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diff --git a/7379-0.txt b/7379-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c25f052 --- /dev/null +++ b/7379-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1641 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Early Life of Mark Rutherford, by Mark +Rutherford + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Early Life of Mark Rutherford + + +Author: Mark Rutherford + + + +Release Date: July 9, 2014 [eBook #7379] +[This file was first posted on April 22, 2003] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EARLY LIFE OF MARK +RUTHERFORD*** + + +Transcribed from the 1913 Oxford University Press by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + [Picture: Mark Rutherford, aged about twelve, and his Father] + + + + + + THE EARLY LIFE + OF + MARK RUTHERFORD + + + (W. HALE WHITE) + + BY HIMSELF + + * * * * * + + HUMPHREY MILFORD + + OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS + + LONDON EDINBURGH NEW YORK TORONTO + MELBOURNE AND BOMBAY + + 1913 + + * * * * * + + OXFORD: HORACE HART + PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY + + + + +Forward + + +A FEW years ago I asked my father to put down some facts of his life for +those of his family who are too young to remember his early years. In +his will he bequeathed these “Notes” to my only sister, Mary Theodora, +who has lived with him all her life, but she hesitated, in face of the +last sentence, to publish them. Although it is true they were not +written with a view to publication, it is evident, from a conversation my +father had with his wife about them, that he had no objection to their +being made public. + +My sister therefore prints them now, in the hope that they may interest a +few beyond the “two or three persons” for whom they were intended. + + W. HALE WHITE. + +_June_ 1913. + + + + +List of Illustrations + +MARK RUTHERFORD, AGED ABOUT 12, AND HIS FATHER _Frontispiece_ +BEDFORD BRIDGE _Facing p._ 13 +‘THE BEDFORD TIMES’ COACH _Facing p._ 15 +THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE _Facing p._ 16 +MARK RUTHERFORD’S FATHER _Facing p._ 38 +THE SCHOOL, BEDFORD, IN 1831 _Facing p._ 47 +OLD HORNE LANE, BEDFORD, IN 1835 _Facing p._ 50 +MARK RUTHERFORD AT THE AGE OF 24 _Facing p._ 88 + + + + +Autobiographical Notes + + +I HAVE been asked at 78 years old to set down what I remember of my early +life. A good deal of it has been told before under a semi-transparent +disguise, with much added which is entirely fictitious. What I now set +down is fact. + +I was born in Bedford High Street, on December 22, 1831. I had two +sisters and a brother, besides an elder sister who died in infancy. My +brother, a painter of much promise, died young. Ruskin and Rossetti +thought much of him. He was altogether unlike the rest of us, in face, +in temper, and in quality of mind. He was very passionate, and at times +beyond control. None of us understood how to manage him. What would I +not give to have my time with him over again! Two letters to my father +about him are copied below: + + (185—) + + “MY DEAR SIR, + + “I am much vexed with myself for not having written this letter + sooner. There were several things I wanted to say respecting the + need of perseverance in painting as well as in other businesses, + which it would take me too long to say in the time I have at + command—so I must just answer the main question. Your son has very + singular gifts for painting. I think the work he has done at the + College nearly the most promising of any that has yet been done + there, and I sincerely trust the apparent want of perseverance has + hitherto been only the disgust of a creature of strong instincts who + has not got into its own element—he seems to me a fine fellow—and I + hope you will be very proud of him some day—but I very seriously + think you must let him have his bent in this matter—and then—if he + does not work steadily—take him to task to purpose. I think the + whole gist of education is to let the boy take his own shape and + element—and then to help—discipline and urge him _in_ that, but not + to force him on work entirely painful to him. + + “Very truly yours, + + (Signed) J. RUSKIN.” + + “NATIONAL GALLERY, 3_rd_ _April_. + + (185—) + + “MY DEAR SIR, + + “Do not send your son to Mr. Leigh: his school is wholly inefficient. + Your son should go through the usual course of instruction given at + the Royal Academy, which, with a good deal that is wrong, gives + something that is necessary and right, and which cannot be otherwise + obtained. Mr. Rossetti and I will take care—(in fact your son’s + judgement is I believe formed enough to enable him to take care + himself) that he gets no mistaken bias in those schools. A ‘studio’ + is not necessary for him—but a little room with a cupboard in it, and + a chair—and nothing else—_is_. I am very sanguine respecting him, I + like both his face and his work. + + “Thank you for telling me that about my books. I am happy in seeing + much more of the springing of the green than most sowers of seed are + allowed to see, until very late in their lives—but it is always a + great help to me to hear of any, for I never write with pleasure to + myself, nor with purpose of getting praise to myself. I hate + writing, and know that what I do does not deserve high praise, as + literature; but I write to tell truths which I can’t help crying out + about, and I _do_ enjoy being believed and being of use. + + “Very faithfully yours, + + (Signed) J. RUSKIN. + + W. White, Esq.” + +My mother, whose maiden name was Chignell, came from Colchester. What +her father and mother were I never heard. I will say all I have to say +about Colchester, and then go back to my native town. My maternal +grandmother was a little, round, old lady, with a ruddy, healthy tinge on +her face. She lived in Queen Street in a house dated 1619 over the +doorway. There was a pleasant garden at the back, and the scent of a +privet hedge in it has never to this day left me. In one of the rooms +was a spinet. The strings were struck with quills, and gave a thin, +twangling, or rather twingling sound. In that house I was taught by a +stupid servant to be frightened at gipsies. She threatened me with them +after I was in bed. My grandmother was a most pious woman. Every +morning and night we had family prayer. It was difficult for her to +stoop, but she always took the great quarto book of Devotions off the +table and laid it on a chair, put on her spectacles, and went through the +portion for the day. I had an uncle who was also pious, but sleepy. One +night he stopped dead in the middle of his prayer. I was present and +awake. I was much frightened, but my aunt, who was praying by his side, +poked him, and he went on all right. + +We children were taken to Colchester every summer by my mother, and we +generally spent half our holiday at Walton-on-the-Naze, then a fishing +village with only four or five houses in it besides a few cottages. No +living creature could be more excitedly joyous than I was when I +journeyed to Walton in the tilted carrier’s cart. How I envied the +carrier! Happy man! All the year round he went to the seaside three +times a week! + +I had an aunt in Colchester, a woman of singular originality, which none +of her neighbours could interpret, and consequently they misliked it, and +ventured upon distant insinuations against her. She had married a baker, +a good kind of man, but tame. In summer-time she not infrequently walked +at five o’clock in the morning to a pretty church about a mile and a half +away, and read _George Herbert_ in the porch. She was no relation of +mine, except by marriage to my uncle, but she was most affectionate to +me, and always loaded me with nice things whenever I went to see her. +The survival in my memory of her cakes, gingerbread, and kisses; has done +me more good, moral good—if you have a fancy for this word—than sermons +or punishment. + +My christian name of “Hale” comes from my grandmother, whose maiden name +was Hale. At the beginning of last century she and her two brothers, +William and Robert Hale, were living in Colchester. William Hale moved +to Homerton, and became a silk manufacturer in Spitalfields. Homerton +was then a favourite suburb for rich City people. My great-uncle’s +beautiful Georgian house had a marble bath and a Grecian temple in the +big garden. Of Robert Hale and my grandfather I know nothing. The +supposed connexion with the Carolean Chief Justice is more than doubtful. + + [Picture: Bedford Bridge, at the foot of which stood the house in which + ‘Mark Rutherford’ was born] + +To return to Bedford. In my boyhood it differed, excepting an addition +northwards a few years before, much less from Speed’s map of 1609 than +the Bedford of 1910 differs from the Bedford of 1831. There was but one +bridge, but it was not Bunyan’s bridge, and many of the gabled houses +still remained. To our house, much like the others in the High Street, +there was no real drainage, and our drinking-water came from a shallow +well sunk in the gravelly soil of the back yard. A sewer, it is true, +ran down the High Street, but it discharged itself at the bridge-foot, in +the middle of