Orders, Decorations and Medals

An interesting Crimea Medal pair awarded to Captain J. W. Clayton, 13th Light Dragoons, afterwards a popular artist, author, composer, poet and travel writer, whose memoir Ubique is a vivid account of his experiences in the Crimea

Crimea 1854-56, 1 clasp, Sebastopol (Captn. J. W. Clayton, 13th Lt. Dragoons), contemporary engraved naming; Turkish Crimea 1855, Sardinian issue, Hunt & Roskell type, unnamed,, contemporary engraved naming, mounted as worn from Hunt & Roskell riband buckles, complete with related dress miniature medals, edge bruising and contact marks, otherwise generally very fine (4) £1500-2000

John William Clayton was born in February 1833, the eldest son of Captain John Lloyd Clayton, late Royal Navy (see previous Lot).

Appointed a Cornet in the 13th Light Dragoons in December 1848, young John was embarked for the Crimea in 1855, where, on his arrival that July, he was advanced to Captain and actively employed before Sebastopol. And although he had missed his regiment’s part in the famous charge of the Light Brigade, one of his first expeditions on coming ashore was a visit to the “Valley of Death”. His memoir, Ubique, published in 1857, takes up the story:

‘A canter across the plains to the spot where the Light Cavalry charged, was, to a member of that body to whose lot the honour of charging with them fell not, deeply interesting ... the plains of glory lay still strewed with ghastly relics, and with iron seeds sown there on 25 October 1854; and riding on, our horses’ hoofs displaced here and there a heap of festering bones, or a mouldering skull, and disturbing from the eye-sockets and cavities loathsome and obscene animals, which trailed their slimy length slowly away; while close by, sweet, fresh, and bright, the wild thyme, forget-me-not, and convolvulus grew and flourished, showing rottenness engendering beauty, and the decay and death of one thing necessary for the existence of another.’

And of engagements with the enemy, Clayton’s Ubique has a lengthy account of the action fought near Tchernaya on 11 August 1855:

‘We shortly knew the action had commenced, as the roaring of artillery and rattle of small arms fell upon the ear; and the three cavalry brigades, followed by the Royal Horse Artillery and field batteries, accompanied by the stretchers, ambulances and surgeons’ apparatus, were called to attention, and moved off at a trot towards the scene of the action ... So for three hours the white belching smoke wreathed and curled all along the crests of every hill of eminence, and far flew in all directions the hissing globes of death: now plunging into the ranks of the French, cutting regular lanes through them, and each shot leaving its row of dead in its wake, and dashing high into the air the dust and stones. Then again, could be seen the shot tearing and bursting through and amongst the thick dark columns of the enemy, which blackened mountains’ summits and sides with their overwhelming numbers: down they seemed to fall in dozens, the missiles spreading amidst their masses the direst havoc and confusion, and sweeping and scattering them in heaps. The whole valley of Tchernaya was filled and darkened with smoke and dust, lighted up perpetually by the quick thousand flashes of rifle and musketry ... ’

And of the aftermath of the battle, Clayton leaves a vivid and moving account:

‘In the afternoon we mounted our ponies to explore the field of slain, when we found ourselves suddenly under the fire of a Russian battery on the heights of Inkermann, which was firing round after round at the burying parties, and upon those who were carrying away to hospital, and helping most carefully, their own wounded and dying. The whole plain, far around, was strewn and covered in knots and heaps of mangled dead and dying piled confusedly together. It was difficult in some places where the fight had been hottest to guide the ponies so as to escape treading on the bodies. The burning sun sent down a battery of heat upon the wounded wretches, who lay in agony, moaning piteously, and stretching out their arms; some seemingly in prayer, others in entreaty for a drop of water to cool their swollen tongues. The attitudes of some of the corpses were curiously horrible, where life had become extinct so suddenly and sharply as to leave the bodies stiffening in the same position that they were in at the moment of death; and upon our passing along, a corpse was discovered sitting bolt upright on a ditch’s bank, a cannon shot apparently having carried clean away the entire back of the head, leaving the face like a mask, totally uninjured.

