Queer Places:
Eton College, Windsor SL4 6DW, United Kingdom
University of Cambridge, 4 Mill Ln, Cambridge CB2 1RZ
Kensal Green Cemetery, Harrow Rd, London W10 4RA, United Kingdom

Percival Andree Pickering (February 8, 1810 – August 7, 1876) was born in London on February 8, 1810, the second son of Edward Rowland Pickering, a surgeon of Lincoln's Inn, and grew up alongside his brothers Edward H. Pickering and William P. Pickering, the latter of whom later played a fundamental role in the formation of the Surrey County Cricket Club. Receiving his early education at Eton College, Pickering entered Trinity College as a pensioner at the age of eighteen on June 23, 1828, and matriculated in the October term of that year. He subsequently migrated to St John’s College in 1833, where he completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1832 and proceeded to his Master of Arts in 1835. During his time at university, his intellectual pursuits and social circles led to his membership in the Cambridge Apostles, an elite and intellectually rigorous secret society that fostered deep homosocial and homosocial-adjacent bonds among its members, reflecting a broader pattern of intense male intimacy characteristic of nineteenth-century elite intellectual life. His reflections on such profound interpersonal connections found formal expression in his published writing, specifically his An Essay on Friendship.

Following his academic foundations, Pickering embarked on a distinguished legal career. He was admitted to the Inner Temple on November 26, 1832, and was called to the Bar on May 4, 1838, practicing on the Northern Circuit. His professional rise within the legal establishment was marked by numerous prestigious appointments and honors. He was elected a Fellow of St John’s College from 1833 to 1841, made a Bencher of the Inner Temple in 1856, appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1858, and later served the Inn as Reader in 1869 and Treasurer in 1870. Alongside his core legal practice, he took on several prominent judicial and public offices, serving as the Recorder of Pontefract from 1852, Judge of the Liverpool Court of Passage from 1867 until his death in 1876, and King's Attorney and Serjeant within the County Palatine of Lancaster from 1868 to 1876. Outside of his professional endeavors, Pickering also engaged in gentlemanly sport, making a single appearance in first-class cricket in 1846 for the Surrey Club against the Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord's, where he batted in both innings and faced formidable bowlers William Hillyer and Jemmy Dean.

In 1853, Pickering married Anna Maria Wilhelmina Stanhope, the eldest daughter of John Spencer Stanhope of Cannon Hall in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The couple raised four children, whose own considerable achievements left a lasting cultural and scientific legacy: Mary Evelyn Pickering, who became the renowned Pre-Raphaelite painter Evelyn De Morgan; Percival Spencer Umfreville Pickering, who established himself as a notable chemist and horticulturist; Rowland Neville Umfreville Pickering; and the author Anna Pickering. Pickering's life came to a sudden and unexpected end on August 7, 1876, when he died at the age of sixty-six while driving a carriage in Dover, Kent. He was laid to rest in Kensal Green Cemetery in London, leaving behind a legacy deeply intertwined with Victorian legal administration, elite academic societies, and a talented artistic and scientific family.

References:


The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life 1st Edition
by W.C. Lubenow

Other references:

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