the town, which was full of cesspools. Every now and then +the river was drawn off and the thick masses of poisonous filth which +formed its bed were dug out and carted away. In consequence of the +imperfect outfall we were liable to tremendous floods. At such times a +torrent roared under the bridge, bringing down haystacks, dead bullocks, +cows, and sheep. Men with long poles were employed to fend the abutments +from the heavy blows by which they were struck. A flood in 1823 was not +forgotten for many years. One Saturday night in November a man rode into +the town, post-haste from Olney, warning all inhabitants of the valley of +the Ouse that the “Buckinghamshire water” was coming down with alarming +force, and would soon be upon them. It arrived almost as soon as the +messenger, and invaded my uncle Lovell’s dining-room, reaching nearly as +high as the top of the table. + + [Picture: ‘The Bedford Times’ Coach, which made its last journey to + London on November 21, 1846] + +The goods traffic to and from London was carried on by an enormous +waggon, which made the journey once or twice a week. Passengers +generally travelled by the _Times_ coach, a hobby of Mr. Whitbread’s. It +was horsed with four magnificent cream-coloured horses, and did the fifty +miles from Bedford to London at very nearly ten miles an hour, or twelve +miles actual speed, excluding stoppages for change. Barring accidents, +it was always punctual to a minute, and every evening, excepting Sundays, +exactly as the clock of St. Paul’s struck eight, it crossed the bridge. +I have known it wait before entering the town if it was five or six +minutes too soon, a kind of polish or artistic completeness being thereby +given to a performance in which much pride was taken. + +The Bedford Charity was as yet hardly awake. No part of the funds was +devoted to the education of girls, but a very large part went in +almsgiving. The education of boys was almost worthless. The +head-mastership of the Grammar School was in the gift of New College, +Oxford, who of course always appointed one of their Fellows. Including +the income from boarders, it was worth about £3,000 a year. + + [Picture: The Old Meeting-house] + +Dissent had been strong throughout the whole county ever since the +Commonwealth. The old meeting-house held about 700 people, and was +filled every Sunday. It was not the gifts of the minister, certainly +after the days of my early childhood, which kept such a congregation +steady. The reason why it held together was the simple loyalty which +prevents a soldier or a sailor from mutinying, although the commanding +officer may deserve no respect. Most of the well-to-do tradesfolk were +Dissenters. They were taught what was called a “moderate Calvinism”, a +phrase not easy to understand. If it had any meaning, it was that +predestination, election, and reprobation, were unquestionably true, but +they were dogmas about which it was not prudent to say much, for some of +the congregation were a little Arminian, and St. James could not be +totally neglected. The worst of St. James was that when a sermon was +preached from his Epistle, there was always a danger lest somebody in the +congregation should think that it was against him it was levelled. There +was no such danger, at any rate not so much, if the text was taken from +the Epistle to the Romans. + +In the “singing-pew” sat a clarionet, a double bass, a bassoon, and a +flute: also a tenor voice which “set the tune”. The carpenter, to whom +the tenor voice belonged, had a tuning-fork which he struck on his desk +and applied to his ear. He then hummed the tuning-fork note, and the +octave below, the double bass screwed up and responded, the leader with +the tuning-fork boldly struck out, everybody following, including the +orchestra, and those of the congregation who had bass or tenor voices +sang the air. Each of the instruments demanded a fair share of solos. + +The institution strangest to me now was the Lord’s Supper. Once a month +the members of the church, while they were seated in the pews, received +the bread and wine at the hands of the deacons, the minister reciting +meanwhile passages from Scripture. Those of the congregation who had not +been converted, and who consequently did not belong to the church and +were not communicants, watched the rite from the gallery. What the +reflective unconverted, who were upstairs, thought I cannot say. The +master might with varying emotions survey the man who cleaned his knives +and boots. The wife might sit beneath and the husband above, or, more +difficult still, the mistress might be seated aloft while her husband and +her conceited maid-of-all-work, Tabitha, enjoyed full gospel privileges +below. + +Dependent on the mother “cause” were chapels in the outlying villages. +They were served by lay preachers, and occasionally by the minister from +the old meeting-house. One village, Stagsden, had attained to the +dignity of a wind and a stringed instrument. + +The elders of the church at Bedford belonged mostly to the middle class +in the town, but some of them were farmers. Ignorant they were to a +degree which would shock the most superficial young person of the present +day; and yet, if the farmer’s ignorance and the ignorance of the young +person could be reduced to the same denomination, I doubt whether it +would not be found that the farmer knew more than the other. The farmer +could not discuss Coleridge’s metres or the validity of the maxim, “Art +for Art’s sake”, but he understood a good deal about the men around him, +about his fields, about the face of the sky, and he had found it out all +by himself, a fact of more importance than we suppose. He understood +also that he must be honest; he had learnt how to be honest, and +everything about him, house, clothes, was a reality and not a sham. One +of these elders I knew well. He was perfectly straightforward, +God-fearing also, and therefore wise. Yet he once said to my father, “I +ain’t got no patience with men who talk pōtry (poetry) in the pulpit. If +you hear that, how can you wonder at your children wanting to go to +thēatres and cathredrals?” + +Of my father’s family, beyond my grandfather, I know nothing. His +forefathers had lived in Bedfordshire beyond memory, and sleep +indistinguishable, I am told, in Wilstead churchyard. He was Radical, +and almost Republican. With two of his neighbours he refused to +illuminate for our victories over the French, and he had his windows +smashed by a Tory mob. One night he and a friend were riding home on +horseback, and at the entrance of the town they came upon somebody lying +in the road, who had been thrown from his horse and was unconscious. My +grandfather galloped forwards for a doctor, and went back at once before +the doctor could start. On his way, and probably riding hard, he also +was thrown and was killed. He was found by those who had followed him, +and in the darkness and confusion they did not recognize him. They +picked him up, thinking he was the man for whom they had been sent. When +they reached the Swan Inn they found out their mistake, and returned to +the other man. He recovered. + +I had only one set of relations in Bedford, my aunt, who was my father’s +sister, her husband, Samuel Lovell, and their children, my cousins. My +uncle was a maltster and coal merchant. Although he was slender and +graceful when he was young, he was portly when I first knew him. He +always wore, even in his counting-house and on his wharf, a spotless +shirt—seven a week—elaborately frilled in front. He was clean-shaven, +and his face was refined and gentle. To me he was kindness itself. He +was in the habit of driving two or three times a year to villages and +solitary farm-houses to collect his debts, and, to my great delight, he +used to take me with him. We were out all day. His creditors were by no +means punctual: they reckoned on him with assurance. This is what +generally happened. Uncle draws up at the front garden gate and gets +out: I hold the reins. Blacksmith, in debt something like £15 for +smithery coal, comes from his forge at the side of the house to meet him. + +“Ah, Mr. Lovell, I’m glad to see you: how’s the missus and the children? +What weather it is!” + +“I suppose you guess, Master Fitchew, what I’ve come about: you’ve had +this bill twice—I send my bills out only once a year—and you’ve not paid +a penny.” + +Fitchew looks on the ground, and gives his head a shake on one side as if +he were mortified beyond measure. + +“I know it, Mr. Lovell, nobody can be more vexed than I am, but I can’t +get nothing out of the farmers. Last year was an awful year for them.” + +Uncle tries with all his might to look severe, but does not succeed. + +“You’ve told me that tale every time I’ve called for twenty years past: +now mind, I’m not going to be humbugged any longer. I must have half of +that £15 this month, or not another ounce of smithery coal do you get out +of me. You may try Warden if you like, and maybe he’ll treat you better +than I do.” + +“Mr. Lovell, £10 you shall have next Saturday fortnight as sure as my +name’s Bill Fitchew.” + +A little girl, about eight years old, who was hurried into her white, +Sunday frock with