V 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OP 
 
 SAN DIEGO 
 
' i 
 
Digitized by \he Internet Arclnive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 lnttp://www.arcliive.org/details/earlylifeofmarl<rOOrutlniala 
 
Mark Rutherford, aged about twelve, 
 AND HIS Father 
 
THE EARLY LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 MARK RUTHERFORD 
 
 (W. HALE WHITE) 
 By himself 
 
 HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON EDINBURGH NEW YORK TORONTO 
 
 MELBOURNE AND BOMBAY 
 
 1913 
 
OXFORD : HORACE HART 
 PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY 
 
Foreword 
 
 A FEW years ago I asked my father to 
 put down some facts of his life for those of 
 his family who are too young to remember 
 his early years. In his will he bequeathed 
 these "Notes" to my only sister, Mary 
 Theodora, who has lived with him all her 
 life, but she hesitated,- in face of the last 
 sentence, to pubhsh them. Although it is 
 true they were not written with a view to 
 publication, it is evident, from a conversa- 
 tion my father had with his wife about 
 them, that he had no objection to their 
 being made public. 
 
 My sister therefore prints them now, in 
 the hope that they may interest a few 
 beyond the "two or three persons" for 
 whom they were intended. 
 
 W. HALE WHITE. 
 
 June 1913. 
 
List of Illustrations 
 
 Mark Rutherford, aged about I2, 
 
 AND His Father . . . Frontispiece 
 
 Bedford Bridge . . Facing p. 13 
 
 'The Bedford Times' Coach . Facing p. is 
 
 The Old Meeting-house . . Facing p. 16 
 
 Mark Rutherford's Father Facing p. 38 
 
 The School, Bedford, in 1831 . Facing p. 47 
 
 Old Horne Lane, Bedford, in 
 
 1835 ..... Facing p. 50 
 
 Mark Rutherford at the Age 
 
 OF 24 . . . . . Facing p. 88 
 
Autobiographical 
 Notes 
 
 1HAVE been asked at 78 years old to 
 set down what I remember of my early 
 life. A good deal of it has been told before 
 under a semi-transparent disguise, with 
 much added which is entirely fictitious. 
 What I now set down is fact. 
 
 I was born in Bedford High Street, on 
 December 22, 1831, I had two sisters and 
 a brother, besides an elder sister who died 
 in infancy. My brother, a painter of much 
 promise, died young. Ruskin and Rossetti 
 thought much of him. He was altogether 
 unlike the rest of us, in face, in temper, 
 and in quality of mind. He was very 
 passionate, and at times beyond control. 
 5 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 None of us understood how to manage 
 him. What would I not give to have my 
 time with him over again ! Two letters 
 to my father about him are copied below : 
 
 (185-) 
 " My dear Sir, 
 
 " I am much vexed with myself for 
 " not having written this letter sooner, 
 " There were several things I wanted to 
 " say respecting the need of perseverance 
 " in painting as well as in other businesses, 
 " which it would take me too long to say 
 " in the time I have at command — so 
 " I must just answer the main question. 
 " Your son has very singular gifts for 
 " painting. I think the work he has done 
 " at the College nearly the most promising 
 " of any that has yet been done there, and 
 " I sincerely trust the apparent want of 
 " perseverance has hitherto been only the 
 6 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " disgust of a creature of strong instincts 
 " who has not got into its own element — 
 " he seems to me a fine fellow — and I hope 
 " you will be very proud of him some day — 
 " but I very seriously think you must let 
 " him have his bent in this matter — and 
 " then — if he does not work steadily — take 
 " him to task to purpose. I think the 
 " whole gist of education is to let the boy 
 " take his own shape and element — and 
 " then to help — discipline and urge him in 
 " that, but not to force him on work 
 " entirely painful to him. 
 
 " Very truly yours, 
 
 (Signed) "J. Ruskin." 
 
 "National Gallery, 3rd April. 
 
 " My dear Sir, (185—) 
 
 " Do not send your son to Mr. Leigh : 
 
 " his . school is wholly inefficient. Your 
 
 " son should go through the usual course 
 
 7 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 *' of instruction given at the Royal Aca- 
 '• demy, which,- with a good deal that is 
 " wrong, gives something that is necessary 
 "and right, and which cannot be other- 
 *' wise obtained. Mr. Rossetti and I will 
 " take care — (in fact your son's judgement 
 " is I believe formed enough to enable him 
 " to take care himself) that he gets no 
 " mistaken bias in those schools. A 
 " ' studio ' is not necessary for him — but 
 " a little room with a cupboard in it, and 
 " a chair — and nothing else — is. 1 am very 
 " sanguine respecting him, I like both his 
 " face and his work. 
 
 " Thank you for telling me that about my 
 " books. I am happy in seeing much more 
 " of the springing of the green than most 
 " sowers of seed are allowed to see, until 
 '* very late in their lives — but it is always 
 " a great help to me to hear of any, for 
 " I never write with pleasure to myself, nor 
 8 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " with purpose of getting praise to myself. 
 " I hate writing, and know that what I do 
 " does not deserve high praise, as literature; 
 " but I write to tell truths which I can't 
 " help crying out about, and I do enjoy 
 " being believed and being of use. 
 " Very faithfully yours, 
 
 (Signed) " J. Ruskin. 
 " W. White, Esq." 
 
