{{short description|American-born British novelist, poet and dramatist}} {{Use dmy dates|date=February 2020}} {{Use British English|date=June 2025}} <!-- Before adding an infobox to this article, please seek to establish a new consensus on the Talk page to do so. --> Sturgis, in about 1880|thumb '''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== [[File:1896 FA Cup.jpg|thumb|right|125px|The second FA Cup trophy, identical to the original trophy won by Wanderers in the 1873 FA Cup Final]] Sturgis was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the fourth son of merchant and lawyer Russell Sturgis and his third wife, Julia Overing ({{nee}} Boit; 1820–1888). His great-grandfather was another Russell Sturgis, and his older half-brother was John Hubbard Sturgis.<ref>Boit, Robert Apthorp (2009). Chronicles of the Boit Family and Their Descendants and of Other Allied Families. Bibliobazaar; ISBN 978-1-113-65501-1, p. 207</ref> When Julian was seven months old, the family moved to England, where Russell Sturgis joined Baring Brothers in London.<ref>[http://www.kellscraft.com/captainsboston/captainsboston03.html "Russell Sturgis" biography], ''Some Merchants and See Captains of Old Boston'' (1918)</ref>{{#tag:ref|Sturgis's obituary in ''The New York Times'' stated that his half brother was the art critic Russell Sturgis.<ref name=NYTobit>[https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1904/04/14/100468284.pdf "Julian Sturgis Dead"], ''The New York Times'', 14 April 1904, p. 9</ref> However, the latter's mother, Margaret Dawes, was married to another Russel Sturgis, not Julian's father.<ref name=dnb>Lee, Elizabeth. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36365 "Sturgis, Julian Russell (1848–1904)"], rev. Katharine Chubbuck, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 4 March 2012 {{subscription required}}</ref>|group= n}} The writer Howard Sturgis was Julian's younger brother.<ref name=dnb/>
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.<ref name=Cavallini>Cavallini, pp. 100–101</ref> 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.<ref name="Cavallini" /><ref name=who>[http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whowaswho/U191384 "Sturgis, Julian Russell"], ''Who Was Who'', A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edition, Oxford University Press, December 2007. Retrieved 6 March 2012. {{subscription required}}</ref>
== Career ==
=== Law and sport === After graduating in 1872,<ref name="dnb" /> 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.{{#tag:ref|Sturgis joined the Wanderers in 1872, making his first appearance in a 2–0 defeat by the Royal Engineers on 30 November 1872. Wanderers automatically qualified for the 1873 FA Cup Final as the cup holders, having won the inaugural competition the previous year. Although having made only a handful of appearances for the Wanderers, Sturgis was selected as a forward for the final, played at Lillie Bridge on 29 March 1873. Wanderers defeated Oxford University 2–0, with goals from Arthur Kinnaird and Charles Wollaston.|group= n}} 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.<ref name="Cavallini" /><ref>Olley, James. [https://www.espn.com/soccer/chelsea-engchelsea/story/4385411/pulisic-exclusive-us-starchelsea-excited-to-get-redemption-in-fa-cup-final "Pulisic exclusive: U.S. star, Chelsea 'excited to get redemption' in FA Cup final"], ESPN, 14 May 2021</ref> 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.{{#tag:ref|The first match of the 1876 final, on 11 March 1876, ended in a 1–1 draw, but the Wanderers won 3–0 in the replay on 18 March, with two goals from Thomas Hughes and one by Wollaston.<ref name=Cavallini/>|group= n}} Sturgis also played for the Gitanos Football Club and at county level for Middlesex.<ref>{{cite book| last=Warsop| first=Keith| title=The Early F.A. Cup Finals and the Southern Amateurs|publisher=Tony Brown, Soccer Data|year=2004|page=128|isbn=1-899468-78-1}}</ref>
Sturgis was granted British nationality in 1877, and he travelled extensively throughout the world in the late-1870s.<ref name="who" />
===Writer=== Sturgis's first published work as a professional writer was a short piece, "The Philosopher's Baby", in ''Blackwood's Magazine'' in 1874.<ref name=dnb/> His first novel was ''John-a-Dreams'' (1878), followed the next year by ''An Accomplished Gentleman'', of which ''The Times'' said:
{{blockquote|It may be described as an Idyll of Anglo-Italian life under the sunny skies of Venetia. Mr. Sturgis, who must have steeped himself in local inspiration, dwells with delicately sympathetic discrimination on his scenes as well as his characters. ... But with all its poetical refinement of tone and inspirations of cultivation and art worship there is a great deal of fun in the book in one shape or another.<ref>"Recent Novels", ''The Times'', 7 July 1879, p. 5</ref>|}}
