Sir William Cornwallis Harris

(1807-48)

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Sir William Cornwallis Harris (1807-1848), by profession an engineer in the Indian Army, earned early renown by writing a lively account of a hunting expedition which he led, with one companion, into the interior of southern Africa in 1836-7. It was on the strength of the success of this book, first published in Bombay in 1838, that Harris was appointed leader of an expedition mounted by the British Government to establish relations with Sahela Selassie, King of Shoa (in southern Abysinnia), for which service he was knighted in 1844. He was perhaps the archetypal hunter-naturalist: deriving great pleasure and excitement from the pursuit and killing of all kinds of game, yet being at the same time a keen observer of the natural world. He is credited with the 'discovery' of the sable antelope (known for many years as the 'Harris buck'), and presented the type specimen to the British Museum; and his detailed accounts of the big game of southern Africa, illustrated by his own watercolour sketches, contributed significantly, when published in 1840-1, to the increasing awareness of African wildlife in Victorian England. His writings (and drawings) are also of considerable historical importance. He describes in some detail his own encounter with Mzilikazi, 'King of the Amazooloo', in 1836, and provides a first-hand commentary on the early stages of the 'Great Trek'. His three-volume account of his expedition to Ethiopia, published in 1844, was widely acclaimed; and the accompanying volume of illustrations is itself an important record of its kind.

Harris was born at Wittersham, Isle of Oxney, in Kent, and was baptised there on 2 April 1807. He was the second son of James Harris (c.1767-1829), of Wittersham Hall, and of Lucy, younger daughter of James Trimmer, of Ealing, Middlesex, and his wife Sarah Trimmer (1741-1810), well known in her time as an educationalist and authoress. William's elder brother Charles (b. 1803) died in 1817. His younger brother was Captain Robert Harris (1809-65), who entered the Navy in 1822 and who in 1857, after much active service, was given responsibility for the implementation of plans to provide young naval officers with a proper education.

<Family. Leland L. Duncan's survey of the monumental inscriptions in the church and in the churchyard (published on the website of the Kent Archaeological Society) provides details of WCH's parents, elder brother, step-mother, and her second husband. It also reveals the significance, in Wittersham, of the Rev. William Cornwallis, after whom WCH was doubtless named.>

<Harris received his education and training at the East India Company's military college at Addiscombe, near Croydon in Surrey, and was commissioned second lieutenant in 1823. A portrait of him as a young officer in the Indian Army, painted at about this time (attributed by modern scholarship to Ramsay Richard Reinagle (1775-1862)), came to light in 1959, in the possession of one of Harris's grand-nieces, and is now in the National Portrait Gallery.>

<Harris's early career in India.>

<The hunting expedition to southern Africa in 1836-7, accompanied by William Richardson, of the Bombay Civil Service. Harris in Cape Town, 1837. Publication of his map.>

<Harris's return to Bombay. Publication of Narrative / Wild Sports; and preparation of illustrations for the successive editions. Sketches or drawings published as lithographs in the 2nd edition (London: John Murray, 1839). Watercolours first published as hand-coloured lithographs as illustrations for the 3rd edition (London: William Pickering, 1841). The originals of these drawings preserved by Harris family, with others.>

<The expedition to Ankober, capital of the Kingdom of Shoa, 1841-3. For the 'Instructions Addressed by the Secretary of the Government of Bombay to Capt. W. C. Harris', dated Bombay, 24 April 1841, and a list of members of the expedition, see The Highlands of Æthiopia (1844), vol. I, pp. A3 and A4>

<Harris in England, 1843-6. Publications: 4th edition of Wild Sports (1844); and Highlands of Æthiopia (1844). Watercolour portrait of Harris, published as a frontispiece to Illustrations of the Highlands of Ethiopia [1844/5]. Attributed in Illustrations to Oakley; but also described as a self-portrait (Gordon-Brown, Pictorial Africana, 1975 ed., col. plate opp. p. 199). Original watercolour signed 'O Oakley. Fect. 1845'. Belonged to Trevor Harris, Johannesburg, c. 1960. Acquired by the Africana Museum, Johannesburg, in 1967-8. See R. F. Kennedy, Catalogue of Pictures in the Africana Museum, VII: Supplement H-Z (Johannesburg, 1972), p. 85 (O26). Presumably Octavius Oakley (1800-67), represented in NPG by four other works.>

<Harris's return to India, 1846, and his death in 1848.>

<Wild Sports, 5th edition (1852).>

 

 

William Cornwallis Harris

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SDK December 2004