CAPTAIN JOHN EARNSCLEUGH BRYDON
ROYAL ARMY MEDICAL CORPS
27TH JUNE 1917 AGE 33
BURIED: ST MARTIN CALVAIRE BRITISH CEMETERY, ST MARTIN-SUR-COJEUL, FRANCE
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.