ROYAL VISIT TO INDIABiblio.com
Special Trains for the Tour of Their Royal Highnesses The Prince & Princess of Wales: Beluchistan and Singh.
1905153020Lahore: Printed at the North Western Railway Press 1905-06. The Raj by rail Lavishly produced souvenirs of a six-month tour of India by the future George V and Queen Mary. Both are scarce: in the UK Cambridge holds a copy of each and we have traced a further copy of Time Table at Leiden. The 1905-06 royal visit was an opportunity for the prince and princess to broaden their imperial experience. The ambitious program included visits by rail to all four corners of India - Peshawar Rangoon Mysore and Karachi - and represented the most wide-ranging survey undertaken in India by any member of the royal family. "As with his father in 1875-6 he the prince was struck by the complacent sense of superiority of many of the white civil servants and on his return made a speech calling for 'a wider sympathy' on the part of the Indian Civil Service" ODNB. The success of the trip set the stage for the couple's return in 1911 for the coronation durbar the only durbar attended by a British monarch. The two brochures cover the legs from Bhatindi to Umballa Cantonment 28 November - 11 December 1905 and Delhi to Karachi Cantonment 8-17 March 1906 the last part of the tour. Besides detailed itineraries each includes views taken along the route such as the tomb of Ranjit Singh at Lahore the tunnel into the Upper Bolan Pass and the Chappar Rift Bridge. Special Trains also has portraits of local inhabitants. Provenance: Herbert Henry Spalding 1874-1943 District Locomotive Superintendent Bhatuda with his address on the mailing envelope. Spalding was born in India his father worked as an engineer on South Indian Railway in the 1870s and 1880s and joined the colonial civil service in 1897. In 1922 he was appointed Locomotive and Carriage Superintendent Indian State Railways retiring in 1929. Though unmarked as such these copies were subsequently owned by Major David Cecil Underwood Jr. 1970-2023 who compiled an extensive collection of material relating to royal visits to India. Two works large octavo ff. 17; ff. 9. Special Trains with 12 collotype views laid down on leaves with printed captions and ornamental borders 5 letterpress leaves; Time Table with 12 collotype views mounted 2-to-a-page on leaves with printed captions and ornamental borders 3 letterpress leaves. Both printed in blue and gold internally and interleaved with tissue guards. Original decorative wrappers printed in gold and lettered in blue stitched with blue cord Special Trains glued into wrappers as issued. With original envelope 300 x 195 mm. Covers lightly creased and soiled more so to rear wrapper of Time Table cockling caused by mounting adhesive as usual collotypes well preserved: very good copies. unknown
Peter Harrington · Royaume-Uni1 850,00 £GB≈ 2 112,33 €
