Julian Sturgis

Julian Russell Sturgis (21 October 1848 – 13 April 1904) was an American-born British novelist, poet, librettist, lyricist, and footballer.

Educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, Sturgis distinguished himself in Eton's sporting activities and rowed for Balliol for three years. He then played association football as an amateur, from 1872 to 1876, and was the first foreign born person to play in, and the first to win, an FA Cup Final.

Sturgis qualified as a barrister, but he embarked on a writing career in 1874, producing novels, poetry, plays and libretti. He wrote the words for four operas, with music by Arthur Goring Thomas, Arthur Sullivan, Alexander Mackenzie and Charles Villiers Stanford, respectively. He is, perhaps, best remembered as the librettist for Sullivan's 1891 opera ''Ivanhoe''.

Early life and education

Sturgis was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the fourth son of merchant and lawyer Russell Sturgis and his third wife, Julia Overing ( Boit; 1820–1888). His great-grandfather was another Russell Sturgis, and his older half-brother was John Hubbard Sturgis. When Julian was seven months old, the family moved to England, where Russell Sturgis joined Baring Brothers in London. The writer Howard Sturgis was Julian's younger brother.

Sturgis attended Eton from 1862 to 1867, where he played an active role in the mixed Wall and Field XI games in 1867, serving as Keeper of the Field.Cavallini, pp. 100–101 He also edited the ''Eton College Journal'' and was chairman of Pop. On leaving Eton, he went to Balliol College, Oxford, where he rowed for three years for the college."Sturgis, Julian Russell"
''Who Was Who'', A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edition, Oxford University Press, December 2007. Retrieved 6 March 2012.

Career

Law and sport

After graduating in 1872, Sturgis entered the legal profession, becoming a barrister of the Inner Temple in 1876. During the same four years, he distinguished himself as a footballer, playing for the amateur team Wanderers when they won the FA Cup in 1873. As all the other players in this and the previous Cup Final were either English, Irish or Scottish, Sturgis was the first person born in the United States to appear in and also the first to win, an FA Cup Final. He also played for the Old Etonians, and in the FA Cup semi-final against Oxford University at The Oval on 19 February 1876, he scored the only goal for the public school old boys to take them to their second consecutive final, against the Wanderers. He played in the final at The Oval. Sturgis also played for the Gitanos Football Club and at county level for Middlesex.

Sturgis was granted British nationality in 1877, and he travelled extensively throughout the world in the late-1870s.

Writer

Sturgis's first published work as a professional writer was a short piece, "The Philosopher's Baby", in ''Blackwood's Magazine'' in 1874. His first novel was ''John-a-Dreams'' (1878), followed the next year by ''An Accomplished Gentleman'', of which ''The Times'' said:

Sturgis's biographer Elizabeth Lee writes that he specialised in "light comedies, mostly set at Eton or Oxford." In 1880 he published ''Little Comedies'', described by Lee as "dialogues in dramatic form containing some of his most dazzling and characteristic writing". In 1882 two books by Sturgis came out: ''Comedies New and Old'' and ''Dick's Wandering''. In November 1883, he married Mary Maud de la Poer Beresford. They had three sons. One, Mark, would later become assistant Under-Secretary for Ireland.

In 1885, Sturgis wrote the libretto for Arthur Goring Thomas's opera, ''Nadeshda'', which was first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on 16 April 1885. In a generally favourable review, the critic in ''The Times'' noted that Sturgis had taken the plot from an old Russian story recently adapted as a German novel, and commented, "Wherever or in what shape Mr. Sturgis may have found his materials he has treated them in a clever and workmanlike manner. His diction is not very refined or elevated, and his metre in rhymed lyrics or blank verse often defies the rules of prosody. But the incidents of the story are set forth simply and clearly, and more than one powerful situation is attained."

Sturgis continued to write novels during the 1880s. They were ''My Friends and I'' (1884), ''John Maidment'' (1885), ''Thraldom'' (1887), and ''The Comedy of a Country House'' (1889). Reviewing the second of these, ''The Manchester Guardian'' said, "Readers of ''Little Comedies'' know how patiently and ingeniously Mr. Sturgis can draw what may be called the minor scoundrel – the scoundrel whose scoundrelism is so successfully concealed from the world and from himself that it is only a few people who know him to be a scoundrel at all. He has made a fresh and more audacious study of this type in ''John Maidment'', a study audacious but successful."

Sturgis's father died in 1887, leaving substantial legacies to his children. Sturgis received £40,000 tax-free,"Recent Wills", ''The Manchester Guardian'', 29 December 1887, p. 3 the equivalent of more than £20m in 2010 terms. Sturgis retained a house in London and divided his time between there and his country estate, first at Elvington, near Dover, and then at Compton, near Guildford, where he built a house, Wancote.

