diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'old')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/emrt10.txt | 1603 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/emrt10.zip | bin | 0 -> 36172 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/emrt10h.htm | 1481 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/emrt10h.zip | bin | 0 -> 36824 bytes |
4 files changed, 3084 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/old/emrt10.txt b/old/emrt10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f25b303 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/emrt10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1603 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Early Life of Mark Rutherford +by Mark Rutherford + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Early Life of Mark Rutherford + +Author: Mark Rutherford + +Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7379] +[This file was first posted on April 22, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: US-ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE EARLY LIFE OF MARK RUTHERFORD *** + + + + + +Transcribed from the 1913 edition by David Price, +email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + +THE EARLY LIFE OF MARK RUTHERFORD + + + + +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, 3rd April. + +"MY DEAR SIR, (185-) + +"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. + +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. + +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 pounds +a year. + +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 potry (poetry) in the pulpit. If +you hear that, how can you wonder at your children wanting to go to +theatres 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 pounds 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 pounds 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 pounds 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 +book-selling 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 [Greek text], 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 Fetiche-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." + +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 Personae, 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 emrt10.txt or emrt10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, emrt11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, emrt10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, +even years after the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. + +Most people start at our Web sites at: +http://gutenberg.net or +http://promo.net/pg + +These Web sites include award-winning information about Project +Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new +eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!). + + +Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement +can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is +also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the +indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an +announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter. + +http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext04 or +ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext04 + +Or /etext03, 02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90 + +Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, +as it appears in our Newsletters. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text +files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+ +We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002 +If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total +will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks! +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users. + +Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated): + +eBooks Year Month + + 1 1971 July + 10 1991 January + 100 1994 January + 1000 1997 August + 1500 1998 October + 2000 1999 December + 2500 2000 December + 3000 2001 November + 4000 2001 October/November + 6000 2002 December* + 9000 2003 November* +10000 2004 January* + + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created +to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people +and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, +Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, +Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, +Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New +Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, +Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South +Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West +Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. + +We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones +that have responded. + +As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list +will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states. +Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state. + +In answer to various questions we have received on this: + +We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally +request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and +you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have, +just ask. + +While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are +not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting +donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to +donate. + +International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about +how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made +deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are +ways. + +Donations by check or money order may be sent to: + + PROJECT GUTENBERG LITERARY ARCHIVE FOUNDATION + 809 North 1500 West + Salt Lake City, UT 84116 + +Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment +method other than by check or money order. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by +the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN +[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154. Donations are +tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fund-raising +requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be +made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +You can get up to date donation information online at: + +http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html + + +*** + +If you can't reach Project Gutenberg, +you can always email directly to: + +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> + +Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message. + +We would prefer to send you information by email. + + +**The Legal Small Print** + + +(Three Pages) + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks, +is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart +through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project"). +Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook +under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market +any commercial products without permission. + +To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may +receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims +all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation, +and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated +with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including +legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the +following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this eBook, +[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook, +or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + eBook or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word + processing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the eBook (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the + gross profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation" + the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were + legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent + periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to + let us know your plans and to work out the details. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of +public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed +in machine readable form. + +The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time, +public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses. +Money should be paid to the: +"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or +software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at: +hart@pobox.com + +[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only +when distributed free of all fees. Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by +Michael S. Hart. Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be +used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be +they hardware or software or any other related product without +express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* + diff --git a/old/emrt10.zip b/old/emrt10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9a581b2 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/emrt10.zip diff --git a/old/emrt10h.htm b/old/emrt10h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..66b3c8c --- /dev/null +++ b/old/emrt10h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1481 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>The Early Life of Mark Rutherford</title> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">The Early Life of Mark Rutherford, by Mark Rutherford</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Early Life of Mark Rutherford +by Mark Rutherford + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Early Life of Mark Rutherford + +Author: Mark Rutherford + +Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7379] +[This file was first posted on April 22, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: US-ASCII +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1913 Oxford University Press by David Price, +email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div> +<h1>THE EARLY LIFE OF MARK RUTHERFORD</h1> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Autobiographical Notes</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>(185-)</p> +<p>“My DEAR SIR,</p> +<p>“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 <i>in</i> +that, but not to force him on work entirely painful to him.</p> +<p>“Very truly yours,<br />(Signed) “J. RUSKIN.”</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>“NATIONAL GALLERY, 3<i>rd April.</i></p> +<p>“MY DEAR SIR, (185-)</p> +<p>“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—<i>is</i>. I am very +sanguine respecting him, I like both his face and his work.</p> +<p>“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 <i>do</i> enjoy being believed and being of use.</p> +<p>“Very faithfully yours,<br />(Signed) J. RUSKIN.<br />W. White, +Esq.”</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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!</p> +<p>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 <i>George Herbert</i> +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Times</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 potry (poetry) in the +pulpit. If you hear that, how can you wonder at your children +wanting to go to theatres and cathredrals?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Ah, Mr. Lovell, I’m glad to see you: how’s the +missus and the children? What weather it is!”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>Fitchew looks on the ground, and gives his head a shake on one side +as if he were mortified beyond measure.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>Uncle tries with all his might to look severe, but does not succeed.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Mr. Lovell, £10 you shall have next Saturday fortnight +as sure as my name’s Bill Fitchew.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Hullo, my pretty dear, what’s your name? Dear, +what’s your name?”</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>After much hesitation: “Keziah Fitchew, sir.”</p> +<p>“Are you a good little girl? Do you say your prayers +every morning and every evening?”</p> +<p>“Yes, sir.”</p> +<p>“Would you know what to do with sixpence if I gave it you? +You’d put it in the missionary box, wouldn’t you?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“I suppose it’s one o’clock as usual, Mr. Lovell, +at the Red Lion?” My uncle laughs as he moves to the gate.</p> +<p>“I tell you what it is, Mr. Fitchew, you’re a precious +rascal; that’s what you are.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>The <i>Reply</i> 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 <i>Poor Man’s Help and Young +Man’s Guide</i>, which went through more than thirty editions +in fifty years. There he wrestled with the Baptists, and produced +his <i>Argumentative and Practical Discourse on Infant Baptism</i>. +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 <i>Argument</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Inner Life +of the House of Commons</i>, 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 <i>minus</i> +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.</p> +<p>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 book-selling 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Comus</i>, 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 <i>Heroes and Hero Worship</i> and the <i>Sartor Resartus</i> +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Aida</i>?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Chambers’ Journal</i>. +Blessings on the brothers Chambers for that magazine and for the <i>Miscellany</i>, +which came later! Then there was Charles and Mary Lamb’s +<i>Tales of Ulysses</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>there was +a great calm</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +-</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>“Knowing that Nature never did betray<br />“The heart +that loved her.”</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Will you explain the mode in which you conceive the sacred +writers to have been influenced?”</p> +<p>“Do you believe a statement because it is in the Bible, or +merely because it is true?”</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>“Are you conscious of any divergence from the views expounded +by the Principal in this introductory lecture?”</p> +<p>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”.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>My father wrote and published a defence of us, entitled <i>To Think +or not to Think</i>, with two noble mottoes, one from Milton’s +<i>Areopagitica</i> and the other some lines from <i>In Memoriam</i>, +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 ουτε ρητον, +ουτε yραπτον, +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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>“MY DEAR SIR,</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“Faithfully yrs,<br />F. D. MAURICE.<br /><i>July</i> 27, 1852.<br />21 +Queen’s Square,<br />Bloomsbury.”</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>“EVERSLEY. S<i>aturday.<br /></i>“DEAR SIR,</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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 <i>Theopneustic—</i>a work of which +I cannot speak in terms of sufficient abhorrence, however well meaning +the writer may have been. Onward to Strauss, <i>Transcendentalism—</i>and +Mr. John Chapman’s <i>Catholic Series</i> 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.</p> +<p>I am, dear Sir,<br />“Your obedient and faithful servant,<br />“C. +KINGSLEY.”</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Westminster +Review</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>I was soon taken off the <i>Westminster</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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—<i>Will +he come back to-day</i>? 