The Story Of A Drunk, Diseased, Insane Hunter And Inglorious Squire

By Stephen J. Gertz

Original boards, untouched.

What do you call a 175 year old copy of a book that looks exactly as it did on the day it was published, completely untouched without any sort of restoration at all?

I call it an astonishment.

Light come, light go.

But, beyond the wild-tale,  it's the night scenes in aquatint engravings by Henry Alken and T.K. Rawlins that will make a lasting impression upon readers of Memoirs of the Life of the Late John Mytton, Esq. (1837) by Nimrod, the mighty hunter otherwise known as C.J. Apperley (1777-1843), British sportsman and sports writer.

The Oaks filly.

"This is not a work of fiction, for John Mytton, a rather inglorious character for a biography, was a hard-living, hard-drinking country squire of Halston, Shropshire, capable of the utmost physical endurance, and ready to accept any wager to walk, shoot or ride against any man. Many of his feats are recorded and graphically delineated, including the climax of his folly in setting his nightshirt on fire to cure a hiccough (Martin Hardie). Kids, don't try this at home.

John "Mad Jack" Mytton, born into comfortable circumstances, attended Westminster School. He was expelled a year later for fighting. He went to Harrow. He was expelled three days later. He had tutors. He tormented them with practical jokes; he once left a horse in one's bedroom.  Despite poor academic achievement he was accepted into Cambridge. He brought 2,000 bottles of port along to fortify him for study. He left before graduating because he was bored.

He went into the army and devoted himself to gambling and drinking. When he turned twenty-one he came into his inheritance. Then the real fun began.

He decided to stand for Parliament. His campaign platform was, apparently, Vote for me and I'll give you a £10 note. He won the election. But he found politics boring and only attended Parliament once, for thirty eternally excruciating minutes. He declined to stand for re-election.

In 1832 he thought he'd  give Parliament another shot. When the polling results began to be counted he quit the race when it was clear he was going to ignominiously lose. The fact that he had gone into exile to avoid debts may have had something to do with it.

The straight life cramped his style, which, at this point, centered upon horse racing and gambling, and, oh yes, drinking. About that wager he made and won: he rode his horse into the Bedford Hotel, up the grand staircase and on to the balcony, and jumped, still a-saddle, over diners in the restaurant below and then out the window and onto the street.

He was cuckoo for fox-hunting and did so no matter the weather. In winter, caught up in the thrill of the chase, he would strip naked to continue the pursuit. He enjoyed arising in the middle of the night and, buck naked with only his gun to keep him warm, would go out, ambush ducks, and return to bed.

Stand and deliver.

He owned 700 pairs of hunting boots, 1,000 hats, and 3,000 shirts. He loved pets; he owned 2,000 dogs, as hounds, and some attired in livery, others in costumes. He fed them steak and champagne.

He was, as must now be apparent, a marinated, extravagant thrill seeker. He was hell in the carriage driver's seat, the shortest, most inconsequential ride a feral dash to the finish line. He once invited a parson and doctor to dine at his home one evening. He dressed himself as a highwayman, and, face disguised, rode out and held them up at gun-point, calling "Stand and deliver!"

The list of his eccentric and scandalous behavior is long. We will gloss over the time he rode a bear into a dinner party, and dog-fought a mastiff.

Money ran through his fingers like water. His inheritance went down the drain. He died in debter's prison.

In its review of Memoirs...  the Literary Gazette contrasted Mytton's promise with his sad end:

". . .heir to an immense fortune, gifted by nature with a mind susceptible of noble cultivation, and a body endowed with admirable physical powers with the wretched drunkard who died in a gaol at the age of thirty-eight, a worn-out debauchee and driveling sot" (Literary Gazette, review of Memoirs).

". . . Did the late Mr Mytton really enjoy life amidst all this profusion of expenditure? No. He lacked the art of enjoyment. He was bored and unhappy. There was that about him which resembled the restlessness of the hyena. A sort of pestering spirit egged him on" (Nimrod).

Well done. Neck or Nothing.

"When Lockhart said of 'Nimrod' that he could 'hunt like Hugo Meynell and write like Walter Scott,' he was doubtless excited into exaggeration by the pleasure of having hit upon a man who could write of sport without the vulgarity of Egan. 'Nimrod,' whose name was Charles James Apperley, was a man of education, a country squire and a genuine sportsman. Loss of means turned him to literature; he contributed articles on sport to The Sporting Magazine, The Quarterly Review and other journals; but is best known by his two books, The Life of a Sportsman, and Memoirs of the Life of John Mytton, both of which were illustrated with coloured engravings by Alken...

