Thomas Osbert Mordaunt

Thomas Osbert Mordaunt (1730–1809) was a British officer and poet, known for "The Call".

Mordaunt was the son of Charles Mordaunt, also a soldier. His grandfather, Brigadier-General Lewis Mordaunt, was the younger brother of Charles Mordaunt, 3rd Earl of Peterborough, sometime First Lord of the Treasury.^[1]^[2] He was commissioned ensign and lieutenant in the 2nd Regiment of Foot Guards on 27 January 1753, and promoted captain-lieutenant in the 10th Regiment of Dragoons on 25 December 1755.^[3] He is recorded as having ultimately achieved the rank of major general.^[2]

Mordaunt is best remembered for his oft-quoted poem "The Call", written during the Seven Years' War of 1756–1763:

"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!

Throughout the sensual world proclaim,

One crowded hour of glorious life

Is worth an age without a name."

For many years, the poem was incorrectly attributed to Mordaunt's contemporary, Sir Walter Scott. Scott had merely quoted a stanza of the poem at the beginning of Chapter 34 (Chapter XIII of Volume II) of his novel Old Mortality.^[4]

One Crowded Hour, Tim Bowden's biography of Australian combat cameraman Neil Davis, takes its title from a phrase used in "The Call". Arthur Conan Doyle's short story, One Crowded Hour,^[5] makes ironic use of the same phrase.

References

^ The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom: Moels to Nuneham, G. E. Cokayne, The St Catherine Press, 1936, pg 203
^ ^a ^b "Mordaunt Family History and Genealogy Resource". Retrieved 1 December 2017.
^ Mackinnon, Daniel (1833). Origin and Services of the Coldstream Guards. Vol. II. London: Richard Bentley. pp. 486–487.
^ "The Project Gutenberg eBook of Old Mortality, by Sir Walter Scott". www.gutenberg.org. Retrieved 10 September 2021.
^ "One Crowded Hour, by Arthur Conan Doyle". Retrieved 17 October 2021.