"Churchill is nothing but a cad." An 1899-1900 Boer War Archive of British author and war correspondent Henry C. Shelley, featuring Shelley's fellow war correspondent Winston S. Churchill in a photograph, in print, and in correspondence.
South Africa: 1899. This is a compellingly interesting archive belonging to war correspondent Henry C. Shelley, detailing events of the Boer War between 1899-1900 and in which Shelley’s fellow war correspondent, Winston S. Churchill, features in a photograph, in print, and in correspondence. Henry "Harry" Charles Shelley (- 1936) was a British author and journalist who, in the words of The New York Times, "for some years served as literary and dramatic critic on American newspapers."
The archive includes 8 photographs annotated on versos, one of which depicts a young Winston Churchill (slouching insouciantly in a deck chair with his hands and feet crossed) along with other war correspondents aboard the Royal Mail Ship (R.M.S.) Dunottar Castle, one of General Sir Redvers Buller (then Commander-in-Chief of British forces in South Africa), and two of Edgar Wallace (one of which is inscribed in pencil on verso “Mr Edgar Wallace, Reuters, Author of a Kimberley poem published in the Cape Argus. The Editor sent 1,000 copies for distribution among the troops”.) Also included are: five letters written by Shelley (one on Dunottar Castle stationery); a unique programme for athletic sports, which lists curious games such as ‘chalking the pig’s eye’; a copy of The Weekly Mail, edited by Harry C. Shelley; a Prospectus of Lectures which Shelley gave about the war; a printed passenger manifest for the R.M.S. Dunottar Castle, which lists ‘Mr. Winston Churchill and valet’. Also included are four cartoons - a political cartoon drawn on the blank verso of a bill of lading depicting the emigration of the Boers to South Africa during the ‘Great Trek’ of 1836-37, as well as a series of three thumbnail cartoon drawings, each numbered and mounted on card, of a goat bucking a camera man off a cliff.
Harry C. Shelley was a war correspondent, photographer, and lecturer, who spent 8 months with the British Army covering the Boer War in 1899-1900, writing for The King and Westminster Gazette and editing for The Weekly Mail. As his Prospectus of Lectures states, "his experiences embrace actual knowledge and personal eyesight of all the chief events of the War on the Western side", going on to say "he was the only Correspondent who was allowed to make an ascent in the War Balloon, and, during the halt at Bloemfontein, he was accorded special privileges by Lord Roberts to enable him to secure the only pictures in existence of many historic incidents transpiring in that town".
In October 1899, the second Boer War erupted between the descendants of Dutch settlers in South Africa and the British. “The Boer War was the most widely reported war up to the twentieth century, with as many as 300 correspondents spending time in the field,” and was the “longest and bloodiest conflict fought by British forces between 1815 and World War I” (Encyclopedia of War Journalism). Among this crowd of correspondents was a young Winston S. Churchill, an adventure-seeking young cavalry officer and war correspondent, who swiftly found himself in South Africa with the 21st Lancers and an assignment as press correspondent to The Morning Post.
What made the war particularly brutal to the public was the preponderance of photographs taken by correspondents in the field and published for public consumption in British newspapers. “Also present were the first cameramen to record moving pictures…”. The Boer War demarcates the shift in how the public sees conflicts, the mediums in which they are exposed to it, and unsurprisingly, in turn, how a nation frames the narrative of that conflict toward its own interests. All of which makes Shelley stand out among correspondents, as he both wrote about and photographed the events – it was rare to do both – and some of the photographs he took of events during the war were “the only pictures in existence…”
Shelley’s letters describe battle scenes, soldier movements and preparation, and the harsh conditions of South Africa. There are also beautiful touches of light-hearted description; in a letter to his wife, Shelley humorously addresses the issue of the largest nuisance to war correspondents, soldiers, and Boers alike – the flies: “I really believe that if I stay here much longer I shall get so in the habit of waving my hands in front of my face that when I get back I shall be mistaken for a harmless lunatic.”
Particularly delicious is Shelley’s distaste for one of the other war correspondents, with whom Shelley travelled aboard the R.M.S. Dunottar Castle, a young and then little-known Winston Churchill. Writing to his wife, Carrie, on Dunottar Castle stationery, Shelley said of “the men who are in my cabin” that one, “Campbell”, was "a perfect gentleman & a right good fellow, but the other (Churchill) is nothing but a cad", adding "when we get up to the front with the other press men it is likely he will have a rough time". By contrast, Shelley found Rudyard Kipling, whom he also met and who was similarly covering the war, "exceedingly pleasant ...full of high spirits".
Churchill indeed had a ‘rough time’, but one that proved his mettle and made his name. On 15 November 1899, only a month after he sailed for South Africa, Churchill was captured during a Boer ambush of an armored train. His daring escape less than a month later rendered him a celebrity and helped launch his political career.
Perhaps Shelley’s description of Churchill as a “cad” is more of a slight against Churchill’s palpable ambitions, which often polarized his acquaintances. Certainly an air of privilege and presumption accompanied Churchill’s manifest capability and courage; Shelley may have known that in addition to a valet, Churchill took with him to South Africa “sixty bottles of spirits, twelve bottles of Rose’s Lime Juice, and a supply of claret.”
Shelley was a successful and lauded war correspondent, and very much Churchill’s senior, but by the end of Churchill’s youthful twenty-fifth year – not long after Shelley made his acquaintance – Churchill had become one of the world’s highest paid war correspondents, published his first five books, made his first lecture tour of North America, braved and breasted both battlefields and the hustings, and shortly thereafter was elected to Parliament, where he would take his first seat only weeks after the end of Queen Victoria’s reign. This archive provides a unique window on the context, conflict, and early career that forged Churchill. Item #008114
Price: $3,500.00