Lot 49
Alexander, Sir James Edward (1803-1885)
Sketchbook of Crimean War service, 1854-6
Auction: The Library of General Sir James Alexander | Wed 25 February from 10am | Lots 31 to 62
Description
Oblong 12mo (10 x 16.2cm), black roan album, [107 ff.], illustrated throughout with pen-and-ink sketches (and occasional grey wash or blue ink; a few sketches in pencil only), mainly to rectos only but occasionally to versos also (including for 3 double-page panoramas), often with multiple sketches to a page, manuscript captions (frequently dated), including views and scenes in Balaclava, Sevastopol (including the Mamelou redoubt), the Redan, the Malakoff redoubt, Mangup Kale, and Alma, depictions of battles, bombardments, encampments, fortifications, living quarters, ordnance, portraits of named officers and of other ranks (including Sardinian and French troops, cossacks, etc.), graves of British soldiers, Crimean antiquities, a panorama of the Battle of the Chernaya at Traklin Bridge, and more, together with several sketches of views, peoples and objects in Canada and Ireland preceding Alexander's posting, at Gibraltar, North Africa, Malta and Istanbul on the voyage out, at Malta and Spain on the home voyage, and several sketches of views in England, Scotland and Ireland following his return;
Together with 11 autograph letters from Alexander to his wife Eveline Marie Alexander (addressed to ‘Lady Alexander’), written from Sevastopol, July-December 1855, and 2 similar letters to his son Edward Mayne Alexander, providing a detailed running commentary on the siege and capture of Sevastopol and subsequent events, illustrated with several small pen-and-ink sketches (e.g. 23rd July, ‘Last night at 11, for an hour & a half, we had a hot action. The Russians came out & fought all along our front. The fire of great guns, mortars & small arms was very heavy & incessant'; 21st September, ‘Our general Sir William Eyre keeps us so much employed, and very right too for it is no time to go asleep with 100,000 Russians still resting like a dark cloud on the heights on our right flank’; 19th October, ' ‘information from Berlin leads our chiefs to believe that the Russians meditate another attack upon our position, so we are up early morning, in the cold, at ½ past 4, stand to our arms for an hour, staff officers go & look out over the valley of the Tchernaya & Heights of Inkermann, & if all is quiet we are turned in again’)
Provenance
THE LIBRARY OF GENERAL SIR JAMES EDWARD ALEXANDER (1803-1885)
Footnote
Having recently been appointed lieutenant-colonel and regimental major, Alexander was sent to Crimea as commander of his regiment the 14th foot in mid-1855 during the siege of Sevastopol. He was present at the fall of the city in September and was subsequently awarded the Ottoman order of the Mejidiye (fifth class).