For more on Stephen Lushington’s role in this campaign see Betty Fladeland, Men and Brothers. Anglo-American Antislavery Cooperation (University of Illinois Press, 1972).
17. Edward Lillie, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner: 1845–1860 (Roberts Brothers, 1877), p. 593.
18. Stephen Lushington to Charles Sumner, July 9, 1857, and October 27, 1859. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Charles Sumner to Stephen Lushington, 26 October 1859, SHC7854/1/5/33.
19. Diary of Charles Buxton, October 30, 1859. BL. Add Ms 87180. Buxton recorded how Sumner “gave an interesting account of his visit to Tennyson: who was at first very cold & gruff so that he felt himself ‘de trop’ (he had an introduction from the Duchess of Argyle). Mrs Tennyson however very cordial & agreeable & after a while a picture of Dante started Sumner on poets, & Tennyson became communication & friendly—& talked freely of his own poetry. He complained of Maud being misunderstood. Mrs T devoted to him, & they are most happy. S said it was the happiest home he had seen ‘even among the happy homes of England.’”
20. Mirror of Parliament 1831, April 21.
21. Ibid., 14 July 1831.
22. In 1866, Lushington was called upon to pass judgement on a matter relating to the seizure of seven Confederate ships. In this case, his son Vernon came before him to represent the U.S. government.
23. Journal of Queen Victoria (on line).
24. Stephen Lushington to Alice Lushington, January 16, 1862, SHC7854/1/8/44.
25. Frederick . D. Maurice to Charles Kingsley, October 12, 1862, in F. Maurice, Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, Chiefly Told in his Own Letters (London, 1885).
26. Lord Justice James to Vernon Lushington, January 20, 1873. SHC785/3/1/19.
27. A.P. Stanley, Purity and Light. A Sermon Preached before the University of Cambridge, Feb. 2. 1873 (Macmillan and Co., 1873).
He is thoroughly frank, open and sailor like, earnest and enthusiastic, extremely Radical, but not wildly, taking a great interest in all questions of political economy and moral philosophy, an ardent admirer of Plato, Wordsworth, and especially Ruskin.
—Wilfred Heeley in Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, Lady-Burne-Jones (Macmillan, 1912), p. 125
Fascinating Mr Lushington, with dove’s eyes and without two fingers who come here now to take tea very often.
—Jane Welsh Carlyle to Kate Sterling Ross, December 27, 1856. “Carlyle Letters Online.” The Carlyle Letters Online: A Victorian Cultural Reference, Volume 32. Duke University Press
It was his distinguishing trait that he always saw the best in people, and they were thus led to be at their best in his company.
—Henrietta Litchfield, from The Working Men’s College Journal, Vol. XII, No. 223 March 1912, p. 271
Introduction
One evening, early in 1856, in a smoke-filled room in Doctors’ Commons, a center for lawyers close to St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, an encounter took place that was set to mark a seminal point in the history of nineteenth-century British art. The encounter was that of the young Oxford undergraduate Edward Burne-Jones and the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. This introduction of the young student and the older, charismatic, and rebellious painter and poet was later hailed as the “second beginning of Pre-Raphaelitism, not to be confused with the first.”1 The person responsible for the meeting was Vernon Lushington.
Burne-Jones was at Exeter College, Oxford and had already met William Morris. Both had entered the university with the idea of taking holy orders and entering the Anglican ministry. However, a shared interest in art soon took over and began to erode earlier ambitions. They discovered the work of the Pre-Raphaelites and, in particular, that of Rossetti. Burne-Jones longed to make contact with Rossetti and so set out for London in the hope of seeing his idol.
Vernon Lushington. © Surrey History Centre.
After eventually finding his way to the Working Men’s College in Great Ormond Street, London, where Rossetti was a volunteer art teacher, Burne-Jones entered a room crowded with staff and College supporters, but Rossetti was nowhere to be seen. He explained his mission to one of the volunteer tutors who introduced him to “a kindly-looking man” who knew Rossetti but who expressed some doubt that the artist, usually bored by such gatherings, would appear that evening. The “kindly-looking man” was Vernon Lushington. Despite all doubts, Rossetti did appear and was pointed out to Burne-Jones who saw “him for the first time, his face satisfying all my worship.” However, in the presence of his idol, the young acolyte was suddenly overcome by shyness and, losing his nerve, felt unable to approach the object of his pilgrimage.
Sensitive to Burne-Jones’s feelings, Lushington invited him come to his rooms in Doctors’ Commons a few nights later, where Rossetti was expected to attend an informal gathering of friends. He later recalled how it was that on evening he had his “first fearful meeting talk” with Rossetti. The result was that he abandoned any academic aspirations he might have had, or any thoughts of entering the church, and, instead, became a painter. Burne-Jones later introduced Rossetti to William Morris who also gave up any thought of entering the church and was subsequently brought into the wider circle of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.
This simple act of hospitality, to which we shall return, was typical of Lushington and earned him eternal thanks from Burne-Jones who later wrote, “my first introduction to Gabriel was your doing—and big results it brought into my life.” The art historian William Gaunt summed up the episode when he wrote “in 1856, Oxford and Pre-Raphaelitism met—in Vernon Lushington’s rooms.”2
Lushington possessed a natural talent for friendship and a skill of bringing people together that enabled him throughout the rest of his life to network within, and across, a variety of cultural and intellectual circles as he followed in his father’s footsteps, championing reform and social concern wherever he could.
NOTES
1. William Gaunt, The Pre-Raphaelite Dream (Re-Print Society By Arrangement with Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1943), p. 92.
2. Ibid., p. 96.
Vernon Lushington and his twin brother Godfrey were children of reform. They were born into a family of reformers on March 8, 1832, at 2 Great George Street, just a short distance from the old Palace of Westminster where, three months later, an Act was passed which transformed British politics forever by sweeping away the old “rotten boroughs”, creating new parliamentary constituencies that recognized and reflected the emerging industrial
