The Early Life of Mark Rutherford
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Mark Rutherford >> The Early Life of Mark Rutherford
Transcribed from the 1913 edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
THE EARLY LIFE OF MARK RUTHERFORD
Autobiographical Notes
I have been asked at 78 years old to set down what I remember of my
early life. A good deal of it has been told before under a semi-
transparent disguise, with much added which is entirely fictitious.
What I now set down is fact.
I was born in Bedford High Street, on December 22, 1831. I had two
sisters and a brother, besides an elder sister who died in infancy.
My brother, a painter of much promise, died young. Ruskin and
Rossetti thought much of him. He was altogether unlike the rest of
us, in face, in temper, and in quality of mind. He was very
passionate, and at times beyond control. None of us understood how
to manage him. What would I not give to have my time with him over
again! Two letters to my father about him are copied below:
(185-)
"My DEAR SIR,
"I am much vexed with myself for not having written this letter
sooner. There were several things I wanted to say respecting the
need of perseverance in painting as well as in other businesses,
which it would take me too long to say in the time I have at
command--so I must just answer the main question. Your son has very
singular gifts for painting. I think the work he has done at the
College nearly the most promising of any that has yet been done
there, and I sincerely trust the apparent want of perseverance has
hitherto been only the disgust of a creature of strong instincts who
has not got into its own element--he seems to me a fine fellow--and
I hope you will be very proud of him some day--but I very seriously
think you must let him have his bent in this matter--and then--if he
does not work steadily--take him to task to purpose. I think the
whole gist of education is to let the boy take his own shape and
element--and then to help--discipline and urge him IN that, but not
to force him on work entirely painful to him.
"Very truly yours,
(Signed) "J. RUSKIN."
"NATIONAL GALLERY, 3rd April.
"MY DEAR SIR, (185-)
"Do not send your son to Mr. Leigh: his school is wholly
inefficient. Your son should go through the usual course of
instruction given at the Royal Academy, which, with a good deal that
is wrong, gives something that is necessary and right, and which
cannot be otherwise obtained. Mr. Rossetti and I will take care--
(in fact your son's judgement is I believe formed enough to enable
him to take care himself) that he gets no mistaken bias in those
schools. A 'studio' is not necessary for him--but a little room
with a cupboard in it, and a chair--and nothing else--IS. I am very
sanguine respecting him, I like both his face and his work.
"Thank you for telling me that about my books. I am happy in seeing
much more of the springing of the green than most sowers of seed are
allowed to see, until very late in their lives--but it is always a
great help to me to hear of any, for I never write with pleasure to
myself, nor with purpose of getting praise to myself. I hate
writing, and know that what I do does not deserve high praise, as
literature; but I write to tell truths which I can't help crying out
about, and I DO enjoy being believed and being of use.
"Very faithfully yours,
(Signed) J. RUSKIN.
W. White, Esq."
My mother, whose maiden name was Chignell, came from Colchester.
What her father and mother were I never heard. I will say all I
have to say about Colchester, and then go back to my native town.
My maternal grandmother was a little, round, old lady, with a ruddy,
healthy tinge on her face. She lived in Queen Street in a house
dated 1619 over the doorway. There was a pleasant garden at the
back, and the scent of a privet hedge in it has never to this day
left me. In one of the rooms was a spinet. The strings were struck
with quills, and gave a thin, twangling, or rather twingling sound.
In that house I was taught by a stupid servant to be frightened at
gipsies. She threatened me with them after I was in bed. My
grandmother was a most pious woman. Every morning and night we had
family prayer. It was difficult for her to stoop, but she always
took the great quarto book of Devotions off the table and laid it on
a chair, put on her spectacles, and went through the portion for the
day. I had an uncle who was also pious, but sleepy. One night he
stopped dead in the middle of his prayer. I was present and awake.
I was much frightened, but my aunt, who was praying by his side,
poked him, and he went on all right.
We children were taken to Colchester every summer by my mother, and
we generally spent half our holiday at Walton-on-the-Naze, then a
fishing village with only four or five houses in it besides a few
cottages. No living creature could be more excitedly joyous than I
was when I journeyed to Walton in the tilted carrier's cart. How I
envied the carrier! Happy man! All the year round he went to the
seaside three times a week!
I had an aunt in Colchester, a woman of singular originality, which
none of her neighbours could interpret, and consequently they
misliked it, and ventured upon distant insinuations against her.