red ribbons, as soon as her mother saw my uncle at the +gate, runs up towards him according to secret instructions, but stops +short by about a yard, puts her forefinger on her lip and looks at him. + +“Hullo, my pretty dear, what’s your name? Dear, what’s your name?” + +“Say Keziah Fitchew, sir,” prompts Mrs. Fitchew, appearing suddenly at +the side door as if she had come to fetch her child who had run out +unawares. + +After much hesitation: “Keziah Fitchew, sir.” + +“Are you a good little girl? Do you say your prayers every morning and +every evening?” + +“Yes, sir.” + +“Would you know what to do with sixpence if I gave it you? You’d put it +in the missionary box, wouldn’t you?” + +Keziah thinks, but does not reply. It is a problem of immense +importance. Uncle turns to Bill, so that Keziah cannot see him, puts up +his left hand to the side of his face and winks violently. + +“I suppose it’s one o’clock as usual, Mr. Lovell, at the Red Lion?” My +uncle laughs as he moves to the gate. + +“I tell you what it is, Mr. Fitchew, you’re a precious rascal; that’s +what you are.” + +At one o’clock an immense dinner is provided at the Red Lion, and thither +the debtors come, no matter what may be the state of their accounts, and +drink my uncle’s health. Such was Uncle Lovell. My father and mother +often had supper with him and my aunt. After I was ten years old I was +permitted to go. It was a solid, hot meal at nine o’clock. It was +followed by pipes and brandy and water, never more than one glass; and +when this was finished, at about half-past ten, there was the walk home +across the silent bridge, with a glimpse downward of the dark river +slowly flowing through the stone arches. + +I now come to my father. My object is not to write his life. I have not +sufficient materials, nor would it be worth recording at any length, but +I should like to preserve the memory of a few facts which are significant +of him, and may explain his influence upon me. + +He was born in 1807, and was eight years old when his father died: his +mother died seven years earlier. He had a cruel step-mother, who gave to +her own child everything she had to give. He was educated at the Grammar +School, but the teaching there, as I have said, was very poor. The +step-mother used to send messages to the head master begging him soundly +to thrash her step-son, for he was sure to deserve it, and school +thrashing in those days was no joke. She also compelled my father to +clean boots, knives and forks, and do other dirty work. + +I do not know when he opened the shop in Bedford as a printer and +bookseller, but it must have been about 1830. He dealt in old books, the +works of the English divines of all parties, both in the Anglican Church +and outside it. The clergy, who then read more than they read or can +read now, were his principal customers. From the time when he began +business as a young man in the town he had much to do with its affairs. +He was a Whig in politics, and amongst the foremost at elections, +specially at the election in 1832, when he and the Whig Committee were +besieged in the Swan Inn by the mob. He soon became a trustee of the +Bedford Charity, and did good service for the schools. In September +1843, the Rev. Edward Isaac Lockwood, rector of St. John’s, in the town, +and trustee of the schools, carried a motion at a board meeting declaring +that all the masters under the Charity should be members of the Church of +England. The Charity maintained one or two schools besides the Grammar +School. The Act of Parliament, under which it was administered, provided +that the masters and ushers of the Grammar School should be members of +the Church of England, but said nothing about the creed of the masters of +the other schools. The consternation in the town was great. It was +evident that the next step would be to close the schools to Dissenters. +Public meetings were held, and at the annual election of trustees, Mr. +Lockwood was at the bottom of the poll. At the next meeting of the +board, after the election, my father carried a resolution which rescinded +Mr. Lockwood’s. The rector’s defeat was followed by a series of +newspaper letters in his defence from the Rev. Edward Swann, mathematical +master in the Grammar School. My father replied in a pamphlet, published +in 1844. + +There was one endowment for which he was remarkable, the purity of the +English he spoke and wrote. He used to say he owed it to Cobbett, whose +style he certainly admired, but this is but partly true. It was rather a +natural consequence of the clearness of his own mind and of his desire to +make himself wholly understood, both demanding the simplest and most +forcible expression. If the truth is of serious importance to us we dare +not obstruct it by phrase-making: we are compelled to be as direct as our +inherited feebleness will permit. The cannon ball’s path is near to a +straight line in proportion to its velocity. “My boy,” my father once +said to me, “if you write anything you consider particularly fine, strike +it out.” + +The _Reply_ is an admirable specimen of the way in which a controversy +should be conducted; without heat, the writer uniformly mindful of his +object, which is not personal distinction, but the conviction of his +neighbour, poor as well as rich, all the facts in order, every point +answered, and not one evaded. At the opening of the first letter, a +saying of Burkitt’s is quoted with approval. “Painted glass is very +beautiful, but plain glass is the most useful as it lets through the most +light.” A word, by the way, on Burkitt. He was born in 1650, went to +Cambridge, and became rector, first of Milden, and then of Dedham, both +in Suffolk. As rector of Dedham he died. There he wrote the _Poor Man’s +Help and Young Man’s Guide_, which went through more than thirty editions +in fifty years. There he wrestled with the Baptists, and produced his +_Argumentative and Practical Discourse on Infant Baptism_. I have +wandered through these Dedham fields by the banks of the Stour. It is +Constable’s country, and in its way is not to be matched in England. +Although there is nothing striking in it, its influence, at least upon +me, is greater than that of celebrated mountains and waterfalls. What a +power there is to subdue and calm in those low hills, overtopped, as you +see it from East Bergholt, by the magnificent Dedham half-cathedral +church! It is very probable that Burkitt, as he took his walks by the +Stour, and struggled with his _Argument_, never saw the placid, winding +stream; nor is it likely that anybody in Bedford, except my father, had +heard of him. For his defence of the schools my father was presented at +a town’s meeting with a silver tea-service. + +By degrees, when the battle was over, the bookselling business very much +fell off, and after a short partnership with his brother-in-law in a +tannery, my father was appointed assistant door-keeper of the House of +Commons by Lord Charles Russell. He soon became door-keeper. While he +was at the door he wrote for a weekly paper his _Inner Life of the House +of Commons_, afterwards collected and published in book form. He held +office for twenty-one years, and on his retirement, in 1875, 160 members +of the House testified in a very substantial manner their regard for him. +He died at Carshalton on February 11, 1882. There were many obituary +notices of him. One was from Lord Charles Russell, who, as +Serjeant-at-Arms, had full opportunities of knowing him well. Lord +Charles recalled a meeting at Woburn, a quarter of a century before, in +honour of Lord John Russell. Lord John spoke then, and so did Sir David +Dundas, then Solicitor-General, Lord Charles, and my father. “His,” said +Lord Charles, “was the finest speech, and Sir David Dundas remarked to +me, as Mr. White concluded, ‘Why that is old Cobbett again _minus_ his +vulgarity.’” He became acquainted with a good many members during his +stay at the House. New members sought his advice and initiation into its +ways. Some of his friends were also mine. Amongst these were Sir John +Trelawney and his gifted wife. Sir John belonged to the scholarly +Radical party, which included John Stuart Mill and Roebuck. The visits +to Sir John and Lady Trelawney will never be forgotten, not so much +because I was taught what to think about certain political questions, but +because I was supplied with a standard by which all political questions +were judged, and this standard was fixed by reason. Looking at the +methods and the procedure of that little republic and at the anarchy of +to-day, with no prospect of the renewal of allegiance to principles, my +heart sinks. It was through one of the Russells, with whom my father was +acquainted, that I was permitted with him to call on Carlyle, an event +amongst the greatest in my life, and all the happier for me because I did +not ask to go. + +What I am going to say now I hardly like to mention, because of its +privacy, but it is so much to my father’s honour that I cannot omit it. +Besides, almost everybody concerned is now dead. When he left Bedford he +was considerably in debt, through the falling off in his bookselling +business which I have just mentioned, caused