"Memoirs of the Life of John Mytton appeared as a book in 1837, a portion of the work having been printed in The New Sporting Magazine in 1835. It shows a difficult task performed with fidelity and tact. Apperley had been Mytton’s neighbour in Shropshire, and had extended to him all the care that was possible when both were living in Calais in order to avoid their creditors. Apperley’s task was to write the life of a man who, while he was one of the most heroic sportsmen that ever lived, was also drunken, diseased and insane; and he performed the task with admirable judgment" (Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume XIV. The Victorian Age, Part Two, VI. Caricature and the Literature of Sport).

"A most valuable and important book for the sporting life of the period, aptly described by Newton as 'a biography of a man that reads like a work of fiction'" (Tooley).

And this is an unsophisticated copy of a book that looks like a work of restoration, an under-the-bed-in-a-box-and-forgotten-OMG example. Tally-Holy Mackerel.

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[ALKEN, Henry, artist]. NIMROD (pseud. of C.J. Apperley). Memoirs of the Life of the Late John Mytton, Esq. Formerly M.P. for Shrewsbury, High Sheriff for the Counties of Salup & Merioneth, and Major of the North Stropshire Yeomanry Cavalry. With Notices of His Hunting, Shooting, Driving, Racing, Eccentric and Extravagant Exploits By Nimrod. With Numerous Illustrations by H. Alken and T.J. Rawlins. Second Edition. Reprinted with considerable Additions from the New Sporting Magazine. London: R. Ackermann, 1837.

Second and enlarged edition, with additions to the text and six extra hand-colored plates. Tall octavo )9 7/8 x 5 3/4 in; 240 x 146 mm). ix, [3], 206, [2], [8], as publisher's catalog] pp. Extra-engraved title page. Eighteen hand-colored aquatint plates.

Publisher's original green pebbled cloth with large trophy vignette in gilt enclosing title, and gilt lettered spine with dog and rabbit gilt stamps bordering title and "1837" in gilt at foot. All edges gilt. Yellow endpapers. 

Abbey, Life, 385.  Tooley 67.  Schwerdt 1, p. 38.  Martin Hardie, pp. 185-186.  Prideaux, p. 326.         

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Sometimes A Not So Great Notion, Or When Buffoons Horse Around (1831)

By Stephen J. Gertz

 A good rider can hear his horse speak to him, a great rider can hear his horse whisper, but a bad rider won't hear his horse even if it screams at him. 

• • •

 Right now it's only a notion. l think l can get money to make it into a concept, then turn it into an idea - Alvy Singer (Woody Allen), Annie Hall.

 

I have a NOTION that DUCROW could not excel this...his is all Art, mine Nature.

Some notions are best left just that particularly when they get into the heads of amateurs with horseback ambitions and delusions of grandeur. Slapstick ensues.

I had no NOTION of the Comforts of Hunting by Water.

1831-33. Henry Alken, sporting caricaturist, had a great notion that a series of engraved plates with wittily understated captions satirizing  men on steeds at unsafe speeds and the horse's ass on horseback would tickle the withers of those who find the pretensions of the upwardly mobile downright funny, i.e. everybody. He turned the notion into a concept, the concept into an idea, and Sporting Notions was born, twisting the not-so-great notions of nincompoops in the saddle into a great lampoon.

I have a NOTION that this Bridge will a-Bridge my Sport.

Inspired perhaps by circus performer Andrew Ducrow (1793-1842), "The Father of British Circus Equestrianism," and his popular acrobatics on horseback act at Astley's Amphitheater, Alken, who took special glee when riders landed on their glutes, imagined them as inept performers in a bent Cirque du Soliel, equestrian ninnies in a cirque du oy vey.

I have a NOTION that this may be called "Riding to the hounds at a Smashing rate."

In thirty-six soft-ground etched and aquatint plates, Alken skewers those in over their heads on horseback and drowning while on a fox hunt. Somewhere, the fox is on the sidelines texting his den mates, "ROTFLMAO."

I had a NOTION that Timber jumping was quite an easy thing.
I held him TIGHT in hand, too.

Henry Thomas Alken (1785-1841)  "was the dominant sporting artist of the early nineteenth century... he delivered a long series of designs to the leading sporting printsellers—S. and J. Fuller, Thomas McLean, and Rudolph Ackermann among others.