She had married a baker, a good kind of man, but tame. In summer-
time she not infrequently walked at five o'clock in the morning to a
pretty church about a mile and a half away, and read George Herbert
in the porch. She was no relation of mine, except by marriage to my
uncle, but she was most affectionate to me, and always loaded me
with nice things whenever I went to see her. The survival in my
memory of her cakes, gingerbread, and kisses; has done me more good,
moral good--if you have a fancy for this word--than sermons or
punishment.
My christian name of "Hale" comes from my grandmother, whose maiden
name was Hale. At the beginning of last century she and her two
brothers, William and Robert Hale, were living in Colchester.
William Hale moved to Homerton, and became a silk manufacturer in
Spitalfields. Homerton was then a favourite suburb for rich City
people. My great-uncle's beautiful Georgian house had a marble bath
and a Grecian temple in the big garden. Of Robert Hale and my
grandfather I know nothing. The supposed connexion with the
Carolean Chief Justice is more than doubtful.
To return to Bedford. In my boyhood it differed, excepting an
addition northwards a few years before, much less from Speed's map
of 1609 than the Bedford of 1910 differs from the Bedford of 1831.
There was but one bridge, but it was not Bunyan's bridge, and many
of the gabled houses still remained. To our house, much like the
others in the High Street, there was no real drainage, and our
drinking-water came from a shallow well sunk in the gravelly soil of
the back yard. A sewer, it is true, ran down the High Street, but
it discharged itself at the bridge-foot, in the middle of the town,
which was full of cesspools. Every now and then the river was drawn
off and the thick masses of poisonous filth which formed its bed
were dug out and carted away. In consequence of the imperfect
outfall we were liable to tremendous floods. At such times a
torrent roared under the bridge, bringing down haystacks, dead
bullocks, cows, and sheep. Men with long poles were employed to
fend the abutments from the heavy blows by which they were struck.
A flood in 1823 was not forgotten for many years. One Saturday
night in November a man rode into the town, post-haste from Olney,
warning all inhabitants of the valley of the Ouse that the
"Buckinghamshire water" was coming down with alarming force, and
would soon be upon them. It arrived almost as soon as the
messenger, and invaded my uncle Lovell's dining-room, reaching
nearly as high as the top of the table.
The goods traffic to and from London was carried on by an enormous
waggon, which made the journey once or twice a week. Passengers
generally travelled by the Times coach, a hobby of Mr. Whitbread's.
It was horsed with four magnificent cream-coloured horses, and did
the fifty miles from Bedford to London at very nearly ten miles an
hour, or twelve miles actual speed, excluding stoppages for change.
Barring accidents, it was always punctual to a minute, and every
evening, excepting Sundays, exactly as the clock of St. Paul's
struck eight, it crossed the bridge. I have known it wait before
entering the town if it was five or six minutes too soon, a kind of
polish or artistic completeness being thereby given to a performance
in which much pride was taken.
The Bedford Charity was as yet hardly awake. No part of the funds
was devoted to the education of girls, but a very large part went in
almsgiving. The education of boys was almost worthless. The head-
mastership of the Grammar School was in the gift of New College,
Oxford, who of course always appointed one of their Fellows.
Including the income from boarders, it was worth about 3,000 pounds
a year.
Dissent had been strong throughout the whole county ever since the
Commonwealth. The old meeting-house held about 700 people, and was
filled every Sunday. It was not the gifts of the minister,
certainly after the days of my early childhood, which kept such a
congregation steady. The reason why it held together was the simple
loyalty which prevents a soldier or a sailor from mutinying,
although the commanding officer may deserve no respect. Most of the
well-to-do tradesfolk were Dissenters. They were taught what was
called a "moderate Calvinism", a phrase not easy to understand. If
it had any meaning, it was that predestination, election, and
reprobation, were unquestionably true, but they were dogmas about
which it was not prudent to say much, for some of the congregation
were a little Arminian, and St. James could not be totally
neglected. The worst of St. James was that when a sermon was
preached from his Epistle, there was always a danger lest somebody
in the congregation should think that it was against him it was
levelled. There was no such danger, at any rate not so much, if the
text was taken from the Epistle to the Romans.