mainly by his courageous +partisanship. His official salary was not sufficient to keep him, and in +order to increase it, he began to write for the newspapers. During the +session this was very hard work. He could not leave the House till it +rose, and was often not at home till two o’clock in the morning or later, +too tired to sleep. He was never able to see a single revise of what he +wrote. In the end he paid his debts in full. + +My father was a perfectly honest man, and hated shiftiness even worse +than downright lying. The only time he gave me a thrashing was for +prevarication. He had a plain, but not a dull mind, and loved poetry of +a sublime cast, especially Milton. I can hear him even now repeat +passages from the _Comus_, which was a special favourite. Elsewhere I +have told how when he was young and stood at the composing desk in his +printing office, he used to declaim Byron by heart. That a Puritan +printer, one of the last men in the world to be carried away by a +fashion, should be vanquished by Byron, is as genuine a testimony as any +I know to the reality of his greatness. Up to 1849 or thereabouts, my +father in religion was Independent and Calvinist, the creed which, as he +thought then, best suited him. But a change was at hand. His political +opinions remained unaltered to his death, but in 1851 he had completed +his discovery that the “simple gospel” which Calvinism preached was by no +means simple, but remarkably abstruse. It was the _Heroes and Hero +Worship_ and the _Sartor Resartus_ which drew him away from the +meeting-house. There is nothing in these two books directly hostile +either to church or dissent, but they laid hold on him as no books had +ever held, and the expansion they wrought in him could not possibly +tolerate the limitations of orthodoxy. He was not converted to any other +religion. He did not run for help to those who he knew could not give +it. His portrait; erect, straightforward-looking, firmly standing, one +foot a little in advance, helps me and decides me when I look at it. Of +all types of humanity the one which he represents would be the most +serviceable to the world at the present day. He was generous, +open-hearted, and if he had a temper, a trifle explosive at times, nobody +for whom he cared ever really suffered from it, and occasionally it did +him good service. The chief obituary notice of him declared with truth +that he was the best public speaker Bedford ever had, and the committee +of the well-known public library resolved unanimously “That this +institution records with regret the death of Mr. W. White, formerly and +for many years an active and most valuable member of the committee, whose +special and extensive knowledge of books was always at its service, and +to whom the library is indebted for the acquisition of its most rare and +valuable books.” The first event in my own life is the attack by the mob +upon our house, at the general election in 1832, to which I have +referred. My cradle—as I have been told—had to be carried from the front +bedroom into the back, so that my head might not be broken by the stones +which smashed the windows. + + [Picture: Mark Rutherford’s Father] + +The first thing I can really see is the coronation of Queen Victoria and +a town’s dinner in St. Paul’s Square. About this time, or soon after, I +was placed in a “young ladies’” school. At the front door of this polite +seminary I appeared one morning in a wheelbarrow. I had persuaded a shop +boy to give me a lift. + +It was when I was about ten years old—surely it must have been very early +on some cloudless summer morning—that Nurse Jane came to us. She was a +faithful servant and a dear friend for many years—I cannot say how many. +Till her death, not so long ago, I was always her “dear boy”. She was as +familiar with me as if I were her own child. She left us when she +married, but came back on her husband’s death. Her father and mother +lived in a little thatched cottage at Oakley. They were very poor, but +her mother was a Scotch girl, and knew how to make a little go a long +way. Jane had not infrequent holidays, and she almost always took my +sister and myself to spend them at Oakley. This was a delight as keen as +any which could be given me. No entertainment, no special food was +provided. As to entertainment there was just the escape to a freer life, +to a room in which we cooked our food, ate it, and altogether lived +during waking hours when we were indoors. Oh, for a house with this one +room, a Homeric house! How much easier and how much more natural should +we be if we watched the pot or peeled the potatoes as we talked, than it +is now in a drawing-room, where we do not know what chair to choose +amongst a dozen scattered about aimlessly; where there is no table to +hide the legs or support the arms; a room which compels an uncomfortable +awkwardness, and forced conversation. Would it not be more sincere if a +saucepan took part in it than it is now, when, in evening clothes, +tea-cup in hand, we discuss the show at the Royal Academy, while a lady +at the piano sings a song from _Aida_? + +As to the food at Oakley, it was certainly rough, and included dishes not +often seen at home, but I liked it all the better. My mother was by no +means democratic. In fact she had a slight weakness in favour of rank. +Somehow or other she had managed to know some people who lived in a +“park” about five or six miles from Bedford. It was called a “park”, but +in reality it was a big garden, with a meadow beyond. However, and this +was the great point, none of my mother’s town friends were callers at the +Park. But, notwithstanding her little affectations, she was always glad +to let us go to Oakley with Jane, not that she wanted to get rid of us, +but because she loved her. Nothing but good did I get from my wholly +unlearned nurse and Oakley. Never a coarse word, unbounded generosity, +and an unreasoning spontaneity, which I do think one of the most blessed +of virtues, suddenly making us glad when nothing is expected. A child +knows, no one so well, whereabouts in the scale of goodness to place +generosity. Nobody can estimate its true value so accurately. Keeping +the Sabbath, no swearing, very right and proper, but generosity is first, +although it is not in the Decalogue. There was not much in my nurse’s +cottage with which to prove her liberality, but a quart of damsons for my +mother was enough. Going home from Oakley one summer’s night I saw some +magnificent apples in a window; I had a penny in my pocket, and I asked +how many I could have for that sum. “Twenty.” How we got them home I do +not know. The price I dare say has gone up since that evening. Talking +about damsons and apples, I call to mind a friend in Potter Street, whose +name I am sorry to say I have forgotten. He was a miller, tall, thin, +slightly stooping, wore a pepper-and-salt suit of clothes, and might have +been about sixty years old when I was ten or twelve. He lived in an +ancient house, the first floor of which overhung the street; the rooms +were low-pitched and dark. How Bedford folk managed to sleep in them, +windows all shut, is incomprehensible. At the back of the house was a +royal garden stretching down to the lane which led to the mill. My +memory especially dwells on the currants, strawberries, and gooseberries. +When we went to “uncle’s”, as we called him, we were turned out +unattended into the middle of the fruit beds if the fruit was ripe, and +we could gather and eat what we liked. I am proud to say that this +Potter Street gentleman, a nobleman if ever there was one, although not +really an uncle, was in some way related to my father. + +The recollections of boyhood, so far as week-days go, are very happy. +Sunday, however, was not happy. I was taken to a religious service, +morning and evening, and understood nothing. The evening was +particularly trying. The windows of the meeting-house streamed inside +with condensed breath, and the air we took into our lungs was poisonous. +Almost every Sunday some woman was carried out fainting. Do what I could +it was impossible to keep awake. When I was quite little I was made to +stand on the seat, a spectacle, with other children in the like case, to +the whole congregation, and I often nearly fell down, overcome with +drowsiness. My weakness much troubled me, because, although it might not +be a heinous sin, such as bathing on Sunday, it showed that I was not one +of God’s children, like Samuel, who ministered before the Lord girded +with a linen ephod. Bathing on Sunday, as the river was always before +me, was particularly prominent as a type of wickedness, and I read in +some book for children, by a certain divine named Todd, how a wicked boy, +bathing on the Sabbath, was drawn under a mill-wheel, was drowned, and +went to hell. I wish I could find that book, for there was also in it a +most conclusive argument intended for a child’s mind against the +doctrine, propounded by people called philosophers, that the world was +created by chance. The refutation was in the shape of a dream by a +certain sage representing a world made by Chance and not by God. +Unhappily all that I recollect of the remarkable universe thus