Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/autobiograpliyofwOOsimpricli THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM SIMPSON, R.I, (CRIMEAN SIMPSON) SOME IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. THE MEMOIRS OF PAUL KRUGER, Four Times President of the South African Republic. Told by Himself. Translated by A. Teixeira de Mattos. With Portraits. 2 vols., demy 8vo, cloth gilt, 32J. SAND-BURIED RUINS OF KHOTAN. By M. AuREL Stein, Indian Educational Service. Demy 8vo, cloth, 21s. net. With over 120 Illustrations and a Photogravure Frontispiece. MOTOR CARS AND THE APPLICATION OF MECHANICAL POWER TO ROAD VEHICLES. By Rhys Jenkins, Memb. Inst. Mech. Eng. With about 100 Illustrations and a Photogravure Frontispiece. Medium 8vo, cloth, 21^. net. THE OLD BAILEY AND NEWGATE. By Charles Gordon. With about 100 Illus- trations and a Frontispiece in tint. Demy 8vo, cloth, 21 s. net. THE CONFESSIONS OF A CARICATURIST. By Harry Furniss. With numerous Illustra- tions, many made specially for this work. New and Cheap Edition. One Vol. Medium 8vo, cloth, lOJ. 6d. net. LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN. Vjttuvvv -) ^i^J^-rxK THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM SIMPSON, R.I. (CRIMEAN SIMPSON) EDITED BY GEORGE EYRE-TODD AUTHOR OF "the SKETCH-BOOK OF THE NORTH," " BYWAYS OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER," ETC., EDITOR OF "the GLASGOW POETS," "thE BOOK OF GLASGOW CATHEDRAL," ETC. ILLUSTRATED WITH MANY REPRODUCTIONS OF SIMPSON'S PICTURES FROM THE COL- LECTIONS OF HIS MAJESTY THE KING, THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE, THE MARQUIS OF BUTE, THE EARL OF ROSEBERY, THE EARL OF NORTHBROOK, THE BRITISH MUSEUM, SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM, THE PALESTINE EXPLORATION FUND, ETC. + ^ + LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1903 3 - /io (Ml rights reserved.) MY DEAB DAUGHTER ANN PENELOPE SIMPSON i dedicate these notes and eecollections that when she gbows up she may through them lbarn something of her father's life PBEFACE IN his last years William Simpson occupied the hours of his enforced leisure in writing an account of the memorable circumstances of his life. His career had been eventful and varied far beyond that of most men. He had taken part, as an observer on the spot, in nearly all the great wars and historic events in which his country was interested during a period of forty years. As the earliest of war artists he had gone through the campaign of the Crimea, and this with such distinction as to earn for himself the soubriquet thenceforth of " Crimean Simpson." India after the Mutiny had also been studied and wrought over by him during two years of painstaking travel. Probably no artist before or since has investigated its ancient interests and remote regions with such thoroughness and sympathy. Among his later campaigns he followed Napier to Magdala, and took part in bringing the son of King Theodore home. He went with the Germans to Paris, was arrested as a spy, and passed through the dangerous episodes of the Commune in the French capital. And he took a brilliant part in the Afghan war, was shot at in the Khyber Pass, and by the merest chance escaped assassination with Cavagnari in Cabul. Among more pacific episodes of which he had intimate personal knowledge were the Kertch Ex- pedition, the Duke of Newcastle's tour to Circassia, the opening of the Suez Canal, the examination of "Warren's excavations at Jerusalem and Schlieman's at Mycen£e, the great Vatican Council of 1869, the Indian tour of the Prince of Wales, the Afghan Boundary Commission, and such vii PREFACE royal marriages as those of the Czar of Kussia, the Emperor of China, Prince WilHam of Prussia, and the Princess Louise. In all these events he took part as an eye-witness. Throughout his life he kept careful diaries, and his hun- dreds of sketches and pictures themselves formed an authentic record. His autobiography, therefore, constantly throws a vivid, and often an entirely new light on the living detail of the most momentous transactions of his time. Even the more personal chapters in Simpson's life-story contain much more than matter of merely personal interest. The memories of early years afford a curious picture of the artist's native city of Glasgow as it existed two generations ago. The account of the relations between artist and pub- lisher, and of the methods and resources of a great war artist, forms a narrative, valuable in itself, of the inner working of a peculiarly modern profession. And the details of his researches into the antiquities of India offer more than a glimpse of a most suggestive field of study in which Simpson had made himself an authority. On this last subject, indeed, Simpson