antiquarian bookseller - Peter Harrington

Peter Harrington Antiquarian Bookseller
247.CUTTS, John, Baron
Cutts of Gowran.
Letters to Severall Persons during
the Time that I comanded Her
Majesty’s Forces in Chief in the Low
Country’s in the Year 1703.
[The Hague, 1703–4] [38868] £1500
Foolscap 4to. 56pp. MS in a clearly legible secretarial hand, all
signed by Cutts, numerous blanks, in contemporary marbled
wraps, worn, lacking spine. Light browning, a little shaken,
but sound in worn wraps.
Cutts was a career soldier and minor poet. Having been
attached to the retinue of the Duke of Monmouth at
The Hague, on the defeat of the Monmouth Rebellion
he joined the forces of Charles of Lorraine fighting the
Turks, distinguishing himself at the siege and capture of
Buda in 1686. Unsympathetic to James II, he then served
with an English regiment in Dutch pay. Hugh MacKay,
who knew him well at the time, describes him as “pretty
tall, lusty and well shaped, an agreeable companion,
with abundance of wit, affable and familiar, but too
much seized with vanity and self-conceit.” He sailed to
England with William III and distinguished himself in
the campaign in Ireland, at the Battle of Boyne and at
the defence of Limerick where he was wounded, for
which services he was created Baron Cutts of Gowran.
In 1692 he was in the Low Countries at Engheim and
Steenkerke, and in 1694 he joined the disastrous Brest
Expedition. In 1695 he was back in Flanders and earned
himself the sobriquet “The Salamander” for his daring,
and fire-proof, escapades at Namur. Returning from
the siege as a popular hero, he spent the next few
years as a boon companion to William III, occasional
diplomat, being sent to Vienna at the time of the Treaty
of Ryswick, debtor, owing some £17,500, and MP.
He returned to active service with outbreak of the War
of the Spanish Succession, declining the Governorship
of Jamaica in favour of a return to the Netherlands.
In 1702 he added lustre to his fame with the capture
of Fort St. Michael at Venloo, “The achievement was
variously regarded. Cutts’s enemies, and they were
many, viewed it as a vainglorious act of one who, in the
words of Swift, was ‘brave and brainless as the sword he
wears’ [Swift also described him as “the vainest old fool
alive”]. Nor was this idea altogether scouted in the army,
where Cutts’s romantic courage rendered him popular.
Captain Robert Parker of the Royal Irish, who was one
of the storming party… describing the onrush of the
assailants as ‘like madmen without fear or wit’…” [ODNB].
The period covered by this letter-book is that when
Marlborough returned to England leaving Cutts in
command. It contains the full texts of his 54 out-going
letters containing instructions to the officers commanding
the regiments in the field, promotions, transfers &c., reports
to Marlborough and his secretary Adam Cardonnel on the
state of operations, relations with allied commanders,
political negotiations, and transmitting information
from the naval forces off the coast. On 8 January 1704
he sends a lengthy letter providing Marlborough with
“an Account of what had happened ‘till that time in
the Forces under [his] care.” Cutts was subsequently at
Blenheim, “encircling the village and preventing the
10,000 French troops from breaking out of Blenheim,
eventually forcing them to surrender”, and on the return
march captured Trier to serve as winter headquarters.
“Blenheim was Cutts’s last fight. On 23 March 1705 he was
appointed Commander-in-Chief in Ireland … However,
his health was much broken, and he appears to have
been aggrieved at his removal from more active scenes…
He died in Dublin, rather suddenly, on 26 January 1707,
leaving, so his detractors said, not enough money for his
burial. He was interred in Christ Church Cathedral, but no
monument was erected to him. George Montagu, a friend
of Horace Walpole and a grandson of the first Lady Cutts
by a former husband, wanted to erect a monument to Lord
Cutts, for which Walpole wrote an epitaph in 1762, but
the design was never carried further.” The sad state of his
affairs is underlined by the last document present here, a
two-page copy of a petition sent by Cutt’s sister Joanna to
Queen Anne, a testimonial of her brother’s services – “My
Lord Cutts has bin in the Publick Service ever since the
Yeare 1688 at a farr greater Expence than his Employments
answerd to him.” – and a plea for “Her Majesties Goodness
and Charity” to assist her as “all funds ceasing with
him by this Fatal Stroke, she is cutt from all Hopes.”
Substantial 18th-century campaign documents of this
kind are far from common, and the almost complete
erasure of such a prominent and courageous soldier as
Cutts from the record adds considerable appeal to this
insight into his services.
248.DESNOS, Louis Charles.
Atlas Chorographique, Historique,
et Portatif des Elections du
Royaume. Généralité de Paris.
Divisée en ses Vingt Deux
Elections, et réprésentée dans
toutes ses Parties par autant de
Cartes particulieres, d’une Maniere
Chorographique et Complette,
avec le Nombre des Paroisses et
des Feux, la Position des Villes,
des Bourgs, des Villages, des
Hameaux… par une Société
d’Ingénieurs…
Paris, Savoye, Despilly, Duchesne… [& chez] L’Auteur, 1763 [39060]
£3500
Small 4to (196 × 136 mm). Mottled calf trade binding,
raised bands to the spine, double fillet gilt panels to the
compartments enclosing gilt pomegranate devices, red
morocco label, red edge-stain. Fully-engraved title page,
double-page key map coloured in outline and 23 other similar
maps, 21 double-page, two – Paris, Environs & Faubourgs
– folding. Light foxing and browning, but overall an excellent
copy in superb contemporary condition, just the slightest of
shelf-wear to the binding.
FIRST EDITION. Uncommon, OCLC lists just three copies
which appear to be bound with an accompanying text
by the abbé Regley which was clearly never present
here: a further edition was issued three years later.
This copy is bound in the second most expensive of
the bindings offered on the title page, at 19 francs,
the dearest being “maroquin” at 27 francs. Also
offered was stitched at 18 or in leaves at 17 francs.
Desnos was a “mapmaker, globemaker and publisher
who worked with most of the eminent cartographers of
Catalogue 57: Travel Section 6: Europe, including Constantinople
his day” (Tooley), most often remembered today for his
involvement with Brion de la Tour on the Atlas Général…
This attractive hand-atlas of the administrative districts
surrounding Paris is described as “utile a l’Etranger comme
au Citoyen qui veut avoir une connoissance détaillée de la
France et particulierement à ceux qui sont intèressés dans
l’Administration de la Justice, le Commerce et les Finances,
aux Voyageurs, et aux Jeunes gens, qui veulent apprendre
notre Histoire [as useful to visitors as to citizens who wish
to have a detailed knowledge of France and particularly to
those interested in the administration of justice, commerce
and finances, to travellers, and also young people wishing
to understand our history]”.
Tooley Dictionary of Mapmakers.
124 125