The Early Life of Mark Rutherford Part 1

The Early Life of Mark Rutherford.

by 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 fict.i.tious.

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 pa.s.sionate, 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. .h.i.therto 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, tw.a.n.gling, 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 ma.s.ses 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 Sat.u.r.day night in November a man rode into the town, post-haste from Olney, warning all inhabitants of the valley of the Ouse that the "Buckinghams.h.i.+re 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. Pa.s.sengers 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- masters.h.i.+p 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 ba.s.s, a ba.s.soon, 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 ba.s.s 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 ba.s.s or tenor voices sang the air. Each of the instruments demanded a fair share of solos.

The inst.i.tution 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 pa.s.sages 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 cla.s.s 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, G.o.d-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 Bedfords.h.i.+re 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 s.h.i.+rt--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 a.s.surance. 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, n.o.body 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 Sat.u.r.day 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."