph certainly appears as one of his memorial verses in his memoir, but the words aren't the same,
Tell England, you that pass our monument,
Men who died serving Her rest here, content.
Ernest Raymond published his best-selling novel, Tell England, based on the Gallipoli campaign, in 1922. Many war cemeteries had yet to be contructed so there was time enough for the book to have an influence on the choice of headstone inscriptions. Simonides' epitaph, in Raymond's own translation, is used on a grave marker. Edgar Doe and Rupert Ray have gone searching for the grave of their friend and come across it unexpectedly.
"His name stood on a cross with those of six other officers, and beneath was written in pencil the famous epitaph:
Tell England, ye who pass this monument,
We died for her, and here we rest content.
The perfect words went straight to Doe's heart.
"Roop," he said, "if I'm killed you can put those lines over me."
I fear I could not think of anything very helpful to reply.
"They are rather swish," I murmured."
Marcus Goodall made friends with Siegfried Sassoon in the spring of 1916 whilst on an Army training course at Flixecourt and, after Goodall's death, Sassoon wrote an unpublished elegy to him, Elegy to M.G., which can be found in his notebook for 26 June to 8 Aug. 1916. Goodall makes an appearance as Lieutenant Allgood in Sassoon's 'Memoirs of an Infantry Officer'. Although the book is a fictional memoir there is no reason to think that the portrait of Allgood/Goodall is not an acurate one.
"Allgood was quiet, thoughtful, and fond of watching birds. We had been to the same public school, though there were nearly ten years between us. He told me that he wanted to be a historian, and I listened respectfully while he talked about the Romans in Early Britain, which was his favourite subject. ... Allgood never grumbled about the war, for he was a gentle soul, willing to take his share in it, though obviously unsuited to homicide. But there was an air of veiled melancholy on his face, as if he were inwardly warned that he would never see his home in Wiltshire again. A couple of months afterwards I saw his name on one of the long lists of killed, and it seemed to me that he had expected it."
AB UNO DISCE OMNES
RIFLEMAN RICHARD MCDOWELL
Ab uno disce omnes: from one example learn all. Virgil Aeneid II:65. A rather more expansive translation would be, from one example the character of a nation may be judged, and this, I am sure, is what Rifleman McDowell's parents meant to imply about their son.
HE PREFERRED A NOBLE LIFE
BEFORE A LONG
PRIVATE JAMES FINGLAND HYSLOP
Private Hyslop was born in 1887 in Muswell Hill, London. He enlisted in Calgary, Alberta on 11 June 1915. His inscription was chosen by his sister, Mrs JA Forbes. Whilst not a quote it owes its sentiment to Seneca the Younger, the Roman philosopher, who wrote: "Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.
NON NOBIS SOLUM
SECOND LIEUTENANT HENRY FREDERICK EDGCUMBE EDWARDES
Not for ourselves alone. The quotation comes from Cicero's De Officiis 1:22. Non nobis solum nati sumus ortusque nostri partem patria vindicat, partem amici. Not for ourselves alone are we born; our country, our friends, have a share in us. Henry Edwardes, a graduate of St John's College, Cambridge, had been a Classics master at Abingdon School before he joined up in the autumn of 1914. Their website commemorates his service.
QUI ANTE DIEM PERIIT
SED MILES, SED PRO PATRIA
LIEUTENANT JOHN RIGGALL BLAIR
These are the last lines of Henry Newbolt's poem 'Clifton Chapel'. They are not quoted from an ancient Latin author, Newbolt wrote them himself. The words translate as, 'Who died before his time - but a soldier, but for his country.' In the poem, published in 1898, a new boy at his father's old school is shown, by his father, the school chapel and encouraged to embrace the Christian and chivalric codes that constitute the public school ethos. Pointing out a brass memorial plaque on the Chapel wall, the father implies that there can be no purer following in life than to be a soldier who is prepared to die for his country. The last verse reads:
God send you fortune: yet be sure,
Among the lights that gleam and pass,
You'll live to follow none more pure
Than that which glows on yonder brass.
'Qui procul hinc', the legend's writ, -
The frontier grave is far away -
'Qui ante diem periit:
Sed miles, sed pro patria.