Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Ritchie, Richmond Thackeray Willoughby
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 maturity of her husband's character and the lasting youthfulness of her own. They had one son and one daughter.
Lady Ritchie wrote a number of novels, some of which, notably The Village on the Cliff (1867) and Old Kensington (1873), deserved and obtained a considerable popularity. But her real bent was rather to memoirs and biographical sketches; and it is in social life rather than in literature that her position was unique. For seventy years, almost from the nursery until her death, she knew nearly everybody of literary, artistic, or musical note; and her eye for picturesque detail combined with her quick sympathy and unquenchable interest in character-study gave distinction to all her work. To this Dictionary she contributed the life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning; and through her brother-in-law, Sir Leslie Stephen, and her friend, Reginald Smith, she gave valuable information and assistance to other contributors. The Blackstick Papers (1908) and From the Porch (1913) are the best-known volumes of her essays. The latter contains the address which she delivered in January 1913 as president of the English Association, remarkable for its fine appreciation of Mrs. Oliphant, the novelist. In 1914 Lady Ritchie sat to J. S. Sargent for a black-and-white portrait, subscribed for by her friends; this is now in the possession of her daughter. She died 26 February 1919 at Freshwater, Isle of Wight.
[The Times, 14 October 1912 and 28 February 1919; Cornhill Magazine, vols. xlvi and xlvii, 1919; Gerard Ritchie, The Ritchies in India, 1920; Leonard Huxley, The House of Smith Elder (for private circulation), 1923; Lady Ritchie's Works, of which a complete bibliography is given in Letters of Anne Thackeray Ritchie, edited by her daughter, Hester Ritchie, 1924; Sir Malcolm Seton, The India Office, 1926; Lord Morley, Recollections, 1917; private information.]