Launcestons Stuff: September 2010

Patrick Houston Shaw-Stewart

17.VIII.1888 – 30.XII.1917

Patrick Shaw-Stewart was a brilliant Eton College and Oxford scholar of the Edwardian era who died on active service as a battalion commander in the Royal Naval Division during the First World War.

Patrick Houston Shaw-Stewart was born on August 17, 1888 at Aberartro Llanenddwyn on the Merioneth coast, second son of retired Royal Engineers Major-General John Heron Maxwell Shaw-Stewart and his wife Mary Catherine Bedingfield Collyer, only daughter of Colonel George Chancellor Collyer, also of the Royal Engineers, whom he married in 1871. Patrick was their youngest child, joining an elder brother Colonel Basil Heron Shaw-Stewart CMG DSO, and two sisters who died unmarried, all three survived him.

At both Eton, which he attended from 1901 to1906 and Balliol College Oxford from 1907 to 1910, he was a foundation scholar, and he swept the board of available academic prizes - the Reynolds and Newcastle scholarships at Eton and the Ireland, Craven, Hertford and Eldon Law scholarships while at Balliol, as well as Firsts in Honour Moderations and Greats.

Amongst his contemporaries, many thought his pointed nose, pallid freckled complexion and red hair unattractive, but he was by common consent the intellectual star of his circle: he was President of the Annandale Society and prominent in many of the other Balliol debating and dining societies which flourished in his time. His closest and oldest friends at Balliol were all Etonians: Ronald Knox, later his biographer; L.E. Jones who also wrote about him; and a doomed group which was exuberant beyond the patience of the dons - Julian Grenfell, Charles Alfred Lister, and Edward William Horner. Following Lister's rustication in 1908 for ridiculing the Junior Dean of Trinity College, there was an elaborate mock funeral at which Shaw-Stewart preached on the text "I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest".

In the autumn after Greats, he was elected a fellow of All Souls College, and he was entered as a student of the Inner Temple, but he had already accepted a job with Barings Bank. By 1913 he was a managing director. A member of the "corrupt coterie" of young aristocratic socialites which was centered on Lady Diana Manners, he corresponded profusely and intimately with her from 1908 until a few days before his death. From the very beginning of their meeting and “relationship”, Patrick’s epistles to Diana professed undying love. At the time, she was only sixteen, and at first the expressions were innocent, with no serious intent. They took on a form of a delightful stimulant to the responses of a budding enchantress. However, after Diana “came out” into the aristocratic milieu that surrounded her, she was now “fair game” and Patrick’s intent and hence his love letters became ever more serious. On the side of Diana, she walked a diplomatic tightrope, as it was her intent of fending him off, while still maintaining their friendship. In fact, she made it clear several times to Patrick that she did not return his feelings, and considered him as just one of her many suitors, still Shaw-Stewart ignored the warning. Sadly for Patrick, Diana teased and tantalized him, all the while loving Duff Cooper. When Patrick was killed, Diana’s response was to rise above it, and to refuse to mourn. Later she wrote of Patrick, “his instantaneous death – and an end to his brave heart and his mind teeming with methodical designs for a life of fine aims, fortune, and fulfillment. His memory will last as long as we who knew him live to remember.”

Lady Diana Manners

Shaw-Stewart was in America on bank business in 1914, but returned to England not long before war was declared. Commissioned as a Sub-Lt in the RNVR in September 1914, Patrick joined the Hood Battalion of the RND in November. When they sailed on the Grantully Castle for the Mediterranean on February 22, 1915, he took his Herodotus as a guidebook. His mess companions included F.S. Kelly, Bernard Freyberg, and Rupert Brooke. When they buried Brooke among the olive trees of Skyros on April 23, 1915, Shaw-Stewart commanded the firing party. After Gallipoli, where he grew a striking red beard and earned the Legion of Honour for liaison work with the French, he was attached to the French forces in Salonika through 1916, for which he was awarded the Croix de Guerre. Although appointed a staff officer (GSO.3), he badgered the War Office to be allowed to see real action, and rejoined the Hood Battalion in France in May 1917. He was killed on December 30, 1917 as its temporary commanding officer in the rank of Lt-Cdr, and was buried on 6 January 1918 in the British extension to the communal cemetery at Metz-en-Couture.

Characterized as a "war poet" in many places, this rests on a single poem which was unknown in his lifetime, albeit a memorable one, which has been printed many times since. Written in a rest period during the Dardanelles campaign, it is, like his correspondence, heavily laced with allusions to Greek epic literature. The poem was written while Shaw-Stewart waited to be sent to fight at Gallipoli. He was on leave on the island of Imbros, overlooking Hisarlik, the site of the ancient city of Troy, and in the poem, Shaw-Stewart makes numerous references to the Iliad, questioning, "Was it so hard, Achilles / So very hard to die?" In the final stanza he evokes the image of flame-capped Achilles screaming from the Achaean ramparts after the death of Patroclus, and requests that Achilles likewise shout for him during the battle.

At the same time, it seems to have been his only poem, found after his death written into his copy of Housman's A Shropshire Lad.

ACHILLES IN THE TRENCH
Patrick Shaw-Stewart

I saw a man this morning
Who did not wish to die;
I ask, and cannot answer,
if otherwise wish I.

Fair broke the day this morning
Upon the Dardanelles:
The breeze blew soft; the morn's cheeks
Were cold as cold sea-shells.

But other shells are waitind
Across the Aegean Sea;
Shrapnel and high explosives,
Shells and hells for me.

Oh Hell of ships and cities,
Hell of men like me,
Fatal second Helen,
Why must I follow thee?

Achilles came to Troyland
And I to Chersonese;
He turned from wrath to battle,
And I from three days' peace.

Was it so hard, Achilles,
So very hard to die?
Thou knowest, and I know not;
So much the happier am I.

I will go back this morning
From Imbros o'er the sea.
Stand in the trench, Achilles,
Flame-capped, and shout for me.'

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