The expressions of the dead faces in general varied according to the manner of death. Those who had died from bayonet thrusts displayed an expression of intense pain, and were horribly distorted; while, on the contrary, those who had expired from gun-shot wounds, the countenances appeared calmer and placid, with their glassy, dull, unmeaning eyes turned upwards to the bright skies, the hollowing sockets already ringed with swarms of devouring flies and crawling insects. There lay the slaughtered thousands, blackened, swollen, and disfigured, piled and heaped together, as it were by the hand of the Destroying Angel, saturated in one another’s blood, which lay in dark stagnant pools and clotted masses by their sides, rotting and blackening in the sun; while high aloft wheeled flocks of dark ill-omened birds, or sat uttering their hoarse discordant croaking as they scented the dead from afar, anticipating the night and their horrid feast ... ’

By early September 1855, Clayton himself was in danger of an early demise, languishing with a high fever in a hospital bed on the Balaklava Heights, where ‘days and weeks rolled by over a bed of pain and discontent, in a temporarily erected hospital of planks’. He continues:


‘The sick and wounded being together in the same building, the weakened nerves of the former were in many cases much harassed by the cries and moans of the latter, especially upon the surgeon’s proceeding to probe and dress their wounds; and always the wild, dark hours of the night were awakened by the voice of torture. The nurses who attended upon us, and the ladies who visited the hospital once a day, were most kind-hearted and vigilant themselves in their endeavours to alleviate a patient’s suffering, even to his last moments ... ’

At length, on regaining his strength after the added complication of ‘being reduced to a perfect skeleton by dysentery’, Clayton was embarked on the hospital ship Severn for Constantinople, but he ‘was off like a fly out of a mustard-pot’ when the ship weighed anchor at Tkontan, heading for ‘that general resort for all those gentlemen who have more money than sense, Messere’s Hotel in Pera’, and here he remained for a month before continuing his journey to Constantinople, and new quarters in the old Turkish harem of Haidar Pasha at Scutari - alas, ‘the fair birds who were lodged here had long since flown at the approach of ribald soldiery’.

As a result of ongoing ill-health, and the death of his father, Clayton was compelled to resign his commission in January 1857, thereafter embarking on a successful career as an artist, author, composer, poet and travel writer, the latter activity leading to his election as a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. And his additional interests in yachting and the sea no doubt contributed to the rave reviews afforded one of his maritime drawings, selected for the Annual International Exhibition at the Albert Hall Gallery, the critic of the Court Journal comparing his penmanship and detail to attention equal to ‘the finest line engraving ... we look upon Captain Clayton’s drawing as a masterpiece.’

Clayton died in April 1913 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery; he had married firstly, in 1862, Charlotte Henrietta Somerset, and secondly, in 1892, Catherine Mary Gibson, brother of John Richardson Gibson, Commissioner of the Land Survey in Egypt (see following Lot for his Honours & Awards).

ACCOMPANYING BOOKS, DOCUMENTS, PHOTOGRAPHS AND PORTRAITS

(i) A selection of the recipient’s books, comprising Ubique, English Country Quarters and Eastern Bivouac (Charles J. Skeet, London, 1857); Il Pellegrino or Wanderings & Wonderings, Vol. I & II (T. Cautley Newby, Cavendish Square, London, 1863), Vol. II lacking front cover; Scenes and Studies or Errant Steps and Stray Fancies, 2 copies (Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1870)

(ii) A passport granted to ‘Lieutenant John William Clayton of the 13th Light Dragoons, for travelling on the Continent’, issued by the Foreign Office, 1 October 1853, bearing assorted stamps and signatures, original dark green leather binding

(iii) A pocket sketch book, 10.5cm. by 6.25cm., leather binding and silk interior, by Last of New Bond Street, with around 15 completed panoramic scenes from the U.K. (Wales, the Lake District, etc.), and the Continent (Switzerland and the Gulf of Spezzia, etc.), in pencil, dating from the early 1860s

(iv) Declaration of Ownership certificate for the rigged-yawl Miranda, dated 19 June 1874, and an Admiralty certificate permitting Clayton to fly the Red Ensign as a member of the Royal Victoria Yacht Club, dated 17 July 1874

