For Remembrance...

I have just returned from the most wonderful visit to Belgium, accompanying students from the school I where I used to teach and where I am currently serving as a governor (I'm also an 'old girl'!)  The school's Senior Choir - girls from Years 9 to 13 - spent four days performing, sampling the culinary delights of Bruges and enjoying some lovely summer weather.   

Normally, such a visit would not warrant a 'Merry Shrew' mention, but the crowning moment of the week was their contribution to the Menin Gate Last Post ceremony on Wednesday July 9th which was one of the most memorable and poignant experiences I've ever had.

I've posted before about the Bensonian memorial window in what is now the Swan's upstairs foyer -The Merry Shrews of Venice: We few...  Although, as far as I have been able to discover, none of the memorialised Bensonians are on the walls at the Menin Gate, I ran through their names in my head during the one minute silence and then thought of the other members of the Company who had served in both the military and in support roles. This followed the buglers' Last Post and the 'Exhortation' from Binyon's  "For the Fallen", a silence filled with birdsong in the summer evening sun, before the first notes of the choir singing 'Amazing Grace' filled the space.  

Afterwards, the girls explored the monument in more detail, many visibly moved as people came over to recount their reasons for being there and the stories of some of those names.  

The Menin Gate Last Post was something which has long been on my 'bucket list' and is an experience I will never forget.  I'm already plotting and planning how I can return to explore more of the Flanders and French WWI sites.

UPDATE: After bit of internet digging, I have discovered that FRB's nephew, Lieutenant Hugh Cecil Benson is commemorated on panel 46 of the Menin Gate.  An architect by profession, he joined the Rifles in December 1914 and died on 22nd June 1916 at Hooge.  I've also found two accounts - one by FRB and the other by CB - of the Bensons' canteen work for the French Red Cross.  Of the two, CB's is (of course!) the better written and is illustrated with uncredited line drawings, presumably by a house artist at The Windsor Magazine.  Taken together they provide a fascinating glimpse into a very specific moment in time, far away from the world of touring Shakespeare. I've also unearthed several previously overlooked 1917 performances of a condensed 'Shrew' which the pair toured around the Music Hall circuit during the summer and autumn of 1917, in between their two stints at war work.   Performing twice nightly with two or three matinees a week, and supported by a number of variety acts, they varied from one and two night engagements to whole weeks in Glasgow and Birmingham.  Another side-scrape to explore...