produced +is that the geese had hoofs, and “clamped about like horses”. Such was +the awful consequence of creation by a No-God or nothing. + + [Picture: The School, Bedford, as it was in 1831] + +In 1841 or 1842—I forget exactly the date—I was sent to what is now the +Modern School. My father would not let me go to the Grammar School, +partly because he had such dreadful recollections of his treatment there, +and partly because in those days the universities were closed to +Dissenters. The Latin and Greek in the upper school were not good for +much, but Latin in the lower school—Greek was not taught—consisted almost +entirely in learning the Eton Latin grammar by heart, and construing +Cornelius Nepos. The boys in the lower school were a very rough set. +About a dozen were better than the others, and kept themselves apart. + +The recollections of school are not interesting to me in any way, but it +is altogether otherwise with playtime and holidays. School began at +seven in the morning during half the year, but later in winter. At +half-past eight or nine there was an interval of an hour for breakfast. +It was over when I got home, and I had mine in the kitchen. It was +dispatched in ten minutes, and my delight in cold weather then was to lie +in front of the fire and read _Chambers’ Journal_. Blessings on the +brothers Chambers for that magazine and for the _Miscellany_, which came +later! Then there was Charles and Mary Lamb’s _Tales of Ulysses_. It +was on a top shelf in the shop, and I studied it whilst perched on the +shop ladder. Another memorable volume was a huge atlas-folio, which my +sister and I called the Battle Book. It contained coloured prints, with +descriptions of famous battles of the British Army. We used to lug it +into the dining-room in the evening, and were never tired of looking at +it. A little later I managed to make an electrical machine out of a wine +bottle, and to produce sparks three-quarters of an inch long. I had +learned the words “positive” and “negative”, and was satisfied with them +as an explanation, although I had not the least notion what they meant, +but I got together a few friends and gave them a demonstration on +electricity. + +Never was there a town better suited to a boy than Bedford at that time +for out-of-door amusements. It was not too big—its population was about +10,000—so that the fields were then close at hand. The Ouse—immortal +stream—runs through the middle of the High Street. To the east towards +fenland, the country is flat, and the river is broad, slow, and deep. +Towards the west it is quicker, involved, fold doubling almost completely +on fold, so that it takes sixty miles to accomplish thirteen as the crow +flies. Beginning at Kempston, and on towards Clapham, Oakley, Milton, +Harrold, it is bordered by the gentlest of hills or rather undulations. +At Bedford the navigation for barges stopped, and there were very few +pleasure boats, one of which was mine. The water above the bridge was +strictly preserved, and the fishing was good. My father could generally +get leave for me, and more delightful days than those spent at Kempston +Mill and Oakley Mill cannot be imagined. The morning generally began, if +I may be excused the bull, on the evening before, when we walked about +four miles to bait a celebrated roach and bream hole. After I got home, +and just as I was going to bed, I tied a long string round one toe, and +threw the other end of the string out of window, so that it reached the +ground, having bargained with a boy to pull this end, not too violently, +at daybreak, about three-quarters of an hour before the time when the +fish would begin to bite well. At noon we slept for a couple of hours on +the bank. In the evening we had two hours more sport, and then marched +back to town. Once, in order to make a short cut, we determined to swim +the river, which, at the point where we were, was about sixty feet wide, +deep, and what was of more consequence, bordered with weeds. We +stripped, tied our clothes on the top of our heads and our boots to one +end of our fishing lines, carrying the other end with us. When we got +across we pulled our boots through mud and water after us. Alas! to our +grief we found we could not get them on, and we were obliged to walk +without them. Swimming we had been taught by an old sailor, who gave +lessons to the school, and at last I could pick up an egg from the bottom +of the overfall, a depth of about ten feet. I have also been upset from +my boat, and had to lie stark naked on the grass in the sun till my +clothes were dry. Twice I have been nearly drowned, once when I wandered +away from the swimming class, and once when I could swim well. This +later peril is worth a word or two, and I may as well say them now. I +was staying by the sea-side, and noticed as I was lying on the beach +about a couple of hundred yards from the shore a small vessel at anchor. +I thought I should like to swim round her. I reached her without any +difficulty, in perfect peace, luxuriously, I may say, and had just begun +to turn when I was suddenly overtaken by a mad conviction that I should +never get home. There was no real danger of failure of strength, but my +heart began to beat furiously, the shore became dim, and I gave myself up +for lost. “This then is dying,” I said to myself, but I also said—I +remember how vividly—“There shall be a struggle before I go down—one +desperate effort”—and I strove, in a way I cannot describe, to bring my +will to bear directly on my terror. In an instant the horrible +excitement was at an end, and _there was a great calm_. I stretched my +limbs leisurely, rejoicing in the sea and the sunshine. This story is +worth telling because it shows that a person with tremulous nerves, such +as mine, never ought to say that he has done all that he can do. Notice +also it was not nature or passion which carried me through, but a +conviction wrought by the reason. The next time I was in extremity +victory was tenfold easier. + + [Picture: Old Horne Lane, Bedford, in 1835] + +In the winter, fishing and boating and swimming gave way to skating. The +meadows for miles were a great lake, and there was no need to take off +skates in order to get past mills and weirs. The bare, flat Bedfordshire +fields had also their pleasures. I had an old flint musket which I found +in an outhouse. I loaded it with hard peas, and once killed a sparrow. +The fieldfares, or felts, as we called them, were in flocks in winter, +but with them I never succeeded. On the dark November Wednesday and +Saturday afternoons, when there was not a breath of wind, and the fog +hung heavily over the brown, ploughed furrows, we gathered sticks, +lighted a fire, and roasted potatoes. They were sweet as peaches. After +dark we would “go a bat-fowling”, with lanterns, some of us on one side +of the hedge and some on the other. I left school when I was between +fourteen and fifteen, and then came the great event and the great blunder +of my life, the mistake which well-nigh ruined it altogether. My +mother’s brother had a son about five years older than myself, who was +being trained as an Independent minister. To him I owe much. It was he +who introduced me to Goethe. Some time after he was ordained, he became +heterodox, and was obliged to separate himself from the Independents to +whom he belonged. My mother, as I have already said, was a little weak +in her preference for people who did not stand behind counters, and she +desired equality with her sister-in-law. Besides, I can honestly declare +that to her an Evangelical ministry was a sacred calling, and the thought +that I might be the means of saving souls made her happy. Finally, it +was not possible now to get a living in Bedford as a bookseller. The +drawing class in the school was fairly good, and I believe I had profited +by it. Anyhow, I loved drawing, and wished I might be an artist. The +decision was against me, and I was handed over to a private tutor to +prepare for the Countess of Huntingdon’s College at Cheshunt, which +admitted students other than those which belonged to the Connexion, +provided their creed did not materially differ from that which governed +the Connexion trusts. + +Before I went to college I had to be “admitted”. In most Dissenting +communities there is a singular ceremony called “admission”, through +which members of the congregation have to pass before they become members +of the church. It is a declaration that a certain change called +conversion has taken place in the soul. Two deacons are appointed to +examine the candidate privately, and their report is submitted to a +church-meeting. If it is satisfactory, he is summoned before the whole +church, and has to make a confession of his faith, and give an account of +his spiritual history. As may be expected, it is very often inaccurately +picturesque, and is framed after the model of the journey to Damascus. A +sinner, for example, who swears at his pious wife, and threatens to beat +her, is suddenly smitten with giddiness and awful pains. He throws +himself on his knees before her, and thenceforward he is a “changed +character”. I had to tell the church that my experience had not been +eventful. I