1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724
725
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759
760
761
762
763
764
765
766
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791
792
793
794
795
796
797
798
799
800
801
802
803
804
805
806
807
808
809
810
811
812
813
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826
827
828
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843
844
845
846
847
848
849
850
851
852
853
854
855
856
857
858
859
860
861
862
863
864
865
866
867
868
869
870
871
872
873
874
875
876
877
878
879
880
881
882
883
884
885
886
887
888
889
890
891
892
893
894
895
896
897
898
899
900
901
902
903
904
905
906
907
908
909
910
911
912
913
914
915
916
917
918
919
920
921
922
923
924
925
926
927
928
929
930
931
932
933
934
935
936
937
938
939
940
941
942
943
944
945
946
947
948
949
950
951
952
953
954
955
956
957
958
959
960
961
962
963
964
965
966
967
968
969
970
971
972
973
974
975
976
977
978
979
980
981
982
983
984
985
986
987
988
989
990
991
992
993
994
995
996
997
998
999
1000
1001
1002
1003
1004
1005
1006
1007
1008
1009
1010
1011
1012
1013
1014
1015
1016
1017
1018
1019
1020
1021
1022
1023
1024
1025
1026
1027
1028
1029
1030
1031
1032
1033
1034
1035
1036
1037
1038
1039
1040
1041
1042
1043
1044
1045
1046
1047
1048
1049
1050
1051
1052
1053
1054
1055
1056
1057
1058
1059
1060
1061
1062
1063
1064
1065
1066
1067
1068
1069
1070
1071
1072
1073
1074
1075
1076
1077
1078
1079
1080
1081
1082
1083
1084
1085
1086
1087
1088
1089
1090
1091
1092
1093
1094
1095
1096
1097
1098
1099
1100
1101
1102
1103
1104
1105
1106
1107
1108
1109
1110
1111
1112
1113
1114
1115
1116
1117
1118
1119
1120
1121
1122
1123
1124
1125
1126
1127
1128
1129
1130
1131
1132
1133
1134
1135
1136
1137
1138
1139
1140
1141
1142
1143
1144
1145
1146
1147
1148
1149
1150
1151
1152
1153
1154
1155
1156
1157
1158
1159
1160
1161
1162
1163
1164
1165
1166
1167
1168
1169
1170
1171
1172
1173
1174
1175
1176
1177
1178
1179
1180
1181
1182
1183
1184
1185
1186
1187
1188
1189
1190
1191
1192
1193
1194
1195
1196
1197
1198
1199
1200
1201
1202
1203
1204
1205
1206
1207
1208
1209
1210
1211
1212
1213
1214
1215
1216
1217
1218
1219
1220
1221
1222
1223
1224
1225
1226
1227
1228
1229
1230
1231
1232
1233
1234
1235
1236
1237
1238
1239
1240
1241
1242
1243
1244
1245
1246
1247
1248
1249
1250
1251
1252
1253
1254
1255
1256
1257
1258
1259
1260
1261
1262
1263
1264
1265
1266
1267
1268
1269
1270
1271
1272
1273
1274
1275
1276
1277
1278
1279
1280
1281
1282
1283
1284
1285
1286
1287
1288
1289
1290
1291
1292
1293
1294
1295
1296
1297
1298
1299
1300
1301
1302
1303
1304
1305
1306
1307
1308
1309
1310
1311
1312
1313
1314
1315
1316
1317
1318
1319
1320
1321
1322
1323
1324
1325
1326
1327
1328
1329
1330
1331
1332
1333
1334
1335
1336
1337
1338
1339
1340
1341
1342
1343
1344
1345
1346
1347
1348
1349
1350
1351
1352
1353
1354
1355
1356
1357
1358
1359
1360
1361
1362
1363
1364
1365
1366
1367
1368
1369
1370
1371
1372
1373
1374
1375
1376
1377
1378
1379
1380
1381
1382
1383
1384
1385
1386
1387
1388
1389
1390
1391
1392
1393
1394
1395
1396
1397
1398
1399
1400
1401
1402
1403
1404
1405
1406
1407
1408
1409
1410
1411
1412
1413
1414
1415
1416
1417
1418
1419
1420
1421
1422
1423
1424
1425
1426
1427
1428
1429
1430
1431
1432
1433
1434
1435
1436
1437
1438
1439
1440
1441
1442
1443
1444
1445
1446
1447
1448
1449
1450
1451
1452
1453
1454
1455
1456
1457
1458
1459
1460
1461
1462
1463
1464
1465
1466
1467
1468
1469
1470
1471
1472
1473
1474
1475
1476
1477
1478
1479
1480
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>
|