 My mother, whose maiden name was 
 Chignell, came from Colchester. What 
 her father and mother were I never heard. 
 I will say all I have to say about Col- 
 chester, 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 
 9 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 in it has never to this day left me. In 
 one of the rooms was a spinet. The strings 
 were struck with quills, and gave a thin, 
 twangling, or rather twingling sound. In 
 that house I was taught by a stupid 
 servant to be frightened at gipsies. She 
 threatened me with them after I was in 
 bed. My grandmother was a most pious 
 woman. Every morning and night we had 
 family prayer. It was difficult for her to 
 stoop, but she always took the great 
 quarto book of Devotions off the table and 
 laid it on a chair, put on her spectacles, 
 and went through the portion for the day. 
 I had an uncle who was also pious, but 
 sleepy. One night he stopped dead in the 
 middle of his prayer. I was present and 
 awake. I was much frightened, but my 
 aunt, who was praying by his side, poked 
 him, and he went on all right. 
 
 We children were taken to Colchester 
 
 10 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 1 
 
 I had an aunt in Colchester, a woman 
 of singular originality, which none of her 
 neighbours could interpret, and conse- 
 quently they misliked it, and ventured 
 upon distant insinuations against her. 
 She had married a baker, a good kind of 
 man, but tame. In summer-time she not 
 infrequently walked at five o'clock in the 
 morning to a pretty church about a mile 
 and a half away, and read George Herbert 
 in the porch. She was no relation of mine, 
 II 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 except by marriage to my uncle, but she 
 was most affectionate to me, and always 
 loaded me with nice things whenever I 
 went to see her. The survival in my 
 memory of her cakes, gingerbread, and 
 kisses; has done me more good, moral good 
 — if you have a fancy for this word — than 
 sermons or punishment. 
 
 My christian name of " Hale " comes 
 from my grandmother, whose maiden 
 name was Hale. At the beginning of 
 last century she and her two brothers, 
 William and Robert Hale, were living in 
 Colchester. William Hale moved to 
 Homerton, and became a silk manufac- 
 turer 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 
 12 
 
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AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 supposed connexion with the Carolean 
 Chief Justice is more than doubtful. 
 
 To return to Bedford. In my boyhood 
 it differed, excepting an addition north- 
 wards 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 drink- 
 ing-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 
 13 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 " Buck- 
 inghamshire water " was coming down 
 with alarming force, and would soon be 
 upon them. It arrived almost as soon as 
 the messenger, and invaded my uncle 
 Lovell's dining-room, reaching nearly as 
 high as the top of the table. 
 
 The goods trafl&c to and from London 
 was carried on by an enormous waggon, 
 which made the journey once or twice 
 14 
 
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AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 a week. Passengers generally travelled 
 by the Times coach, a hobby of Mr. 
 Whitbread's. It was horsed with four 
 magnificent cream-coloured horses, and 
 did the fifty miles from Bedford to London 
 at very nearly ten miles an hour, or twelve 
 miles actual speed, excluding stoppages 
 for change. Barring accidents, it was 
 always punctual to a minute, and every 
 evening, excepting Sundays, exactly as 
 the clock of St. Paul's struck eight, it 
 crossed the bridge. I have known it wait 
 before entering the town if it was five or 
 six minutes too soon, a kind of polish or 
 artistic completeness being thereby given 
 to a performance in which much pride 
 was taken. 
 
 The Bedford Charity was as yet hardly 
 
 awake. No part of the funds was devoted 
 
 to the education of girls, but a very large 
 
 part went in almsgiving. The education 
 
 15 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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. 
 
 Dissent had been strong throughout the 
 whole county ever since the Common- 
 wealth. 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 con- 
 gregation steady. The reason why it held 
 together was the simple loyalty which 
 prevents a soldier or a sailor from mutiny- 
 ing, although the commanding oflScer may 
 deserve no respect. Most of the well-to- 
 do tradesfolk were Dissenters. They were 
 taught what was called a " moderate 
 16 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " Calvinism ", a phrase not easy to under- 
 stand. If it had any meaning, it was that 
 predestination, election, and reprobation, 
 were unquestionably true, but they were 
 dogmas about which it was not prudent to 
 say much, for some of the congregation 
 were a little Arminian, and St. James 
 could not be totally neglected. The worst 
 of St. James was that when a sermon 
 was preached from his Epistle, there was 
 always a danger lest somebody in the 
 congregation should think that it was 
 against him it was levelled. There was 
 no such danger, at any rate not so much, if 
 the text was taken from the Epistle to the 
 Romans. 
 
 In the " singing-pew " sat a clarionet, 
 a double bass, a bassoon, and a flute : 
 also a tenor voice which " set the tune ". 
 The carpenter, to whom the tenor voice 
 belonged, had a tuning-fork which he 
 17 B 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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, every- 
 body following, including the orchestra, 
 and those of the congregation who had 
 bass or tenor voices sang the air. Each 
 of the instruments demanded a fair share 
 of solos. 
 
 The institution strangest to me now was 
 the Lord's Supper. Once a month the 
 members of the church, while they were 
 seated in the pews, received the bread and 
 wine at the hands of the deacons, the 
 minister reciting meanwhile passages from 
 Scripture. Those of the congregation who 
 had not been converted, and who con- 
 sequently did not belong to the church and 
 were not communicants, watched the rite 
 from the gallery. What the reflective un- 
 i8 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 converted, who were upstairs, thought I 
 cannot say. The master might with vary- 
 ing emotions survey the man who cleaned 
 his knives and boots. The wife might sit 
 beneath and the husband above, or, more 
 difficult still, the mistress might be seated 
 aloft while her husband and her conceited 
 maid-of-all-work, Tabitha, enjoyed full 
 gospel privileges below. 
 
 Dependent on the mother " cause " 
 were chapels in the outlying villages. 
 They were served by lay preachers, and 
 occasionally by the minister from the old 
 meeting-house. One village, Stagsden, had 
 attained to the dignity of a wind and 
 a stringed instrument. 
 
