George Gladstone Turner

Born at Reigate in Surrey, George Gladstone Turner was baptised at St John’s in Redhill, Surrey, on 23 January 1851. He appears as a 3-month-old baby on the 1851 census, living at the Philanthropic Institution in Reigate, where his father was the chaplain. He was the youngest of five children.

His father Sydney Turner (1814-1879) was an Anglican priest who became Rector of Hampstead and later the Dean of Ripon. His grandfather was the historian Sharon Turner (1768-1847); it was at his suggestion that his friend Isaac D’Israeli had his children, including the future Prime Minister Benjamin, baptised into the Church of England.

George passed his examinations for acceptance into the Indian Civil Service in May 1870, and after two years further training in Bombay he passed his final exams in July 1872.

His claim to the laurels of a poet rest upon his work Hypermnestra: A Graeco-Egyptian Myth, published by Longman in December 1881.

A long review in The Times of India described him as ‘Our new poet, Mr George Gladstone Turner, a young Bombay Civilian, who has recently been compelled to retire on account of ill-health.’ The reviewer thought that Turner ‘sings in a variety of pleasant meters,’ but that ‘he gives no trace of his real life and its surroundings here. […] His poem is too long or too short: too short to enable the reader the realise the full horror of this tragic history; too long for the pretty love story which is the motive of the work’ (The Times of India, 24 January 1882. The review quotes extensively from the poem.)

Another reviewer, this one writing for The Graphic, thought that as a poet Turner ‘has almost everything to learn, first of all that nowhere outside Cockneydom can “shore” rhyme to either “law” or “awe.” Also that no one has ever accused Aphrodite of being a maid. But there are some slight evidences of taste and feeling in such verses as those of “The Wedding March,” and the book is, at least, a sign of straining after higher things’ (The Graphic, 21 January 1882). [The reviewer was right that Aphrodite was not one of the maiden goddesses but I can’t think how else one might have pronounced ‘shore’ except that it rhyme with ‘law’ and ‘awe.’]

George Gladstone Turner died, aged only 39, on 21 February 1890 ‘at 71 Harcourt Terrace, South Kensington, the residence of his brother’ (Colonies and India, 5 March 1890). The announcement described him as ‘late Bombay Civil Service, youngest son of the late Very Rev. Sydney Turner (formerly Dean of Ripon), and grandson of the late Sharon Turner, F.R.S.’

Photographed by Elliott and Fry of London.