The Remarkable Lushington Family. David Taylor
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a book based on the papers, or use them as the basis of research for a PhD. Initially I chose the latter and was ultimately awarded a doctorate for my thesis on Vernon Lushington the Positivist. This earned me the first Blackham Fellowship and then, from France, the Prix de these Auguste Comte.
But Vernon Lushington represented only one generation of this remarkable family. His father, Stephen had been a lawyer to both Lady Byron and Queen Caroline. He had worked with Wilberforce to bring about the abolition of slavery. The third generation, Vernon’s daughter Kitty, was composer Sir Hubert Parry’s “Kittiwake” and novelist Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway”. It soon became clear that there was a bigger story to be told and, as I was invited to lecture to groups such as the Pre-Raphaelite Society, the Gaskell Society, the Carlyle Society, the William Morris Society, the Virginia Woolf Society, and elsewhere, I was continually encouraged to put in to print the story of this remarkable family.
Over the years, I have met, or corresponded with, a number of experts in various related fields which touched upon the Lushingtons and their circle. These include Rosemary Ashton (the Carlyles, George Elliot, John Murray, and nineteenth-century Bloomsbury), Judith Bronkhurst (Holman Hunt), the late Anthony Curtis (Virginia Woolf); Cynthia Gamble, the late Henrietta Garnett (Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Circle); Robert Hewison (John Ruskin); Stuart Jones (Mark Pattison), Julia Markus (Lady Byron and Ada Lovelace), Jan Marsh (Rossetti), the late Fiona MacCarthy (William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones), the late Leonard Roberts (Arthur Hughes), Angela Thirwell (Ford Madox Brown), Clare Tomalin (Thomas Hardy), Jenny Uglow (Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and Edward Lear) all of whom have encouraged me in my journey to tell the story of the Lushingtons.
The late Laura Ponsonby, great granddaughter of Sir Hubert Parry, generously opened up the Parry archive and extended warm hospitality at the lovely Shulbrede Priory, allowing me to sit at Parry's desk and read his diaries. In the world of Carlyle studies, I must thank Professor Ian Campbell of Edinburgh University for his encouragement and generous Scottish hospitality. David Sorensen, a leading Carlyle expert, and Christopher Harvie author of The Lights of Liberalism. University Liberals and the Challenge of Democracy 1860–1886, were two further Scottish contacts.
In addition to the help and encouragement I have received from those mentioned above, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Martha Vogeler of the USA, author of the definitive work on Lushington’s fellow Positivist Frederic Harrison. Martha was with me at the start of my journey and encouraged me to pursue my research. She also generously presented me with some of Lushington’s positivist papers which she had acquired when they came on the market. Another who has patiently dealt with my endless questions is Gillian Sutherland of Newnham College, Cambridge, whose wonderful book on the Clough family has been a major source of inspiration and a model for “generational biographies.”
My thanks also go to Jenny Hartley, John Tosh and Peter Edwards, my PhD supervisors and to Thomas Dixon of Queen Mary College, London, my external supervisor and author of The Invention of Altruism who recommended me to apply for the Blackham Fellowship.
I have made many new friends in following the Lushington trail. In the United Kingdom, I have benefitted from the researches of Sir John Lushington who introduced me to Julian and Emma Fellowes (Lord and Lady Fellowes of West Stafford) who took a particular interest in my work after discovering that Emma had Lushington ancestors.
In the USA, I am enormously grateful to Mark Samuels Lasner, whose extensive collection of Pre-Rphaelite art and ninetieth century literature is now at the University of Delware and to Professor Margaret Stetz, an expert in nineteenth-century women’s studies. Mark and Margaret have opened many doors for me and have been so generous in their encouragement and hospitality. Also, in the USA, I have had the extremely good fortune to meet, Gabrielle Griswold who is the last living link with that branch of Lushington family of which I write. Gabrielle is a remarkable lady who had worked for Susan Lushington in the early 1950s. Other friends in the USA are Michael Robertson, author of Worshipping Walt. The Whitman Disciples, and Bill Lubenow author of Liberal Intellectuals and Public Culture in Modern Britain, 1815–1914. I have also benefitted from meeting and exchanging ideas with Mary Pickering author of the definitive, three-volume, intellectual biography of Auguste Comte.
In Paris, I was given generous access to the archives of La Maison d ‘Auguste Comte. Other libraries and archives centers I have used elsewhere are at Blessingbourne, Fivemiletown, N.I; the Bodleian Library; the British Library; Cambridge University Library; Castle Howard archives; Harvard University (Houghton Library); the John Rylands Library; Leicester County Archives; London Metropolitan University (Women’s Library); the National Library of Scotland; the National Art Library, Victoria & Albert Museum; Princeton University; Royal Holloway College, University of London; Surrey History Centre, Trinity College Library, Cambridge, and West Sussex Record Office.
Finally, my thanks go to my wife Carrie who has been with me throughout my journey with the Lushingtons in researching and writing this book. She has patiently borne my increasing obsession with the subjects of this book and together we have traveled to many places associated with the Lushingtons and their circle during the course of which our lives have been enriched by the people we have met and the friends we have made.
I believe that what I have written is both true and accurate, but any errors or omissions of fact or attribution that may have occurred are entirely my own responsibility.
David Taylor
2020
What has been termed as “the long nineteenth century” (1798–1914) was marked by revolution and radical reform—aesthetically, politically, sexually, and culturally.1 During the course of that century, there emerged a new group within English society defined not by wealth, power, or social standing but by intellect. This group consisted of certain families who “began to share the spoils of the professional and academic world between their children.”2 The children of these families intermarried and drew others into their circle who were also distinguished by their intellectual ability.
Later defined as the “intellectual aristocracy,” this group had a profound influence on English politics, education, and literature and the family connections between them have been described as part of “the poetry of history.”3 Members of these families became the new professional civil servants. They were leaders of the intelligentsia “criticising the assumptions of the ruling classes above them and forming the opinions of the upper middle class to which they belonged.” They were marked by a sense of dedication, duty, and purpose. Franchise reform, women’s education, and reform of the universities were high on their agenda. Philanthropy and a sense of public duty was the magnet which drew them together.
The three generations of the Lushington family covered by this book were at this heart of this group not just as contributors but also as facilitators and networkers. An alternative title for this book could have been From Clapham to Bloomsbury. The Clapham Sect were a group of Church of England social reformers based in south London early in the nineteenth century whose adherents included the abolitionist William Wilberforce. The Bloomsbury Group were a colorful and highly influential group of English writers, intellectuals, philosophers, and artists at the start of the following century that included the writer Virginia Woolf and her sister, the artist Vanessa Bell. Where the Clapham Sect inspired a moral and spiritual reformation, the artists and writers of the Bloomsbury Group sought to effect a moral and spiritual liberation from those “Clapham values.”
The lives of the individuals featured in this book conveniently cover the period of the long nineteenth century and extend well into the twentieth. Stephen Lushington, who was born just before the French Revolution, was closely associated with and deeply influenced by the core values of the Clapham Sect. Nearly a century later, his three granddaughters spent their early years with Woolf and Bell, and others within the Bloomsbury Group. However, none of these Lushingtons felt able to enter those worlds which, nevertheless, touched, and in a measure, shaped their lives. Nor was Vernon Lushington, who represents the middle generation, entirely able to identify with another radical group, the early Christian Socialists, with whom he came into