sold for 1561l.; the engravings for about 2000l.
Lord Amherst travelled much in the East, and his collection of Egyptian curiosities was almost as well known as his books and china. Some of these were described in 'The Amherst Papyri, being an Account of the Egyptian Papyri in the Collection of Lord Amherst,' by P. E. Newberry (1899, 4to), and 'The Amherst Papyri, being an Account of the Greek Papyri in the Collection of Lord Amherst of Hackney,' by B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt (1900, 4to).
He died after a few hours' illness at 23 Queen's Gate Gardens, London, S.W., on 16 Jan. 1909, in his seventy-fourth year, and was buried in the family vault in Didlington churchyard, Norfolk.
His portrait by the Hon. John Collier is now in the possession of Baroness Amherst of Hackney. It has been engraved. He married on 4 June 1856, at Hunmanby, co. York, Margaret Susan (b 8 Jan. 1835), only child of Admiral Robert Mitford of Mitford Castle, Northumberland, and Hunmanby, Yorkshire. His widow and six daughters survived him. The eldest daughter, Mary Rothes Margaret, who married in 1885 Lord William Cecil, succeeded to the peerage by special limitation in default of male heirs. He bore the undifferenced arms of the family of Amherst, quartering Daniel and Tyssen. He was of middle height and sturdy appearance, of genial and unassuming manners, much interested in his literary, artistic, and antiquarian collections and the pursuance of the duties of country life in Norfolk, where he farmed on a large scale and was known as a breeder of Norfolk polled cattle. He was an excellent shot and fond of yachting. He presented a volume to the Roxburgh Club, of which he was a member, and one to the Scottish Text Society. He wrote:
- (with Hamon Lestrange) 'History of Union Lodge, Norwich, No. 52,' privately printed, Norwich, 1898.
- (with Basil Home Thomson) 'The Discovery of the Solomon Islands, by Alvaro de Mendana, in 1568, translated from the original Spanish MSS., edited with introduction and notes,' 1901, 2 vols. small 4to, 100 copies on large paper (the translation was made by Amherst from the MSS. in his own collection; it was also issued by Hakluyt Soc.).
[Family information; Complete Peerage, by G. E. C., new edit, by Vicary Gibbs, 1910; The Times, 18 and 21 Jan. 1909; Alfred Austin's Autobiog. 1911, ii. 269-73.]
ANDERSON, ALEXANDER (1845–1909), labour poet writing under the pseudonym of 'Surfaceman,' born on 30 April 1845, in the village of Kirkconnel in Upper Nithsdale, was sixth and youngest son of James Anderson, a Dumfriesshire quarryman, by his wife Isabella Cowan. When the boy was three, the household removed to Crocketford in Kirkcudbright, and at the village school there Anderson got all his schooling; there too he began to make rhymes. At sixteen he was back in his native village working in a quarry; some two years later (1862), he became a surfaceman or platelayer on the Glasgow and South-western railway there. While performing his long day's task on the line he found opportunity of an evening or at meal times on the embankment to read Shelley, Wordsworth, and Tennyson; and by help of 'Cassell's Educator' and an elementary grammar, acquired French enough to puzzle out Racine and Molière. Later he managed in like manner to read Goethe, Schiller, and Heine in German, learnt a little Italian, and acquired a smattering of Spanish and Latin. In 1870 he began to send verses to the 'People's Friend' of Dundee, whose sub-editor, Mr. A. Stewart, brought Anderson's work under the notice of George Gilfillan [q. v.] and advised the publication of a volume of collected pieces, 'A Song of Labour and other Poems' (1873). This Gilfillan reviewed very favourably; and to a second volume, 'The Two Angels and other Poems' (Dundee, 1875), the friendly critic prefixed an appreciative memoir of the 'Surfaceman,' whose verse now appeared from time to time in 'Good Words,' 'Chambers's Journal,' 'Cassell's Magazine,' and the 'Contemporary Review.' A wealthy Glasgow citizen, Mr. Thomas Corbett, sent Anderson to Italy with his son (Archibald Cameron Corbett, afterwards Lord Rowallan). But the sonnet series 'In Rome' does not record the impressions made by Italian experiences; they are the imaginings of the railway labourer who, when he published them (1875), had hardly been out of his native county. Before the surfaceman returned to his labours on the rail he had made personal acquaintance with Carlyle, Roden Noel, Lord Houghton, Miss Mulock (Mrs. Craik), and Alexander Macmillan. His next venture, 'Songs of the Rail' (1878; 3rd edit. 1881), was largely composed of railway poems from the two earlier collections. 'Ballads and Sonnets' (1879), published by Macmillan, also contained a selection from the earlier volumes with new pieces.