 The elders of the church at Bedford 
 belonged mostly to the middle class in the 
 town, but some of them were farmers. 
 Ignorant they were to a degree which 
 would shock the most superficial young 
 19 B2 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 reahty 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 
 
 20 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " (poetry) in the pulpit. If you hear 
 '* that, how can you wonder at your 
 " children wanting to go to theatres and 
 " cathredrals ? " 
 
 Of my father's family, beyond my grand- 
 father, 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 neigh- 
 bours 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 
 21 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 mis- 
 take, and returned to the other man. He 
 recovered. 
 
 I had only one set of relations in Bed- 
 ford, 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 
 22 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 hap- 
 pened. Uncle draws up at the front 
 garden gate and gets out : I hold the reins. 
 Blacksmith, in debt something like £15 
 for smithery coal, comes from his forge 
 at the side of the house to meet him. 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Lovell, I'm glad to see you : 
 " how 's the missus and the children ? 
 " What weather it is ! " 
 
 "I suppose you guess, Master Fitchew, 
 " what I've come about : you've had this 
 " bill twice — I send my bills out only 
 "once a year — and you've not paid 
 " a penny." 
 
 23 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Fitchew looks on the ground, and gives 
 his head a shake on one side as if he were 
 mortified beyond measure. 
 
 *' I know it, Mr. Lovell, nobody can be 
 " more vexed than I am, but I can't get 
 '* nothing out of the farmers. Last year 
 "was an awful year for them." 
 
 Uncle tries with all his might to look 
 severe, but does not succeed. 
 
 " You've told me that tale every time 
 " I've called for twenty years past : now 
 " mind, I'm not going to be humbugged 
 " any longer. I must have half of that 
 " £15 this month, or not another ounce of 
 " smithery coal do you get out of me. You 
 " may try Warden if you like, and maybe 
 "he'll treat you better than I do." 
 
 " Mr, Lovell, £10 you shall have next 
 " Saturday fortnight as sure as my name 's 
 " Bill Fitchew." 
 
 A little girl, about eight years old, who 
 24 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 was hurried into her white, Sunday frock 
 with red ribbons, as soon as her mother 
 saw my uncle at the gate, runs up towards 
 him according to secret instructions, but 
 stops short by about a yard, puts her 
 forefinger on her lip and looks at him. 
 
 " Hullo, my pretty dear, what 's your 
 " name ? Dear, what 's your name ? " 
 
 " Say Keziah Fitchew, sir," prompts 
 Mrs. Fitchew, appearing suddenly at the 
 side door as if she had come to fetch her 
 child who had run out unawares. 
 
 After much hesitation : " Keziah Fit- 
 " chew, sir." 
 
 " Are you a good little girl ? Do you 
 " say your prayers every morning and 
 " every evening ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Would you know what to do with 
 " sixpence if I gave it you } You'd put 
 " it in the missionary box, wouldn't you ? " 
 23 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Keziah thinks, but does not reply. It 
 is a problem of immense importance. 
 Uncle turns to Bill, so that Keziah cannot 
 see him, puts up his left hand to the side 
 of his face and winks violently. 
 
 " I suppose it 's one o'clock as usual, 
 " Mr. Lovell, at the Red Lion .? " My 
 uncle laughs as he moves to the gate. 
 
 " I tell you what it is, Mr. Fitchew, 
 "you're a precious rascal; that's what 
 "you are." 
 
 At one o'clock an immense dinner is 
 provided at the Red Lion, and thither the 
 debtors come, no matter what may be 
 the state of their accounts, and drink my 
 uncle's health. Such was Uncle Lovell. 
 My father and mother often had supper 
 with him and my aunt. After I was ten 
 years old I was permitted to go. It was 
 a solid, hot meal at nine o'clock. It was 
 followed by pipes and brandy and water, 
 26 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 ■ never more than one glass; and when this 
 was finished, at about half-past ten, there 
 was the walk home across the silent 
 bridge, with a glimpse downward of the 
 dark river slowly flowing through the 
 stone arches. 
 
 I now come to my father. My object 
 is not to write his life. I have not sufficient 
 materials, nor would it be worth recording 
 at any length, but I should like to preserve 
 the memory of a few facts which are 
 significant of him, and may explain his 
 influence upon me. 
 
 He was born in 1807, and was eight 
 years old when his father died : his mother 
 died seven years earlier. He had a cruel 
 step-mother, who gave to her own child 
 everything she had to give. He was 
 educated at the Grammar School, but the 
 teaching there, as I have said, was very 
 poor. The step-mother used to send 
 27 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 com- 
 pelled my father to clean boots, knives 
 and forks, and do other dirty work. 
 
 I do not know when he opened the shop 
 in Bedford as a printer and bookseller, 
 but it must have been about 1830. He 
 dealt in old books, the works of the 
 English divines of all parties, both in 
 the Anglican Church and outside it. The 
 clergy, who then read more than they read 
 or can read now, were his principal cus- 
 tomers. 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 fore- 
 most at elections, specially at the election 
 in 1832, when he and the Whig Committee 
 were besieged in the Swan Inn by the 
 28 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 
 29 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 the bottom of the poll. At the next meet- 
 ing 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 Gram- 
 mar School. My father replied in a pam- 
 phlet, published in 1844. 
 
 There was one endowment for which he 
 was remarkable, the purity of the English 
 he spoke and wrote. He used to say he 
 owed it to Cobbett, whose style he certainly 
 admired, but this is but partly true. It was 
 rather a natural consequence of the clearness 
 of his own mind and of his desire to make 
 himself wholly understood, both demand- 
 ing the simplest and most forcible expres- 
 sion. If the truth is of serious importance 
 to us we dare not obstruct it by phrase- 
 making : we are compelled to be as direct 
 30 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 par- 
 " ticularly fine, strike it out." 
 
