The Autobiography of William Simpson, R. I.: (Crimean Simpson) [Hardcover]

About The Book : 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 Expedition, 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 Mycenae, the great Vatican Council of 1869, the Indian tour of the Prince of Wales, the Afghan Boundary Commission, and such royal marriages as those of the Czar of Kussia, the Emperor of China, Prince William of Prussia, and the Princess Louise.