Robert Louis Stephenson
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"THIS HAPPY-STARRED
FULL-BLOODED SPIRIT
SHOOTS INTO
THE SPIRITUAL LAND" R.L.S.
PRIVATE FRANK WILLIAM TROTMAN
This is such a strong and appropriate inscription that it is quite extraordinary that it's not found more often. It comes from Aes Triplex, a famous essay by Robert Louis Stevenson in which, knowing that he himself doesn't have long to live, he urges people to rush headlong into life even if death is just round the corner: better to be taken at the flood than at low tide. Aes triplex is Latin for triple brass, battle armour was made of triple brass and thought to be indestructible. To Stevenson, someone who dies in the fullness of life is therefore similarly indestructible. The following long but edited passage gives an indication of Stevenson's meaning:
"It is better to lose life like a sprendthrift that to waste it like a miser. It is better to live and be done with it, than die daily in the sick room. ... does not life go down with a better grace, foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling to an end in sandy deltas? When the Greeks made their fine saying that those whom the Gods love die young, I cannot help believing they had this sort of death also in their eye. ... In the hot-fit of life, a-tiptoe on the highest point of being, he passes at a bound on to the other side. ... the trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds of glory, this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the spiritual land.
Aes Triplex
Robert Louis Stevenson
Stevenson wrote of the dying trailing crowds of glory, Wordsworth originally associated them with the new-born. To Wordsworth we don't enter the world in "utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home".
Mr WG Trotman of 88 Lower Kennington Lane, London SE11 signed the form to confirm Frank Trotman's inscription. This was probably his father, George Trotman of Trotman & Co, tea dealers and grocers operating from that address. Frank was educated at St Olave's Grammar School, worked for London County Council, he's commemorated on their war memorial, and was killed in action on 7 October 1916 in the attack on Transloy Ridge.
"STEEL TRUE AND BLADE STRAIGHT
THE GREAT ARTIFICER
MADE MY MATE"
LANCE CORPORAL GUY MELVILLE FARNDEN
This is a quote from Robert Louis Stevenson's beautful poem 'My Wife':
Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer
Made my mate.
Honour, anger, valour, fire;
A love that life could never tire,
Death quench or evil stir,
The mighty master
Gave to her.
Teacher, tender, comrade, wife,
A fellow-farer true through life,
Heart-whole and soul free
The august father
Gave to me.
Guy Farnden's wife, Edith, chose his incription, transferring the qualities Stevenson had bestowed on his beloved and greatly valued wife onto her own husband to whom she had been married for ten years.
GLAD DID HE LIVE
AND GLADLY DIED
AND HE LAID HIM DOWN
WITH A WILL
CAPTAIN RICHARD JOHN CLARKE
On 10 March 1915 the British army launched its first major planned offensive against the German lines. Soldiers from the Indian Army made up half the attacking force and suffered heavy casualties, the 39th Garhwal Rifles losing four officers and 120 men that day.
Captain Richard John Clarke, the son of Major Charles James Clarke, Royal Engineers, was born in Sydney, Australia in 1879. In 1911 he was serving with the 8th Rajputs in Hong Kong, and in 1914 he was in Peshawar. He was killed leading a frontal attack on the German trenches.
His inscription is adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson's poem, Requiem, which is inscribed on Stevenson's own grave in Samoa.
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and glady die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you 'grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.