Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ritchie, Joseph
RITCHIE, JOSEPH (1788?–1819), African traveller, born at Otley in Yorkshire about 1788, was son of a medical practitioner in the town. Following his father's profession, he became hospital surgeon at York about 1811, and there made the acquaintance of Samuel Ireland [q. v.], the Shakespeare forger, of whom he has left a lively description in a letter to his schoolfellow and friend, the Rev. Richard Garnett [q. v.] In 1813 he became surgeon to the Lock Hospital in London, where his scientific and literary abilities speedily introduced him to excellent society. Visiting Paris in 1817 with strong introductions, he obtained the notice of Humboldt, and was recommended to the English government as qualified to undertake the exploration of the Nigritian Soudan by way of Tripoli and Fezzan. Ritchie enthusiastically accepted the offer to direct an expedition. On his return to London, while occupied with preparations, he made the acquaintance of Keats, through Haydon, and, possibly from some association of ‘Endymion’ with the Mountains of the Moon, promised to carry the poem with him to Africa, and fling it into the midst of the Sahara. Writing about this time to Garnett, he says: ‘If you have not seen the poems of J. Keats, a lad of about 20, they are well worth your reading. If I am not mistaken, he is to be the great poetical luminary of the age to come.’ In anticipation of his departure, he produced ‘A Farewell to England,’ a very beautiful poem in the Spenserian stanza, which was eventually published in Alaric Watts's ‘Poetical Album’ in 1829. No man, as his correspondence proves, could have entered upon a dangerous undertaking in a finer spirit, or with more ardent hopes of benefiting his country and the world; but these anticipations were doomed to disappointment. Arriving at Malta in September, he made the acquaintance of Captain George Francis Lyon [q. v.], who volunteered to accompany him in place of Captain Frederick Marryat [q. v.], who was to have been his associate, but had been prevented from joining. After long delays at Tripoli, and a short expedition to the Gharian mountains, Ritchie, Lyon, and their servant, Belford, transparently disguised as Moslems, quitted Tripoli for Murzuk, the capital of Fezzan, on 22 March 1819. The expedition was grievously mismanaged, not by the travellers, but by the home authorities, who supplied them inadequately with funds and burdened them with ill-selected merchandise, which proved unsaleable. After numerous attacks of illness, Ritchie, worn out and almost in want of the necessaries of life, expired at Murzuk, in the south of Fezzan, on 20 Nov. 1819; and Lyon, after visiting Tegerry, made his way back to the coast. Ritchie, trusting to the retentiveness of his memory, had left few observations in writing; but Lyon's quick perception, literary gift, and skill as a draughtsman rendered the account of this abortive expedition, which he published in 1821, one of the most entertaining books of African travel.
Ritchie was undoubtedly a man of superior character and ability, whose life was thrown away in an ill-conceived and ill-supported enterprise, for the mismanagement of which he was in no way responsible. His scientific attainments were considerable, and he wrote many elegant pieces of verse besides his ‘Farewell to England,’ which is entitled by power of expression and depth of feeling to a permanent place in literature.
[Lyon's Narrative of Travels in Northern Africa; Gerhard Rohlf's Reise, Leipzig, 1881; Keats's Poetry and Prose, ed. Forman, pp. 79, 114, 178; Haydon's Diary; private information.]