Arthur Helps

Who was Arthur Helps?

Sir Arthur Helps KCB HonDCL, English writer and dean of the Privy Council, youngest son of Thomas Helps, a London merchant, 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. 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, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. This appointment he filled till 1839, when he went to Ireland as private secretary to Lord Morpeth, Chief Secretary for Ireland. In the meanwhile 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.