(v) A musical score, The Ianthe Waltz, by ‘Captain J. W. Clayton, F.R.G.S., late 13th Hussars’, dedicated to his daughter and first performed at Mitchell’s Royal Gallery in South Kensington, together with a portrait photograph of Ianthe

(vi) Royal Geographical Society, Fellow’s Ticket for the 1912-13 Session, ink inscribed, ‘Capt. J. W. Clayton’

(vii) A leather-bound ‘In Memoriam’ funeral order of service, ‘James William Clayton ... Interred at Highgate Cemetery, Thursday 24th April after a service at St. Mark’s Church, North Audley Street’

(viii) A photograph of Clayton as a young cavalry officer, in worn leather travelling frame, and another of him in later life, in civilian attire, this too in a worn leather travelling case

(ix) A portrait miniature of the recipient in his 13th Light Dragoons’ full-dress uniform, wearing the British Crimea Medal, watercolour, oval gilt mount, with decorated gilt frame, the whole contained in a glazed wooden case, 29.5cm. by 34cm. overall

(x) A coloured photograph of Clayton in later life, in oval glazed frame, the reverse with inscription, ‘Captain John William Clayton, F.R.G.S., 13th Light Dragoons, only son of John Lloyd Clayton, R.N., 3rd son of the 4th baronet (cr. 1732), born 1833, died 1913’, 5.5cm. by 8cm. including upper loop

(xi) A print of ‘Capt. J. W. Clayton, late 13th Light Dragoons’, wearing eastern attire in a mountainous, coastal setting, most probably as used for a frontispiece or plate in one of his travel books, fragile gilt frame, 30cm. by 46cm. overall

ACCOMPANYING MILITARIA AND ARTEFACTS

(i) The recipient’s cavalry officer’s flap pouch, the silver front with decorated scroll edges and central gilt Guelphic crown over ‘VR’ cypher, the black leather pouch with Andrews of Pall Mall label, and red moroccan interior, complete with en suite hallmarked side ornaments and loops, London 1843, maker’s mark ‘I.H.’; together with related pouch belt, with similarly hallmarked and decorated fitments, and battle honours for ‘Peninsula’ and ‘Waterloo’; a heavy gilt-bronze mounted badge of the 13th Light Dragoons, with similar battle honours; and a pair of later shoulder boards

(ii) A fine quality special design card case, in gilt frame, the front panel with applied bullion and velvet crowned ‘VR’ cypher and ‘XIII L.D.’ and regimental motto below, with battle honours for ‘Peninsula’ and ‘Waterloo’ through to the four main engagements of the Crimea War in between, the back panel with the recipient’s applied and decorated crest and initials, the blue silk interior with two pockets, 10 cm. by 17.5cm., minor wear to velvet in places

(iii) A pair of Victorian carved giltwood chairs, circa 1850, with applied silver bullion 13th Light Dragoons’ crest and battle honours to seats and backs, the whole upon a dark blue velvet ground, 92cm. high, 47cm. wide, velvet worn, regimental bullion titles damaged in places and dark-stained, and giltwood worn and chipped in places, but well-worthy of restoration

(iv) A fine quality leather travelling case, by Briggs of Piccadilly, London, circa 1850, the lid gilt inscribed ‘I. W. Clayton, 13th Light Dragoons’, with interior compartments and sleeves for ink, pens and stationery, 36cm. by 25cm., and likely used by him in the Crimea

(v) A burr walnut cigar box, circa 1875, the lid with inlaid brass cartouche bearing Clayton’s crest and initials, and the interior with six labelled compartments, 44cm. by 33cm.

(vi) A carved wooden shield with painted Clayton family crest, 22cm. by 13 cm.

(vii) A compensated pocket aneroid barometer, by Dixey of New Bond Street, 4 cm. diameter, gilt metal case with engraved reverse, ‘Captn. J. W. Clayton, F.R.G.S.’, in fitted red leather case, leather scuffed otherwise in good condition

(viii) An elaborate metalled buckle, with applied enamelled ensigns and ship’s title ‘S.S. Greek’; and a velvet purse / wallet, with gilt frame and latch, the front and back with embroidered names, ‘Lucie’ and ‘Johnnie’, velvet worn