 The Reply is an admirable specimen of 
 the way in which a controversy should be 
 conducted ; without heat, the writer uni- 
 formly 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 
 
 31 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Dedham, both in Suffolk. As rector of 
 Dedham he died. There he wrote the 
 Poor Man's Help and Young Man's Guide, 
 which went through more than thirty 
 editions in fifty years. There he wrestled 
 with the Baptists, and produced his 
 Argumentative and Practical Discourse on 
 Infant Baptism. I have wandered through 
 these Dedham fields by the banks of the 
 Stour. It is Constable's country, and in 
 its way is not to be matched in England. 
 Although there is nothing striking in it, 
 its influence, at least upon me, is greater 
 than that of celebrated mountains and 
 waterfalls. What a power there is to 
 subdue and calm in those low hills, over- 
 topped, as you see it from East Bergholt, 
 by the magnificent Dedham half- cathedral 
 church 1 It is very probable that Burkitt, 
 as he took his walks by the Stour, and 
 struggled with his Argument, never saw 
 32 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 the placid, winding stream ; nor is it likely 
 that anybody in Bedford, except my 
 father, had heard of him. For his defence 
 of the schools my father was presented 
 at a town's meeting with a silver tea- 
 service. 
 
 By degrees, when the battle was over, 
 the bookselling business very much fell 
 off, and after a short partnership with his 
 brother-in-law in a tannery, my father 
 was appointed assistant door-keeper of 
 the House of Commons by Lord Charles 
 Russell. He soon became door-keeper. 
 While he was at the door he wrote for 
 a weekly paper his Inner Life of the Hottse 
 of Commons, afterwards collected and pub- 
 lished 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 
 33 c 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 February ii, 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 mimis 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 
 34 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Radical party, which included John Stuart 
 Mill and Roebuck. The visits to Sir John 
 and Lady Trelawney will never be for- 
 gotten, not so much because I was taught 
 what to think about certain poHtical 
 questions, but because I was supplied with 
 a standard by which all political questions 
 were judged, and this standard was fixed 
 by reason. Looking at the methods and 
 the procedure of that little republic and at 
 the anarchy of to-day, with no prospect 
 of the renewal of allegiance to principles, 
 my heart sinks. It was through one of 
 the Russells, with whom my father was 
 acquainted, that I was permitted with 
 him to call on Carlyle, an event amongst 
 the greatest in my life, and all the happier 
 for me because I did not ask to go. 
 
 What I am going to say now I hardly 
 like to mention, because of its privacy, 
 but it is so much to my father's honour 
 35 C2 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 men- 
 tioned, 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 news- 
 papers. During the session this was very 
 hard work. He could not leave the House 
 till it rose, and was often not at home till 
 two o'clock in the morning or later, too 
 tired to sleep. He was never able to see 
 a single revise of what he wrote. In the 
 end he paid his debts in full. 
 
 My father was a perfectly honest man, 
 and hated shiftiness even worse than 
 downright lying. The only time he gave 
 me a thrashing was for prevarication. He 
 had a plain, but not a dull mind, and 
 36 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 loved poetry of a sublime cast, especially 
 Milton. I can hear him even now repeat 
 passages from the Comus, which was a 
 special favourite. Elsewhere I have told 
 how when he was young and stood at the 
 composing desk in his printing office, he 
 used to declaim Byron by heart. That 
 a Puritan printer, one of the last men in 
 the world to be carried away by a fashion, 
 should be vanquished by Byron, is as 
 genuine a testimony as any I know to the 
 reahty 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 
 pohtical 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. 
 37 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 It was the Heroes and Hero Worship and 
 the Sartor Resartiis 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 ortho- 
 doxy. 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 service- 
 able 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 
 38 
 
Mark Rutherford's Father 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 bed- 
 room into the back, so that my head 
 might not be broken by the stones which 
 smashed the windows. 
 39 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 The first thing I can really see is the 
 coronation of Queen Victoria and a town's 
 dinner in St. Paul's Square. About this 
 time, or soon after, I was placed in a 
 " young ladies' " school. At the front 
 door of this polite seminary I appeared 
 one morning in a wheelbarrow. I had 
 persuaded a shop boy to give me a lift. 
 
 It was when I was about ten years old — 
 surely it must have been very early on 
 some cloudless summer morning — that 
 Nurse Jane came to us. She was a faithful 
 servant and a dear friend for many years 
 — I cannot say how many. Till her death, 
 not so long ago, I was always her " dear 
 "boy ". She was as familiar with me as 
 if I were her own child. She left us when 
 she married, but came back on her hus- 
 band's death. Her father and mother 
 lived in a little thatched cottage at Oakley. 
 They were very poor, but her mother was 
 40 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 enter- 
 tainment, 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 uncom- 
 41 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 fortable awkwardness, and forced con- 
 versation. Would it not be more sincere 
 if a saucepan took part in it than it is now, 
 when, in evening clothes, tea-cup in hand, 
 we discuss the show at the Royal Academy, 
 while a lady at the piano sings a song 
 from Aida ? 
 
