SECOND LIEUTENANT FRANK SIDNEY CHESTERTON
ROYAL FIELD ARTILLERY
11TH NOVEMBER 1916 AGE 39
BURIED: GROVE TOWN CEMETERY, MEAULTE, FRANCE
Frank Chesterton's wife, Norah, chose this inscription from a poem by W.E. Henley called 'What is to Come'. Henley was an influential literary figure at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, best known now for his poem 'Invictus' with its ringing last lines:
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
'What is to Come', though far less well known is a tender, bittersweet poem, very appropriate for a wife's farewell:
What is to come we know not. But we know
That what has been was good - was good to show,
Better to hide, and best of all to bear.
We are the masters of the days that were;
We have lived, we have loved, we have suffered ... even so.
Shall we not take the ebb who had the flow?
Life was our friend? Now, it it be our foe -
Dear, though it spoil and break us! - need we care
What is to come?
Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow,
Or the gold weather round us mellow slow;
We have fulfilled ourselves, and we can dare
And we can conquer, though we may not share
In the rich quiet of the afterglow
What is to come.
Frank Chesterton was a successful architect working mainly in London and the Home Counties, particularly in Knightsbridge and Kensington where much of the rebuilding of the High Street during the early years of the twentieth century came from his designs. He was also a partner in the family's residential property business, Chesterton and Sons, which his grandfather had started and which his son Oliver successfully expanded into one of London's largest estate agencies.
There's no indication that Frank Chesterton had been a Territorial and the fact that he served with C Battery, 92nd Brigade, a New Army battalion, would appear to confirm this. He saw service on the Somme and he died at a Casualty Clearing Station of wounds received the same day, 11 November 1916.