DOCTORAL THESIS Vernon Lushington : Practising Positivism
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DOCTORAL THESIS Vernon Lushington : Practising Positivism Taylor, David Award date: 2010 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 29. Sep. 2021 Vernon Lushington : Practising Positivism by David C. Taylor, MA, FSA A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD School of Arts Roehampton University 2010 Abstract Vernon Lushington (1832-1912) was a leading Positivist and disciple of Comte's Religion of Humanity. In The Religion of Humanity: The Impact of Comtean Positivism on Victorian Britain T.R. Wright observed that “the inner struggles of many of [Comte's] English disciples, so amply documented in their note books, letters, and diaries, have not so far received the close sympathetic treatment they deserve.” Material from a previously little known and un-researched archive of the Lushington family now makes possible such a study. After a childhood influenced by the values of the Clapham Sect, Lushington went to Cambridge where he came under the spell of Thomas Carlyle, for whom he worked for a period as an unpaid secretary, and then Auguste Comte whose Religion of Humanity finally replaced any lingering orthodox Christian faith. At Cambridge Lushington mixed with leading Christian Socialists and worked as a tutor at the Working Men's College alongside Ruskin and D.G. Rossetti. Other friends included William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones who Lushington later introduced to Rossetti, an event which triggered the second phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, The altruistic Lushington used his legal skills to assist struggling trade union leaders consolidate their cause and his concern for the working classes led him to co-operate with Elizabeth Gaskell in raising funds to assist the struggling Manchester cotton operatives. It was as a Positivist that Lushington wished to be remembered. This thesis considers the attraction of Positivism for Lushington and his place in its development and spread during the second half of the nineteenth century. Specific areas covered are Lushington’s childhood influences, his university life, his relationship with Carlyle and his adoption of Positivism. The thesis then turns to consider how Lushington outworked his new beliefs first in his public life – especially in the area of the Arts, and in then in his domestic role where his enthusiastic embrace of the Religion of Humanity placed severe strains on his marriage. Acknowledgements In presenting this thesis, I have received generous help from a substantial number of individuals whom I should like to thank. In the first place, this thesis would not have been possible in the first place had not Richard Norris taken the trouble to contact me and then present me with the Lushington archive. The history of the archive and my acquisition is explained in my Introduction. I am very grateful to my Supervisor Peter Edwards who first suggested that I use the archive as a basis for a thesis. His friendship, encouragement, and enthusiasm have been much appreciated. To my Director of Studies Jenny Hartley and my other Supervisor John Tosh I am also indebted for their energetic scholarly support, their enthusiasm for the project and their patience with me. I have also appreciated their rigorous attitude towards my full and appropriate use of the archive and its presentation in this thesis. Thanks are also due to the Roehampton University for providing occasions for the sharing of my research with other fellow researchers and to the University for generously supporting a short lecture tour, based on my research project, in the USA. I have received encouragement both to undertake and complete this research from many people both in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The authors Fiona MacCarthy, Jan Marsh and Claire Tomalin have all given me time to discuss my work and have offered encouragement. Other leading academics and published authors on subjects directly relating to my research with whom I discussed my work either in person or by e-mail include Charles Cashdollar, Christopher Harvie, i Christopher Kent, Mary Pickering and Terry Wright. It was Wright’s book “The Religion of Humanity” that provided the challenge to look at Lushington as a Positivist. I also owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Martha Vogeler, an expert on the Positivists and author of the seminal work on Frederic Harrison, for her kindness, unlimited generosity, enthusiasm and long-distance “oversight” of my work. Leonard Robertson of Vancouver has generously provided me with copies of the Lushington letters from his Arthur Hughes archive and Judith Bronkhurst has given me her time and expertise regarding the artist Holman Hunt. Thanks are due to numerous record repositories in particular the staff at the Surrey History Centre where the Lushington archive is now lodged. I have appreciated the Centre’s willingness to take me on as volunteer archivist to assist in sorting and cataloguing the archive – an exercise that has yet to be completed. I am also indebted to l’Musée d’Auguste Comte in Paris (and Aurélia Giusti in particular) for allowing me full and unrestricted access to all materials relevant to the English Positivists and for generously allowing me full and free use of its photocopying facilities. I am also grateful to the archivist and staff at Castle Howard for access to Lushington’s letters to George Howard. Many libraries and art galleries have also provided much help and expertise including the Bodleian Library, the British Library, Cambridge University Library, the Fitzwilliam Museum, King’s College Library, Cambridge, the National Archives, the National Art Library, the National Library of Scotland, and Trinity College Library, Cambridge. ii During the course of researching this thesis I have made many new friends who have opened doors and provided me with opportunities to further my research and extend my interest. They include Mark Samuels-Lasner whose collection of British nineteenth-century art and literature at Delaware University is second to none in the USA. David Sorenson of St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia has helped enormously in my research on Lushington and Thomas Carlyle as have Ian Campbell and Ralph Jessop of Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities respectively. Laura Ponsonby welcomed me to Shulbrede Priory and gave me full unrestricted access to the extensive Parry archive the honour of working at Parry’s desk. I have also benefited from conversations on the “Intellectual Aristocracy” with William Whyte of St. John’s College, Oxford and the Clough family with Gillian Sutherland of Newnham College, Cambridge. Stephen Waddams of Toronto University has assisted me in researching Stephen Lushington. Finally, and by no means least, I thank my wife Carrie who, with the appearance of the Lushington archive, began to feel that perhaps it was a case of “three people in the marriage”. Without her unqualified support and encouragement I could not have completed this thesis. iii Contents Acknowledgements i 1. Introduction 1 2. Formative Years 38 3. Seminal Years – Cambridge & Beyond 55 4. The Prophet – Thomas Carlyle 103 5. The Priest – Auguste Comte 149 6. “My Life for Others” 187 7. “Art – a priestly function” 226 8. Domestic Positivism 285 9. Conclusion 337 Bibliography - 1 - Introduction This thesis is the result of my acquisition of an important, but yet largely unknown, collection of letters and other papers of the nineteenth-century lawyer and aesthete Vernon Lushington, together with material generated by and relating to other members of his family. Until now, Lushington has been a shadowy presence in Victorian studies. The archive offers a variety of interesting possibilities for study not only for enlarging our previously limited knowledge of Lushington and his family, but also, by re-tracing his life and thought, it provides an opportunity to explore through the eyes of a key figure, the religious, intellectual and cultural history of the second half of the nineteenth century. The archive also gives fresh perspectives on a number of well known themes and will open up other fields for future research. Such is the mass and diversity of material, the necessity of finding a discrete focus for presenting the archive and bringing it into the public domain soon becomes apparent. For example, there is important new material on the Pre- Raphaelites, William Morris and Virginia Woolf as well as fresh insights into a number of other well known nineteenth-century figures. However the strongest theme which emerges from the archive, and one which links all other areas of interest, is that of Lushington the Positivist – his chief contributions to the intellectual and cultural history of Britain being found within the development of the British Positivist movement. Although Lushington’s