[Humorous note from Edward Belcher to Thomas Crofton Croker consisting of a fictitious address for Crofton Croker]

Note handwritten by Edward Belcher in the style of an addressed envelope. Belcher's monogram features at the bottom left-hand corner.

c.1824

Ink on paper

This is one of three such notes in the Crofton Croker Album.

National Gallery of Ireland

CSIA

 

I.
T. Crofton Croker Esqr.
"At the Big Dogge"
Gloucester Road.

EB

Sir Edward Belcher was the second son of Andrew Belcher of Halifax, Nova Scotia and Roehampton, Surrey. His grandfather was William Belcher, governor of Nova Scotia. Belcher was born in the year 1799 and entered the navy, 1812. On 21 July 1818 Belcher was made lieutenant and in 1825 was appointed assistant surveyor to the Blossom, at the time, about to sail to the Pacific Ocean and Bering Strait on a voyage of exploration, of more than three years. He was made commander on 16 March 1829. From 1830 to 1833, Belcher commanded the Aetna, surveying parts of Africa. In 1830 he married Diana, daughter of Captain George Jolliffe HEICS. In 1836, Belcher was appointed to the Sulphur, a surveying ship, captained by Captain Beechey, then on the coast of South America. Having visited several of the island groups in the Pacific ocean, Belcher was called to China in 1840, because of the war. After seven years in July 1842, the Sulpher returned to England by the western route. In January 1843, the same year he was appointed knight, Belcher published, in two volumes, his "Narrative of a Voyage Round the World Performed in H.M.S. Sulphur during the Years 1836-42". In 1842 Belcher was appointed to work for another ship the Samarang for the survey of the coast of China. However, her route had to be changed to Borneo, the Philippines, and Formosa, where Blecher was employed to fight pirates and survey. He returned to England, late 1847. One year later, he published in two volumes the work "Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Samarung". In 1852, Belcher was appointed the commander of an Arctic expedition in search of Sir John Franklin. His account, including the abandonement of a ship was published in the work entitled "The last of the Arctic Voyagers", published in two volumes in the year 1855. He became vice-admiral in 1866, admiral in 1872 and was made a KCB on 13 March 1867. He passed his remaining years in literacy and scientific activities. His publications include "A treatise on Nautical Surveying", 1835, "Horatio Howard Brenton, a Naval Novel (3 volumes), 1856. He was editor to W.H. Smyths's book entitled "Sailors' Word Book, 1867. Belcher died 18 March 1877.

In 1844, the Cork-born antiquarian Thomas Crofton Croker acquired at auction a sketchbook that had belonged to Henry Perronet Briggs, his artist friend who had died a short period earlier. At the time of purchase, the album contained just ten studies by Briggs of costume details after the Dutch artist Jacques de Gheyn (1565-1629). Crofton Croker began to fill the empty pages with details of Briggs' exhibition history. The list continues uninterrupted until 1826 at which point Crofton Croker records the death of Thomas Foster, a mutual friend of his and Briggs. Crofton Croker continues the list, with occasional annotations, up to 1844, but then turns his attention almost exclusively to Foster. The album contains from that point extended notes by Crofton Croker, many of which draw on or quote from the testimony of other friends, on Foster's suicide and its immediate consequences, along with a large quantity of artworks, letters and other other ephemera relating to Foster. The album was discovered in Oxford in 2002 and acquired by the Centre for the Study of Irish Art the following year.