Patrick Shaw-Stewart
Patrick Shaw-Stewart (17 August, 1888 - 30 December, 1917) was a brilliant Eton College and Oxford scholar of the Edwardian era who died on active service in the First World War.
His career was one of great academic brilliance, matched by a steely determination to succeed. He came first in the Eton scholarship in 1901, a year after his friend, Ronald Knox, had come first in the same examination. He won the Newcastle scholarship at Eton in 1905. At Oxford, he won the Craven, the Ireland, and the Hertford Scholarships in Classics as well as taking a double first in Classical Moderations in 1908 and Greats in 1910. Elected to a fellowship of All Souls, he instead committed his career to Barings Bank, where he was appointed one of the youngest managing director in the bank's history, in 1913. At this time he became devoted to Lady Diana Manners and became a leading member of her "corrupt coterie," known simply as The Coterie. When war was declared in 1914, he joined the Royal Navy and, serving with Rupert Brooke, played a prominent role in the famed young poet's funeral in Greece. Winning promotion to Lieutenant Commander, he was killed in December 1917.
His fame today stems from one of his poems, today one of the most well-remembered of the 'war poems' of the First World War, which begins:
I saw a man this morning
Who did not wish to die
I ask, and cannot answer,
If otherwise wish I.
The poem was written while Shaw-Stewart waited to be sent to fight at Gallipoli. He was stationed 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.