was young, and had enjoyed the privilege of godly parents. + +What was conversion? It meant not only that the novice unhesitatingly +avowed his belief in certain articles of faith, but it meant something +much more, and much more difficult to explain. I was guilty of original +sin, and also of sins actually committed. For these two classes of sin I +deserved eternal punishment. Christ became my substitute, and His death +was the payment for my transgression. I had to feel that His life and +death were appropriated by me. This word “appropriated” is the most +orthodox I can find, but it is almost unintelligible. I might perhaps +say that I had to feel assured that I, personally, was in God’s mind, and +was included in the atonement. + +This creed had as evil consequences that it concentrated my thoughts upon +myself, and made me of great importance. God had been anxious about me +from all eternity, and had been scheming to save me. Another bad result +was that I was satisfied I understood what I did not in the least +understand. This is very near lying. I can see myself now—I was no more +than seventeen—stepping out of our pew, standing in the aisle at the +pew-door, and protesting to their content before the minister of the +church, father and mother protesting also to my own complete content, +that the witness of God in me to my own salvation was as clear as +noonday. Poor little mortal, a twelvemonth out of round jackets, I did +not in the least know who God was, or what was salvation. + +On entering the college I signed the Thirty-nine Articles, excepting two +or three at most; for the Countess, so far as her theology went, was +always Anglican. One of her chaplains was William Romaine, the famous +incumbent of St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, who on his first Good Friday in +that church administered to five hundred communicants. The book I was +directed to study by the theological professor after admission, was a +book on the Atonement, by somebody named Williams. He justified the +election of a minority to heaven and a majority to hell on the ground +that God owed us nothing, and being our Maker, might do with us what He +pleased. This struck me as original, but I had forgotten that it is the +doctrine of the Epistle to the Romans. It is almost incredible to me +now, although I was hardly nineteen, that I should have accepted without +question such a terrible invention, and the only approach to explanation +I can give is that all this belonged to a world totally disconnected from +my own, and that I never thought of making real to myself anything which +this supernatural world contained. + +The most important changes in life are not those of one belief for +another, but of growth, in which nothing preceding is directly +contradicted, but something unexpected nevertheless makes its appearance. +On the bookshelf in our dining-room lay a volume of Wordsworth. One day, +when I was about eighteen, I took it out, and fell upon the lines— + + “Knowing that Nature never did betray + The heart that loved her.” + +What they meant was not clear to me, but they were a signal of the +approach of something which turned out to be of the greatest importance, +and altered my history. + +It was a new capacity. There woke in me an aptness for the love of +natural beauty, a possibility of being excited to enthusiasm by it, and +of deriving a secret joy from it sufficiently strong to make me careless +of the world and its pleasures. Another effect which Wordsworth had upon +me, and has had on other people, was the modification, altogether +unintentional on his part, of religious belief. He never dreams of +attacking anybody for his creed, and yet it often becomes impossible for +those who study him and care for him to be members of any orthodox +religious community. At any rate it would have been impossible in the +town of Bedford. His poems imply a living God, different from the +artificial God of the churches. The revolution wrought by him goes far +deeper, and is far more permanent than any which is the work of Biblical +critics, and it was Wordsworth and not German research which caused my +expulsion from New College, of which a page or two further on. For some +time I had no thought of heresy, but the seed was there, and was alive +just as much as the seed-corn is alive all the time it lies in the earth +apparently dead. + +I have nothing particular to record of Cheshunt, the secluded +Hertfordshire village, where the Countess of Huntingdon’s College then +was. It stood in a delightful little half park, half garden, through +which ran the New River: the country round was quiet, and not then +suburban, but here and there was a large handsome Georgian house. I +learnt nothing at Cheshunt, and did not make a single friend. + +In 1851 or 1852 I was transferred, with two other students, to New +College, St. John’s Wood. On February 3, 1852, the Principal examined +our theological class on an inaugural lecture delivered at the opening of +the college. The subject of the lecture was the inspiration of the +Bible. The two students before mentioned were members of this class, and +asked some questions about the formation of the canon and the +authenticity of the separate books. They were immediately stopped by the +Principal in summary style. “I must inform you that this is not an open +question within these walls. There is a great body of truth received as +orthodoxy by the great majority of Christians, the explanation of which +is one thing, but to doubt it is another, and the foundation must not be +questioned.” How well I recollect the face of the Principal! He looked +like a man who would write an invitation to afternoon tea “within these +walls”. He consulted the senate, and the senate consulted the council, +which consisted of the senate and some well-known ministers. We were +ordered to be present at a special council meeting, and each one was +called up separately before it and catechized. Here are two or three of +the questions, put, it will be remembered, without notice, to a youth a +little over twenty, confronted by a number of solemn divines in white +neckerchiefs. + +“Will you explain the mode in which you conceive the sacred writers to +have been influenced?” + +“Do you believe a statement because it is in the Bible, or merely because +it is true?” + +“You are aware that there are two great parties on this question, one of +which maintains that the inspiration of the Scriptures differs in kind +from that of other books: the other that the difference is one only of +degree. To which of these parties do you attach yourself?” + +“Are you conscious of any divergence from the views expounded by the +Principal in this introductory lecture?” + +At a meeting of the council, on the 13th February, 1852, it was resolved +that our opinions were “incompatible” with the “retention of our position +as students”. This resolution was sent to us with another to the effect +that at the next meeting of the council “such measures” would be taken +“as may be thought advisable”. At this meeting my father, together with +the father of one of my colleagues attended, and asked that our moral +character should be placed above suspicion; that the opinions for which +we had been condemned should be explicitly stated, and that we should be +furnished with a copy of the creed by which we were judged. The next +step on the part of the council was the appointment of a committee to +interview us, and “prevent the possibility of a misapprehension of our +views”. We attended, underwent examination once more, and once more +repeated the three requests. No notice was taken of them, but on 3rd +March we were asked if we would withdraw from the college for three +months in order that we might “reconsider our opinions”, so that possibly +we might “be led by Divine guidance to such views as would be compatible +with the retention of our present position”. Idiomatic English was +clearly not a strong point with the council. Of course we refused. If +we had consented it might have been reasonably concluded that we had +taken very little trouble with our “views”. Again we asked for +compliance with our requests, but the only answer we got was that our +“connexion with New College must cease”, and that with regard to the +three requests, the council “having duly weighed them, consider that they +have already sufficiently complied with them”. + +It is not now my purpose to discuss the doctrine of Biblical Inspiration. +It has gone the way of many other theological dogmas. It has not been +settled by a yea or nay, but by indifference, and because yea or nay are +both inapplicable. The manner in which the trial was conducted was +certainly singular, and is worth a word or two. The Holy Office was +never more scandalously indifferent to any pretence of justice or +legality in its proceedings. We were not told what was the charge +against us, nor what were the terms of the trust deed of the college, if +such a document existed; neither were we informed what was the meaning of +the indictment, and yet the council must have been aware that nothing +less than our ruin would probably be the result of our condemnation. + +My father wrote and published a defence of us, entitled _To Think or not +to Think_, with two noble mottoes, one from Milton’s _Areopagitica_ and +the other some lines from _In Memoriam_, which was read in those days by +people who were not sentimental fools, and who, strange to say, got out +of it something solid which was worth having. The days may return when +something worth having will be got out of it again. To the question, +“Will you explain the mode in which you conceive the sacred writers to +have been influenced?” my father replied—“Rather a profound question, +that. A profounder, I venture to say, never agitated the mind of a +German metaphysician. If the query had been put to me, I should have +taken the liberty to question the questioner thus: ‘Can you explain to me +the growth of a tree? Can you explain how the will of man influences the +material muscles?