Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/260

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Browne
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Browne

capture of Kabul. Meanwhile the victory of general Sir Charles Gough at Fatehabad on 2 April 1879 enabled Browne to occupy Gandamak. In the subsequent political negotiations which led to the signature of the treaty of Gandamak on 26 May with Yakub Khan, the son of the dispossessed Ameer Shere Ali, Browne had no share. On the withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan Lord Lytton, despite the protests of Sir Frederick Haines, visited on Browne the discredit of the failure of his transport service, a result which was mainly due to the dilatory preparations of the government. Browne was not reappointed military member of the council, and was relegated to the command of the Lahore district. Nevertheless his services did not pass altogether unrewarded. He was created a K.C.B. in 1879, and received the thanks of the government of India and both houses of parliament. Shortly after he retired from active service, and when the massacre of the Cavagnari mission at Kabul on 3 Sept. 1879 reopened the Afghan war he was no longer eligible for a command.

Browne was promoted general on 1 Dec. 1888, and made a G.C.B. in 1891. He was well known in military circles as the inventor of the sword-belt which was universally adopted in the army. After his retirement he resided at The Wood, Ryde, Isle of Wight, where he died on 14 March 1901. After cremation his remains were buried at Ryde. In 1860 he married Lucy, daughter of R. C. Sherwood, M.D., of the East India Company's medical service. A portrait by Consley Vivian is at the East India United Service Club, St. James's Square, London, S.W. A memorial tablet has been erected in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral.

[The Times, 15 and 19 March 1901; Army and Navy Gazette, 16 March 1901; W. H. Paget, A Record of the Expeditions against the North-West Frontier Tribes, 1884, p. 86; Kaye and Malleson, History of the Indian Mutiny, 1889, vols. iv. and v.; Lord Roberts, Forty-one Years in India, 1898; W. H. Russell, The Prince of Wales's Tour, 1877; G. J. Younghusband, The Story of the Guides, 1908; H. B. Hanna, The Second Afghan War, 1899–1910, 3 vols.; The Official History of the Second Afghan War, 1908; Lady Betty Balfour, History of Lord Lytton's Indian Administration, 1899; R. S. Rait, Life of Field-marshal Sir Frederick Haines, 1911.]


BROWNE, THOMAS (1870–1910), painter and black-and-white artist, born at Nottingham on 8 Dec. 1870, was son of Francis and Maria Browne. He was educated at St. Mary's national school in his native place, and at the age of eleven became an errand boy, first at a milliner's, and then in the lace-market. When fourteen he was apprenticed to a firm of lithographic printers, and served the full period of seven years. In the meantime he began to practise as a black-and-white artist, and had his first humorous drawings accepted by the periodical called 'Scraps.' In 1895 he came to London, which remained his headquarters till his death. He quickly found a ready market for his work in such papers as 'Cycling,' the 'Tatler,' the 'Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News,' 'Punch,' the 'Sketch,' and the 'Graphic.' He paid more than one visit to America, and there published many sketches and cartoons in the 'New York Herald,' the ' New York Times,' and the 'Chicago Tribune.' His illustrations were characterised not only by their ready wit but by their admirable quality of line and fluency of draughtsmanship. By his contemporaries 'Tom Browne' will perhaps be best remembered for his creation of those comic types of American illustrated journalism, Weary Willie and Tired Tim. Among special volumes which he illustrated were 'Tom Browne's Cycle Sketch Book' (1897), 'The Khaki Alphabet Book' (1901), 'The Night Side of London' (1902), and 'Tom Browne's Comic Annual' (1904-5). He also won considerable success as a designer of posters, and in 1897 was one of the founders of the lithographic colour-printing firm of Tom Browne & Co. at Nottingham.

Though Brown was best known as a humorous draughtsman, his work as a painter in water-colour showed in its refinement of colour and design highly artistic gifts. For many of his paintings he found subjects in Holland and Spain, and in 1909 brought back much material from a tour in China and Japan. In 1898 he was elected a member of the Royal Society of British Artists, and in 1901 a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-colour, while from 1898 to 1901 he exhibited each year at the Royal Academy, sending seven pictures in all. He was a member of the London Sketch Club from its foundation in 1897, and president in 1907. An active freemason, he was a past master of the Pen and Brush Lodge. The happy geniality which distinguished his life as well as his pictures won him hosts of friends.

On 1 Jan. 1910 Browne was operated on for an internal malady, and died on