 As to the food at Oakley, it was certainly 
 rough, and included dishes not often seen 
 at home, but I Hked 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, 
 42 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 un- 
 learned nurse and Oakley. Never a coarse 
 word, unbounded generosity, and an un- 
 reasoning 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, where- 
 abouts 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 
 43 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 incom- 
 prehensible. 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, straw- 
 berries, and gooseberries. When we went 
 44 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 to "uncle's", as we called him, we were 
 turned out unattended into the middle of 
 the fruit beds if the fruit was ripe, and 
 we could gather and eat what we liked. 
 I am proud to say that this Potter Street 
 gentleman, a nobleman if ever there was 
 one, although not really an uncle, was in 
 some way related to my father. 
 
 The recollections of boyhood, so far as 
 week-days go, are very happy. Sunday, 
 however, was not happy. I was taken to 
 a religious service, morning and evening, 
 and understood nothing. The evening 
 was particularly trying. The windows of 
 the meeting-house streamed inside with 
 condensed breath, and the air we took 
 into our lungs was poisonous. Almost 
 every Sunday some woman was carried 
 out fainting. Do what I could it was 
 impossible to keep awake. When I was 
 quite little I was made to stand on the 
 45 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 hnen ephod. 
 Bathing on Sunday, as the river was 
 always before me, was particularly pro- 
 minent 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 
 46 
 
o 
 OS 
 o 
 
 b 
 Q 
 U 
 
 CQ 
 
 ►T 
 o 
 o 
 
 K 
 o 
 (fi 
 
 X 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 was created by chance. The refutation 
 was in the shape of a dream by a certain 
 sage representing a world made by Chance 
 and not by God. Unhappily all that 
 I recollect of the remarkable universe thus 
 produced is that the geese had hoofs, and 
 " clamped about like horses ". Such was 
 the awful consequence of creation by 
 a No-God or nothing. 
 
 In 1841 or 1842 — I forget exactly the 
 date — I was sent to what is now the 
 Modern School. My father would not let 
 me go to the Grammar School, partly 
 because he had such dreadful recollections 
 of his treatment there, and partly because 
 in those days the universities were closed 
 to Dissenters. The Latin and Greek in 
 the upper school were not good for much, 
 but Latin in the lower school — Greek was 
 not taught — consisted almost entirely in 
 learning the Eton Latin grammar by heart, 
 47 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 and construing Cornelius Nepos. The boys 
 in the lower school were a very rough set. 
 About a dozen were better than the others, 
 and kept themselves apart. 
 
 The recollections of school are not 
 interesting to me in any way, but it is 
 altogether otherwise with playtime and 
 holidays. School began at seven in the 
 morning during half the year, but later in 
 winter. At half-past eight or nine there 
 was an interval of an hour for breakfast. 
 It was over when I got home, and I had 
 mine in the kitchen. It was dispatched 
 in ten minutes, and my delight in cold 
 weather then was to lie in front of the fire 
 and read Chambers' Journal. Blessings on 
 the brothers Chambers for that magazine 
 and for the Miscellany, which came later I 
 Then there was Charles and Mary Lamb's 
 Tales of Ulysses. It was on a top shelf in the 
 shop, and I studied it whilst perched on the 
 48 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 shop ladder. Another memorable volume 
 was a huge atlas-folio, which my sister and 
 I called the Battle Book. It contained 
 coloured prints, with descriptions of famous 
 battles of the British Army. We used to 
 lug it into the dining-room in the evening, 
 and were never tired of looking at it. 
 A little later I managed to make an 
 electrical machine out of a wine bottle, 
 and to produce sparks three-quarters of 
 an inch long. I had learned the words 
 " positive " and " negative ", and was 
 satisfied with them as an explanation, 
 although I had not the least notion what 
 they meant, but I got together a few 
 friends and gave them a demonstration on 
 electricity. 
 
 Never was there a town better suited to 
 a boy than Bedford at that time for out- 
 of-door amusements. It was not too big 
 — its population was about 10,000 — so 
 49 D 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 undula- 
 tions. 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, 
 50 
 
Old Horne Lane, Bedford 
 as it was in 1835 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 if I may be excused the bull, on the even- 
 ing 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 day- 
 break, 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 
 51 D 2 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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. Swim- 
 ming 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 stay- 
 ing by the sea-side, and noticed as I was 
 lying on the beach about a couple of 
 hundred yards from the shore a small 
 52 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 re- 
 member how vividly — " There shall be 
 " a struggle before I go down — one des- 
 " perate effort " — and I strove, in a way 
 I cannot describe, to bring my will to bear 
 directly on my terror. In an instant the 
 horrible excitement was at an end, and 
 there was a great calm. I stretched my 
 limbs- leisurely, rejoicing in the sea and 
 the sunshine. This story is worth telling 
 because it shows that a person with 
 53 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 tremulous nerves, such as mine, never 
 ought to say that he has done all that he 
 can do. Notice also it was not nature or 
 passion which carried me through, but 
 a conviction wrought by the reason. The 
 next time I was in extremity victory was 
 tenfold easier. 
 
 In the winter, fishing and boating and 
 swimming gave way to skating. The 
 meadows for miles were a great lake, and 
 there was no need to take off skates in 
 order to get past mills and weirs. The 
 bare, flat Bedfordshire fields had also their 
 pleasures. I had an old flint musket which 
 I found in an outhouse. I loaded it with 
 hard peas, and once killed a sparrow. 
 The fieldfares, or felts, as we called them, 
 were in flocks in winter, but with them 
 I never succeeded. On the dark November 
 Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, when 
 there was not a breath of wind, and the fog 
 54 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 
 55 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 behind counters, and she desired equahty 
 with her sister-in-law. Besides, I can 
 honestly declare that to her an Evangelical 
 ministry was a sacred calling, and the 
 thought that I might be the means of 
 saving souls made her happy. Finally, it 
 was not possible now to get a living in 
 Bedford as a bookseller. The drawing 
 class in the school was fairly good, and 
 I believe I had profited by it. Anyhow, 
 I loved drawing, and wished I might be 
 an artist. The decision was against me, 
 and I was handed over to a private tutor 
 to prepare for the Countess of Huntingdon's 
 College at Cheshunt, which admitted 
 students other than those which belonged 
 to the Connexion, provided their creed did 
 not materially differ from that which 
 governed the Connexion trusts. 
 
