THE CREALOCKS: TWO SOLDIER ARTISTS FROM THE CRIMEA
TO THE ZULU WAR
R.A. BROWN, Formerly University Librarian and E. HANCOCK, Formerly Curator of Low Parks Museum Hamilton
Henry Hope and John North Crealock were talented artists who served in the Army. An
extensive archive of sketches, drawings and paintings relating to the
period 1850-90 exists in a number of public collections. These
collections appear to have been little studied. They offer an
interesting and at times humorous insight into life in the Army
during the heyday of the British colonial era. This article draws
together known information of the brothers' artistic and military
lives.
Henry Hope (1831-91) and John North (1836-95) were the sons of William Belton
Crealock (1789-1854), a London solicitor, and his wife Ann
Swain. They came from a line of farmers who had lived for a long time
in the parish of Littleham, Bideford in North Devon. The family home
was at Langerton, now Higher Langdon. It is in disrepair. The remains
of many of the family lie in the churchyard of St. Swithun's Church.
Some prospered more than others. Since 1965 there has been a public
house, The Crealock Arms, in Littleham on the site of a Crealock
farm.
William Belton Crealock, whose father was a Bideford attorney, married into money
and set up practice in London. His sons were born at Stanhope Place,
near Marble Arch. He was able to send the boys to Rugby School and to
pay for their commissions in the Army, in which both attained high
rank. Downe' has described their school-days at Rugby and their
love of hunting and fishing. He suggests that an ‘instinctive
feel for terrain and landscape.' could have originated during their
country holidays in Devonshire.
Henry Hope Crealock, the second son, was born on 31 March 1831. His interest in and flair for portraiture
is evident in the albums of silhouettes, made of black paper
cuttings, the earliest dating from when he was only twelve.'
On 13 October 1848, at the age of seventeen, he was commissioned in the 90th Light
Infantry (the Perthshire Volunteers) which in 1881 was amalgamated
with the 26th.Regiment, The Cameronians, to become The Cameronians
(Scottish Rifles), sadly disbanded in 1968. He was promoted
Lieutenant on 24 December 1852 and Captain two years later. He served
in the Crimean War at the siege of Sebastopol and was mentioned in
despatches for his conduct during the attacks on the Redan. In 1855
he was appointed Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General.
After only seven
years' service he was promoted Major in 1856 and posted to
Constantinople.
In 1857 he served as Deputy Assistant Quartermaster- General with
the China Expeditionary Force, and was present at the operations at
Canton and the capture of Yeh. In 1858, ten years after receiving his
first commission, Henry Hope was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel
at the age of twenty-seven. He left China for India in January
1858, and served on the staff in the Rohilkhand, Biswara and Trans
Gogra campaigns, with Sir William Rose Mansfield, before returning to
China in 1860 as Military Secretary, to Lord Elgin. He was present at
the surrender of the Taku Forts and the capture of Peking. In October
1860, when the army looted and destroyed the island Summer Palace of
the Emperor Yuen Ming Yuan near Peking, Henry Hope acquired a
splendid Gobelin tapestry, Le Combat des Animaux, probably
woven between 1715 and 1723.
Following his return home in 1860 he published Sketches of the
Chinese Campaign, a collection of photogravure plates. This was the first of several series
recording his experiences while on campaign. He was a prolific and
very talented artist whose sketches show army life in immense detail
and, at times, with considerable humour.
Henry Hope went with Wolseley to New Brunswick in 1861-2, followed by a posting to
Gibraltar from 1862 to 1865. Promoted Colonel in 1864, he was
appointed Military Attache at St Petersburg in 1865 and then at
Vienna, 1866-9, which included the Seven Weeks' War between
Austria and Prussia. In June 1869 he was made a Companion of the
Bath' and, while in Vienna, commissioned from R. Russ a portrait,` in
which he is wearing the Companion's neck badge. He was promoted
Major-General in 1870, at the age of thirty-nine, and was
QuartermasterGeneral in Ireland from 1874 to 1877.
