Dugmore, Arthur Radclyffe (1870-1952). Big game photographer and author of "The Romance of the Newfoundland Caribou" among other titles. AUTOGRAPH LETTER BY ARTHUR RADCLYFFE DUGMORE, 3-pages addressed to American lecture manager James Pond concerning a visit to the fronts of the American and British forces in France during World War I. [France?]. July 20, 1918. Octavo, 7 inch high by 4-1/2 inch wide. Approximately 173 words penned on three of the four sides of a folded sheet of personalized letterhead. The letterhead from his family home of Brockhurst, Grange Road, Guernsey was used elsewhere as is indicated by the identification having a line crossed through it. Dugmore is most probably writing from France. He writes to the American lecture manager James B. Pond that "I am to return under the instructions of the comparatively new Ministry of Information as soon as I have gathered the material I want. This will include the results of a visit to the front both with the British & American forces in France, a probable visit to the Grand Fleet, visits to the largest munitions works & ship yards. So I hope to be ready to return in September. That is to say leaving here about the middle of that month. The plan to go to the west coast California etc. will be first rate....By the way I have been a Major since Feb 10th & never knew it till the other day." He signs in full, "Very truly yrs A Radclyffe Dugmore". In a postscript he writes: "Are you mentioning the African lecture for the west?". Pond has stamped the note:"ANS'D AUG 29 1918". A few words are slightly smudged and the letter is folded twice for mailing. Very good.
The big game photographer and author Major Arthur Radclyffe Dugmore (1870-1952) was also an artist, illustrating some of his books and producing a series of prints of wildlife. He traveled extensively photographing and filming animals throughout the world and particularly in Africa. The author of "The Wonderland of Big Game", "The Romance of the Beaver", "Camera Adventures in the African Wilds", and "The Romance of the Newfoundland Caribou", among others, his films include "The Wonderland of Big Game". He was the subject of a 1931 Lowell Thomas biography "Rolling Stone: The Life and Adventures of Arthur Radclyffe Dugmore".
At the beginning of World War 1 Dugmore went to the battle front and recorded his experiences. He wrote of them in his book "When the Somme Ran Red". Quoting from the dust jacket of the book: "This book was written during wartime by a gassed British infantry officer incapacitated and no longer fit for service in the trenches. Dugmore was an unusual soldier who would normally have been considered too old for front line duties from the outset. He was already well into middle age at the outbreak of hostilities having spent a career as a naturalist and sportsman and it was only due to influential friends that he managed to obtain a commission in an infantry regiment - the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. Yet this was not his first experience of the Western Front. As the German Army swept into Belgium, the civilian Dugmore-armed only with a cine camera-travelled to the front as the small Belgian Army vainly attempted to stem the advance, to experience the war at first hand. His account of this early stage of the war makes unusual and fascinating reading. After joining the army, the author joined his regiment serving in the trenches during the period leading towards the First Battle of the Somme in 1916 and it is this and his time during the battle itself that are the principal subjects in this account."
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