Pater, Walter Horatio
Pater, Walter Horatio ( 1839 – 94 ),born in Stepney, the son of a surgeon who died in 1842 ; his mother died in 1854 . From 1869 he lived with his unmarried sisters Hester and Clara (one of the founders of Somerville College, Oxford). After a childhood in rural Enfield, he was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and The Queen's College, Oxford, where his interests in Hellenism, pre-Socratic and German philosophy, European art and literature were encouraged, variously, by B. Jowett , W. W. Capes , and M. Arnold . He became a fellow of Brasenose in 1864 ; his Oxford career was marked by personal and professional controversies. Jowett blocked a university appointment when he suspected Pater's involvement with a student; colleagues attacked the ‘Conclusion’ to Studies in the History of the Renaissance ( 1873 ) because it postulated the relativity of existence (‘that strange, perpetual, weaving...
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