In the "singing-pew" sat a clarionet, a double bass, a bassoon, and
a flute: also a tenor voice which "set the tune". The carpenter,
to whom the tenor voice belonged, had a tuning-fork which he struck
on his desk and applied to his ear. He then hummed the tuning-fork
note, and the octave below, the double bass screwed up and
responded, the leader with the tuning-fork boldly struck out,
everybody following, including the orchestra, and those of the
congregation who had bass or tenor voices sang the air. Each of the
instruments demanded a fair share of solos.
The institution strangest to me now was the Lord's Supper. Once a
month the members of the church, while they were seated in the pews,
received the bread and wine at the hands of the deacons, the
minister reciting meanwhile passages from Scripture. Those of the
congregation who had not been converted, and who consequently did
not belong to the church and were not communicants, watched the rite
from the gallery. What the reflective unconverted, who were
upstairs, thought I cannot say. The master might with varying
emotions survey the man who cleaned his knives and boots. The wife
might sit beneath and the husband above, or, more difficult still,
the mistress might be seated aloft while her husband and her
conceited maid-of-all-work, Tabitha, enjoyed full gospel privileges
below.
Dependent on the mother "cause" were chapels in the outlying
villages. They were served by lay preachers, and occasionally by
the minister from the old meeting-house. One village, Stagsden, had
attained to the dignity of a wind and a stringed instrument.
The elders of the church at Bedford belonged mostly to the middle
class in the town, but some of them were farmers. Ignorant they
were to a degree which would shock the most superficial young person
of the present day; and yet, if the farmer's ignorance and the
ignorance of the young person could be reduced to the same
denomination, I doubt whether it would not be found that the farmer
knew more than the other. The farmer could not discuss Coleridge's
metres or the validity of the maxim, "Art for Art's sake", but he
understood a good deal about the men around him, about his fields,
about the face of the sky, and he had found it out all by himself, a
fact of more importance than we suppose. He understood also that he
must be honest; he had learnt how to be honest, and everything about
him, house, clothes, was a reality and not a sham. One of these
elders I knew well. He was perfectly straightforward, God-fearing
also, and therefore wise. Yet he once said to my father, "I ain't
got no patience with men who talk potry (poetry) in the pulpit. If
you hear that, how can you wonder at your children wanting to go to
theatres and cathredrals?"
Of my father's family, beyond my grandfather, I know nothing. His
forefathers had lived in Bedfordshire beyond memory, and sleep
indistinguishable, I am told, in Wilstead churchyard. He was
Radical, and almost Republican. With two of his neighbours he
refused to illuminate for our victories over the French, and he had
his windows smashed by a Tory mob. One night he and a friend were
riding home on horseback, and at the entrance of the town they came
upon somebody lying in the road, who had been thrown from his horse
and was unconscious. My grandfather galloped forwards for a doctor,
and went back at once before the doctor could start. On his way,
and probably riding hard, he also was thrown and was killed. He was
found by those who had followed him, and in the darkness and
confusion they did not recognize him. They picked him up, thinking
he was the man for whom they had been sent. When they reached the
Swan Inn they found out their mistake, and returned to the other
man. He recovered.
I had only one set of relations in Bedford, my aunt, who was my
father's sister, her husband, Samuel Lovell, and their children, my
cousins. My uncle was a maltster and coal merchant. Although he
was slender and graceful when he was young, he was portly when I
first knew him. He always wore, even in his counting-house and on
his wharf, a spotless shirt--seven a week--elaborately frilled in
front. He was clean-shaven, and his face was refined and gentle.
To me he was kindness itself. He was in the habit of driving two or
three times a year to villages and solitary farm-houses to collect
his debts, and, to my great delight, he used to take me with him.
We were out all day. His creditors were by no means punctual: they
reckoned on him with assurance. This is what generally happened.
Uncle draws up at the front garden gate and gets out: I hold the
reins. Blacksmith, in debt something like 15 pounds for smithery
coal, comes from his forge at the side of the house to meet him.
"Ah, Mr. Lovell, I'm glad to see you: how's the missus and the
children? What weather it is!"
"I suppose you guess, Master Fitchew, what I've come about: you've
had this bill twice--I send my bills out only once a year--and
you've not paid a penny."
Fitchew looks on the ground, and gives his head a shake on one side
as if he were mortified beyond measure.
"I know it, Mr. Lovell, nobody can be more vexed than I am, but I
can't get nothing out of the farmers. Last year was an awful year
for them."
