Vernon LushingtonKC, (8 March 1832 – 24 January 1912), was aPositivist, DeputyJudge Advocate General,Second Secretary to the Admiralty, and was associated withthe Pre-Raphaelites. He was aCambridge Apostle.

Lushington was born inWestminster, London, toStephen and Sarah Grace (née Carr) Lushington; his twin brother wasGodfrey Lushington,KCBGCMG, Permanent Under-Secretary of State of the Home Office. He was educated atEast India College,Haileybury,Hertfordshire, andTrinity College,Cambridge.^[1] He became aQC, acounty 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.^[2]

With his brother Godfrey, he advocated positivist philosophy, motivated by the ideas ofAuguste Comte, and was a follower ofFrederic Harrison. Influenced byFrederick Denison Maurice, he joined theWorking 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, andFrederick James Furnivall,Thomas Hughes, andRichard Buckley Litchfield, became a unifying force at the College.^[3]

He was a friend to artists, authors and activists, particularly those of The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and theArts and Crafts Movement who gravitated to the Working Men's College. In 1856, it was he who first introducedEdward Burne-Jones toDante Gabriel Rossetti in his college rooms.^[4][3] Rossetti used Lushington’s wife, Jane, as a model in 1865.^[5]

Lushington, a friend ofWilliam Morris, was a frequent visitor toKelmscott Manor.^[4] He was a close friend ofLeslie Stephen and his family; Stephen’s daughterVirginia (later Woolf) based her characterMrs. Dalloway on Lushington’s daughter Kitty.^[4] He was also a close friend of Working Men’s College founder Richard Buckley Litchfield and his wifeEtty, daughter ofCharles Darwin; the Lushingtons were regular visitors to Darwin’sDown House. AsThomas Carlyle’s friend, he edited Carlyle’s firstCollected Works, (Chapman and Hall, 1858).

Jane Lushington was a talented musician who sang in theBach Choir and played the piano. Her playing was admired by Charles Darwin.^[6] She and her three daughters (Kitty, b. 1867, Margaret, b. 1869 andSusan, b. 1870) were the subject of a painting byArthur 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.^[7][8] The three sisters all received tutoring fromHubert Parry^[9] and performed not only in an intimate family setting and before small groups like thePositivists, but in public with, for example, the South Hampstead Orchestra.^[10]

Jane Lushington died suddenly in 1884. Kitty married the journalist and amateur tennis playerLeo Maxse in 1890 and became a well-known London society hostess: she was the model for her friendVirginia Woolf's characterMrs Dalloway.^[11] She died in 1922.^[12] Margaret married Stephen Massingberd in 1895 (who inheritedGunby Hall, Lincolnshire in 1897), and was painted again by Arthur Hughes in 1903. She died early in 1906 of peritonitis.^[13] Susan Lushington was a founding member of theFolk Song Society in 1898. She was awarded the MBE in 1943 and died in 1953.^[14]

List of musical families (classical music)

• 1832 births
• 1912 deaths
• People educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College
• Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
• 19th-century King's Counsel
• 20th-century King's Counsel
• British barristers
• 20th-century English judges
• Permanent secretaries to the Admiralty
• County Court judges (England and Wales)
• 19th-century English judges

• Webarchive template wayback links
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from April 2022