 Before I went to college I had to be 
 " admitted ". In most Dissenting com- 
 56 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 munities there is a singular ceremony 
 called " admission ", through which mem- 
 bers 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 sum- 
 moned 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 inaccu- 
 rately 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 
 57 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " changed character ". I had to tell the 
 church that my experience had not been 
 eventful. I was young, and had enjoyed 
 the privilege of godly parents. 
 
 What was conversion .? It meant not 
 only that the novice unhesitatingly avowed 
 his belief in certain articles of faith, but 
 it meant something much more, and much 
 more difficult to explain. I was guilty of 
 original sin, and also of sins actually com- 
 mitted. 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 appro- 
 priated 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. 
 
 58 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 con- 
 tent, that the witness of God in me to my 
 own salvation was as clear as noonday. 
 Poor little mortal, a twelvemonth out of 
 round jackets, I did not in the least know 
 who God was, or what was salvation. 
 
 On entering the college I signed the Thirty- 
 nine Articles, excepting two or three at 
 
 59 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 
 60 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 all this belonged to a world totally dis- 
 connected from my own, and that I never 
 thought of making real to myself anything 
 which this supernatural world contained. 
 
 The most important changes in life are 
 not those of one belief for another, but of 
 growth, in which nothing preceding is 
 directly contradicted, but something un- 
 expected nevertheless makes its appear- 
 ance. On the bookshelf in our dining- 
 room lay a volume of Wordsworth. One 
 day, when I was about eighteen, I took it 
 out, and fell upon the lines — 
 
 " Knowing that Nature never did betray 
 " The heart that loved her." 
 
 What they meant was not clear to me, 
 but they were a signal of the approach 
 of something which turned out to be of 
 the greatest importance, and altered my 
 history. 
 It was a new capacity. There woke in 
 6i 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 
 62 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 research which caused my expulsion from 
 New College, of which a page or two 
 further on. For some time I had no 
 thought of heresy, but the seed was there, 
 and was alive just as much as the seed- 
 corn is alive all the time it lies in the 
 earth apparently dead. 
 
 I have nothing particular to record of 
 Cheshunt, the secluded Hertfordshire vil- 
 lage, where the Countess of Huntingdon's 
 College then was. It stood in a delightful 
 little half park, half garden, through which 
 ran the New River : the country round 
 was quiet, and not then suburban, but 
 here and there was a large handsome 
 Georgian house. I learnt nothing at 
 Cheshunt, and did not make a single 
 friend. 
 
 In 1851 or 1852 I was transferred, with 
 two other students, to New College, St. 
 John's Wood. On February 3, 1852, the 
 
 63 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 ortho- 
 " doxy 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 Prin- 
 cipal ! He looked like a man who would 
 write an invitation to afternoon tea 
 " within these walls ". He consulted the 
 64 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 senate, and the senate consulted the 
 council, which consisted of the senate and 
 some well-known ministers. We were 
 ordered to be present at a special council 
 meeting, and each one was called up 
 separately before it and catechized. Here 
 are two or three of the questions, put, it 
 will be remembered, without notice, to 
 a youth a little over twenty, confronted 
 by a number of solemn divines in white 
 neckerchiefs. 
 
 " Will you explain the mode in which 
 " you conceive the sacred writers to have 
 " been influenced .? " 
 
 " Do you believe a statement because it 
 " is in the Bible, or merely because it is 
 ♦' true ? " 
 
 " You are aware that there are two 
 
 " great parties on this question, one of 
 
 " which maintains that the inspiration of 
 
 " the Scriptures differs in kind from that 
 
 65 E 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " of other books : the other that the 
 " difference is one only of degree. To 
 " which of these parties do you attach 
 " yourself ? " 
 
 " Are you conscious of any divergence 
 "from the views expounded by the Prin- 
 " cipal in this introductory lecture? " 
 
 At a meeting of the council, on the 
 13th February, 1852, it was resolved that 
 our opinions were " incompatible " with 
 the " retention of our position as students ". 
 This resolution was sent to us with another 
 to the effect that at the next meeting of 
 the council " such measures " would be 
 taken " as may be thought advisable ". 
 At this meeting my father, together with 
 the father of one of my colleagues attended, 
 and asked that our moral character should 
 be placed above suspicion ; that the 
 opinions for which we had been con- 
 demned should be explicitly stated, and 
 66 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 " re- 
 " consider 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 
 
 67 E2 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " views ". Again we asked for compliance 
 with our requests, but the only answer 
 we got was that our " connexion with New 
 " College must cease ", and that with 
 regard to the three requests, the council 
 " having duly weighed them, consider that 
 " they have already sufficiently complied 
 "with them". 
 
 It is not now my purpose to discuss the 
 doctrine of Biblical Inspiration. It has 
 gone the way of many other theological 
 dogmas. It has not been settled by a yea 
 or nay, but by indifference, and because 
 yea or nay are both inapplicable. The 
 manner in which the trial was conducted 
 was certainly singular, and is worth a 
 word or two. The Holy Office was never 
 more scandalously indifferent to any pre- 
 tence of justice or legality in its pro- 
 ceedings. We were not told what was the 
 charge against us, nor what were the 
 68 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 con- 
 demnation. 
 
