Lumsden. Letters from the Quarter Master General 1851-1857

An old album sheet with, on one side, a letter on two sides of a bifolium in a fine secretarial hand to Ensign P. S. Lumsden, Offg. Asst. Qr. Mr. General, dated Headquarters, Simla, 15th April 1851 and signed J. G. Drummond, Lt. Col., Quarter Master General of the Army instructing Lumsden that the Commander in Chief has posted him to the Peshawar Field Force whither he is required to proceed with all convenient expedition. SOLD 18th March 2023

On the other side of the card leaf is a bifolium bearing a true copy No 1034 [as certified by the Q.M.G. of the Army at Bareilly, 14th February 1857, signed A. Becher, Colonel] of a letter to the Q.M.G. from R. J. H. Bird. Colonel, Secy. to the Govt. of India  in the Mily. Dept. setting out the satisfaction of the Government with hazardous and difficult of the surveying party of the Great Trigonometrical Survey under Lieutenant Montgomerie and mentioning the services contributed by three officers of the Q.M.G. department, named in the margin as Capts.  Lumsden, Allgood, & Johnson.They had been surveying the mountainous territories of H/H/ Maharaja Goolab Singh of Kashmir. Both letters are glued to the card by the blank second half of the bifolium.    mar1/3

Copy letters such as this are very seldom found and the original would have been in official army records, many of which may not have reached England after independence and may not have survived in India.

Provenance: From a large archive of the General’s papers passed down through descendants of his brother, General Sir Harry Lumsden. Lumsden himself had no children.

General Sir Peter Stark Lumsden, G.C.B., C.S.I.. A.D.C. [1829-1918] had a very distinguished career in India, China, and Afghanistan and was the author of the standard work on his brother’s regiment Lumsden of the Guides. He joined the Bengal Army in 1847 and first saw action on the N.W.F. in 1851. In 1857 he was on a special mission to Kandahar and served in the China War with Napier., Bhutan War 1854, QMG India 1868-72, acting Resident Hyderabad 1873, Chief of the Staff in India in 1879 and headed the British Commission for the Demarcation of the N. W. Boundary of Afghanistan 1884-5.  He was made G.C.B. and an ADC to Queen Victoria.