1890s and last years

Throughout the 1880s, Sir Arthur Sullivan chafed at the restrictions of the comic operas for which he was famous. His friends and associates, and even the queen, encouraged him to write a serious opera. His usual collaborator, W.S. Gilbert, declined to join him in writing a full-scale romantic opera, and recommended Sturgis as "the best serious librettist of the day". The opera, ''Ivanhoe'' (1891), is an adaptation of Walter Scott's long patriotic novel of the same title. Most critics praised the libretto. Bernard Shaw was an exception, accusing Sturgis of "wanton debasement of a literary masterpiece", turning "Scott's noble dialogue" into "fustian". ''The Times'' praised Sturgis's "remarkable fidelity and skill". ''The Observer'' also found his work skilful. ''The Manchester Guardian'' said that Sullivan was fortunate in his librettist, who "show dhimself capable of depicting ideas and events in a few words, and those words replete with rhythmical vigour and poetic beauty as well as significance of meaning." Sullivan's friend the critic Herman Klein called the libretto "a skilful and fairly dramatic adaptation of Scott's novel and a polished example of poetic lyric-writing".''Ivanhoe'' at the G&S Archive
, 3 October 2003. Retrieved 7 March 2012 Although the opera was a success, initially running for an unprecedented 155 performances at Richard D'Oyly Carte's new Royal English Opera House, it passed into obscurity after the opera house failed. It was, Klein observed, "the strangest comingling of success and failure ever chronicled in the history of British lyric enterprise!"

The only novel published by Sturgis in the 1890s was ''The Folly of Pen Harrington'' (1897). He also essayed a sustained piece of verse in ''Count Julian: a Spanish Tragedy'' (1893), which he followed with ''A Book of Song'' (1894). Among his poems, three were set to music by Hubert Parry, an old friend from Eton days: "Sleep" ("Beautiful up from the deeps of the solemn sea"), "Through the ivory gate" ("I had a dream last night"), and "Whence".

In 1901, Sturgis wrote the libretto for Charles Villiers Stanford's opera, ''Much Ado About Nothing'', based on the play by Shakespeare. Sturgis's text was exceptionally faithful to Shakespeare's original. ''The Manchester Guardian'' commented, "Not even in the ''Falstaff'' of Arrigo Boito and Giuseppe Verdi have the characteristic charm, the ripe and pungent individuality of the original comedy been more sedulously preserved."

The libretto for Stanford was the last of the four that Sturgis wrote. He did not live to see the third of them staged. In 1899 he wrote a libretto for Alexander Mackenzie based on, and with the same title as, Dickens's story ''The Cricket on the Hearth''.Chandler, David
"Beef and Pie, Fairies and Failure: The First English Dickens Opera"
Dickens Fellowship of Japan. Retrieved 7 March 2012 The text was published in 1901, and Mackenzie set it shortly afterwards. Accounts vary as to why it was not produced at the time. It may have been because the composer and the Carl Rosa Opera Company could not agree on terms, or because another adaptation by Karl Goldmark had been successfully presented too recently for another version to be viable.Barrett, Francis F
"The Cricket on the Hearth: Sir A. C. Mackenzie's Opera"
''The Musical Times'' , Vol. 55, No. 857 (July 1914), p. 460 The piece did not reach the stage until ten years after Sturgis's death. It was given under the composer's baton by students of the Royal Academy of Music in 1914, with future stars of different operatic genres in the cast: Darrell Fancourt and Eva Turner. The critic from ''The Musical Times'' wrote of Sturgis's "skill and sympathy. ... He approached his task in the true Dickens spirit and made a good version of the story, strengthening it ... by lyrics of appropriate spirit and refinement."

Death

Sturgis died at his London house in Knightsbridge on 13 April 1904, aged 55, after a long illness. Sturgis was cremated at Woking Crematorium and his ashes were buried in Compton Cemetery, near his country house in Surrey. Henry James wrote to Sturgis's widow of her husband's "beautiful, noble, stainless memory, without the shadow upon him, or the shadow of a shadow, of a single grossness or meanness or ugliness – the world's dust on the nature of thousands of men. Everything that was high and charming in him comes out as one holds on to him, and when I think of my friendship of so many years with him I see it all as fairness and felicity."James, Henry
Letter dated 13 April 1904, "The Letters of Henry James Volume 2"
Retrieved 7 March 2012

Notes and references

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Sturgis, Julian
1848 births
1904 deaths
19th-century American dramatists and playwrights
19th-century British dramatists and playwrights
Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford
American romantic fiction writers
American men's soccer players
Men's association football players not categorized by position
British opera librettists
British romantic fiction writers
Old Etonians F.C. players
People associated with Gilbert and Sullivan
People educated at Eton College
Wanderers F.C. players
Writers from Boston
Sturgis family
American expatriate men's soccer players
American expatriate sportspeople in England
Gitanos F.C. players
Expatriate men's footballers in England