"OH GENTLEMEN! GENTLEMEN! HERE'S A LAMENTABLE OCCURRENCE"
Apperley occupied himself during his exile in writing sporting memoirs and reminiscences, and contributing to Ackermann's New Sporting Magazine. In 1835 he was invited by Lockhart to write three articles on Hunting, Racing, and Coaching for the Quarterly Review, and these, which represent some of his best work, were republished under the title of The Chase, the Turf, and the Road, with coloured etchings by Henry Alken. Lockhart was so much impressed by the powers of his new contributor, that he told John Murray, "I have found a man who can hunt like Hugo Meynell and write like Walter Scott,"—a criticism that did more credit to his sporting than his literary acumen, though Apperley's style is greatly superior to that of Pierce Egan and other of his sporting contemporaries. In 1837 he published his Memoirs of the Life of John Mytton, which had appeared serially in the New Sporting Magazine, and was illustrated with plates drawn by Alken and etched by Rawlings. This was followed by The Life of a Sportsman, illustrated by the same artist, which has become one of the classics of hunting literature. Apperley returned to London in 1842, and died in Pimlico the following year.
The death of Apperley was preceded by the rise of another famous sporting writer, Robert Smith Surtees (1803-64), the second son of Anthony Surtees, of Hamsterley Hall, Durham. Robert was educated at Durham Grammar School, and afterwards articled to a solicitor. A partnership was bought for him in London, but this proved unsatisfactory, and the young man, turning his back upon the law, started upon his literary career as contributor to the old Sporting Magazine. In 1831, in connection with Rudolf Ackermann, the son and successor of Rowlandson's employer, he started the New Sporting Magazine, which he edited down to 1836, and in the pages of this periodical the celebrated Mr. Jorrocks, humorist, sportsman, and grocer, made his first bow to the public. These papers were collected under the title of Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities in 1838, with illustrations by "Phiz"; but a later edition, that of 1843, contains fifteen coloured plates by Alken. In the same year Surtees succeeded to the family estate, but in spite of this change in his circumstances he did not lay aside his pen. Lockhart had once remarked to Apperley à propos the creator of Jorrocks, "That fellow could write a good novel if he liked to try"; and the compliment, being promptly repeated to Surtees, resulted in the composition of Handley Cross (1843), in which Mr. Jorrocks makes his appearance as a country squire and master of hounds. A later edition of the book was illustrated by a new sporting artist, John Leech. Handley Cross was followed by Hawbuck Grange, Ask Mamma, and the ever-popular Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour, which contained numerous coloured plates and woodcuts by Leech. "The Yorkshireman," as Surtees was nicknamed, presumably because he was born in Durham, also contributed papers to Bell's Life, some of which, commemorative of the fine open winter of 1845-46, were afterwards published as The Analysis of the Hunting Field, with illustrations by Alken, who now disappears from our view, though he left two or three sons in the same "line of business," with whom he has sometimes been confused, while the popular name of Alken became a general patronymic for a whole school of sporting artists. Surtees, who died at Brighton in 1864, was a fine horseman and a keen observer of social types, though, so far from being the rollicking sportsman suggested by his books, he is described as a man of rather reserved and taciturn nature. The remarkable character of Mr. Jorrocks was evolved during long, lonely journeys, when the shrewd ex-grocer, or rather his imaginary conception, stood his creator in the stead of a travelling companion.
MR. JORROCKS' LECTURE ON "UNTING"
