page_title: John Bacon Sawrey Morritt
section_title: Associations
hierarchical_section_title: John Bacon Sawrey Morritt / Associations
context_page_description: John Bacon Sawrey Morritt was an English traveller, politician and classical scholar.
context_section_description: Morritt paid Sir Walter Scott a visit in the summer of 1808, and was again his guest in 1816 and January 1829. Their friendship was never broken. Scott, on his return from London in 1809, spent a fortnight at Rokeby, which he admired. In December 1811 he told Morritt his intention of making it the scene of a poem, and received in reply a letter on its history. Scott's second stay in autumn 1812 resulted in Rokeby, praised for its local descriptions. It was dedicated to Morritt, who was entrusted with the secret of the authorship of the Waverley novels.
  Scott's visits were renewed in 1815, 1826, 1828, and in September 1831 on his last journey to London and Italy. Letters which passed between them are included in John Gibson Lockhart's Life of Scott; others are in Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott (1894). Morritt, on Scott's invitation, became an occasional contributor to the Quarterly Review, and his poem "The Curse of Moy, a Highland Tale" appeared in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (5th edit. iii. 451).  
  It was on the advice of his friend Thomas Lawrence that Morritt bought the Rokeby Venus, for £500 from the dealer William James Buchanan. He was also acquainted with Stewart Rose, Richard Payne Knight, Sir Humphry Davy, and Robert Southey who visited Rokeby in 1812 and 1829. He was elected a member of the Dilettanti Society on 2 June 1799, and his portrait as "arch-master" of its ceremonies, in the long crimson taffety-tasselled robe of office, was painted by Sir Martin Archer Shee for the society in 1831–2.
  Morritt was one of the founders and a member of the first committee of the Travellers' Club, in 1819. Sir William Fraser mentioned him as a brilliant raconteur.
caption: Rokeby Venus, c. 1647–51. 122cm x 177 cm (48in x 49.7in). National Gallery, London.
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