Queer Places:
Eton College, Windsor, Windsor and Maidenhead SL4 6DW
University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3PA
St Mary's Church, Sturminster Marshall, Wimborne BH21 4BU, UK
9 Avonmore Rd, London W14 8RT, UK
Charles Kegan Paul (8 March 1828 – 19 July 1902) was an English clergyman, publisher and author. He began his adult life as a clergyman of the Church of England, and served the Church for more than 20 years. His religious orientation moved from the orthodoxy of the Church of England to first Agnosticism, then Positivism, and finally Roman Catholicism.
After education at Bromsgrove School, Laurence Housman went with his sister
Clemence Housman to study art at the
Lambeth School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. His sister
earned their joint living by wood-engraving. Then he met Kegan Paul, a
clergyman who had unfrocked himself and gone in for a very divagatory course -
mesmerism, vegetarianism, socialism, unitarianism, Joseph Arch and the
Agricultural Labourers' movement - to bankrupt himself and his colleagues as a
publisher and fall into the arms of Catholicism. However, he encouraged Laurence to
write, who found him "a man after his own heart."
Paul was born on 8 March 1828 at Whitelackington, Somerset, the eldest of ten children of the Rev. Charles Paul (1802 – 1861) and Frances Kegan Horne (1802 – 1848) of Bath, Somerset. He was educated at Eton College where he entered Dr Hawtrey's house in 1841, at 13 years of age.[1]
Paul's aunt made a visit to Eton to check out the school before he was sent
and reported that the worst ward in the worst hospital was preferable to Long
Chamber, the dormitory for College. Given the condition of hospitals at the
time this was a terrible indictment, and Paul was initially placed instead in
Goodford's house.[note 1][3] Paul matriculated on 29 January 1846 at age 17 and entered Exeter College, Oxford. He received his B.A. degree three years later, in 1849.[2]
Paul was ordained deacon in Lent of 1851,[1] and served as curate at Great Tew, in the Oxford Dioceses for 1851 – 1852.[2] He was ordained a priest in 1852, and served as curate of Bloxham, near Banbury, Oxfordshire for six months.[1] After serving for a while as a tutor to pupils travelling in Germany, Paul was appointed to chaplain's post in Eton. He served as a chaplain and an assistant master for 1853 – 1862.[2] He also served as the Master in College, the housemaster of College, the oldest boarding house at Eton. He left teaching in Eton in 1862 and was appointed vicar to Sturminster Marshall, Dorset, a living in the gift of Eton. It was not a large living, being worth less than £300 a year.[4] He served there for twelve years. He associated with Joseph Arch's movement on behalf of agricultural labourers in Dorset. Finding himself more and more out of sympathy with the teachings of the Church of England he abandoned his living and went to London.[1] While he was at Sturminster Marshall he completed the requirements for his M.A. degree, and was awarded the degree in 1868.[2]
In 1877 he purchased the publishing department of the firm Henry S. King & Co. which had previously published some of his work, and for whom he had been acting as a reader.[1] Paul renamed the firm C. Kegan Paul & Co.[5] Following his writings on William Godwin and
Mary Wollstonecraft, he was of material assistance in helping Elizabeth Robins Pennell write the first full-length biography of the latter.[6]
After a fire in 1883 and other problems, the firm was amalgamated with two other publisher, George Redway, who became a partner, and the heirs of Nicholas Trübner. The new firm, now a Limited Company titled Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd, moved into larger premises in 1891. The firm did well until 1895, when the profits fell suddenly. Redway and Paul lost the confidence of the shareholders and were effectively forced out. Paul retired, having been badly injured in an accident some months earlier.[7] While the board accepted Paul's resignation, he remained on good terms with the firm, and they published two more of his translations, as well as his Memories and his volume of verse.[8] The firm was eventually merged with George Routledge in 1912.
Kegan Paul married Margaret Agnes Colville,[23] daughter of Andrew Colville (1779–1856), businessman and administrator. Her siblings included James William Colvile, a judge in colonial India; Eden Colvile, Governor of Rupert's Land and the Hudson's Bay Company; Isabella Colville, mother of football pioneer Francis Marindin; and Georgiana Mary, Baroness Blatchford. Their son Eden Paul (1865–1944) was a socialist physician, writer and translator.
Paul was badly injured in a traffic accident while crossing Hammersmith Road in 1895, and the injury left him with chronic pain for the rest of his life.[8]
The Times noted in his obituary that he went from being a clergyman of the Church of England to Agnosticism, Positivism, and finally Catholicism.[24] He was living at 9 Avonmore Road, West Kensington, London when he died on 19 July 1902. His estate was valued at £2,897 (£420,829 in 2022).[25]
His portrait had been painted by Anna Lea Merritt and was in the possession of his daughter in 1912.[26]
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