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On the Art of Living with Others
-Sir Arthur Help
summery
Answers
The youngest son of London merchant Thomas Helps, Arthur Helps was born in Streatham in South London.
He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, coming out thirty-first wrangler in the mathematical tripos in 1835.[1] He was recognized by the ablest of his contemporaries there as a man of superior gifts, and likely to make his mark in later life. As a member of the "Conversazione Society", better known as the Cambridge Apostles, a society established in 1820 for the purposes of discussion on social and literary questions by a few young men attracted to each other by a common taste for literature and speculation, he was associated with Charles Buller, Frederick Maurice, Richard Chenevix Trench, Monckton Milnes, Arthur Hallam and Alfred Tennyson.
Soon after leaving the university, Arthur Helps became private secretary to Thomas Spring Rice (afterwards Lord Monteagle), then Chancellor of the Exchequer. This appointment he filled until 1839, when he went to Ireland as private secretary to Lord Morpeth (afterwards Earl of Carlisle), Chief Secretary for Ireland. In the meanwhile (28 October 1836) Helps had married Bessy Fuller, daughter of Captain Edward Fuller and Elizabeth Blennerhassett. Bessy's maternal grandfather, Rev. John Blennerhassett of Tralee, Co. Kerry, was the cousin of Harman Blennerhassett.
He was one of the commissioners for the settlement of various claims relating to the Gunboat War dating as far back as 1807. In retaliation for the bombardment of Copenhagen, the Danish government had impounded British goods in warehouses, and merchant ships with their cargoes. Although the seizure of goods on land had been settled soon afterwards, the ship-owners were still fruitlessly pursuing their claims for compensation from the British Government as late as 1861.[2] However, with the fall of the Melbourne administration (1841) Helps' official experience closed for a period of nearly twenty years. He bought the Vernon Hill estate near Bishops Waltham, Hampshire, and a private income allowed him to turn to writing books and plays, which he dictated to an amanuensis.