The Rev.Featherstone Kellett (1829-1906; e.m. 1852), was born at Middle Rigg, Weardale, 15 June 1829 and trained for the ministry at Richnond College. He served on several Connexional Committees, was Chairman of the Halifax and Bradford District and was elected to the Legal Hundred in 1886. He retired to Nottingham in 1900, where he died on 2 May 1906. Two of his sons entered the ministry.
Frederick W. Kellett (1862-1904) was born on 22 November 1862 at Camborne. Educated at Kingswood School and Cambridge, he gained First Class honours in both Theology and Classical Studies, won a prize for History and was elected a fellow of his college, Sidney Sussex. In 1885 he was appointed a tutor at Richmond College and in 1891 went to teach at the Madras Christian College, where he also served as secretary of the Madras Missionary Conference. He was remembered for his empathy with both Brahmin and outcaste. He died while on furlough in Nottingham on 29 June 1904.
Ernest Edward Kellett (1864-1950), schoolmaster and author, was born in Maidstone on 23 August 1864. He inherited from his father a love of reading, chronicled in Ex libris: confessions of a constant reader (1940). He was educated at Kingswood School and Wadham College, Oxford, where he graduated in both Maths and Classics, 1st Class. He brought his deep and wide scholarship to his teaching at The Leys School, 1889-1924, where he was also a housemaster. His Musa Leysiana (two volumes, 1901 and 1904) reflects his affection for the school. He was a prolific author on a wide range of topics, mainly literary and historical, such as Religion and Life in the Early Victorian Age (1938). His light verse appeared in Punch and other periodicals and his linguistic skills were evidenced by several works of translation. His As I Remember (1936) draws on personal reminiscences of his early years. He died at Redhill on 23 October 1950.
[F.W. Kellett] 'A brilliant Cambridge student, he stood, in matters of scholarship, head and shoulders above the rest of us, while his lovely and lovable character, despite the overmastering nervousness of which he was the victim, endeared him to everybody.'
George Jackson, in Frank H. Cumbers (ed.), Richmond College 1843-1943 (1944) ..pp. 68-9
'[My] housemaster was E.E. Kellett. After retiring from The Leys he was to begin a second career, and has long been recognised as one of the most learned, yet most vital, of authors and literary critics… Now and then we persuaded him, after "lights out" in the dormitory, to tell us a ghost story or other tale of horror: which he did to such effect that many of us welcomed his wise insistence that the lights should afterwards be turned on again for a few minutes, lest, on our settling to sleep, it should be perchance to dream.
'As for knowledge, he carried the whole world of books in his head… I can see him now, poring over some volume as he walked along the road, his collar gaping open and his tie askew - irregularities which disappeared after his marriage to the gifted lady to whom, in return for being granted extra practice on the organ, I posted his love-letter each evening.'
Gilbert Thomas, Autobiography (1946) p.86
Entry written by: GEM
Category: Person
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