Vernon Lushington
{{Short description|British judge (1832–1912)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
Vernon Lushington KC, (8 March 1832 – 24 January 1912), was a Positivist, Deputy Judge Advocate General, Second Secretary to the Admiralty, and was associated with the Pre-Raphaelites. He was a Cambridge Apostle.
Biography
Lushington was born in Westminster, London, to Stephen and Sarah Grace (née Carr) Lushington; his twin brother was Godfrey Lushington, KCB GCMG, Permanent Under-Secretary of State of the Home Office. He was educated at East India College, Haileybury, Hertfordshire, and Trinity College, Cambridge.[https://venn.lib.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search-2018.pl?sur=Lushington&suro=w&fir=Vernon&firo=w&cit=&cito=c&c=all&z=all&tex=&sye=1832&eye=1912&col=all&maxcount=50 Record for Vernon Lushington] at the University of Cambridge He became a QC, a county court judge, Secretary to the Admiralty in 1871, and Deputy Judge Advocate General from 1878 to 1912. He married Jane Mowatt, daughter of Francis Mowatt, on 28 February 1865. From 1877 to 1903 the Lushington family's country residence was Pyports, Cobham, Surrey.{{cite book|last1=Taylor|first1=David|title='Under The Cedar'. The Lushingtons of Pyports. A Victorian Family in Cobham - and elsewhere in Surrey.|date=2015|publisher=Grosvenor House Pushington Limited|isbn=978-1-78148-403-6}}
With his brother Godfrey, he advocated positivist philosophy, motivated by the ideas of Auguste Comte, and was a follower of Frederic Harrison. Influenced by Frederick Denison Maurice, he joined the Working Men's College as a singing teacher, and promoter of art and music appreciation; he became part of the group that formed the first College governing Corporation in 1854. At the death of Maurice in 1872, he, with his brother, and Frederick James Furnivall, Thomas Hughes, and Richard Buckley Litchfield, became a unifying force at the College.J. F. C. Harrison, A History of the Working Men's College (1854-1954), Routledge Kegan Paul, 1954
He was a friend to artists, authors and activists, particularly those of The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts and Crafts Movement who gravitated to the Working Men's College. In 1856, it was he who first introduced Edward Burne-Jones to Dante Gabriel Rossetti in his college rooms.[http://www.morrissociety.org/taylor.html "Lecture at the Grolier Club"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090416032204/http://www.morrissociety.org/taylor.html |date=April 16, 2009 }} William Morris Society 12 March 2009; retrieved 26 April 2011 Rossetti used Lushington’s wife, Jane, as a model in 1865.[https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/rossetti-mrs-vernon-lushington-t00333Mrs Vernon Lushington] Tate Britain
Lushington, a friend of William Morris, was a frequent visitor to Kelmscott Manor. He was a close friend of Leslie Stephen and his family; Stephen’s daughter Virginia (later Woolf) based her character Mrs. Dalloway on Lushington’s daughter Kitty. He was also a close friend of Working Men’s College founder Richard Buckley Litchfield and his wife Etty, daughter of Charles Darwin; the Lushingtons were regular visitors to Darwin’s Down House. As Thomas Carlyle’s friend, he edited Carlyle’s first Collected Works, (Chapman and Hall, 1858).
Musical family
Jane Lushington was a talented musician who sang in the Bach Choir and played the piano. Her playing was admired by Charles Darwin.[https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/7f76efbc-f3a9-3063-a1aa-fe5a4a4546f6?component=9e62cade-2bf4-3262-9472-f0c068657645 Letters and Papers of Vernon Lushington and Jane Lushington], Surrey History Centre She and her three daughters (Kitty, b. 1867, Margaret, b. 1869 and Susan, b. 1870) were the subject of a painting by Arthur Hughes. The Home Quartet: Mrs Vernon Lushington and her Children was first exhibited in 1883, and shows Mrs Lushington at the piano, two daughters with violins and a third with a cello.Paula Gillett. Musical Women in England, 1870-1914 (2000), p. 101-2[https://www.meisterdrucke.uk/fine-art-prints/Arthur-Hughes/556281/The-Home-Quartet:-Mrs-Vernon-Lushington-and-her-Children,-1883-.html The Home Quartet: Mrs Vernon Lushington and her Children (1883), Meisterdrucke] The three sisters all received tutoring from Hubert Parry{{Cite web |last=Surrey County Council |first=Woodhatch Place |title=Lushington family archive |url=https://www.surreycc.gov.uk/culture-and-leisure/history-centre/researchers/guides/lushington-family-archive |access-date=2023-03-11 |website=www.surreycc.gov.uk}} and performed not only in an intimate family setting and before small groups like the Positivists, but in public with, for example, the South Hampstead Orchestra.{{Cite journal |last1=Mirwald |first1=Helen Penn |last2=Vogeler |first2=Martha S |date=1999 |title=A Life Devoted to Music: Susan Lushington in Kingsley |url=https://www.hantsfieldclub.org.uk/publications/hampshirestudies/digital/1990s/vol54/Mirwald&Vogeler.pdf |journal=Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club & Archaeological Society |issue=54 |pages=232–242}}
Jane Lushington died suddenly in 1884. Kitty married the journalist and amateur tennis player Leo Maxse in 1890 and became a well-known London society hostess: she was the model for her friend Virginia Woolf's character Mrs Dalloway.[https://people.elmbridgehundred.org.uk/biographies/lushington-family/ 'Vernon and Kitty [Katherine
References
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Category:People educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College
Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
Category:19th-century King's Counsel
Category:20th-century King's Counsel
Category:20th-century English judges
Category:Permanent Secretaries to the Admiralty