Sturgis's biographer Elizabeth Lee writes that he specialised in "light comedies, mostly set at Eton or Oxford."<ref name=dnb/> In 1880 he published ''Little Comedies'', described by Lee as "dialogues in dramatic form containing some of his most dazzling and characteristic writing".<ref name=dnb/> In 1882 two books by Sturgis came out: ''Comedies New and Old'' and ''Dick's Wandering''.<ref name=dnb/> In November 1883, he married Mary Maud de la Poer Beresford. They had three sons.<ref name=who/> One, Mark, would later become assistant Under-Secretary for Ireland.<ref>Martin F. Seedorf, "Sturgis, Sir Mark Beresford Russell Grant-", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, January 2008</ref>
thumb|left|Playbill of ''Nadeshda'', 1885 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."<ref>"Nadeshda", ''The Times'', 17 April 1885, p. 8</ref>
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."<ref>"New Books", ''The Manchester Guardian'', 23 January 1886, p. 9</ref>
[[File:Ivanhoe-programme.jpg|thumb|upright|right|Programme for ''Ivanhoe'', 1891]] Sturgis's father died in 1887, leaving substantial legacies to his children.{{#tag:ref|The ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' incorrectly gives the year as 1883. Russell Sturgis's death was noted in the press in November 1887.<ref>"Money-Market and City Intelligence", ''The Times'' 7 November 1887, p. 11</ref><ref name=wills/>|group= n}} Sturgis received £40,000 tax-free,<ref name=wills>"Recent Wills", ''The Manchester Guardian'', 29 December 1887, p. 3</ref> the equivalent of more than £20m in 2010 terms.<ref>Williamson, Samuel H. [http://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare "Five Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a UK Pound Amount, 1830 to Present"], MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 7 March 2012</ref> 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.<ref name=dnb/>
===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.<ref>Jacobs, pp. 188, 267 and ''passim''</ref> 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".<ref>Jacobs, p. 282</ref> 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".<ref>Shaw, pp. 256–257</ref>{{#tag:ref|It is unclear how "noble" Shaw really held Scott to be: writing five years later he said, "With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespear."<ref>Shaw, Bernard. Review of Henry Irving's production of ''Cymbeline'', September 1896, ''quoted'' in Henderson Archibald. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/40681304 "Shaw and Shakespeare"], ''Bulletin of the Shaw Society of America'', No. 6 (September 1954), pp. 1–6 {{subscription required}}</ref>|group= n}} ''The Times'' praised Sturgis's "remarkable fidelity and skill".<ref>"The Royal English Opera House", ''The Times'', 2 February 1891, p. 4</ref> ''The Observer'' also found his work skilful.<ref>"The New English Opera House: Sir Arthur Sullivan's Grand Opera ''Ivanhoe''", ''The Observer'', 1 February 1891, p. 5</ref> ''The Manchester Guardian'' said that Sullivan was fortunate in his librettist, who "show[ed] himself 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."<ref>"Opening of the Royal English Opera", ''The Manchester Guardian'', 2 February 1891, p. 5</ref> 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".<ref name=Ivanhoe>[http://diamond.boisestate.edu/gas/sullivan/ivanhoe/klein.html ''Ivanhoe'' at the G&S Archive] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141006072235/http://diamond.boisestate.edu/gas/sullivan/ivanhoe/klein.html |date=6 October 2014 }}, 3 October 2003. Retrieved 7 March 2012</ref> 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.<ref>Gordon-Powell, Robin. ''Ivanhoe'', full score, Introduction, vol. I, p. XII–XIII, 2008, The Amber Ring; and Lamb, Andrew. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/957307 "Ivanhoe and the Royal English Opera"], ''The Musical Times'', Vol. 114, No. 1563, May 1973, pp. 475–78</ref> It was, Klein observed, "the strangest comingling of success and failure ever chronicled in the history of British lyric enterprise!"<ref name=Ivanhoe/>
