Sir Arthur Helps

Sir Arthur Helps (July 10, 1813 - March 7, 1875) was an English writer and dean of the Privy Council. He was a Cambridge apostle. Arthur Helps, the youngest son of a London merchant, Thomas Helps, was born in Streetham in south London. He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College in Cambridge, becoming the thirty-fifth debater in math tripos in 1835. There he was recognized as the most capable contemporaries as a man with excellent gifts and is likely to leave his mark in later life. As a member of the Conversazione Society, better known as the Cambridge Apostles, a society created in 1820 to discuss social and literary issues by several young people who were attracted to the general taste for literature and speculation, he was associated with Charles Buller, Frederick Maurice , Richard Shanevix Trench, Moncton Milnes, Arthur Hallam and Alfred Tennyson. Shortly after graduation, Arthur Helps became the personal secretary of Thomas Springs Rice (later Lord Monteagle), then Chancellor of the Exchequer. He performed this appointment until 1839, when he went to Ireland as the personal secretary of Lord Morpet (later Earl of Carlisle), chief secretary for Ireland. Meanwhile (October 28, 1836), Helps married Bessie Fuller, daughter of captain Edward Fuller and Elizabeth Blennerhassett. Bessie's maternal grandfather, Rev. John Blennerhassett of Tralee, Kerry, was a cousin of Harman Blennerhassett.