“An elegant frontispiece is now engraving”

We left Maj. Robert Donkin in 1777 with probably hundreds of copies of his Military Collections and Remarks needing to be shorn of a footnote that intemperately suggested his fellow British soldiers could fire smallpox-tipped arrows at the Americans.

That fall Donkin was busy with other things. In September the War Office announced his promotion to lieutenant colonel, news that made the American newspapers in December. By that time, Donkin was part of the British military force occupying Philadelphia.

We left the Philadelphia engraver James Smither as he switched to work for the Crown forces instead of Pennsylvania’s rebel government. Smither had been in North America for less than ten years, and, with the redcoats taking the American capital, he probably thought the king’s forces were winning.

On 14 April 1778, James Robertson’s Royal Pennsylvania Gazette ran this notice:

To the corps at New-York and Rhode-Island, that subscribed to the military remarks, &c.

LIEUT. Col. Donkin, gives notice that he has distributed to the orphans and widows of of [sic] the army here - - British £204.15.0

And that Mr. Thompson, Town-Adjutant of New-York, will proceed to distribute forthwith - - - £85.13.7

Being the balance arising from the publication, after defraying the expences of printing, &c. £290.8.7

N.B. An elegant frontispiece is now engraving at Mr. Smither’s, one of which will be sent to every subscriber.

Philadelphia, 13 April, 1778.

Thompson ran a similar announcement and accounting in Hugh Gaine’s New-York Gazette on 27 April. Donkin had deputized him to collect subscriptions the year before. (I haven’t found this man’s given name. The Scots Magazine and North-British Intelligencer reported that he was sergeant-major of the 37th Regiment.)

Thus, in 1778 Donkin commissioned Smither to create an illustration for his Military Collections, perhaps to make up for the delay and deletion of the footnote. So far as I can tell, none of the three copies with the footnote intact have the frontispiece shown here, and all of the copies with the frontispiece have a hole in page 190–1.

Donkin had dedicated his book to “the Right Honourable Hugh, Earl Percy, Colonel to his Majesty’s Vth regiment of foot,…commander in chief of the forces in Rhode Island.” He wrote:

HAVING had frequent occasions in the subsequent treatise to quote the grand actions of the most renowned captains of antiquity, it was natural for me to look at home for a Modern equally brilliant. Britannia holds forth PERCY! Fame sounds,
“Great in the war, and great in the arts of state!” ILIAD.

That was the scene Smither illustrated: Donkin at work on his book, interrupted by Fame trumpeting and Britannia (notably without a Liberty Cap) holding out a picture of the earl with the label “Ille noster heros (He is our hero).”

I quoted the £290.8.7 in charitable donations from inside this copy of the book. It’s possible that those pages were added to what Gaine had printed in 1777 at the same time that the frontispiece was inserted. To know for sure, we’d need to examine the copy owned by Gen. Valentine Jones (now at the Clements Library).

TOMORROW: Separate ways.