Winchester College Publication Winchester College War Inscriptions | Page 6

first Grade I listed tweet; but he managed to achieve in addition the placing
of keywords in conspicuously key places; thus “Peace” in the centre of the
north range faces “Stronghold of Freedom” in the south.
Language was Rendall’s second problem. English was generally the preferred
language for memorials to the First World War. For Rendall, Winchester was
par excellence the classical school: and his daily stock-in-trade was translation
not only from Latin, but more particularly into it. Rendall’s ability and
experience in the vernacular were thus less finely honed than his skills in
the classical languages. “Rendall’s intellectual powers were not quite of the
highest order even in the classics”, Firth, slightly acerbically, comments. “He
published a book of verse which is unbelievably bad. His ear and his taste
were faulty. In his classical compositions this imperfection was concealed by
thorough training. In English he was left more to his own natural resources:
these were not enough to preserve him from error.”
The general popularity of Latin in lapidary inscriptions in part relates to the
concision possible in Latin as opposed to the diffuse nature of English.
Essentially, Rendall was forced by the spirit of the times to work in a language
he felt undesirable because prolix. His compromise was to place in small
letters on the inscription anything which in the inflections and declensions
of Latin could have been avoided: for whom, but, and in, or in, be to, for the,
too, of, off.
The third and most taxing difficulty for Rendall was the message. In
contemplating the texts, Rendall has to reconsider his attitudes to war and
to religion. These views were idiosyncratic. Rendall’s “religious faith was
simple and strong”, Firth tells us, “learned in his father’s Cotswold rectory,
and apparently never modified”. He was “indifferent to formal theology and
antagonistic to ecclesiasticism”. “The Rectory stood upon the rock of Faith”,
Rendall recalled. This meant that whereas many had their doubts about war,
Rendall did not. Even Spencer Leeson, a subsequent Headmaster and one of
Rendall’s acolytes, could concede that many Christians “believe with all their
hearts that fighting is not a possible duty for a Christian”. For Rendall,
however, war was mediaevally chivalric, humanly fine. He commissioned
from the artist Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale a triptych representing
Knightly Service, a pictorial realisation of his (rather far-fetched) notion that
the public school system had evolved from mediaeval schools of chivalry.
The most visible remnant of such belief can be seen on the cross in War
Cloister, which has two Crusader Knights on opposing surfaces. Baker sought
to have this design adopted by the Imperial War Graves Commission as
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Triptych with scenes of Winchester College,
by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, 1926.
standard, but the debate was won by Sir Reginald Blomfield, who proposed
the now highly familiar Latin cross with bronze longsword, blade down.
Rendall’s attitude to war was also influenced by his absorption in the classics.
“In his love of beauty in nature and art and literature he was almost more
Greek than English; … and indeed here was where he really lived”, Firth tells
us. “There was in him blending not often seen of the puritan and the
Hellenist, all the puritan strength of principle, and all the Hellenist’s love of
beauty.” Others could not see war, however, in this classical way. For Wilfred
Owen, for example, the often quoted sentiment of Horace that it is sweet
and fitting to die for one’s country (dulce et decorum est pro patria mori) was
now “the old lie”. Thus, over two years, Rendall had to redefine his views of
war, adapting it to the views of others, no small task for a man who not
infrequently found compromise inimical.
Rendall’s main tactic was to divert attention from any difficulties with his
native religious beliefs by appearing to evoke and espouse those of Hellenism:
the events of Thermopylae, the funeral speeches of Homer and Thucydides,
the whole panoply of classical commemorations of death in battle.
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