In 1873 it was proposed that he should enter Parliament and the
Conservative agent suggested he should go to Bradford and give a
lecture on any subject he liked. This he did on 18 March 1873, his
lecture being published under the title of Foreign politics
and England's foreign policy. This was followed in 1878
by a collection of papers entitled Eastern question and the foreign policy of Great Britain.
These papers were basically anti-Russian.
While Henry Hope and his younger brother, John North, were both in England
in the early 1870s, they appear to have worked together on an idea
for publishing a series of sketches entitled The Forest,
The Field & The Camp." The proposed publication, by George Hogarth Turner of Grosvenor Square,
has not been traced.
In July 1878 Henry Hope went to live at 20 Victoria Square, which was to be his London
home for the rest of his life. Vanity Fair-then a political,
social and literary review-featured him in its 'Men of the Day'
series, following his departure for Natal to join the campaign in
Zululand. Caricatured by Spy, he was described as:-
"a man of very active mind. He is an artist of no mean pretensions, a military critic, very
clear and positive in his opinions, and a political essayist of
considerable strategical merits. He has written much without any of
that hesitation which other men often feel when dealing with great
political questions. His criticisms have too commonly been
disregarded, his advice has too often not been taken-and thus we
are where we are in the world instead of being where we might have
been. Living still a bachelor life, he is well-known and much
courted for his undoubted talents and always interesting
conversation."
In 1879, after some twenty-four years of various staff
appointments, he was posted to South Africa where Lord Chelmsford was
at Durban, planning his second invasion of Zululand and attack on
Ulundi after the humiliating defeat at IsandhIwaria in January. The
main column once again would strike east from upper Natal with a
subsidiary column advancing up the coast before turning inland to
Ulundi. This column was entrusted to the command of Henry Hope,`
whose brother, John North, was Chelmsford's Military Secretary. A
shortage of transport and countless difficult river crossings made
progress very slow and the column became known as 'Crealock's
Crawlers'. They were some way from their target when they heard that
Ulundi had been taken by the main column. For his services during the
campaign Henry Hope was created a Companion of the Order of St
Michael and St George. Sir Garnet Wolseley had little time for Henry Hope
and described him as:-
"Dressed like a guest at an artist's ball, he wore a sombrero with a long peacock feather
and an imitation pugaree tied on one side in what he believed to be
picturesque artistic carelessness . . . he had one wagon designed as
a movable hen house so that he might have fresh eggs for breakfast.
He even telegraphed for six milch cows to be sent forward so that he
might not be deprived of milk in his tea while campaigning."
In 1884, Henry Hope retired from the Army as a Lieutenant-General. He continued to
travel abroad` and to hunt in the Scottish Highlands. He died on 31
May 1891 at his home in Victoria Square, aged sixty.
In his will Henry Hope asked to be buried at Littleham and requested 'a sarcophagus
with a recumbent figure on top ... of Gothic character suitable to
the church'. This was duly commissioned and installed with the
inscription: -
“A faithful servant of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, who distinguished
himself in the Crimea 1854-5; China 1857-8; Indian Mutiny
1858-9; China 1860; South Africa 1879.”
John North Crealock, the third son of William Belton Crealock, was born on 21 May 1836 and in 1849
followed his brothers to Rugby School. On 13 October 1854 his father
purchased for him the rank of Ensign in the 95th Derbyshire Regiment
(later the Sherwood Foresters, formed in 1881 from the 45th and 95th
Regiments). Four years later he was promoted to Lieutenant and the
following year became an Inspector of Musketry at Aldershot.
In 1857 his Regiment
sailed for the Cape of Good Hope but on arrival they were re-routed
to India, where the Mutiny had broken out. The 95th Regiment landed
at Bombay and became part of the Rajputana Field Force, whose task it
was to round up the insurgents outside Gwalior. The first success was
the capture of Kotch, where the Maharaja had surrendered to the
mutineers. Eventually Gwalior was captured, but John North was
wounded and took no further part in the campaign. He wrote a vivid
illustrated diary," full of humane touches concerning the
various people involved in the campaign. This diary tells us much
more about John North than the campaign, during which he was thrice
mentioned in despatches. His later campaign diaries and notes are of
a purely military nature.
