My Tour of Service in Ceylon Album.

A vivid album of colonial life in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) at the turn of the century, with copious amounts of drawings, ephemera, letters, and photographs accompanying an exhaustive narrative of official life.

Major Astley Herbert Terry was promoted to Major in April 1903 and set out for Ceylon with his wife, two children, and German governess. Shortly after their arrival at Colombo, on April 24th Terry records 'the birth of our third child-a daughter.' Alongside his three children, the family life of Terry revolved around official and social engagements, the numerous invitations, programmes, and menus of which adorn the pages of the album. Some of his proudest achievements were the acceptance into clubs such as the Ceylon Turf Club, and success in the various races and games put on by the clubs on weekends for which medals and badges he proudly displays.

Terry also travelled around the country in an official capacity and provides surprising insight into the life and politics of the time. He visited Diyatalawa Camp, a Boer prisoner of war camp, Adam's Peak ('Buddha is alleged... to have left his footprint on Adam's Peak'), Trincomalee, Natale, Dambulla '(the famous Rock Temple, hewn out of and right underneath an enormous mass of rock'), Kandy ('We also visited the famous Buddhist temple where a tooth of Buddha is kept'), Punduloya, the Ruanwela Dagoba at Anuradhapura, and more. His commentary includes interesting accounts of monsoon season, travel by chair, descriptions of the locals he met, and the wealth of wildlife amongst the jungle which he routinely hunted for ('elephant tracks, also bear, panther, buffalo… wonderful place the jungle').

The history and economics of the region also held Terry's interest. He provides a summary of Ceylon to his present, recording that it 'was made a Crown Colony in 1798' with Kandy captured in 1803. Several uprisings took place in the following years but 'the rioters – they can hardly be called rebels- were easily subdued'. He also describes the local produce and production with coffee, introduced in 1837, being 'superseded by tea. Tea and timber are the two principal exports', and also 'pearl fishing takes place every two or three years'.

For a typical colonial official the poetic language used to describe the landscape is an enjoyable lift. Terry writes how 'the afterglow appears after the sun has disappeared below the horizon. The sky becomes a brilliant orange which gradually deepens to crimson, and then slowly fades away in soft warm grey tints, ever darkening as the short twilight fades into night.' But the relatively idyllic life was not without trials: at one point Major Terry came home to find 'that I had been burgled' and that several items were missing, 'my room was in a fearful muddle. I lost a pair of gold links... a silver watch and a box of Ceylon coins.'

In total a comprehensive record of one man's life in Sri Lanka and the minutiae of official life set against the day to day socialising and worries of a young colonial family.

Small folio (32 x 27 cm); 209 tipped in letters and pieces of ephemera, 23 photographs with several large, 20 sketches and illustrations, 4 small paintings by the author's children, sketch map of Ceylon, several pressed flowers, bookplate of author to pastedown, 100 pages of manuscript going onto rear endpaper; original half black morocco rebacked, gilt ruled brown pebbled boards, gilt monogram to upper board, well-preserved and secure.