HENRY ALKEN
The books illustrated in colour at
the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth
century may be classed under certain well-defined
headings narrative, topography, costume,
and sport, the last being by no means the least important.
Although neither Gillray nor Rowlandson ignored the
sport of kings, it was Bunbury who, drawing upon his
own personal experiences, set the fashion for hunting
and “horsey” books, which were most commonly
conceived in a vein of broad humour. Of such
was Bunbury’s Geoffry Gambado, or the Academy
for Grown Horsemen, of which several editions
appeared between 1788 and 1808. The most distinguished
of Bunbury’s immediate successors was Henry Alken,
an artist whose origin seems wrapped in mystery.
It has been rumoured that he began his career as stud-groom
or trainer to the Duke of Beaufort in the opening
years of the nineteenth century. His early drawings
were produced under the pseudonym of “Ben Tallyho,”
and the first work to which he signed his own name
seems to have been The Beauties and Defects in
the Figure of the Horse, comparatively Delineated,
which appeared in 1816. This was followed by
some sets of humorous etchings in frank imitation
of Bunbury, such as Specimens of Riding, Symptoms
of being Amazed, A Touch at the Fine Arts,
and, in 1821, by a folio volume, The National Sports
of Great Britain. In 1824 we find a most
complimentary allusion to Alken’s work in an
article on the fine arts in Blackwood’s Magazine,
probably written by Christopher North. The writer,
after observing that George Cruikshank failed in one
subject only the gentlemen of England proceeds:
“Where Cruikshank fails, there, happily for
England and for art, Henry Alken shines, and shines
like a star of the first magnitude. He has filled
up the great blank that was left by the disappearance
of Bunbury. He is a gentleman he has
lived with gentlemen he understands their
nature both in its strength and its weakness....
In this work [A Touch at the Fine Arts] there
is a freedom of handling that is really delightful.
Yet I am not sure but I give the preference to my
older favourite, The Symptoms. The shooting
parties the driving parties the
overturning parties the flirting parties the
fighting parties in that series are all and each of
them nearly divine. Positively you must buy a
set of Alken’s works they are splendid
things no drawing-room is complete without
them.” Alken, it will be seen, had already
made his mark, but it was his connection with Mr.
Apperley, alias “Nimrod,” that was
to bring him his largest meed of fame.
CHARLES JAMES APPERLEY
Charles James Apperley was born at
Plasgronow, Herefordshire, in 1778, and educated at
Rugby. His father, a man of literary tastes, who
corresponded with Dr. Johnson and read Greek before
breakfast, had been tutor and bear-leader on the grand
tour to Sir William Watkin Wynn. Young Apperley,
who refused to be turned into a scholar, was gazetted
cornet in 1798 in Sir W. Wynn’s regiment of yeomanry,
and served in Ireland during the Rebellion. On
his return to England in 1801, he married a Miss Wynn,
a cousin of Sir William’s, and settled at Hinckley
Hall in Leicestershire, where he hoped to add to his
income by selling the hunters that he trained.
Three years later he moved to Bilton Hall, near Rugby,
once the property of Joseph Addison, where he hunted
regularly with the Quorn and the Pytchley, till another
move took him to Bitterly Court, in Shropshire, where
he became intimate with that amazing character John
Mytton, of Halston House, whose life and death he
was afterwards to record in a book that made both subject
and biographer famous. Here we may suppose that
Apperley was witness of some of those escapades that
are now familiar to every student of sporting literature:
the midnight drive across country, when a sunk fence,
a deep drain, and two quickset hedges were successfully
negotiated; the attempt to leap a turnpike gate with
a tandem, when leader and wheeler parted company; and
the gallop over a rabbit warren to see whether the
horse would fall, which it very naturally did, and
rolled upon its rider. It was perhaps just as
well for Apperley that he left this too exciting neighbourhood
after a few years, and moved to Beaurepaire House,
in Hampshire. The loss of money in farming operations
brought him into difficulties, and at this time he
seems to have conceived the idea of writing a book
on hunting. He produced nothing, however, till
some years later, when he was persuaded by Pittman,
editor of the Sporting Magazine, to become a
contributor, and his first article, on “Fox-Hunting
in Leicestershire,” appeared in 1822. This
was followed by accounts of other hunting tours, which
proved so popular that the circulation of the magazine
was soon trebled. Apperley is said to have received
L20 a page for his work, the highest price
ever paid to a journalist at that time, but
apparently this splendid remuneration had to cover
his working expenses, which included a stud of hunters.
“Nimrod” soon became a celebrity in the
sporting world, and masters of hounds trembled at his
nod. The news of his arrival in a country set
every member of the local hunt in a flutter; the best
horses were brought out, and the best covers drawn,
in the hope of a favourable notice from the great
man.
In 1830 the Sporting Magazine
came to grief, in consequence of the death of the
editor, and Apperley, who had borrowed large sums of
Pittman, was obliged to take refuge from his creditors
at Calais, where he spent the next twelve years.
Here, a year later, arrived John Mytton, also a fugitive,
having run through a splendid property, and ruined
a magnificent constitution by drink, before he was
thirty-five. Apperley seems to have done his
best for his old friend and comrade, who, having exchanged
old port of which his daily allowance had
been from four to six bottles a day for
brandy, was rapidly drinking himself to death. Mytton, who seems to have been practically a madman
in his last years, returned to London in 1833, and
was promptly thrown into the King’s Bench, where
he died of delirium tremens in the following year.
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.
ROBERT SMITH SURTEES
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 a
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.