Uncle tries with all his might to look severe, but does not succeed.
"You've told me that tale every time I've called for twenty years
past: now mind, I'm not going to be humbugged any longer. I must
have half of that 15 pounds this month, or not another ounce of
smithery coal do you get out of me. You may try Warden if you like,
and maybe he'll treat you better than I do."
"Mr. Lovell, 10 pounds you shall have next Saturday fortnight as
sure as my name's Bill Fitchew."
A little girl, about eight years old, who was hurried into her
white, Sunday frock with red ribbons, as soon as her mother saw my
uncle at the gate, runs up towards him according to secret
instructions, but stops short by about a yard, puts her forefinger
on her lip and looks at him.
"Hullo, my pretty dear, what's your name? Dear, what's your name?"
"Say Keziah Fitchew, sir," prompts Mrs. Fitchew, appearing suddenly
at the side door as if she had come to fetch her child who had run
out unawares.
After much hesitation: "Keziah Fitchew, sir."
"Are you a good little girl? Do you say your prayers every morning
and every evening?"
"Yes, sir."
"Would you know what to do with sixpence if I gave it you? You'd
put it in the missionary box, wouldn't you?"
Keziah thinks, but does not reply. It is a problem of immense
importance. Uncle turns to Bill, so that Keziah cannot see him,
puts up his left hand to the side of his face and winks violently.
"I suppose it's one o'clock as usual, Mr. Lovell, at the Red Lion?"
My uncle laughs as he moves to the gate.
"I tell you what it is, Mr. Fitchew, you're a precious rascal;
that's what you are."
At one o'clock an immense dinner is provided at the Red Lion, and
thither the debtors come, no matter what may be the state of their
accounts, and drink my uncle's health. Such was Uncle Lovell. My
father and mother often had supper with him and my aunt. After I
was ten years old I was permitted to go. It was a solid, hot meal
at nine o'clock. It was followed by pipes and brandy and water,
never more than one glass; and when this was finished, at about
half-past ten, there was the walk home across the silent bridge,
with a glimpse downward of the dark river slowly flowing through the
stone arches.
I now come to my father. My object is not to write his life. I
have not sufficient materials, nor would it be worth recording at
any length, but I should like to preserve the memory of a few facts
which are significant of him, and may explain his influence upon me.
He was born in 1807, and was eight years old when his father died:
his mother died seven years earlier. He had a cruel step-mother,
who gave to her own child everything she had to give. He was
educated at the Grammar School, but the teaching there, as I have
said, was very poor. The step-mother used to send messages to the
head master begging him soundly to thrash her step-son, for he was
sure to deserve it, and school thrashing in those days was no joke.
She also compelled my father to clean boots, knives and forks, and
do other dirty work.
I do not know when he opened the shop in Bedford as a printer and
bookseller, but it must have been about 1830. He dealt in old
books, the works of the English divines of all parties, both in the
Anglican Church and outside it. The clergy, who then read more than
they read or can read now, were his principal customers. From the
time when he began business as a young man in the town he had much
to do with its affairs. He was a Whig in politics, and amongst the
foremost at elections, specially at the election in 1832, when he
and the Whig Committee were besieged in the Swan Inn by the mob. He
soon became a trustee of the Bedford Charity, and did good service
for the schools. In September 1843, the Rev. Edward Isaac Lockwood,
rector of St. John's, in the town, and trustee of the schools,
carried a motion at a board meeting declaring that all the masters
under the Charity should be members of the Church of England. The
Charity maintained one or two schools besides the Grammar School.
The Act of Parliament, under which it was administered, provided
that the masters and ushers of the Grammar School should be members
of the Church of England, but said nothing about the creed of the
masters of the other schools. The consternation in the town was
great. It was evident that the next step would be to close the
schools to Dissenters. Public meetings were held, and at the annual
election of trustees, Mr. Lockwood was at the bottom of the poll.
At the next meeting of the board, after the election, my father
carried a resolution which rescinded Mr. Lockwood's. The rector's
defeat was followed by a series of newspaper letters in his defence
from the Rev. Edward Swann, mathematical master in the Grammar
School. My father replied in a pamphlet, published in 1844.
