Transcript

of

Arthur Roope Hunt [Obituary]

Trans. Devon. Assoc., vol.  47, (1915), pp. 49-51.

by

Maxwell Adams (Ed.)

Prepared by Michael Steer

The obituary was read at the Association’s July 1915 Exeter meeting. The Art UK Website provides a splendid portrait by Arthur Bentley Connor of Mr Arthur Roope Hunt, (1843-1914), M.A,. F.L.S., F.G.S., President of Torquay Natural History Society (1879-1881). Among the many extensive published obituaries to Mr Hunt, that appearing on the Cambridge,org website provides the greatest detail about his life and significant accomplishments. The obituary, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.

Mr. Hunt was descended from an old Devonshire family who had resided for generations in or near Dartmouth. He was the son of Mr. Arthur Hunt, a partner in the firm of Messrs. Hunt, Roope and Teage, wine exporters of Oporto, where Arthur Roope Hunt was born on 8th January, 1843, but which place, owing to a revolution endangering the lives of British residents, he left, with his parents, in a British war vessel, when eight or nine years of age. His family settled in Torquay in 1852, and he was educated by the Rev. Townsend Warner, matriculating at Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of 18, where he took his degree of M.A. in 1864, and was afterwards called to the Bar by the Hon. Society of the Inner Temple, though he never practised. He was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society in 1870, and in 1884 became a Fellow of the Linnean Society.
After spending a few years in the business house of a cousin in London, he settled in Torquay, at Southwood, and devoted himself for the remainder of his life to many and diverse pursuits, but chiefly to those of a scientific nature. His contributions to geological literature were numerous and varied, and among his many writings may be mentioned a series of valuable papers dealing with the age of Dartmoor granites and the Devonshire schists. He was an authority also on the formation of ripple-mark, on coast erosion, and wave-action on sea-beaches and sea-bottoms, and in particular on the raised beaches and the submerged forest of Torbay, and the submarine geology of the English Channel. The products of his fertile pen appeared in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association, in the Geological Magazine, the Journal of the Torquay Natural History Society, in the Proceedings of the Royal Dublin Society, of the Linnean Society, of the British Association, and in the Westminster Review. His first contribution to the Trans. Devon. Assoc, was written in 1873 on some gold coins found, in 1869, at Blackpool, near Dartmouth. Altogether he published nearly one hundred papers in the Transactions of various learned societies, while his letters on scientific and general subjects, which appeared in the Torquay Directory and other newspapers, probably reached several hundreds. His paper on "Ripple-mark" was read by Lord Rayleigh before the Royal Society in 1882.
Among his school and college fellows were Lord Rayeigh and Field-Marshal Lord Grenfell, and in manhood he numbered among his most intimate scientific friends, William Pengelly, Philip Henry Gosse, John Edward Lee, E. B. Tawney, Daniel Pidgeon, R. N. Worth, Arthur Champernowne, W. A. E. Ussher, A. J. Jukes-Browne, Alexander Somervail, and the Revs. T. R. R. Stebbing and G. F. Whidborne.
In company with William Pengelly he devoted much time to the exploration of Kent's Cavern and wrote many papers thereon, and later, with the co-operation of Adam Corrie and W. Bruce-Clarke, he explored the cave at Borness, Kirkcudbrightshire, a description of which, together with six plates from photographs by A. R. Hunt, appears in the Pros. of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. x., 1873-74.
Mr. Hunt became a life member of the Devonshire Association in 1868, and was one of the largest contributors to its Transactions, and one of its most valued members, and the loss his death occasions will be most keenly felt by its members.
But Mr. Hunt's attainments were not limited to science alone, for he was a clever boat sailer, a good shot and golfer, an enthusiastic musician, an accomplished photographer, and displayed much knowledge of engineering. He had been a member of the Royal Dart Yacht Club, Captain of the Torquay Golf Club, and Captain of the Miniature Rifle Club at Torquay. He was also past President of the Torquay Natural History Society, one of the founders and managers of its museum, and a frequent benefactor, and, on no less than three occasions, he was offered the office of President of the Devonshire Association, an honour which he found himself unable to accept.
Mr. Hunt married Miss Gumbleton, of County Waterford, who survives him together with a son, Mr. C. A. Hunt, barrister-at-law, and Member of the Royal Society of British Artists, and a daughter, who is the wife of Mr. Ernest Smith, the Yorkshire cricketer. Another daughter, Miss Muriel Hunt, famed as a painter of cats, died in 1910.
Mr. A. R. Hunt died on 19 December, 1914, in his 72nd year.