—In fact the universe is full of forces or influences. +Can you trace whence it came and how it came? Can’st thou by searching +find out God? Can’st thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?—it is +high as heaven; what can’st thou do? deeper than hell; what can’st thou +know?’” To the council’s inquiry whether we believed a statement because +it was in the Bible or because it was true, my father replied partly with +a quotation from the celebrated Platonist divine, John Smith, of +Cambridge—“All that knowledge which is separate from an inward +acquaintance with virtue and goodness is of a far different nature from +that which ariseth out of a living sense of them which is the best +discerner thereof, and by which alone we know the true perfection, +sweetness, energy, and loveliness of them, and all that which is οὔτε +ῥητόν, οὔτε yραπτόν, that which can no more be known by a naked +demonstration than colours can be perceived of a blind man by any +definition or description which he can hear of them.” + +This pamphlet was written in 1852, three years after I entered Cheshunt +College, when my father declared to me that “a moderate Calvinism suited +him best”. In 1852 he was forty-five years old. He had not hardened: he +was alive, rejecting what was dead, laying hold of what was true to him, +and living by it. Nor was the change hurried or ill-considered which +took place in him between 1849 and 1852. What he became in 1852 he was +substantially to the end of his days. + +The expulsion excited some notice in the world then, although, as I have +said, the controversy was without much significance. The “views” of Dr. +Harris and the rest of the council were already condemned. Here are some +letters, not before printed, from Maurice and Kingsley on the case. The +closing paragraph of Maurice’s letter is remarkable because in about a +twelvemonth he himself was expelled from King’s College. + + “MY DEAR SIR, + + “I beg to thank you for your very able and interesting pamphlet. I + know one of the expelled students, and have every reason to think + highly of his earnestness and truthfulness. + + “I feel a delicacy in pronouncing any judgement upon the conduct of + the Heads of the College, as I belong to another, and I might seem to + be biased by feelings of Sectarianism and of rivalship. But there + are many of your thoughts by which we may all equally profit, and + which I hope to lay to heart in case I should be brought into + circumstances like those of the judges or of the criminals. + + “Faithfully yrs, + + “F. D. MAURICE. + + “_July_ 27, 1852. + 21 Queen’s Square, + Bloomsbury.” + + * * * * * + + “EVERSLEY. _Saturday_. + + “DEAR SIR, + + “I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your very clever and + well-written pamphlet, which I have read with no surprise but with + most painful interest; and I beg to thank you for the compliment + implied in your sending it to me. Your son ought to thank God for + having a father who will stand by him in trouble so manfully and + wisely: and as you say, this may be of the very greatest benefit to + him: but it may also do him much harm, if it makes him fancy that + such men as have expelled him are the real supporters of the Canon + and inspiration of Scripture, and of Orthodoxy in general. + + “I said that I read your pamphlet without surprise. I must explain + my words. This is only one symptom of a great and growing movement, + which must end in the absolute destruction of ‘Orthodox dissent’ + among the educated classes, and leave the lower, if unchecked, to + “Mormonism, Popery, and every kind of Fetîche-worship. The + Unitarians have first felt the tide-wave: but all other sects will + follow; and after them will follow members of the Established Church + in proportion as they have been believing, not in the Catholic and + Apostolic Faith, as it is in the Bible, but in some compound or other + of Calvinist doctrine with Rabbinical theories of magical + inspiration, such as are to be found in Gaussen’s _Theopneustic_—a + work of which I cannot speak in terms of sufficient abhorrence, + however well meaning the writer may have been. Onward to Strauss, + _Transcendentalism_—and Mr. John Chapman’s _Catholic Series_ is the + appointed path, and God help them!—I speak as one who has been + through, already, much which I see with the deepest sympathy + perplexing others round me; and you write as a man who has had the + same experience. Whether or not we agree in our conclusions at + present, you will forgive me for saying, that every week shows me + more and more that the ‘Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Faith’, so + far from being incompatible with the most daring science, both + physical, metaphysical, and philological, or with the most extended + notions of inspiration, or with continual inrushes of new light from + above, assumes them, asserts them, and cannot be kept Catholic, or + true to itself, without the fullest submission to them. I speak as a + heartily orthodox priest of the Church of England; you will excuse my + putting my thoughts in a general and abstract form in so short a + letter. But if your son—(I will not say you—for your age must be, + and your acquirements evidently are—greater than my own) if your son + would like to write to me about these matters, I do believe before + God, who sees me write, that as one who has been through what he has, + and more, I may have something to tell him, or at least to set him + thinking over. I speak frankly. If I am taking a liberty, you will + pardon the act for the sake of the motive. + + “I am, dear Sir, + + “Your obedient and faithful servant, + C. KINGSLEY.” + +It would be a mistake to suppose that the creed in which I had been +brought up was or could be for ever cast away like an old garment. The +beliefs of childhood and youth cannot be thus dismissed. I know that in +after years I found that in a way they revived under new forms, and that +I sympathized more with the Calvinistic Independency of the sixteenth and +seventeenth centuries than with the modern Christianity of church or +chapel. At first, after the abandonment of orthodoxy, I naturally +thought nothing in the old religion worth retaining, but this temper did +not last long. Many mistakes may be pardoned in Puritanism in view of +the earnestness with which it insists on the distinction between right +and wrong. This is vital. In modern religion the path is flowery. The +absence of difficulty is a sure sign that no good is being done. How far +we are from the strait gate, from the way that is narrow which leadeth +unto life, the way which is found only by few! The great doctrines of +Puritanism are also much nearer to the facts of actual experience than we +suppose. + +After the expulsion I was adrift, knowing no craft, belonging to no +religious body, and without social or political interest. I engaged +myself to a schoolmaster. The story of my very brief stay with him has +been elsewhere told with some variation, but I may as well relate it here +so as to make my little history complete. The school was somewhere in +Stoke Newington. I got there in the evening when it was quite dark. +After a word or two with my chief I was shown into a large school-room. +Two candles were placed on a raised desk, and this was all the light +permitted for the illumination of the great empty space round me. The +walls were hung with maps, and the place of honour on the end wall was +occupied by a huge drawing of the globe, in perspective, carefully +coloured. This masterpiece was the work of the proprietor, an example of +the precious learning which might be acquired at his “establishment”. +After I had sat down for a few minutes a servant brought me my supper, +placed it on a desk, and showed me my bedroom. I ate my meal, and after +some time, as nobody came to see me, I thought I had better go to bed. I +had to ascend a ladder, which I pulled up after me. When I had shut the +door I looked out of window. Before me lay London and the dull glare of +its lights. There was no distinct noise perceptible; but a deadened roar +came up to me. Over in the south-west was the house of the friend I had +left, always a warm home for me when I was in town. Then there fell upon +me what was the beginning of a trouble which has lasted all my life. The +next afternoon I went