There was one endowment for which he was remarkable, the purity of
the English he spoke and wrote. He used to say he owed it to
Cobbett, whose style he certainly admired, but this is but partly
true. It was rather a natural consequence of the clearness of his
own mind and of his desire to make himself wholly understood, both
demanding the simplest and most forcible expression. If the truth
is of serious importance to us we dare not obstruct it by phrase-
making: we are compelled to be as direct as our inherited
feebleness will permit. The cannon ball's path is near to a
straight line in proportion to its velocity. "My boy," my father
once said to me, "if you write anything you consider particularly
fine, strike it out."
The Reply is an admirable specimen of the way in which a controversy
should be conducted; without heat, the writer uniformly mindful of
his object, which is not personal distinction, but the conviction of
his neighbour, poor as well as rich, all the facts in order, every
point answered, and not one evaded. At the opening of the first
letter, a saying of Burkitt's is quoted with approval. "Painted
glass is very beautiful, but plain glass is the most useful as it
lets through the most light." A word, by the way, on Burkitt. He
was born in 1650, went to Cambridge, and became rector, first of
Milden, and then of Dedham, both in Suffolk. As rector of Dedham he
died. There he wrote the Poor Man's Help and Young Man's Guide,
which went through more than thirty editions in fifty years. There
he wrestled with the Baptists, and produced his Argumentative and
Practical Discourse on Infant Baptism. I have wandered through
these Dedham fields by the banks of the Stour. It is Constable's
country, and in its way is not to be matched in England. Although
there is nothing striking in it, its influence, at least upon me, is
greater than that of celebrated mountains and waterfalls. What a
power there is to subdue and calm in those low hills, overtopped, as
you see it from East Bergholt, by the magnificent Dedham half-
cathedral church! It is very probable that Burkitt, as he took his
walks by the Stour, and struggled with his Argument, never saw the
placid, winding stream; nor is it likely that anybody in Bedford,
except my father, had heard of him. For his defence of the schools
my father was presented at a town's meeting with a silver tea-
service.
By degrees, when the battle was over, the bookselling business very
much fell off, and after a short partnership with his brother-in-law
in a tannery, my father was appointed assistant door-keeper of the
House of Commons by Lord Charles Russell. He soon became door-
keeper. While he was at the door he wrote for a weekly paper his
Inner Life of the House of Commons, afterwards collected and
published in book form. He held office for twenty-one years, and on
his retirement, in 1875, 160 members of the House testified in a
very substantial manner their regard for him. He died at Carshalton
on February 11, 1882. There were many obituary notices of him. One
was from Lord Charles Russell, who, as Serjeant-at-Arms, had full
opportunities of knowing him well. Lord Charles recalled a meeting
at Woburn, a quarter of a century before, in honour of Lord John
Russell. Lord John spoke then, and so did Sir David Dundas, then
Solicitor-General, Lord Charles, and my father. "His," said Lord
Charles, "was the finest speech, and Sir David Dundas remarked to
me, as Mr. White concluded, 'Why that is old Cobbett again MINUS his
vulgarity.'" He became acquainted with a good many members during
his stay at the House. New members sought his advice and initiation
into its ways. Some of his friends were also mine. Amongst these
were Sir John Trelawney and his gifted wife. Sir John belonged to
the scholarly Radical party, which included John Stuart Mill and
Roebuck. The visits to Sir John and Lady Trelawney will never be
forgotten, not so much because I was taught what to think about
certain political questions, but because I was supplied with a
standard by which all political questions were judged, and this
standard was fixed by reason. Looking at the methods and the
procedure of that little republic and at the anarchy of to-day, with
no prospect of the renewal of allegiance to principles, my heart
sinks. It was through one of the Russells, with whom my father was
acquainted, that I was permitted with him to call on Carlyle, an
event amongst the greatest in my life, and all the happier for me
because I did not ask to go.
What I am going to say now I hardly like to mention, because of its
privacy, but it is so much to my father's honour that I cannot omit
it. Besides, almost everybody concerned is now dead. When he left
Bedford he was considerably in debt, through the falling off in his
book-selling business which I have just mentioned, caused mainly by
his courageous partisanship. His official salary was not sufficient
to keep him, and in order to increase it, he began to write for the
newspapers. During the session this was very hard work. He could
not leave the House till it rose, and was often not at home till two
o'clock in the morning or later, too tired to sleep. He was never
able to see a single revise of what he wrote. In the end he paid
his debts in full.