 My father wrote and published a defence 
 of us, entitled To Think or not to Think, 
 with two noble mottoes, one from Milton's 
 Areopagitica and the other some lines from 
 In Memoriam, which was read in those 
 days by people who were not sentimental 
 fools, and who, strange to say, got out of 
 it something solid which was worth having. 
 The days may return when something 
 worth having will be got out of it again. 
 To the question, " Will you explain the 
 " mode in which you conceive the sacred 
 "writers to have been influenced?" my 
 father replied — " Rather a profound ques- 
 69 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " tion, 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 cele- 
 brated Platonist divine, John Smith, of 
 70 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 ovre prirov, ovre 
 ' ypttTTToV, that which can no more 
 ' be known by a naked demonstration 
 ' than colours can be perceived of a blind 
 ' man by any definition or description 
 ' which he can hear of them." 
 
 This pamphlet was written in 1852, 
 three years after I entered Cheshunt 
 College, when my father declared to me 
 that " a moderate Calvinism suited him 
 " best ". In 1852 he was forty-five years 
 old. He had not hardened : he was alive, 
 rejecting what was dead, laying hold of 
 71 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 what was true to him, and living by it. 
 Nor was the change hurried or ill-con- 
 sidered which took place in him between 
 1849 and 1852. What he became in 1852 
 he was substantially to the end of his 
 days. 
 
 The expulsion excited some notice in the 
 world then, although, as I have said, the 
 controversy was without much significance. 
 The " views " of Dr. Harris and the rest 
 of the council were already condemned. 
 Here are some letters, not before printed, 
 from Maurice and Kingsley on the case. 
 The closing paragraph of Maurice's letter 
 is remarkable because in about a twelve- 
 month he himself was expelled from King's 
 College. 
 
 " My dear Sir, 
 
 " I beg to thank you for your very 
 " able and interesting pamphlet. I know 
 72 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " one of the expelled students, and have 
 " every reason to think highly of his 
 " earnestness and truthfulness. 
 
 *' I feel a delicacy in pronouncing any 
 "judgement upon the conduct of the 
 " Heads of the College, as I belong to 
 " another, and I might seem to be biased 
 " by feelings of Sectarianism and of rival- 
 " ship. 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 circum- 
 " stances like those of the judges or of the 
 " criminals. 
 
 " Faithfully yrs, 
 
 " F. D. Maurice. 
 
 " July 27, 1852. 
 
 " 21 Queen's Square, 
 " Bloomsbury." 
 
 73 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 *' EvERSLEY. Saturday. 
 
 *' Dear Sir, 
 " I beg to acknowledge the receipt of 
 " your very clever and well-written pam- 
 " phlet, 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 ex- 
 •' pelled him are the real supporters of the 
 " Canon and inspiration of Scripture, and 
 " of Orthodoxy in general. 
 
 " I said that I read your pamphlet with- 
 " out surprise. I must explain my words. 
 *' This is only one symptom of a great and 
 74 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 growing movement, which must end in 
 the absolute destruction of * Orthodox 
 ' dissent ' among the educated classes, 
 and leave the lower, if unchecked, to 
 Mormonism, Popery, and every kind of 
 Fetiche-worship. The Unitarians have 
 first felt the tide-wave : but all other 
 sects will follow ; and after them will 
 follow members of the Established Church 
 in proportion as they have been believ- 
 ing, 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 in- 
 spiration, such as are to be found in 
 Gaussen's TheopneusHc — a work of which 
 I cannot speak in terms of sufficient 
 abhorrence, however well meaning the 
 writer may have been. Onward to 
 Strauss, Transcendentalism — and Mr. 
 John Chapman's Catholic Series is the 
 75 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " 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 con- 
 " elusions 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, meta- 
 " physical, 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 
 76 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " 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 acquire- 
 " ments evidently are — greater than my 
 " own) if your son would like to write to 
 " me about these matters, I do believe 
 " before God, who sees me write, that as 
 " one who has been through what he has, 
 " and more, I may have something to tell 
 " him, or at least to set him thinking over. 
 " I speak frankly. If I am taking a liberty, 
 " you will pardon the act for the sake of 
 " the motive. 
 
 " I am, dear Sir, 
 *' Your obedient and faithful servant, 
 
 " C. KiNGSLEY." 
 
 It would be a mistake to suppose that 
 the creed in which I had been brought up 
 was or could be for ever cast away like 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 ortho- 
 doxy, 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 
 78 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 few ! The great doctrines of Puritanism 
 are also much nearer to the facts of actual 
 experience than we suppose. 
 
 After the expulsion I was adrift, know- 
 ing 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 per- 
 mitted 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 
 79 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 drawing of the globe, in perspective, care- 
 fully 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. 
 80 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 The next afternoon I went to the pro- 
 prietor 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. 
 8z F 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 employ- 
 ment, but could get none till I came to 
 John Chapman, editor and proprietor of 
 the Westminster Review, as well as pub- 
 lisher, mainly of books which were theo- 
 logically heretical, and, I am sorry to say, 
 did not pay. He lived at 142 Strand. 
 
 As the New College council had tested 
 my orthodoxy, so Chapman tested my 
 heresy and found that I was fit for the 
 propagandist work in No. 142 and for its 
 society. He asked me if I believed in 
 miracles. I said " Yes and no ". I did 
 not beUeve that an actual Curtius leaped 
 82 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 into the gulf in the Forum and saved Rome, 
 but I did believe in the spiritual truth set 
 forth in the legend. This reply was allowed 
 to pass, although my scepticism would have 
 been more satisfactory and more useful if 
 it had been a little more thorough. 
 
