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 close with as a Cambridge undergraduate. Instead, the Lushington family generally tolerated a wide variety of religious beliefs or no belief at all.
It has been said that wherever social conscience and reform needed to be stirred into action, a Lushington could usually be found. Like others within the “intellectual aristocracy,” the Lushingtons married into families who shared their interests and political views—the Carrs, the Mowatts, the Massingberds, and the Maxses. But although the name Lushington can be found in the accounts of the lives of many of the well-known figures of the nineteenth century: writers, artists, musicians, politicians, and social reformers, it is usually there only as a footnote leaving the reader wanting to know more.
Except for a volume on Stephen Lushington’s political and legal career,4 and a privately printed early history of the Lushington family,5 no biography of any of the family has been published. This book seeks to redress the situation by bringing to the center stage of the social, artistic, and political life of nineteenth-century Britain the three generations of this remarkable family whose lives were interwoven with those of so many well-known and truly eminent Victorians, and whose own lives uniquely contributed to the cultural, spiritual, and political world in which they lived.
NOTES
1. “The long nineteenth century” was coined by the Marxist historian and author Eric Hobsbawm.
2. Noel Annan, “The Intellectual Aristocracy,” in Studies in Social History, ed. J.H. Plumb (Longmans, 1955).
3. Ibid.
4. S.M. Waddams, Law, Politics and the Church of England: The Career of Stephen Lushington 1782–1873 (Cambridge University Press, 1992).
5. Sir John Lushington Bt., From Gavelkinders to Gentlemen: A History of the Lushington Family in East Kent from 1200 to 1700 (Published by the author, 2011).
He seems the most gentlemanlike, clear headed and clever Man I ever met with.
He is the most rising Man in the Spiritual Court and the Man most looked up to . . . his Character as a man stands high.
—Lady Judith Milbanke to Lady Byron, from Malcolm Elwin, Lord Byron’s Wife (Macdonald & Co., 1962), pp. 375 and 37
Dr Lushington, a singular, eager man.
—Queen Victoria, Thursday May 29, 1845, Vol. 19, pp. 207–29, online
Introduction
In April 1891, Thomas Hardy attended a small dinner party in London’s fashionable Kensington Square at the invitation of His Honor Judge Vernon Lushington.1 The evening appears to have made little impression on Hardy save for the fact that, as he later noted in his diary, he had “looked at the portrait of Lushington’s father, who had known Lady Byron’s secret.”2 The portrait which attracted Hardy’s attention was the brilliant likeness of Dr. Stephen Lushington painted by the Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt in 1862.3 Hunt later boasted to his friend Frederic Stephens, “I think it the best portrait of modern times.”
Stephen Lushington by William Holman Hunt 1862. © The National Portrait Gallery.
Stephen Lushington’s craggy features, deep set eyes, and thoughtful expression, so wonderfully captured by Hunt, must have set Hardy’s imagination racing. Hardy’s novels reveal his intense curiosity in the unusual and the bizarre. His keen sense of observation and inquisitiveness are perfectly captured in his biographical poem “Afterwards” in which he is the “man who noticed such things.” For Hardy, the unusual, the strange, and the macabre were the stuff of life which he used to add color and human interest to his writing.
For decades rumors had been rife concerning “the Byron secret”—the truth behind the separation of Lord and Lady Byron, and it continues to attract interest. George Gordon Byron was famously described as “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” Stories abounded of his infidelities and a possible incestuous relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh, but the only person outside the marriage who knew all the facts was Lady Byron’s lawyer and confidante—Stephen Lushington.
Lady Byron’s mother, after her initial consultation with Lushingtonopined that he was “the most gentlemanlike, clear headed and clever Man I ever met with” and was relieved to place her daughter in his hands. His services to Lady Byron earned him her greatest respect and the deepest trust, and he remained her life-long friend and confidante. Whatever Lushington knew of “the Byron secret,” he took it to his grave leaving Hardy and others to speculate.
Ultimately, Lushington’s services to Lady Byron and her family brought him more than the usual financial rewards. It was through her that he met his future wife and through her son-in-law Lord Lovelace, he and his family were provided with a home at Ockham Park, deep in the Surrey countryside. However, the troublesome affairs of not only Lady Byron but also her daughter Ada Lovelace, and her grandchildren, continued to plague Lushington and his family for many years.
NOTES
1. Thomas Hardy’s friendship
