Overall: 88cm (34.5in) x 77cm (30in)
Oil on canvas. Head and shoulders portrait of Major Edward John Leveson Jervis, 4th Viscount St Vincent (1850–1885), who was killed in action at the Battle of Abu Klea, in 7th Queen’s Own Hussars uniform comprising pith helmet and patrol jacket. Contained in period Watts frame, inscribed ‘J.E.L. Viscount St Vincent / 7th Hussars // Died of wounds received / at the battle of About Klea / Soudan, Janry 1885’. Further inscribed verso ‘Visct St Vincent / died Jany 1885 of wounds received at Abu Klea // Painted by Henrietta Maria Munro / given by her to his friend & brother Officer / The Earl of Scarborough’.
‘The sand of the desert is sodden red,
Red with the wreck of the square that broke
The Gatling’s jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
…’
So wrote the poet Sir Henry Newbolt in his epic poem ‘Vitaï Lampada’ (The Torch of Life) of the quintessential Victorian battle in which the 4th Viscount St Vincent lost his life. The battle was fought in the Sudan on 17 January 1885 by the specially formed Camel Corps during the desperate attempt to rescue General Gordon in Khartoum. The Corps consisted of four camel-mounted units: the Guards Camel Regiment, the Heavy Camel Regiment, of which St Vincent was adjutant, the Light Camel Regiment and the Mounted Infantry Camel Regiment.
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After a troubled night in a defensive zeraba built of stone and thorn bushes, Sir Herbert Stewart ordered his troops to form a square, with St Vincent’s Heavy Camel Regiment in the rear, and advance on the Abu Klea wells. During the lumbering march of two miles, Mahdist rifleman began to began to snipe, one soldier being hit three times. Stewart ordered skirmishers to be sent out to deal with the threat, which was largely successful, though not before the Lord St Vincent, had been fatally wounded. Colonel Talbot of the Life Guards reported ‘anxiety’ about the integrity of the rear of the square. Strings of camels in the centre, carrying ammunition, water and litters for the wounded, were lagging behind. Although Talbot moved some of the Royal Dragoons and Scots Greys to fill a widening gap on the left face, he knew that this had ‘considerably weakened’ the rear of the square; and when the native camel drivers balked, ‘sidling and edging’ from enemy riflemen on the right, the left corner of the square began to disintegrate. This was made worse when, on sight of a large enemy force ahead, the square was halted and then immediately moved to higher ground on the right, an action described by Talbot as ‘a simple movement for men, but difficult for camels, many of which remained outside the square ... among others, the one carrying the wounded Lord St Vincent.’
At this point, thousands of Mahdists rose from the thick grass of a wooded ravine to the left of the British force and began their main attack. St Vincent was no doubt killed in his litter, while the Heavy Camel Regiment withheld their fire, to let the skirmishers back into the square. Major Byng, 1st Life Guards, was the last but one to make it, the man behind him being overtaken and speared to death. The Naval Brigade’s Gardner gun fired a few rounds before jamming, and its crew were swiftly killed or severely wounded. The enemy horde, taking advantage of the opening in the square, hurled themselves ‘with terrific rapidity and fury upon it’. After five minutes of furious hand-to-hand fighting, in which the outward facing ranks turned inwards to fire, 1100 Fuzzy-Wuzzy and Dervish lay dead on the battlefield alongside 168 British casualties.
Lord St Vincent lingered for nearly a week until succumbing to his wounds on 23 January whence he was commemorated with 73 others of Heavy Camel Regiment at Talbot’s instruction by an inscription carved into the wall on ancient Egyptian temple at Philae. The present portrait was painted by Henrietta Maria (née Drummond), Lady Munro (1831-1912). She was the wife of Sir Campbell Munro, 3rd Bt, and a mutual friend of St Vincent’s onetime brother officer Aldred Lumley, 10th Earl of Scarborough (1857-1945). Scarborough (styled Viscount Lumley between 1868 and 1884) was commissioned Cornet into the 7th Queen’s Own Hussars in 1877. He served with St Vincent, who was six years his senior, in the Zulu War in 1879. St Vincent for his part was was present with the 17th Lancers in the engagements at Zuinguin and Ulundi. St Vincent subsequently served as an orderly officer in South Afghanistan in 1880 and was mentioned in despatches. He served in the First Boer War (1881) as adjutant to the Mounted Infantry and in the Egyptian War of 1882, as aide-de-camp to Major-General Drury-Lowe, being present at the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir and the capture of Cairo, for which he was again mentioned in despatches, and received the 4th class Order of the Medjidie, and Khedive’s Star.