tury (1919) was illustrated by reproductions of a selection from the large number of landscapes in colour and pencil with which he occupied the intervals of his weightier tasks. He received the customary honours of the successful artist, becoming associate of the Royal Academy in 1888 and academician in 1895. Oxford conferred upon him the degree of D.C.L. in 1896, and in 1897 he was created K.C.B. He married in 1867 Clara Jane (died 1915), daughter of William Richards, merchant, of Cardiff, and had six sons and one daughter. He died at Beavor Lodge, Hammersmith, 11 February 1921.
There is a portrait of Richmond by George Phoenix in the National Portrait Gallery.
[The Times, 14 February 1921; Magazine of Art, vols. xxii and xxv; A. M. W. Stirling, The Richmond Papers, 1926; private information.]
RITCHIE, Sir RICHMOND THACKERAY WILLOUGHBY (1854–1912), civil servant, was born at Calcutta 6 August 1854, the third son of William Ritchie, advocate-general of Bengal, afterwards legal member of the governor-general's council and vice-chancellor of the university of Calcutta, by his wife, Augusta, daughter of Captain Thomas Trimmer, R.N. His family had been distinguished in Indian annals for three generations. He was educated at Eton, where he was a King's scholar and Newcastle medallist, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where also he held a scholarship, and was one of a brilliant coterie. In 1877 he entered the India Office as a junior clerk. His abilities were soon recognized. From 1883 to 1892 he acted as private secretary to a succession of parliamentary under-secretaries of state for India, including Sir John Gorst and (Lord) Curzon. From October 1892 to February 1894 he was private secretary to the permanent under-secretary, Sir Arthur Godley (afterwards Lord Kilbracken); and in May 1895 he was appointed secretary to the royal commission on Indian expenditure. The last appointment he gave up after a few weeks in order to become private secretary to the secretary of state for India, Lord George Hamilton; this post he held for seven years.
Ritchie possessed qualities which admirably fitted him for these secretarial appointments, and they provided him with a unique experience of the arcana of Indian administration. In November 1902 he was accordingly appointed secretary in the political and secret department of the India Office, although he lacked that service in India which had previously been considered an essential qualification.
When Mr. John (afterwards Viscount) Morley became secretary of state for India in 1905, he was at once attracted by Ritchie's literary gifts, and soon came to place great reliance on his subordinate's experience and independence of judgement. The part which Ritchie played in the momentous changes in Indian administration which followed remains confidential; but it is believed that the fact of his not having served in India absolved him from any suspicion of bias in Lord Morley's eyes and lent weight to counsels of moderation; and in particular that he was responsible for the strict adhesion to recorded precedents which was an unexpected feature of Lord Morley's policy in all questions relating to the internal affairs of native states.
Ritchie was closely concerned with the negotiations with Tibet which followed upon the armed mission of Sir Francis Younghusband to Lhasa in 1903–1904, and with those which resulted in the Anglo-Russian convention of 31 August 1907. He also took great interest in the construction of the Bagdad Railway (1904–1908). He was created K.C.B. in June 1907, and was promoted permanent under-secretary of state in October 1909, being the first member of the staff of the India Office to attain to that position. After, as before, his promotion, Ritchie was the most accessible of men; but in his new position this habit, so valuable in his previous career, made undue demands upon his time. His fastidious taste would not allow a dispatch to go out till it had received the highest polish which he could give it, a process which often entailed long hours of night work. Moreover, the demands of the secretary of state on his personal advice and assistance steadily increased during the crowded years when the Morley-Minto reforms and the revocation (December 1911) of the partition of Bengal were being carried out. Overwork brought on illness, and he died in London 12 October 1912.
Ritchie married in 1877 Anne Isabella, the eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray, who was his father's first cousin. Anne Isabella Thackeray, Lady Ritchie (1837–1919) was born in London 9 June 1837. Her future husband first proposed to her while he was still a schoolboy at Eton; and the marriage was a very happy one, the disparity in their ages being made up for by the early
462