had a claim to the highest regard. The library which he left contained a collection, probably unrivalled in private hands, of scarce books on eastern and primeval religions, the catalogue alone of which affords something like an education on occult subjects. And during the Afghan War, and later, he made excavations and special studies, under Government auspices, into the religious architecture of India. The unpublished volumes into which he gathered his studies of Buddhist archaeology form a very valuable collection of original material. " Before this war," he himself wrote, " our knowledge of Indian architecture was limited to the mouth of the Khyber Pass. I extended that knowledge as far as the Jellalabad Valley and Gundamuck." But perhaps the deepest interest of all will be found to lie in the personal life-story of the author himself. The bare facts of that life-story read hke a romance. Simpson began his career in the very humblest circumstances in his native city in the north. He was without all the outside viii PREFACE aids of education and influence which most men regard as the necessary levers of success. Yet he earned his way, by the fairest means, and by hard, real work, not only to high distinction in a profession he may be said to have created, but to association upon mutual terms with the most distinguished men who were making the history of his time, and was received with the regard of friendship and upon the footing of personal worth even in the closet of the King. Facts like these bespeak a character every chapter of whose story is likely to be worth study. Throughout his career Simpson had a singular faculty for the making and keeping of friends. Possibly something of the secret of this is discovered in a letter written lately by one of his fellow-workers for the Illustrated London News who knew him well. " There was none of us," writes this correspondent, " who ever had such an interest as Simpson had in the deeper studies of archaeology and history, of philosophy and religion, and I have never in my life known his equal for truthfulness, not only in the common sense—I wish it were our common practice,—but I mean his almost passionate zeal for the examination and inquiry to get at the truth, and to set it forth by pen and pencil. It was this high example of veracity, the virtue of the true scientific man, which is not always found in artists, for which I greatly honoured and admired him." Behind all these qualities, however, as a means of attrac- tion, lay the singularly human heart of the man. He married somewhat late in hfe, and the daughter who was born to him was the object of a singularly tender regard. Pasted into the manuscript of his life is an envelope con- taining a lock of hair, and on the outside of this is written, "A.P.S., 10th Sept., 1884. Sent to me in Central Asia.— W. Simpson." And by way of explanation is added, " This came to me in a letter from her mother which reached me on the 9th Oct., at Ahawan, in Persia, and from that it has been all through the present expedition of the Afghan Boundary Commission." Add to this the terms in which he dedicated the memoir of his life itself to that young daughter, and something more than lies on the surface may ix PREFACE perhaps be understood of the personal charm which was Simpson's passport round the world. Apart from his repute as an artist, William Simpson was an author of some consideration. When sent in 1872 by the Illustrated London News to attend the ceremonies of the Emperor of China's marriage, he undertook to act also as correspondent for the Daily News, and the direct outcome of that arrangement was his volume, Meeting the Sun, pub- lished in 1873. And in 1896 he was induced to pubHsh The Buddhist Praying-Wheel, a collection of material, chiefly gathered from his Indian experience, bearing on the symbolism of the wheel and circular movements in custom and religious ritual. But perhaps his most valuable writings were those on Indian archaeology and on primeval religions, contributed to the Transactions of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge of Freemasons, of which he was an ardent member, to the Eoyal Institute of British Architects, the Eoyal Asiatic, and other societies. His original researches and studies in India made him an authority on these subjects, his sane and unprejudiced habit of mind fitted him peculiarly for such work, and in his chosen fields he must be held to have advanced both the knowledge and the wisdom of mankind. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. A START IN LIFE . • .1 II. LONDON .... .12 III. THE CRIMEAN WAR . .19 IV. THE EXPEDITION TO KERTCH ... 40 V. CAMP LIFE IN THE CRIMEA . .46 VI. THE FALL OP SEBASTOPOL ... 59 VII. CIRCASSIA . .66 VIII. ARTIST AND PUBLISHER ...