"He was also a prolific designer, etcher, and lithographer of scenes relating to racing, shooting, coaching, and other sports... He wrote several books on aspects of engraving, including The Art and Practice of Engraving (1849).

"In later life he drifted into ill health, consumption, and poverty... He died in the early summer of 1851" (Oxford DNB)

 I have a NOTION  that the Brute is going to make the best of his way out
and leave us to shift for ourself.

I have a NOTION this is not the HARD way the Man told us of.

Quite scarce, only four copies of Sporting Notions have come to auction within the last thirty-six years but only one, twenty-eight years ago at Christie's in 1984, was colored.

Modern litterateurs will have picked up the reference to Ken Kesey's magnum opus in today's headline, the hard-headed Stamper family's motto, "Never Give An Inch," apropos of the the stubborn pride exhibited by the soft-headed whose self-appraisal of their skills on horseback is off by a mile.

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ALKEN, Henry. Sporting Notions. London: T. McLean, 1831-33.

First edition. Oblong quarto (10 1/4 x 14 1/8 in; 261 x 358 mm). Thirty-six hand-colored soft-ground etchings and aquatints with tissue guards as issued without title page, watermarked 1831-1833.

Tooley 54. Siltzer p. 73.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Of related interest:

Slightly Nuts But Not Crazy: Artist Henry Alken Lampoons Art.

A Horse's Ass In The Saddle, With Henry Alken.
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Slightly Nuts - But Not Crazy: Artist Henry Alken Lampoons Art

By Stephen J. Gertz

Plate 5. All Effect—The Subject far from good, but Rich

The terminology of art can be as confounding as that of rare books  and bibliography. That arcane aspect of the book world was delightfully and satirically dealt with by Ronald Searle in Slightly Foxed - But Still Desirable in 1989. 

165  years earlier, in 1824, the veil of mystery was torn off artist language in a similarly humorous manner.

Plate 2. Unpleasant in Effect—but the keeping is Good.

A Touch at the Fine Arts by Henry Alken and published by Thomas M'Lean in 1824, was "an attempt to elucidate, by graphic delineations, a variety of terms generally and perhaps exclusively made use of by artists, amateurs, connoisseurs, virtuosos, and the like. Long, indeed, has a generous public been, doubtless, puzzled in the endeavour to discover some ray of meaning in those glowing, brilliant and forcible phrases, which the critical catalogues, Catalogues Raisonnées, etc., of the day are woefully burdened with" (from the Preface).

Plate 9. A Very Warm Effect.

 "It is a cheap kind of humour at the best. To take two of the most deserving subjects - ‘A Moving Effect; the Execution rapid,’ is represented by a runaway coach, with expressions of the utmost horror in the faces and attitudes of the occupants; ‘A Striking Effect, the handling by no means good or pleasant to the eye,’ is illustrated by a fracas between two returning roisterers and some night-watchmen.

Pl. 4. A Striking Effect—The handling by no means good, or pleasant to the eye.

"In these and in plate 2, a prison-scene depicting ‘An unpleasant effect, but the Keeping is Good,’ Alken shows genuine power as a draughtsman, and infuses his work with a character lacking elsewhere. The last plate, indeed, might almost be a coloured lithograph from the hand of Daumier. All twelve plates, it should be said, are soft-ground etchings, with colour applied by hand” (Martin Hardie, English Coloured Books, pp. 183-184).

Plate 3. A Moving Effect—the Execution Rapid.

Cheap, low humor, perhaps but, as Jonathan Swift observed in regard to punning, it "is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.” In other words, it's lousy unless you're the one who thought of it.

Adam Gopnik, of The New Yorker, notes that “Wit and puns aren't just decor in the mind; they're essential signs that the mind knows it's on, recognizes its own software, can spot the bugs in its own program.”

Alken  spotted the bugs in art and exterminated its pretensions with a slapstick pasquinade of painters and painting.

Plate 7. A Sudden Effect.

Alken was known primarily as a painter and designer of sporting scenes, producing many satires of horsemanship and the hunt, i.e Specimens of Riding Near London (1821), a rollicking lampoon of a horse's ass on a horse's back, many of its scenes capturing the horseman in a header over his steed and unceremoniously delivered unto the ground. 

Plate 1. An Imposing Effect.

Henry Thomas Alken (1785-1841)  "was the dominant sporting artist of the early nineteenth century... he delivered a long series of designs to the leading sporting printsellers—S. and J. Fuller, Thomas McLean, and Rudolph Ackermann among others.