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—<i>but +at the same time you must see, my dearest, don’t you</i>? +Almost equally difficult, but not quite, is the simple confession without +an extenuating word, <i>I have sinned against Heaven</i>. The +father does not hear. <i>Bring forth the best robe and put it +on him</i>, <i>and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet</i>. +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>I will arise and go to my father</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Submission</i> +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 <i>Submission</i> 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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. <i>Maud</i> was read +at six in the morning as I walked along Holborn; <i>Pippa Passes</i> +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?</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>“Day!<br />Faster and more fast,<br />O’er night’s +brim, day boils at last;<br />Boils, pure gold, o’er the cloud-cup’s +brim<br />Where spurting and suppresst it lay—”</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>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 <i>Virginians</i>, +of <i>David Copperfield</i>, of Tennyson’s <i>Poems</i>, of Cromwell’s +<i>Letters and Speeches</i>, of the <i>Letters and Life of Lord Bacon</i>, +of Emerson’s <i>Essays</i>, of <i>Festus</i>, of the <i>Dramatis +Personæ</i>, and of the <i>Apologia</i>. 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.</p> +<p>These notes are not written for publication, but to please two or +three persons related to me by affection.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE EARLY LIFE OF MARK RUTHERFORD ***</p> +<pre> + +******This file should be named emrt10h.htm or emrt10h.zip****** +Corrected EDITIONS of our EBooks get a new NUMBER, emrt11h.htm +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, emrt10ah.htm + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, +even years after the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. + +Most people start at our Web sites at: +http://gutenberg.net or +http://promo.net/pg + +These Web sites include award-winning information about Project +Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new +eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!). + + +Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement +can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is +also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the +indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an +announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter. + +http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext04 or +ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext04 + +Or /etext03, 02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90 + +Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, +as it appears in our Newsletters. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text +files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+ +We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002 +If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total +will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks! +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users. + +Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated): + +eBooks Year Month + + 1 1971 July + 10 1991 January + 100 1994 January + 1000 1997 August + 1500 1998 October + 2000 1999 December + 2500 2000 December + 3000 2001 November + 4000 2001 October/November + 6000 2002 December* + 9000 2003 November* +10000 2004 January* + + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created +to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people +and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, +Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, +Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, +Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New +Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, +Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South +Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West +Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. + +We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones +that have responded. + +As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list +will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states. +Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state. + +In answer to various questions we have received on this: + +We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally +request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and +you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have, +just ask. + +While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are +not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting +donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to +donate. + +International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about +how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made +deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are +ways. + +Donations by check or money order may be sent to: + + PROJECT GUTENBERG LITERARY ARCHIVE FOUNDATION + 809 North 1500 West + Salt Lake City, UT 84116 + +Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment +method other than by check or money order. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by +the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN +[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154. Donations are +tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fund-raising +requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be +made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +You can get up to date donation information online at: + +http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html + + +*** + +If you can't reach Project Gutenberg, +you can always email directly to: + +Michael S. Hart hart@pobox.com + +Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message. + +We would prefer to send you information by email. + + +**The Legal Small Print** + + +(Three Pages) + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks, +is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart +through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project"). +Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook +under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market +any commercial products without permission. + +To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may +receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims +all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation, +and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated +with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including +legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the +following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this eBook, +[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook, +or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + eBook or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word + processing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the eBook (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the + gross profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation" + the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were + legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent + periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to + let us know your plans and to work out the details. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of +public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed +in machine readable form. + +The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time, +public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses. +Money should be paid to the: +"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or +software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at: +hart@pobox.com + +[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only +when distributed free of all fees. Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by +Michael S. Hart. Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be +used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be +they hardware or software or any other related product without +express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* +</pre></body> +</html> diff --git a/old/emrt10h.zip b/old/emrt10h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9fa9ae1 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/emrt10h.zip |