Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/180

 kingdom of Northumbria, by publishing inedited manuscripts mainly of a date anterior to the Restoration, and relating to the history and topography of northern England.

A silhouette portrait of Surtees is prefixed to the ‘Life’ by G. Taylor.



SURTEES, ROBERT SMITH (1803–1864), sporting novelist, of an old Durham family, was the second son of Anthony Surtees (d. 1838) of Hamsterley Hall, who married, on 14 March 1801, Alice, sister of Christopher Blackett of Wylam, M.P. for south Northumberland 1837–1841. His grandfather, Robert Surtees (1741–1811), was of Milkwell Burn in the parish of Ryton, an estate purchased by his ancestor, Anthony Surtees, in 1626; the estate of Hamsterley Hall was acquired about 1807 from the executors of Thomas, eldest surviving son of Henry Swinburne [q. v.] the traveller (cf., Durham, ii. 290).

Born in 1803, Robert was educated at Durham grammar school, which he left in 1819 for a solicitor's office. Having qualified as a solicitor, he bought a partnership in London; but the business was misrepresented, and he had difficulty in recovering the purchase money. He took rooms in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and began contributing to the old ‘Sporting Magazine.’ During 1830 he compiled a manual for horse-buyers, in which he combined his knowledge of the law with his taste for sporting matters. In 1831 his elder brother, Anthony, died unmarried at Malta on 24 March, thus materially altering his prospects. Before the close of the same year, in conjunction with [q. v.], he started the ‘New Sporting Magazine,’ which Surtees edited down to 1836. Between July 1831 and September 1834 he developed in these pages the humorous character of Mr. John Jorrocks, a sporting grocer, the quintessence of Cockney vulgarity, good humour, absurdity, and cunning. The success of the sketches led to the conception of a similar scheme by Chapman and Seymour, which resulted in the ‘Pickwick Papers.’ The papers of Surtees were collected as ‘Jorrocks's Jaunts’ in 1838, in which year, by the death of his father on 5 March, Surtees succeeded to the estate of Hamsterley Hall. He became a J.P. for Durham, a major of the Durham militia, and high sheriff of the county in 1856. In the meantime, Lockhart, having seen the ‘Jorrocks Papers,’ suggested to a common friend, ‘Nimrod’ (i.e. Charles James Apperley), that Surtees ought to try his hand at a novel. The result was ‘Handley Cross,’ in which Jorrocks reappears as a master of foxhounds and the possessor of a county seat. The coarseness of the text was redeemed in 1854 by the brilliantly humorous illustrations of John Leech, who utilised a sketch of a coachman made in church as his model for the ex-grocer. Some of Leech's best work is to be found among his illustrations to Surtees's later novels, notably ‘Ask Mamma’ and ‘Mr. Romford's Hounds.’ Without the original illustrations these works have very small interest. At the time of his death Surtees had just prepared for appearance in serial parts his last novel, ‘Mr. Facey Romford's Hounds.’ Leech himself died during its issue, and the illustrations were completed by Hablot K. Browne (‘Phiz’). The novelist was a keen observer, very tall, but a good horseman, who, ‘without ever riding for effect, usually saw a deal of what hounds were doing.’ He died at Brighton on 16 March 1864.

Surtees married, on 19 May 1841, Elizabeth Jane (d. 1879), daughter and coheir of Addison Fenwick of Bishop Wearmouth, and had issue Anthony, who died at Rome on 17 March 1871; and two daughters, Elizabeth Anne and Eleanor, who married, on 28 Jan. 1885, John Prendergast Vereker, heir to the viscounty of Gort.

Surtees wrote: 1. ‘The Horseman's Manual, being a Treatise on Soundness, the Law of Warranty, and generally on the Laws relating to Horses. By R. S. Surtees, Lincoln's Inn Fields,’ London, 1831, 8vo. 2. ‘Jorrocks's Jaunts and Jollities, or the Hunting, Shooting, Racing, Driving, Sailing, Eating, Eccentric and Extravagant Exploits of that renowned Sporting Citizen, Mr. John Jorrocks of St. Botolph Lane and Great Coram Street,’ with twelve illustrations by ‘Phiz,’ London, 1838, 8vo (a copy fetched 11l. in 1895); 3rd edition, revised, with sixteen coloured plates after Henry Alken, 1843, 8vo, and, with three additional papers from the pages of the ‘New Sporting Magazine,’ 1869 and 1890. 3. ‘Handley Cross, or the Spa Hunt: a Sporting Tale. By the author of “Jorrocks's Jaunts,”’ 3 vols. 1843, London, 12mo. This was expanded into ‘Handley Cross, or Mr. Jorrocks's Hunt,’ London, 1854, 8vo (first issued in seventeen monthly parts, March 1853–October 1854, in red wrappers designed by Leech; a complete set is valued at 9l.), with seventeen admirable engravings on steel, coloured, and eighty-four woodcuts by John Leech; reprinted with coloured plates by Wildrake, Heath,