"He was also a prolific designer, etcher, and lithographer of scenes relating to racing, shooting, coaching, and other sports... He wrote several books on aspects of engraving, including The Art and Practice of Engraving (1849).

"In later life he drifted into ill health, consumption, and poverty... He died in the early summer of 1851" (Oxford DNB),  a Lethal Effect - the Result Permanent.

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ALKEN, Henry. A Touch at The Fine Arts: Illustrated by Twelve Plates, with Descriptions by Henry Alken. London: Published by Thomas M’Lean, Repository of Wit and Humour, 1824.

First edition. Large quarto (11 15/16 x 9 1/8 inches; 304 x 232 mm.). Twelve hand-colored soft-ground etched plates (8 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches; 216 x141 mm.) mounted on heavy card stock, with the leaf of descriptive letterpress mounted on the facing page. Bound without the half-title, title, preface leaf, and leaf of advertisements.

Martin Hardie, pp. 183-184 and 319. Siltzer, p. 71. Tooley 58. Not in Abbey.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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A Horse's Ass in the Saddle, with Henry Alken

by Stephen J. Gertz

"There's nothing so good for the inside of a man as the outside of a horse," Sir Ronald said. But Lord Reagan never rode Flossie, upon whose back my insides were pureed and my outsides left as an ugly  palette of hematomas. Of my bones and sinews the less said the better.

But I get ahead of myself, as I would soon get ahead of the horse.

I am nothing if not a gentleman, and what is a gentleman if not a skilled horseman, I ask? And so, accompanied by my faithful companion, Sancho, I went for a relaxing ride in the country just outside of London where we could walk, trot, and gallop our steeds without fear of moving violations amidst the clamor and clutter of the City. Traffic's a bugger, Jack.

"Dissatisfied."

We mounted our horses at the stable. I was immediately dissatisfied: While the stableman looked on with bloody annoying amusement I attempted to move Flossie off the ten-penny piece she had stalled upon, alas to little effect. It was as if the coin was the last upon earth and Flossie a miser; the nag would not budge. Sancho's horse, apparently a precocious student of geology, was transfixed by the rocks in its immediate path. By the look of him, you'd think the horse a jeweler examining a gem; if the plug had asked for a loupe I would not have been thrown for one.

"Knights - View of the City Road."

Finally, we took off, knights on the City Road. And shortly thereafter, so, too, did the wind, almost taking us off our horses. "No more beans for breakfast," I flatulently noted to Sancho, whose horse, the geologist, looked back at him as if to say, "Hey, Stinky, lay off the Limburger!" The malodorous gale blew out our umbrellas, which we brought along to insure a full day of uninterrupted sunshine. Had we not brought umbrellas a monsoon would have surely engulfed us, its thumb on its nose with fingers wiggling, the universal sign for "na na-na na na!"

"The pleasure of riding in company.
One would stop if the other could."

Nostrils flared and offended our horses took off, alas and appropriately like  farts in a windstorm. We passed a lone gravestone. "The last guy to ride this scrag," I thought to myself as my life simultaneously passed before me. I swear, the horses levitated. Mine had its head to the heavens as if imploring the Creator, "Get this idiot off of me - pleeeze!" It was then that I lost all confidence in my ride, as I suspect Flossie lost all confidence in me. A horse with an opinion cannot be trusted.

"Symptoms of Things going Downhill."

Thus, we soon experienced symptoms of things going downhill, fast, the horses, apparently, of the opinion that, things heading in that direction anyway, the metaphysical should be equally met. While I struggled to get mine moving - the damned dobbin was gazing longingly into the distance as if seeing an end in sight that I was unfortunately blind to and could not enjoy - Sancho's couldn't keep his eyes off of the rocks on the ground in front of him, and I felt sorry for my compatriot: To be ignored in favor of the igneous is an ignominy not soon forgotten.

 

"The consequences of having plenty of company on the road."

How is it that one can be out in the middle of nowhere with not another human being in sight yet a drayman appears out of the blue, onto the ground, and directly in our path to vex us, throw our horses into a tizzy and us nearly off of them? It was as if our Lord, Jesus, had enlisted Loki, the Trickster, to make our day one for the scrapbook of woe. "You gents need a lift?" the drayman impertinently asked with a degree of evil glee usually associated with Satan collecting on a contract. My soul withered as I slipped my steed's withers.

"Preparing for the Easter Hunt (I shall be over Jack)."

