The Military Collection has recently acquired another original drawing created for a 19th century British illustrated newspaper. In this case, it is a wash and water-color drawing by Walter Paget (1863-1935) depicting men of the Royal West Kent Regiment recovering the body of a wounded officer on the North-West Frontier in 1897. The drawing mounted on board measures 17 x 26 cm.
Paget worked as an in-house illustrator for The Graphic in its office located at 190 Strand in London, and his image was published on page 4 of the issue for Saturday, October 30, 1897. This appeared in a short supplement devoted to the fighting on the Indian Frontier. The text below the printed picture stated that, ‘During General Jeffrey’s action, on September 30, the Mahmuds at one time attacked the centre so vigorously that the men of the Royal West Kent came to close quarters, and had difficulty for a few minutes in recovering the body of a wounded officer. By a staunch stand it was eventually recovered’. The 2nd Brigade of the Malakhand Field Force had been dispatched to the Swat Valley in present-day Pakistan in August 1897 to restore order, and Jeffreys was subsequently given the task of subduing the local Mahmud tribe, which forms the subject of this image.
We are also told that Paget’s drawing was based on a sketch by Lionel James (1871-1955). James was the Reuter’s Special Correspondent with the field force and published an account of the campaign in The Indian Frontier War being an account of the Mohmund and Tirah Expeditions 1897 (New York, Scribners’s Sons, 1898). Another account provides further details of the incident depicted. According to A Frontier Campaign, an attack was made on the fortified villages of Agrah and Gat. The West Kent Regiment came down from a spur on the left burning the village of Agrah on their way, and proceeded to drive the enemy out of several strong positions above the village of Gat. The narrative continues: ‘It was here that half the company of the West Kent, on reaching a sungar [a fortified position], were suddenly charged by a lot of Ghazis, and in the melee which ensued, many of the West Kents were killed and wounded, their officer, 2nd Lieutenant Browne Clayton, being one of the first to be cut down, his body being almost at once recovered by a gallant dash under Major Western’, who is represented in the drawing by the officer in the center firing his revolver.
Such dramatic images were familiar to late 19th century educated Britons who subscribed to the weekly illustrated newspapers such as The Graphic and the Illustrated London News, and during this period they were fed a steady diet of pictures chronicling the military campaigns across the empire especially in the Indian subcontinent and southern Africa.
Another original drawing in the Military Collection depicting an event from the same campaign was painted by one of Walter Paget’s brothers, Henry Marriot Paget.