Background
He was the second son of Anthony Surtees of Hamsterley Hall, a member of an old County Durham family.
(What true-bred city sportsman has not in his day put off ...)
What true-bred city sportsman has not in his day put off the most urgent business-perhaps his marriage, or even the interment of his rib-that he might "brave the morn" with that renowned pack, the Surrey subscription foxhounds? Lives there, we would ask, a thoroughbred, prime, bang-up, slap-dash, break-neck, out-and-out artist, within three miles of the Monument, who has not occasionally "gone a good 'un" with this celebrated pack? ***-excerpt from "Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1604507632/?tag=2022091-20
(Originally published in 1865, this is a fascinating novel...)
Originally published in 1865, this is a fascinating novel of the period and still an interesting read today. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1444647326/?tag=2022091-20
(Ask Mamma - or The Richest Commoner In England by Robert ...)
Ask Mamma - or The Richest Commoner In England by Robert Smith Surtees IT may be a recommendation to the lover of light literature to be told, that the following story does not involve the complication of a plot. It is a mere continuous narrative of an almost everyday exaggeration, interspersed with sporting scenes and excellent illustrations by Leech. CONSIDERING that Billy Pringle, or Fine Billy, as his good-natured friends called him, was only an underbred chap, he was as good an imitation of a Swell as ever we saw. He had all the airy dreaminess of an hereditary high flyer, while his big talk and off-hand manner strengthened the delusion. It was only when you came to close quarters with him, and found that though he talked in pounds he acted in pence, and marked his fine dictionary words and laboured expletives, that you came to the conclusion that he was "painfully gentlemanly." So few people, however, agree upon what a gentleman is, that Billy was well calculated to pass muster with the million. Fine shirts, fine ties, fine talk, fine trinkets, go a long way towards furnishing the character with many. Billy was liberal, not to say prodigal, in all these. The only infallible rule we know is, that the man who is always talking about being a gentleman never is one. Just as the man who is always talking about honour, morality, fine feeling, and so or never knows anything of these qualities but the name. Nature had favoured Billy's pretensions in the lady-killing way. In person he was above the middle height, five feet eleven or so, slim and well-proportioned, with a finely-shaped head and face, fair complexion, light brown hair, laughing blue eyes, with long lashes, good eyebrows, regular pearly teeth and delicately pencilled moustache. Whiskers he did not aspire to. Nor did Billy abuse the gifts of Nature by disguising himself in any of the vulgar groomy gamekeepery style of dress, that so effectually reduce all mankind to the level of the labourer, nor adopt any of the "loud" patterns that have lately figured so conspicuously in our streets. On the contrary, he studied the quiet unobtrusive order of costume, and the harmony of colours, with a view of producing a perfectly elegant general effect. Neatly-fitting frock or dress coats, instead of baggy sacks, with trouser legs for sleeves, quiet-patterned vests and equally quiet-patterned trousers. If he could only have been easy in them he would have done extremely well, but there was always a nervous twitching, and jerking, and feeling, as if he was wondering what people were thinking or saying of him.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KPT4FPM/?tag=2022091-20
He was the second son of Anthony Surtees of Hamsterley Hall, a member of an old County Durham family.
Surtees attended a school at Ovingham and then Durham School.
Surtees soon began to contribute to the Sporting Magazine, and in 1831 he published a treatise on the law relating to horses and particularly the law of warranty, entitled The Horseman's Manual. In the following year he helped to, found the New Sporting Magazine, of which he was the editor for the next five years. To this periodical he contributed between 1832 and 1834 the papers which were afterwards collected and published in 1838 as Jorrocks's Jaunts and Jollities. This humorous narrative of the sporting experiences of a cockney grocer, which suggested the more famous Pickwick Papers of Charles Dickens, is the work by which Surtees is chiefly remembered, though his novel Handley Cross, published in 1843, in which the character of "Jorrocks" is reintroduced as a master of fox-hounds, also enjoyed a wide popularity. The former of these two books was illustrated by "Phiz" (H. K. Browne), and the latter, as well as most of Surtees's subsequent novels, by John Leech, whose pictures of " Jorrocks " are everywhere familiar and were the chief means of ensuring the lasting popularity of that humorous creation. In 1838, on the death of his father, Surtees, whose elder brother had died in 1831, inherited the family property of Hamsterley Hall, where he lived for the rest of his life. The later novels by Surtees included Hillingdon Hall (1845), in which "Jorrocks " again appears; Hawbuck Grange (1847); Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour (1853); Ask Mamma (1858); Plain or Ringlets? (1860); Mr Face у Romford's Hounds (1865). The last of these novels appeared after the author's death, which occurred on the 16th of March 1864.
(What true-bred city sportsman has not in his day put off ...)
(Ask Mamma - or The Richest Commoner In England by Robert ...)
(Originally published in 1865, this is a fascinating novel...)
(The humorous narrative of the sporting experiences of a c...)
(Bath published Fiction)
Quotations:
"There is no secret so close as that between a rider and his horse. "
"More people are flattered into virtue than bullied out of vice. "
"Women never look so well as when one comes in wet and dirty from hunting. "
"Life would be very pleasant if it were not for its enjoyments. "
"Better be killed than frightened to death. "
"No one knows how ungentlemanly he can look, until he has seen himself in a shocking bad hat. "
"It is an inwariable rule with the dealers to praise the bad points and let the good 'uns speak for themselves. "
Quotes from others about the person
Thomas Seccombe, writing in 1898 for the Dictionary of National Biography, said that it was the illustrations of Leech that gave Surtees' work any notability:
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.
Gash concludes wrote that:
Surtees's range was limited, his style often clumsy and colloquial. Even in the better-constructed novels the plots are loose and discursive. Nevertheless, his sharp, authentic descriptions of the hunting field have retained their popularity among fox-hunters. .. . Among a wider public his mordant observations on men, women, and manners; his entertaining array of eccentrics, rakes, and rogues; his skill in the construction of lively dialogue (a matter over which he took great pains); his happy genius for unforgettable and quotable phrases; and above all, his supreme comic masterpiece, Jorrocks, have won him successive generations of devoted followers. Although his proper place among Victorian novelists is not easy to determine, his power as a creative artist was recognized, among professional writers, by Thackeray, Kipling, Arnold Bennett, and Siegfried Sassoon, and earned the tributes of laymen as distinguished and diverse as William Morris, Lord Rosebery, and Theodore Roosevelt.
In 1841 Surtees married Elizabeth Jane Fenwick, daughter of Addison Fenwick of Bishopwearmouth, by whom he had one son and two daughters. His younger daughter Eleanor married John Vereker, afterwards 5th Viscount Gort. Their son was Field Marshal Lord Gort, commander of the BEF in France in 1940.