 I was soon taken off the Westminster, 
 and my occupation now was to write 
 Chapman's letters, to keep his accounts, 
 and, most disagreeable, to " subscribe " 
 his publications, that is to say, to call on 
 booksellers and ask how many copies they 
 would take. Of George Eliot, who lodged 
 at No. 142, I have often spoken, and have 
 nothing to add. It is a lasting sorrow to 
 me that I allowed my friendship with her 
 to drop, and that after I left Chapman 
 I never called on her. She was then 
 unknown, except to a few friends, but 
 I did know what she was worth. I 
 knew that she was not only endowed with 
 83 F2 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 posses- 
 84 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 sions, thrusting out and replacing much 
 that is ugly, monotonous, and depressing. 
 I would earnestly, so earnestly, implore 
 every boy and girl religiously to grasp 
 their chances. Lay up for yourselves 
 treasure in heaven. 
 
 There was one opportunity, however, 
 I did not miss, and this was Caleb Morris. 
 About him also I have written, but for 
 the sake of continuity I will repeat some 
 of it. He had singular influence, not only 
 over me, but over nearly every young man 
 whom he met. He was originally an 
 Independent minister in Wales, where the 
 people are mostly Dissenters, but he came 
 to London when he had not passed middle 
 life, and took charge of the church in 
 Fetter Lane. He was tall, broad-shoul- 
 dered, handsome, erect, but was partly 
 disabled by a strangely nervous tempera- 
 ment which, with an obscure bodily 
 85 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 trouble, frequently prevented him from 
 keeping his engagements. Often and often 
 messengers had to be dispatched late on 
 Sunday morning to find a substitute for 
 him at Fetter Lane, and people used to 
 wait in the portico of the chapel until the 
 service had well begun, and then peep 
 through the door to see who was in the 
 pulpit He was the most eloquent speaker 
 I ever heard. I never shall forget his 
 picture of the father, in the parable of the 
 prodigal son, watching for his child's 
 return, all his thoughts swallowed up in 
 one — Will he come hack to-day ? When 
 he did come — no word of rebuke. The 
 hardest thing in the world is to be com- 
 pletely generous in forgiveness. The most 
 magnanimous of men cannot resist the 
 temptation — hut at the same time you 
 must see, my dearest, donH you? Almost 
 equally difficult, but not quite, is the 
 86 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 simple confession without an extenuating 
 word, / have sinned against Heaven. The 
 father does not hear. Bring forth the best 
 robe and put it on him, and put a ring on 
 his hand and shoes on his feet. A ring on 
 his hand ! Shoes on his feet we can under- 
 stand, but there is to be a ring, honour, 
 ennoblement ! . . . The first movement of 
 repentance was — 1 will arise and go to my 
 father. . . . The omissions in Morris's 
 comment were striking. There was no 
 word of the orthodox machinery of for- 
 giveness. 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 con- 
 troversially, but he uncovered such a 
 wealth of wonder and beauty in it that 
 the problems were forgotten. 
 
 Lord Bacon was Morris's hero, both for 
 87 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 his method and his personal character. 
 These were the days before the researches 
 of Spedding, when Bacon was supposed to 
 be a mass of those impossible paradoxes 
 in which Macaulay delighted. To Morris, 
 Bacon's Submission and his renunciation 
 of all defence were sufficient. With what 
 pathos he repeated Bacon's words when 
 the Lords asked him whether the sub- 
 scription to the Submission was in his own 
 hand. " My Lords, it is my act, my hand, 
 " my heart. I beseech your Lordshipsy be 
 " merciful to a broken reed." 
 
 There is nothing more to be said about 
 Chapman's. I left after an offer of partner- 
 ship, 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. 
 88 
 
Portrait of Mark Rutherford 
 at the age of twenty-four 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 dis- 
 tinguished by an enthusiasm which can 
 only be compared to a religious revival. 
 Maud was read at six in the morning as 
 I walked along Holborn ; Pippa Passes 
 late at night in my dark little room in 
 Serle Street, although of course it was 
 a long while after the poem made its 
 appearance. Wonderful ! What did I see 
 as I stood at my desk in my Serle Street 
 bedroom ? 
 
 " Day ! 
 
 " Faster and more fast, 
 
 "O'er night's brim, day boils at last; 
 
 " Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim 
 
 " Where spurting and suppresst it lay — " 
 
 There on the horizon lies the cloud cup. 
 89 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Over the brim boils, pure gold, the day ! 
 The day which is before me is Pippa's day, 
 and not a day in the Strand : it is a 
 " twelve-hours treasure " : I am as eager 
 as Pippa " not to squander a wavelet of 
 " thee ". The vision still lives. The friend 
 who stood by my side is still with me, 
 although he died years and years ago. 
 What was true of me was true of half 
 a score of my friends. If it is true that the 
 Victorian time was ugly and vulgar, it was 
 the time of the Virginians, of David 
 Copperfield, of Tennyson's Poems, of Crom- 
 well's Letters and Speeches, of the Letters 
 and Life of Lord Bacon, of Emerson's 
 Essays, of Festiis, of the Dramatis Personce, 
 and of the Apologia. We were at the 
 Academy at eight o'clock on a May morn- 
 ing to see, at the very earliest moment, the 
 Ophelia, the Order for Release, the Claudio 
 and Isabella, Seddon's Jerusalem, Lewis's 
 90 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 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 excite- 
 ment of those years between 1848 and 
 1890 was, as I have said, something like 
 that of a religious revival, but it was 
 reasonable. 
 
 These notes are not written for publica- 
 tion, but to please two or three persons 
 related to me by affection. 
 
 91 
 
115799