"Whither thou goest?" I ruthfully thought afterward. The question was soon answered: right up to a fence. The horses would have none of it. Sancho's decided to tip-toe and take it one leg at a time. Mine, obviously still smarting from the hatchet-job the horse barber gave his tail (ouch!), tried to eject me from the saddle as he took wing over the barrier. My hat remains in mid-air in that spot to this day, testimony to my being scared stiff. The only part of me not stiff was my upper lip, which had  lost all tone, slackened, and now limply flapped when I tried to speak, making enunciation a challenge, to say the least. But since I couldn't say the least or much of anything else, the issue was moot.

"One of the comforts of riding in company."

We now come to the denouement of our equestrian jaunt into Hell in the hinterlands. Just when I thought that things could not get any worse, a bee landed on Flossie's anus, stung, and thence inspired her to perform a psychotic Highland fling that flung me over the high side and onto my backside. Swept up in the choreography, Sancho's horse joined Flossie, and the two performed a pas de deux worthy of Terpsichore,  if Terpsichore had four legs, a snout, and grazed on locoweed. Sancho bounced twice and rolled before coming to a full stop.

I thought of Shakespeare, Henry V: "When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes."

But the down-to-earth pains of reality stabbed my posterior, all romance bled-out, and I recalled the definition of horseback riding: "The art of keeping a horse between you and the ground."

And then: "Horse sense is what keeps horses from betting on people."

Finally: "Horse sense is what keeps amateurs from riding them."

If only I'd had any. Clearly, Bucephalus would be the death of us.

I grabbed my spare hat from mid-air, Sancho and I dusted ourselves off, swallowed our pride, and let the horses ride us home, total  collapse of our spinal columns a small price to pay for peace of mind.
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ALKEN, Henry. Specimens of Riding Near London. Drawn from Life.
London: Published by Thomas M'Lean...,1821.
First edition (second edition, 1823). Oblong folio.
Printed title and eighteen hand-colored engraved plates.
Tooley 52.

The Plates:

1.  One of the comforts of riding in company. H. Alken 1821.
2.  Symptoms of Things going downhill. H. Alken 1821.
3.  The pleasure of riding in company. One would stop if the other Could. H. Alken 1821.
4.  Preparing for the Easter Hunt (I shall be over Jack). H. Alken 1821.
5. The Consequences of having plenty of company on the Road. H. Alken 1821.
6.  A thing of the last consequence. H. Alken 1821.
7.  Delighted. S. Alken del et sc. Augt. 1, 1821.
8.  Perfectly satisfied. S. Alken del et sc. Augt. 1, 1821.
9.  Dissatisfied. S. Alken del et sc. Augt. 1, 1821.
10. Surprised. S. Alken del et sc. Augt. 1, 1821.
11. Displeased. S. Alken del et sc. Augt. 1, 1821.
12. Terrified. S. Alken del et sc. Augt. 1, 1821.
13. 'Taste - View near Knigtsbridge. Drawn and Engraved by S. Alken Septr. 1, 1821.
14. Lords - View in Hyde Park. Oct. 1, 1821.
15. Yeomanry of England paying a visit. H. Alken del et sc. 1821.
16. Fancy - View near Grays Inn Road. Drawn and Engraved by S. Alken Septr.1, 1821.
17. Folly - View near Acton. Drawn and Engraved by S. Alken Septr. 1, 1821.
18. Knights - View in the City Road. Oct. 1, 1821.
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Henry Alken (1785-1851) was an English painter and engraver  known primarily as a caricaturist and illustrator of sporting subjects and coaching scenes, with an eye often cocked to the follies of human behavior.
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Is This The Rarest Color-Plate Book Of All?

Death of Ponitawski, detail.

Only one copy has come to auction in thirty-five years. There is only one copy in institutional holdings worldwide. So few were issued, in fact, that the publisher didn’t bother having a title page printed. Only four copies are known to exist. This is one of them.

Manuscript title inlaid to window-panel with engraved border.

The book is Military Duties, Occurrences &c. &c., a color-plate book of the utmost rarity by Henry Alken, one of England’s great artist-designer-engravers of the nineteenth century. The book is at my side as I write; it’s another great day in Rarebookadoon, the enchanted rare book republic in the mist where opportunities like this don’t materialize very often.

The book was issued with fifty-six hand-colored etched plates, each inlaid within a window-panel cut from a leaf of gray paper with an elaborately engraved border surrounding the print. Title and captions are in inked manuscript. The copy before me is incomplete with only forty-three of the original fifty-six plates remaining, the others neatly excised from their window-panels.

