BATEMAN (Charles S.L.)

Original drawings and watercolours for the author's 'The First Ascent of the Kasai: being some Records of service Under the Lone Star'.

Remarkable original artworks

1). A bound volume containing 46 watercolours (17 not in vol.), 17 pen and ink drawings (1 not in vol.), 12 pencil sketches (3 not in vol.), 3 etchings, 3 ms. charts and additional material incl. newspaper cuttings, a photographic negative of the author and manuscript fragments (such as those relating to the examination and prosecution of Jao Domingos, who committed fraud when in the service of the Luebo District). All carefully attached at corners to modern paper, with typescript labels laid down beneath the images. Various places. [1885-1886].

2). A portfolio containing the sheets on which the works were originally mounted, with ms. notes.

3). The First Ascent of the Kasai… First American edition. 8vo. Original blue cloth, gilt titling to spine, wear to head and foot of spine, some marking to boards. A good, partly unopened, copy. pp. xx, [1]-192. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1889.

£17,500.00

The First Ascent of the Kasai… was published in 1889 — a handsomely illustrated volume that recorded the author’s part in an expedition to determine where the waters of the Kasai River emptied themselves.

Charles Somerville LaTrobe Bateman joined the so-called ‘German Expedition’ (despatched by the Geographical Society of Berlin under the commission of Leopold II) on the return-leg of the river-voyage, which had succeeded in its initial aim of descending the Kasai to the Congo at Kwamouth; thereby confirming the Kasai as a tributary to the great river. Bateman and the expedition leader, Dr. Wolf, were tasked with ascending the Kasai in order return the Bashilange-Baluba people (who had acted as guides for the descent) to their homeland at the headwaters of the river. Once there they had a second objective to fulfil: to establish a station at the confluence of the Lulua with Luebo, as a port for the station of Luluaburg.

Aboard the steam-wheel steamer Stanley and the steam-launch En Avant, they departed Leopoldville on the 30th of September 1885 and arrived at their destination on the 7th of November in the same year. Bateman then served as an administrator for the Luebo District: performing a number of difficult functions, such as attempting to prevent slave raiding. He was eventually picked up by by the Stanley on the 18th of December 1886, when he, for the last time, looked ‘upon the dark woods and swirling waters’ of that territory (p.170).

In addition to his primary duties as second-in-command to Wolf, Bateman found time to create a remarkable visual record of the expedition, that passed through the territories of the Chiplumba, Basongo-Meno, Bakuba and Bakete tribes. His drawings, watercolours and etchings of the native peoples, flora and fauna and river scenes, recorded things never before depicted (and in some cases seen) by Europeans. They subsequently provided the basis for the excellent plates in his book, which illustrate, inter alia, Hippopotami on the southern shore of Stanley Pool, Bakuba cups and knives, Lulua fish and Bakete hunters.

Bateman’s original works survived and are offered here for sale, collected together in an album with additional manuscript charts, passages from the book and other association material. Along with those images present in the volume are works which were not included and do not appear in any other published material. Some of the latter provide wonderful additions to Bateman’s narrative, such as the watercolour depicting the visionary Bashilange Chief Chilunga Meso standing atop an islet framed by breaking waves. This picture, when put in the context of the passage it was presumably made to illustrate, acquires a sense of dramatic irony, as one learns of how Chilunga Meso was part-tricked into spending periods of inspired isolation on the islet, by an Angolese translator who was exhausted by the chief’s demands.

Though remarkable for a number of reasons, the pictures are arguably most exceptional for the intimate view they provide of the Bashilange-Baluba people, upon whom the expedition relied so heavily. As the trip from Leopoldville to Luebo is finished by page 61 of The Ascent…, the majority of Bateman’s words are given over to his time in the Luebo District, among the Bashilange, and his pictures reflect that weighting.

Of the author very little is known, other than that which can be gleaned from his book. His father was almost certainly Rev. C. H. Bateman (b.1813), which can be deduced from the records showing that C. H. Bateman fathered Rev. James Henry La Trobe Bateman (b.1848), the brother to whom Charles calls, in the preface to The Ascent…, his ‘amanuensis’ and aide in the production of the book. What became of Charles after he departed Luebo is unknown, but he did not live far beyond that time, a sadness attested to by a gravestone in Carlisle’s Richardson Street Cemetery, bearing the date of his death: 05.08.1892.

Stock No.
221102