Author: Skeffington, Lumley St. George
Biography:
SKEFFINGTON, Lumley St. George (1771-1850: ODNB)
Pseudonym Tom Shuffleton, of the Inner Temple
The two titles that appear here under the pseudonym Tom Shuffleton (or as by the author of the Shuffleton poems) are certainly by the same author, but there is no compelling case for Skeffington’s authorship. He was a devotee of the theatre and his known writings were all produced for the stage: comedies, melodramas, an opera. These poems on the other hand, modelled on the more risqué parts of the canons of Moore and Byron (qq.v.) and with the initial Amatory Works (1815) dedicated to Byron, seem out of keeping. Furthermore, the GM obituary of him in 1851 stressed Skeffington’s elegance and described him as “one of the best bred men of the present times,” whereas the amatory poems are notably coarse. A review in CR, denying prudery and professing admiration for Moore’s and Byron’s works of the same kind, complains that the author is a “disgusting coxcomb” whose poems are “dictated by depravity, and published by vanity.” Lumley St. George Skeffington was the son and heir of Sir William Charles Farrell Skeffington, first baronet Skeffington, and his wife Catherine Josepha Hubbert. He was born in London on 23 Mar. 1771 and attended Newcome’s school in Hackney, famous for its amateur theatricals. GM reports that he made a particularly graceful Hamlet. Skeffington never married but as far as his resources allowed he assiduously attended the theatres and between 1793 and 1813 wrote not with much success for the stage. He was a celebrated fop and leader of fashion in his day. The Skeffington estate in Leicestershire, however, was sold in 1814 and its valuable contents went to auction, so that when Lumley succeeded his father in 1815 his means were considerably reduced. For years he lived mainly “within the rules” of the King’s Bench prison in Southwark, and it was at lodgings near there that he died on 10 Nov. 1850. He was buried at Norwood cemetery on 15 Nov. (ODNB 25 Oct. 2024; findmypast.com 25 Oct. 2024; ancestry.com 25 Oct. 2024; CR [1815], 531; GM Feb. 1851, 198-200)