The Remarkable Lushington Family. David Taylor

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      Lushington’s discharge papers have not survived but a digest of the matter among official records reveals that the charges were considered to be, “frivolous, a subversion of the discipline of the Service.” He was punished by a loss of three months sea time; his offense being described as “misconduct” and he was eventually discharged from service on 13th December, 1849.¹⁵

      A strong affinity with nautical life was retained by Lushington long after he left the navy and, when out on the popular Working Men’s College Sunday walks, he would greet any passing sailor with a nautical phrase.¹⁶ He was later to resume a connection with Britain’s “senior service” when, in 1871, he was appointed Secretary to the Admiralty, a post which he held for seven years. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, Lushington’s mind returned again to his time in the navy. He wrote, that the events of the war were “all so near too. Those who remember the year 1848 may have something of the same feeling, but I was a boy, in the Indian Seas.”¹⁷

      Further Education

      In March 1850, Lushington was placed under the care of the Reverend W. J. Conybeare at his Vicarage in Axminster, Devon, to be schooled for the next phase of his education. Conybeare, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, was a broad churchman and a noted contributor to the Edinburgh Review, an influential periodical that promoted Whig policies¹⁸ Although he undoubtedly helped nurture a more liberal theological outlook in the young Lushington, Conybeare would not have condoned his pupil’s later adoption of Positivism. In 1853, Conybeare wrote an article in the Review on Church Parties at the end of which he commented, “The highest ranks and most intelligent professionals are influenced by sceptical opinions, to an extent which, twenty years back, would have been deemed incredible.”¹⁹ Three years later, Conybeare wrote a novel called Perversion; or, The Causes and Consequences of Infidelity in which he placed Positivism between Unitarianism and Mormonism on a downward-leading path of sin and unbelief.

      The East India Company College

      Conybeare’s role was to prepare Lushington for the East India Company College at Haileybury, Hertfordshire. He supported his student’s application by confirming that, during the time he had known him, he had “conducted himself with perfect propriety; that he has been orderly in his behaviour, attentive to regulations, and most diligent in application to is studies.”²⁰ When Lushington entered the College, its principal was the Reverend Henry Melvill, a popular evangelical preacher whose sermons were said to lack simplicity and directness, appealing more to the literary than the spiritual sense.²¹ His tutor in Asian languages was Monier Monier-Williams, another evangelical who believed the conversion of India to the Christian religion to be one of the aims of oriental scholarship. A former pupil at the College recalled:

      Haileybury was a happy place, though rather a farce as far as learning was concerned. In fact, you might learn as much or as little as you liked, but while the facilities for not learning were considerable, those for learning were, in practice, somewhat scanty.²²

      Despite any distractions and temptations, Lushington gave himself to learning, thereby earning the high regard of the headmaster who, on his leaving, wrote to his father, “I cannot but express my regret at the loss wh[ich] our Coll[ege] will sustain on the retirement from its walls of one of its highest ornaments, of one so admirably qualified in every respect to be the Head of the College.”²³ Lushington excelled at Haileybury and won prizes in Classics, Law, History, and Political Economics, Sanskrit and Hindi as well as a General Proficiency Prize. He also contributed a humorous essay to the school magazine entitled “Stylo-philus Having Broken His Golden Pen, Indulgeth in the Following Stain”.²⁴

      Edward Lear

      Just as their father had gathered a circle of talented friends around him at Ockham Park, so did Lushington and his siblings. One of that circle was Edward Lear, now best remembered for his nonsense verse and art. Lear had a close friendship with Lushington’s cousin, Franklin, whom he had met in 1848 when the two were sailing from Malta to Greece. Despite their age difference, Lear developed a deep attachment to Franklin who almost certainly introduced Lear to his Ockham cousins. Lear’s friendship with the family at Ockham was principally with Vernon’s brother William who was closer to his age.

      Lear made several visits to Ockham Park between 1860 and 1864. He described the house as “pleasant” and “old fashioned”.²⁵ The family were “always a model of kindness, order & simplicity—besides high culture & natural superior intellect.”²⁶ During his visits, Lear entertained the family by singing after dinner. He enjoyed exploring the surrounding countryside and, on one occasion, he walked with the Lushington twins to nearby Cobham to see the magnificent cedars of Lebanon in Painshill Park, which help provide inspiration for a painting he was considering.

      Lear found Stephen Lushington to be “a most wonderfully fine cheerful good learned fine old man” but he considered that the twins “are rather bores.”²⁷ Lear’s opinion, probably due more to his own fits of depression and boredom which made him not always easy to get on with, contrasted with that of Charles Buxton who considered the twins to be, “delightful, so bright, genial, gentlemanly & enthusiastic.”²⁸

      ELIZABETH Gaskell

      In June 1862, Lear recorded in his journal that his fellow guests at Ockham were the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell and two of her daughters. Gaskell shared the Lushington family’s passion for social duty and reform, so vividly expressed through her novels Mary Barton and North and South. It is possible that she may have had some distant kinship with the Lushingtons through her mother’s family, the Hollands, who had been neighbors of the Carrs (Stephen Lushington’s-in-laws) in Northumberland.²⁹

      Lushington’s first recorded meeting with Gaskell was in 1853 when she wrote to her daughter Marianne that he had “brought his sister to tea last night, promiscuous,” that is, uninvited.³⁰ Despite such boldness, he soon won her affections, and by 1862, she confided to a friend, “Yes, I do like Mr Lushington very much; and it is a consequence of prejudice on my part; for when I first knew him he rubbed my fur (mentally speaking,) all the wrong way. But I do think it best to begin with a little aversion.”³¹

      On a visit to London in 1860, Gaskell joined members of the Lushington family at one of the philanthropic concerts at the Working Men’s College.³² A later chance meeting with Lushington and his aunt Frances Carr resulted in Gaskell’s visit to Ockham Park. In 1862, Lushington joined forces with Gaskell in her campaign to assist the Manchester cotton workers who were suffering from of the blockade of raw material from the southern states of America, which resulted from the Civil War. Lushington collected funds from sympathetic friends in London, which he then forwarded to her in Manchester (see page 244).

      The Gaskells’ family home was in Plymouth Grove, Manchester, and Lushington was always assured of a room there whenever his work took him to that city. After one visit, Meta Gaskell wrote to a friend that Lushington had “brought us such a capital account of our dear orphan girls.”³³ On another visit, the novelist took Lushington to see the new Assize Courts that were being built in Manchester.³⁴ She introduced him to the architect, Alfred Waterhouse, who told Lushington that he proposed to place the motto “Thou shalt not bear false witness” on the wall of the Crown Court. However, Lushington suggested that it would be “better to have the words of the venerable oath the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”—a suggestion that was taken up by Waterhouse.³⁵ Lushington wrote to his wife proclaiming:

      I am a Goth, have you found that out?” He explained, ‘I greatly admire the new Assize Courts at Manchester . . . thro’ Mrs Gaskell I have made the acquaintance of the Architect, Mr Waterhouse, a very promising young man; & indeed he showed us all over the building, before it was complete.³⁶

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