Charles Edward Byles was born on 7th October 1873 in Hackney, London, UK. His parents were James Cotton Byles, MRCS (1838 – 1874), a physician, and his wife, Edith Adeline Byles, nee Dinham.
Educated at Uppingham School in Fircroft House, Charles went on to become a journalist.
In 1897, Charles married Rosalind Hawker. Charles and h is wife initially lived in Wandsworth, London but later moved to Amersham in Buckinghamshire, where Charles died in 1944.
NOTE:
Founded in 1871 by Reverend George Christian, who was then school Chaplain, Fircroft House is one of the ‘hill houses’, alongside its neighbour Highfield, overlooking the southern approach to Uppingham. A five-minute walk from the main school building, the house sits in private gardens, adjacent to open farmland and the Middle playing fields – giving a real sense of space and freedom. The house has its own football pitch, a games room with table tennis, pool and table football, and a large boys’ kitchen for year-group evenings.
The WW1 collection of poetry written by Charles Edward Byles was entitled “Rupert Brooke’s grave, and o ther poems “ (Erskine Macdonald, London, 1919).
"Might and Mercy"
HAD German might with mercy been allied
And chivalry march'd with conquest, bearing still
A heart to love, nor only hands to kill,
Then had the gray waves of invasion's tide
Reach 'd to the furthest flood-mark, there to bide
Unebbing: for the vanquish'd lands they fill
Would cry — " Submit we to the kindlier will :
What need of further blood ? too many have died."
But now — behold Louvain! Dinant! and all
The tale — so hellish — of a nation's crime
As haunts not the dark retrospect of Time !
The tide must ebb — and ebb beyond recall.
Else were life made a murderer's carnival,
And Earth spun back to its barbaric prime.
1914
Page 33
To read about how WW! Poet Stanley Casson organised the placing of a tomb over Rupert Brooke’s grave on the Greek Island of Skyros please see
https://forgottenpoetsofww1.blogspot.com/2015/03/rupert-brooke-1887-1915-british.html
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| Rupert Brooke's grave 1920s |
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| A recent photograph of Rupert Brooke's grave |
Sources:
“Rupert Brooke's grave, and other poems” by Byles, C. E. (Charles Edward),
(Erskine Macdonald, London, 1919), which is available as a download free via Archive.
Catherine W. Reilly, “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978) p. 17.
https://archive.org/details/rupertbrookesgra00byleuoft/mode/2up
https://archive.org/stream/rupertbrookesgra00byleuoft/rupertbrookesgra00byleuoft_djvu.txt
https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/charles-edward-byles/3561636/