In 1860 John North
was appointed Inspector of Musketry, first to the Bombay Presidency
and then to the Bombay Northern District. From December 1862 to May
1864 he was Aide-de-Camp to Sir William Mansfield,
Commander-in- Chief Bombay. He continued to serve in India
and attended Staff College in 1868.
He then returned to England and on 20 May 1869, at St Michael's Church, Chester Square,
married Marion Lloyd. They had three sons. The eldest was John
Mansfield Stradling, born in Dublin in 1871, named Mansfield after
his father's Commander-in-Chief in India. The second son
was Henry Keith Thesiger who died at the age of eight. The third son,
Malcolm Elphinstone Fleming, became a lawyer.
In 1870 he was
appointed Aide-de-Camp to General Officer Commanding
Ireland and from 1871 to 1875 he was Deputy Assistant Adjutant
General at Aldershot. He was promoted Major in 1875 and in 1877 he
became Deputy Adjutant Quartermaster-General at Army
Headquarters, Aldershot.
During the 9th Frontier War (also called the Kaffir or Xhosa War, and later
the Border War), in March 1878, John North was posted to South Africa
as Assistant Military Secretary to Lieutenant-General The
Honourable Frederick Thesiger (who became Lord Chelmsford). Of this
campaign John North wrote a very full account. In 1879, with the
conclusion of the Frontier War, Lord Chelmsford was posted to Natal
to cope with rising Zulu discontent on the borders and John North,
now a Lieutenant-Colonel, accompanied him as Military Secretary.
The ensuing campaign gave John North adequate time for sketching and
recording, as the forwarding of military supplies by ox-wagon
over very rough country took so long. The first illustrations of
Rorke's Drift to appear in the Illustrated London News were
based on sketches by John North.
Though he wrote no
journal, his letters to Arthur Harness provide a vivid account of the
campaign.` John North's brother, Henry Hope, was in command of the
force proceeding up the coast from Durban, while John North was with
Chelmsford on the way to Ulundi. Sir Garnet Wolseley, as we have
seen, took a dislike to both brothers, writing: 'They are both snobs
and, as they were not born gentlemen, they cannot help it.' John
North was known as 'the wasp' and Wolseley described him as
Chelmsford's 'evil genius' Nonetheless he was thrice mentioned in
despatches. On the boat home he spent time sketching and many of
these sketches were offered as prizes for sporting and other events
during the voyage.
After the Zulu War,
John North took over command of what became the 2nd Battalion
Sherwood Foresters and was promoted full Lieutenant- Colonel and
later Brevet Colonel. He commanded the Battalion in Gibraltar and in
Alexandria in 1882, and was awarded the campaign medal with Khedive
Star. The regimental history records:
There can be but few in the Battalion, who did not feel they were better soldiers for
having known so progressive and so appreciative a commanding officer.
In 1887 he once
again returned to Staff appointments in England and in 1892 was
promoted to Major-General before going to Madras in 1893. He
died at Rawalpindi on 26 April 1895, aged 58, and was buried in the
churchyard at Littleham alongside his young son Keith and, later, his
wife. There is a memorial window to him in the Catholic church at
Bideford.
His first son, John
Mansfield Stradling, went to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst
and served in the Sherwood Foresters, attaining the rank of Captain
before resigning in May 1897 to become a successful artist. He
rejoined the Foresters for service in the 1914-18 War. John
inherited several journals and sketchbooks from both his father and
his uncle, which he donated to their regimental museums. He died in
Hove in 1959, 'fortified by the rites of the Holy Church'.
THE BROTHERS CREALOCK c. 1860: PHOTOGRAPH OF HENRY HOPE CREALOCK,
STANDING, AND JOHN NORTH CREALOCK, SEATED.
South Lanarkshire Museums Service, From Chinese Expeditionary Force 1857 and Indian campaigns 1857-8,
album of photographic prints (DB 1902/23).
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