The Crealocks: Two soldier artists, from the Crimea to the Zulu War
Sources:-
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).
