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This month we look at a recently acquired collection of papers which spans most of the nineteenth century and three generations of the Lushington family. The collection could be described as 'a Victorian family life in letters'. The majority of the letters were written to Edmund Law Lushington (1811-1893), Professor of Greek at Glasgow University, by members of his family, various friends and colleagues. They include letters from the poet Alfred Tennyson and other well-known literary figures. |
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My dear Papa, |
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| Edmund moved to Scotland in 1838 to take up a professorship at Glasgow University, a post he held for nearly forty years. He was also rector of the University from 1884. Although he married in 1842 and his first child was born in 1844, for the most part his family remained at Park House, the Lushington family home, in Maidstone, Kent. For seven months of the year Edmund lived away from his wife, his brothers and sisters and his four children. |
 Flower motif on envelope (MS Gen 557/2/62/1) |
In order to keep in touch while they were apart, all members of the family, as well as a number of close friends, wrote regular letters to Edmund. Everything that might normally be said in person was transferred to the page and so from the letters emerges a family portrait that takes in everything from details of everyday domestic and academic life to profound expressions of grief at the series of terrible losses suffered by the family between 1854 and 1874. |
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Edmund's father The first series of
letters, written by Edmund Henry Lushington (1766-1839) to his friend
Wilfrid Clark, a clergyman, tell the story of the hard-won domestic
happiness into which Edmund Law Lushington was born. |
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| Following their arrival in Ceylon,
Edmund's wife gave birth to a daughter, also called Louisa, but the mother died shortly after. The letters
scarcely refer to this event, but follow Edmund Henry's return to England
where he eventually married Sophia Philips. She was a cousin of his dead
wife and about whom he had written, in an earlier letter to Clark: 'Sophia
must not be lost. You or Tennant must gain her.' [MS Gen 557/1/1/1] Lushington re-established his legal career in England. Although the letters describe some professional struggles they also demonstrate, as in a letter of May 1811, Edmund's great appreciation of his home life and his desire to share his new happiness with his friend Clark, whose own life was blighted by loneliness and depression: 'good music and good tempered females in the house, your goddaughter so much the object of your affection and her little laughing brother hers and her aunt's delight.' [MS Gen 557/1/1/6] The 'little brother', Edmund Law Lushington, would then have been a few months old. In 1828, Edmund Henry Lushington bought Park House in Kent, which was to be the family home for a century. |
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Wife and children O happy hour, behold the bride With him to whom her hand I gave, They leave the porch, they pass the grave That has today its sunny side. (Tennyson, In Memoriam, Epilogue, 61-4) The marriage of Edmund Law Lushington and Cecilia Tennyson (younger sister of the poet Alfred Tennyson, who describes their wedding in the concluding section of his poem In Memoriam) is shown, in Cecilia's letters to her husband, to be one of close and enduring affection. What is also evident is that Cecilia's life and, to a great extent, the life of her family, was dominated by her ill health. The earliest of Cecilia's letters in the collection sets the tone for many of the others, beginning: 'Well dearest the doctor thinks I am going on very well and on the whole I am much stronger with much less headache' and ends 'I must lie down. Ever thine own C.L.' [MS Gen 557/2/17/1] |
| One of the reasons why the family remained at Park House while Edmund
was working in Glasgow was that Cecilia felt unable to cope with the harsh
climate and conditions of the city. The family were separated further
through Cecilia's frequent trips to the coast, which she found to be
beneficial. She would often take her daughter Lucy with her as a
companion but leave the other children, Eddy (Edmund
Henry), Zilly (Cecilia) and Emily
at Park House with one or other of their aunts.
