Lieutenant Arthur Paget
(1821-1863)
9 November 1861

Volume 5, page 223, sitting number 6388.

Born on 16 December 1830, Arthur John Snow Paget was the eldest son of John Moore Paget of Cranmore Hall, Somerset, and his wife, Elizabeth Jane, both of whose portraits by Silvy appear on the same page of the album.

Educated at Eton and Trinity College Oxford, he became an officer in the North Somerset Regiment of Yeoman Cavalry. He was promoted Captain on 14 October 1862. He was also a member of the Camden Geographical and Ethnological Societies. 

Arthur John Snow Paget never married. He died on 16 April 1863, aged 32. His death is not recorded in the BMD but according to the abstract of his will he died in Hammersmith, west London.

A lengthy obituary appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine (Volume 214, January - June 1863). According to this, 'he displayed very early in life an unusual love of literature in all its branches, and took peculiar interest in archaeological pursuits.

'Gifted with rare and varied talents, his power of rapidly mastering any subject that interested him, his insatiable thirst for knowledge, and singularly accurate memory, gave him no common advantages in acquiring and retaining information. To him the deciphering of faded mediaeval MSS, the translation of dry black-letter folios, and above all the unravelling of genealogical difficulties was but a labour of love. [...] He was an ardent collector of rare old editions; and his extraordinary knowledge of books, added to the vast and ready fund of general information which he possessed, would of themselves have sufficed to raise him from the roll of common men. The somewhat too restless energy of his temperament, combined with an eager desire to see and observe for himself led him to extensive travel; and in this his remarkable aptitude for acquiring languages stood him in good stead. In the course of a short life he had visited the greater part of Europe, had passed many months in the States of North America, lived in the backwoods of Canada, spent a considerable time in Marocco [sic], and here, when in Tangiers in 1855, he won the admiration of all who witnessed his noble devotion in the midst of a fearful outbreak of cholera. While others fled from the danger, he stood fast, and tenderly ministered to the wants of the sick and dying.

'In 1857 he went to China, and was present en amateur at the capture of Canton. In 1860 he visited the Sandwich Islands, and passed some time at Vancouver's Island, returning by San Francisco (when he made a journey to the mammoth trees) through Cental America and the Havannah. He spent the winter of 1861-62 in ascending the Nile to the second cataract; his love of knowledge, here as ever, making him plunge with avidity into all the mysteries of Egyptian lore. Brilliant in conversation, and singularly free from all vanity or affectation, his generous mind, bright and chivalrous nature, and charming presence, deservedly endeared him to all with whom he came in contact, and rendered doubly painful the early loss of one whose short life gave such rare promise of future eminence.'

[From an album assembled by Edmund Baskerville-Mynors, Rector of Ashley in Wiltshire.]