The General's Tent. Captions in manuscript.

Only one copy has come to auction within the last thirty-five years; it, too, incomplete. OCLC/KVK note only one copy in institutional holdings, at Yale; it is, apparently the only complete copy to be recorded, presumably the same copy noted by Abbey as being sold in 1907. The only other copy to come under Abbey's notice was also incomplete.

This copy is the variant noted by Abbey of Alken's A Collection of of Interesting Subjects of Marine Views, Military Parade, Hunting, Coursing, Racing &c &c .

Shirmish.

“The rarest Alken item: unknown to Siltzer, Slater and Schwerdt. Two other copies only can be traced: one, in the possession of D.C. Colman, Esq., and the second a sale room record for December 1907…According to the sale record the date of the book is 1830, but it would appear highly probable that it was considerably earlier, for the following reasons: spelling of the publisher’s name as McLane and not McLean places it before 1830, and the few plates that portray actual historical incidents all bear on the Russian campaign against Napoleon. Further, by 1830 the work of Alken was devoted to sporting subjects only. A reasonable guess at the correct date is more likely 1822 or 1823, and probably even before 1820” (Abbey).

Refreshment.

Abbey notes of the second copy that "the title, however, is a variant [as here], giving the artist's name, and with a title more in consonance with the lettering on the spine, as follows: Military Duties / Occurances &c &c / By / Henry Alken / Collected and Published / by / Thomas McLane / 26 / Haymarket." In the copy under notice, the publisher is spelled "McLean," not McLane; Abbey's first argument is thus moot. Whatever the case, nailing this book's true publication date is, at this point and perhaps for all time, impossible. At best, it can be dated c. 1820-1830.

"The copy sold in 1907 was given the following description in the sale catalogue: 'Alken, H. Military duties, Occurances etc., 56 coloured etchings, inlaid with titles in MSS. So few copes were issued that it was not considered worth while by the publishers to have a title printed.' (Book Auction Records, Dec. 1907)" (Abbey).

“Henry Thomas Alken, born on 12 October 1785 at 3 Dufours Place, was the dominant sporting artist of the early nineteenth century...Henry's first sporting prints were published in 1813...From then on he delivered a long series of designs to the leading sporting printsellers—S. and J. Fuller [who invented the paper doll], Thomas McLean, and Rudolph Ackermann among others. He issued many sets of prints in wrappers and provided illustrations to a series of books, employing the pseudonym Ben Tally Ho for his mildly satirical sallies, and often collaborating with his friend the sporting journalist Charles James Apperley (1779–1843), known as Nimrod.

Relief.

“...He was also a prolific designer, etcher, and lithographer of scenes relating to racing, shooting, coaching, and other sports, and in 1820 he issued a series entitled National Sports of Great Britain. He wrote several books on aspects of engraving, including The Art and Practice of Engraving (1849),,, In later life he drifted into ill health, consumption, and poverty...he died in the early summer of 1851” (Timothy Clayton and Anita McConnell, ‘Alken family (per. 1745–1894)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

I've had many color-plate books pass through my hands over the years. In late 2008, I had an opportunity to research and catalog one of the scarcest suites of plates by James Gillray, The Rake's Progress at the University (London: Published December 22d 1806 by H. Humphrey).

"Convened for wearing Gaiters - sad offense! Expelled - nor e'en permitted a defense."

Only Yale, the Library of Congress, and British Museum have this series of five plates in their first state (they were reprinted by Bohn in 1851); there are no records in OCLC, KVK, of ABPC. Yet this series - unsigned by Gillray - was never published as a bound, titled volume, as Alken's Military Duties, Occurances &c.&c.

In my experience, the Alken is amongst the rarest, if not the rarest, of all 19th century color-plate books.

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ALKEN, Henry. Military Duties, Occurances &c. &c. [London]: Thomas McLean 26 Haymarket, [n.d., c. 1820-30].

First edition (variant). Quarto (10 1/4 x 7 in; 260 x 175 mm). Forty-three (of fifty-six) hand-colored etched plates inlaid within a window-panel cut from a leaf of gray paper with an elaborately engraved border surrounding the print. Title and captions in manuscript.

Contemporary full emerald-green straight-grain morocco. Blind-tooled border within French fillets. Central panel with gilt ruled borders and ornamented corners. All edges gilt. Gilt title to spine. Chemised within a quarter morocco slipcase.

Abbey, Life 349. Index to British Military Costume Prints 1500-1914, 41.