WD1378-1381, WD1406

CROMMELIN, JAMES ARDEN (180l-1893)

Crommelin was the son of Charles Russell Crommelin (Resident, Radhanagar (Bengal) 1784; died Contai (Bengal) 1822) by his second wife, Anne Wilkinson, and grandson of Charles Crommelin (1717-88), Governor of Bombay and his wife, Mary Arden. He went to India in 1820 in the Bengal Engineers and in 1824 saw active service in Burma and in China. From 1828 to 1829 he was in the service of the King of Oudh. He was on leave from 1830 to 1833, returning to India as executive engineer at Dum Dum. He was on Cape leave in 1837. On 28 June 1838, the day of Queen Victoria’s coronation, he climbed the Peterbol Mountain in the Mauritius, ran up the Union jack on the summit and drank her health there. He was the first Englishman to climb this mountain. From 1841 to 1843, while superintending engineer in the NorthWestern Provinces, he bought land in Darjeeling and built two houses. He retired to one of them, Belcombre, in 1843 as a Brevet Lieut.-Colonel and lived there for many years until his death. As a friend of the botanist, Sir Joseph Hooker, who found his knowledge of the Himalayas most valuable, he planned many of Hooker’s tours and went with him on at least one. His eldest daughter, Mary Anne Crommelin, married the Rev. George Francis Popham Blyth, Bishop of Jerusalem, 1887-1914 (see WD153). His granddaughter, Estelle Blyth, presented these pictures and gave the information included in this note. She also presented Colonel Crommelin’s ‘camera lucida’ (F877). See H. Hosten, ‘Dr J.D. Hooker and Colonel James Crommelin’, ‘Bengal Past and Present’, xii, January-June 1931, 50-7.

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WD1378-1381; WD1406

5 drawings. Presented by Miss Estelle Blyth, WD1378-1381 on 12 September 1959; WD1406 on 14 December 1959.