to the proprietor and told him I could not stay. +He was greatly amazed, and still more so because I could give him no +reason for leaving. He protested very reasonably that I could not break +my engagement at the beginning of term, but he gave me permission to look +for a substitute. I found a Scotch graduate who, like myself, had been +accused of heresy, and had nothing to do. He came the same day, and I +went back to — Terrace, somewhere out by Haverstock Hill. I forget its +name; it was a dull row of stuccoed ugliness. But to me that day +Grasmere, the Quantocks, or the Cornish sea-coast would have been nothing +compared with that stucco line. When I knocked at the door the horrible +choking fog had rolled away: I rushed inside; there was a hearty embrace, +and the sun shone gloriously. Still, I had nothing to do. + +At this point I had intended to stop. A good part of my life +henceforward has appeared under disguise in one of my books, but I think +on reconsideration it will be better to record here also what little +remains to be told about myself, and to narrate it as history. I called +on several publishers and asked for employment, but could get none till I +came to John Chapman, editor and proprietor of the _Westminster Review_, +as well as publisher, mainly of books which were theologically heretical, +and, I am sorry to say, did not pay. He lived at 142 Strand. + +As the New College council had tested my orthodoxy, so Chapman tested my +heresy and found that I was fit for the propagandist work in No. 142 and +for its society. He asked me if I believed in miracles. I said “Yes and +no”. I did not believe that an actual Curtius leaped into the gulf in +the Forum and saved Rome, but I did believe in the spiritual truth set +forth in the legend. This reply was allowed to pass, although my +scepticism would have been more satisfactory and more useful if it had +been a little more thorough. + +I was soon taken off the _Westminster_, and my occupation now was to +write Chapman’s letters, to keep his accounts, and, most disagreeable, to +“subscribe” his publications, that is to say, to call on booksellers and +ask how many copies they would take. Of George Eliot, who lodged at No. +142, I have often spoken, and have nothing to add. It is a lasting +sorrow to me that I allowed my friendship with her to drop, and that +after I left Chapman I never called on her. She was then unknown, except +to a few friends, but I did know what she was worth. I knew that she was +not only endowed with extraordinary genius, but with human qualities even +more precious. She took the kindest notice of me, an awkward creature +not accustomed to society. It is sad that youth should be so confident +in its own resources that it will not close its hand upon the treasure +which is placed inside it. It was not only George Eliot by whom I +neglected to profit. I might have seen Rachel. I recollect the evening, +and I believe I was offered a ticket. It was not worth while to walk a +couple of hundred yards to enrich myself for ever! I knew intimate +friends of Caroline Fox, but I made no effort to become acquainted with +her. What a difference it would make to me now, living so much in the +past, if Penjerrick, with a dream of its lawn sloping southward and +seaward, and its society of all the most interesting people in England, +should be amongst my possessions, thrusting out and replacing much that +is ugly, monotonous, and depressing. I would earnestly, so earnestly, +implore every boy and girl religiously to grasp their chances. Lay up +for yourselves treasure in heaven. + +There was one opportunity, however, I did not miss, and this was Caleb +Morris. About him also I have written, but for the sake of continuity I +will repeat some of it. He had singular influence, not only over me, but +over nearly every young man whom he met. He was originally an +Independent minister in Wales, where the people are mostly Dissenters, +but he came to London when he had not passed middle life, and took charge +of the church in Fetter Lane. He was tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, +erect, but was partly disabled by a strangely nervous temperament which, +with an obscure bodily trouble, frequently prevented him from keeping his +engagements. Often and often messengers had to be dispatched late on +Sunday morning to find a substitute for him at Fetter Lane, and people +used to wait in the portico of the chapel until the service had well +begun, and then peep through the door to see who was in the pulpit. He +was the most eloquent speaker I ever heard. I never shall forget his +picture of the father, in the parable of the prodigal son, watching for +his child’s return, all his thoughts swallowed up in one—_Will he come +back to-day_? When he did come—no word of rebuke. The hardest thing in +the world is to be completely generous in forgiveness. The most +magnanimous of men cannot resist the temptation—_but at the same time you +must see_, _my dearest_, _don’t you_? Almost equally difficult, but not +quite, is the simple confession without an extenuating word, _I have +sinned against Heaven_. The father does not hear. _Bring forth the best +robe and put it on him_, _and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his +feet_. A ring on his hand! Shoes on his feet we can understand, but +there is to be a ring, honour, ennoblement! . . . The first movement of +repentance was—_I will arise and go to my father_. The omissions in +Morris’s comment were striking. There was no word of the orthodox +machinery of forgiveness. It was through Morris that the Bible became +what it always has been to me. It has not solved directly any of the +great problems which disturb my peace, and Morris seldom touched them +controversially, but he uncovered such a wealth of wonder and beauty in +it that the problems were forgotten. + +Lord Bacon was Morris’s hero, both for his method and his personal +character. These were the days before the researches of Spedding, when +Bacon was supposed to be a mass of those impossible paradoxes in which +Macaulay delighted. To Morris, Bacon’s _Submission_ and his renunciation +of all defence were sufficient. With what pathos he repeated Bacon’s +words when the Lords asked him whether the subscription to the +_Submission_ was in his own hand. “My Lords, it is my act, my hand, my +heart. I beseech your Lordships, be merciful to a broken reed.” + + [Picture: Portrait of Mark Rutherford at the age of twenty-four] + +There is nothing more to be said about Chapman’s. I left after an offer +of partnership, which, it is needless to say, I did not accept. Mr. +Whitbread obtained for me a clerkship in the Registrar-General’s office, +Somerset House. I was there two or three years, and was then transferred +to the Admiralty. Meanwhile I had married. + +The greater part of my life has been passed in what it is now usual to +contemn as the Victorian age. Whatever may be the justice of the scorn +poured out upon it by the superior persons of the present generation, +this Victorian age was distinguished by an enthusiasm which can only be +compared to a religious revival. _Maud_ was read at six in the morning +as I walked along Holborn; _Pippa Passes_ late at night in my dark little +room in Serle Street, although of course it was a long while after the +poem made its appearance. Wonderful! What did I see as I stood at my +desk in my Serle Street bedroom? + + “Day! + Faster and more fast, + O’er night’s brim, day boils at last; + Boils, pure gold, o’er the cloud-cup’s brim + Where spurting and suppresst it lay—” + +There on the horizon lies the cloud cup. Over the brim boils, pure gold, +the day! The day which is before me is Pippa’s day, and not a day in the +Strand: it is a “twelve-hours treasure”: I am as eager as Pippa “not to +squander a wavelet of thee”. The vision still lives. The friend who +stood by my side is still with me, although he died years and years ago. +What was true of me was true of half a score of my friends. If it is +true that the Victorian time was ugly and vulgar, it was the time of the +_Virginians_, of _David Copperfield_, of Tennyson’s _Poems_, of +Cromwell’s _Letters and Speeches_, of the _Letters and Life of Lord +Bacon_, of Emerson’s _Essays_, of _Festus_, of the _Dramatis Personæ_, +and of the _Apologia_. We were at the Academy at eight o’clock on a May +morning to see, at the very earliest moment, the Ophelia, the Order for +Release, the Claudio and Isabella, Seddon’s Jerusalem, Lewis’s Arab +Scribe and his Frank Encampment in the Desert. The last two, though, I +think, were in the exhibition of the Old Water Colour Society. The +excitement of those years between 1848 and 1890 was, as I have said, +something like that of a religious revival, but it was reasonable. + +These notes are not written for publication, but to please two or three +persons related to me by affection. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EARLY LIFE OF MARK RUTHERFORD*** + + +******* This file should be named 7379-0.txt or 7379-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/7/3/7/7379 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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