There are letters from each of the children to their father, but also a number of letters that passed between Lucy and her sisters during their time apart. One, written to her elder sister, Cecilia, expresses Lucy's excitement at the prospect of receiving photographs of her sisters: 'My dear Zilly, thank you so much for being photographed. I am so glad, I hope they'll be good, promise to send me one as soon as they come, whether good or bad.' [MS Gen 557/2/26/9] |
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| These letters appear even more poignant given the early deaths of Eddy in 1856; Emily, from typhoid fever in 1868 and Lucy, from a tubercular disease in 1874. Their deaths were mourned by family and friends, but especially by Zilly, Edmund and Cecilia's eldest daughter. A year after the death of Emily she writes, 'I am never without thinking of her, and yet I feel unable to think of her as I would. I long to be like her by being like the saviour she followed.' [MS Gen 557/2/18/14] Zilly's letters chart her development from a playful girl into a responsible young woman who, in the absence of her father and with a mother often indisposed, increasingly took on the responsibility of the household. |
 Flower motif on envelope (MS Gen 557/2/21/3) |
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Friends & The
Tennysons
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The most eminent person with whom the Lushingtons could claim friendship
was the poet,
Alfred Tennyson
(1809-1892).
Both Edmund and his brother Henry had been friends with Tennyson while
at Cambridge, a connection that was strengthened by Edmund's marriage to
Tennyson's sister. The relationship between the two families, Edmund's
regular visits to the Isle of Wight (sometimes accompanied by Cecilia)
and the visits of various Tennysons to Park House are well documented by
the letters. Although mainly convivial, these letters do occasionally
reveal frictions between Cecilia and her siblings. One letter in
particular, written by Harriet Tennyson, refers to an occasion in 1863
when she and Arthur Tennyson were thrown out of Park House because
Cecilia had caught Arthur smoking indoors. She writes that Cecilia need
only give 'one word to show that she felt in any way the injury she had
done us not only by cruel and false accusations, but in actual deed.'.
[MS Gen 557/2/49/2] Another is a brief apology note from Arthur to his
sister, which he slipped under her door having burst into a room in
which she was sleeping. [MS Gen 557/2/45/2]
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Two of the most interesting sequences of letters in the collection are from Florence Bairdsmith and Eleanor Sellar. Bairdsmith was the daughter of Thomas De Quincey and her letters give a glimpse of a friendship that thrived on literary discussion and the exchange of ideas: 'Thanks for the Tennyson-Turner volume, which it interested me to see.His thorough understanding of and tenderness for animal life interests me much too. I have the same Buddhist tendency.' [MS Gen 557/2/1/3] Eleanor was the wife of William Sellar, a classics professor at St Andrews and Edinburgh and was a close friend of Bairdsmith. Her letters are chiefly interesting because of their descriptions of her travels through Europe with her husband. Reading the letters of Eleanor and Florence it is everywhere apparent that it is only their sex that prevented these women from enjoying the academic success of their husbands and fathers. |
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Glasgow
University Through all the letters from Edmund Law's family and friends run enquiries about his life in Glasgow. In 1870 the university moved from the east of the city into its current premises at Gilmorehill and his sister Ellen was concerned to know whether Edmund found 'the new college position colder than the old one?' [MS Gen 557/2/20/10] His daughter Emily refers to stories that her father had told her about university life: 'You never told us what happened to the snowballing students, and how easily they got off when they were taken up by the police.' |
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There
are letters from fellow academics referring to various university
matters and one from an ex-student, sending Lushington a copy of 'the
first literary venture of an old pupil.The pleasure of sending it is
great, for it gives me the opportunity of expressing the affectionate
reverence and gratitude of its author towards the University of Glasgow,
and in particular, if you will permit me to say so, towards yourself.'
[MS Gen 557/2/2/1] Similar sentiments are expressed about Edmund Law Lushington throughout the collection. Although there are no letters from Edmund himself, the letters that he received provide an insight into domestic and academic life in the nineteenth century and also offer a likeness of the man to whom they were addressed: the father, brother, husband, colleague and friend. |
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 Flower motif and postmark on envelope (MS Gen 557/2/52/1) |
The following were useful in compiling this article:John O Waller, A Circle of Friends. The Tennysons and the Lushingtons of Park House, Ohio State University Press, Columbus: 1986) Level 9 Main Lib English MT133 WAL |
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Exhibition Page
Original article by Anna Barton, June 2006
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