[[File:Goringthomas-sullivan-mackenzie-stanford.jpg|thumb|left|Sturgis's operatic collaborators: clockwise from top l. Arthur Goring Thomas, Arthur Sullivan, Alexander Mackenzie, Charles Villiers Stanford]] The only novel published by Sturgis in the 1890s was ''The Folly of Pen Harrington'' (1897).<ref name=dnb/> He also essayed a sustained piece of verse in ''Count Julian: a Spanish Tragedy'' (1893), which he followed with ''A Book of Song'' (1894).<ref name=dnb/> Among his poems, three were set to music by Hubert Parry, an old friend from Eton days:<ref>Dibble, Jeremy. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/735404 "Songs by Hubert Parry"], ''Music & Letters'', Vol. 64, No. 1/2 (January–April 1983), pp. 130–131 {{subscription required}}</ref> "Sleep" ("Beautiful up from the deeps of the solemn sea"),<ref>[http://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=15451 Words at The LiederNet Archive]</ref> "Through the ivory gate" ("I had a dream last night"),<ref>[http://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=15450 Words at The LiederNet Archive]</ref> and "Whence".<ref>[http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Whence_(Charles_Hubert_Hastings_Parry) Lyrics and information about "Whence"]</ref>
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.<ref>"Royal Opera", ''The Times'', 31 May 1901, p. 4</ref> ''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."<ref>"Much Ado About Nothing", ''The Manchester Guardian'', 31 May 1901, p. 5</ref>
[[File:Julian Sturgis grave Compton 2026.jpg|thumb|right|The grave of Julian Sturgis at the Watts Cemetery Chapel at Compton in Surrey in 2026]] 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''.<ref name=chandler>Chandler, David. [http://www.dickens.jp/archive/general/g-chandler.pdf "Beef and Pie, Fairies and Failure: The First English Dickens Opera"], Dickens Fellowship of Japan. Retrieved 7 March 2012</ref> 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,<ref name=chandler/> or because another adaptation by Karl Goldmark had been successfully presented too recently for another version to be viable.<ref name=cricket>Barrett, Francis F. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/907772 "The Cricket on the Hearth: Sir A. C. Mackenzie's Opera"], ''The Musical Times'', Vol. 55, No. 857 (July 1914), p. 460 {{subscription required}}</ref> 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.<ref name=cricket/> 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."<ref name=cricket/>
== Death == Sturgis died at his London house in Knightsbridge on 13 April 1904, aged 55, after a long illness.<ref name=dnb/> He was cremated at Woking Crematorium and his ashes were buried in the cemetery at the Watts Cemetery Chapel, near his country house in Surrey.<ref name=dnb/> 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."<ref>James, Henry. [https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=11854211 Letter dated 13 April 1904, "The Letters of Henry James Volume 2"]. Retrieved 7 March 2012</ref>
==Notes and references== ;Notes {{Reflist|group=n|colwidth=24em}} ;References {{Reflist|colwidth=25em}}
==Sources== {{wikisource|works=or}} * {{cite book |author=Boit, Robert Apthorp| title=Chronicles of the Boit Family and Their Descendants and of Other Allied Families| publisher= Bibliobazaar| year=2009|isbn=978-1-113-65501-1}} * {{cite book |author=Cavallini, Rob| title=The Wanderers F.C. - "Five times F.A. Cup winners"| publisher= Dog N Duck Publications| year=2005|isbn=0-9550496-0-1}} * {{cite book|last=Jacobs |first=Arthur |year=1986 |title=Arthur Sullivan |location= Oxford|publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=0-19-282033-8}} * {{cite book|last=Jones |first=Brian |year=2005 |title=Lytton – Gilbert and Sullivan's Jester |location=London |publisher=Basingstoke Books |isbn=1-4120-5482-6 }} * {{cite book |last=Shaw|first=Bernard| editor-last= Laurence | editor-first= Dan H | title= Shaw's Music – The Complete Music Criticism of Bernard Shaw, Volume 2 | location=London | publisher= The Bodley Head | year=1989 | isbn=0-370-31271-6}}
{{Arthur Sullivan}} {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sturgis, Julian}} Category:1848 births Category:1904 deaths Category:19th-century American dramatists and playwrights Category:19th-century British dramatists and playwrights Category:Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Category:American romantic fiction writers Category:American men's soccer players Category:Men's association football players not categorized by position Category:British opera librettists Category:British romantic fiction writers Category:Old Etonians F.C. players Category:Arthur Sullivan librettists Category:People educated at Eton College Category:Wanderers F.C. players Category:Writers from Boston Julian Category:American expatriate men's soccer players Category:American expatriate sportspeople in England Category:Gitanos F.C. players Category:Expatriate men's footballers in England