Author: KELSALL, Charles
Biography:
KELSALL, Charles (1782-1857: ODNB)
Traveller, classicist, and advocate for reform in education, Charles Kelsall was baptised at St. Alfege, Greenwich, Kent, on 1 Aug. 1782, the son of Sarah (Phipps) and Thomas Kelsall. His father was a member of the council of the EIC, and the family was wealthy. Both parents died in 1796 and an uncle undertook the role of guardian to the three children. Charles continued his education at Eton and then at Trinity College, Cambridge (matric. 1800), but left the university without taking a degree. He never married. He spent three years with a Wiltshire militia regiment and then embarked on widespread travels, occasionally publishing on subjects that interested him—history, cartography, design, comparative geography, etc. In 1812 alone he saw through the press the poem listed here, a translation of two of Cicero’s Verrine Orations, and an essay on place-names in Sicily “partly from actual survey.” Later works of note include Phantasm of a University (1814), Constantine and Eugene (Brussels, 1818), A Classical Excursion from Rome to Arpino (Geneva, 1820), and under the pseudonym “Mela Britannica” the odd Esquisse de mes travaux, de mes voyages, et de mes opinions (1830) which was printed at London and published there and at Frankfurt. Kelsall argued for radical change in the universities and in the hierarchies of British society in general. In 1841 he purchased a villa in Hythe, near Southampton, Hampshire, which he remodelled and renamed Villa Amalthea. Ornamental gardens contained busts of his heroes—Shakespeare, Newton, Pythagoras, and others. In his will he endowed a building at Morden College, Blackheath (neighbouring Greenwich), to house the collection of books and mss that he also bequeathed to them. He expressed the wish that if he should die in England, he would be buried at the College; but he died in Nice, France, on 3 Jan. 1857 and was buried there. Upon probate, his personal assets were valued at £60,000. (ODNB 28 Dec. 2024; ancestry.com 28 Dec. 2024; findmypast.com 28 Dec. 2024; ACAD; Morning Post 21 Jan. 1857) HJ