Prose
EVERY NOBLE LIFE
LEAVES ITS FIBRE INTERWOVEN
IN THE WORK OF THE WORLD
ACTING BOMBARDIER THOMAS MOUNTFORD
Thomas Mountford's inscription is a slightly altered version of some famous lines from John Ruskin's 'Proserpina'. Ruskin claimes that the impact of a 'real' human life on the world is not at all slight or insubstantial:
"That life, when it is real, is not evanescent; is not slight; does not vanish away. Every noble life leaves the fibre of it interwoven for ever in the work of the world; by so much, evermore, the strength of the human race has gained; more stubborn in the root, higher towards heaven in the branch; and, "as a teil tree, as an oak, - whose substance is in them when they cast their leaves, - so the holy seed is in the midst thereof".
Mountford, the son of a hewer in a coal miner, was a trainee teacher in the 1911 census. He served with C Battery 232nd Army Field Brigade Royal Artillery and died of wounds on 31 July 1917, the opening day of the Third Ypres Campaign. His mother chose his inscription, asserting that her son's life had made a positive contribution to the 'work of the world'.
THERE IS NO SERVICE LIKE HIS
WHO SERVES BECAUSE HE LOVES
CAPTAIN JOHN EARNSCLEUGH BRYDON
This inscription is a very famous line from Sir Philip Sidney's New Arcadia Book 2:3 with the word 'who' substituted for the word 'that'. It is said of Zelmane, who has disguised herself as a page, Daiphantus, in order to serve the man she loves, Pyrocles, who doesn't love her. First published in 1593, after Sidney's death at the Battle of Zutphen in 1589, it is a convoluted story that at one time was both very well known and very influential. However, rather amusingly the admiration had worn off by the nineteenth century and the 1867 edition has an asterisk beside these lines to a note that says:
"A most charming sentence; the thought as beautiful as true. It is such as these, and there are many, that more than redeem the involved tediousness of the Arcadia. Of their worth Sidney (or his publisher) seems to have been fully aware, as they were set in italics."
The nineteenth century saw 'service' as the voluntary subordination of oneself to others as in a Christian or chivalric model. Consequently this "most charming sentence" regularly appeared in books of mottos and on calendars as the thought for the day.
John Brydon was a doctor, educated at Richmond School, Yorkshire and Edinburgh University. He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps Territorial Force in 1908 and by January 1914 had achieved the rank of captain. He was posted to France in April 1915 and served with the Ammunition Column attached to the Northumberland Division. He died from the effects of gas on 26 June 1917.