THE EARLY LIFE OF MARK RUTHERFORD

Autobiographical Notes

I have been asked at 78 years old to set down what I remember of myearly 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 twosisters and a brother, besides an elder sister who died in infancy. My brother, a painter of much promise, died young. Ruskin andRossetti thought much of him. He was altogether unlike the rest ofus, in face, in temper, and in quality of mind. He was verypassionate, and at times beyond control. None of us understood howto manage him. What would I not give to have my time with him overagain! 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 lettersooner. There were several things I wanted to say respecting theneed of perseverance in painting as well as in other businesses, which it would take me too long to say in the time I have atcommand--so I must just answer the main question. Your son has verysingular gifts for painting. I think the work he has done at theCollege nearly the most promising of any that has yet been donethere, and I sincerely trust the apparent want of perseverance hashitherto been only the disgust of a creature of strong instincts whohas not got into its own element--he seems to me a fine fellow--andI hope you will be very proud of him some day--but I very seriouslythink you must let him have his bent in this matter--and then--if hedoes not work steadily--take him to task to purpose. I think thewhole gist of education is to let the boy take his own shape andelement--and then to help--discipline and urge him IN that, but notto 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 whollyinefficient. Your son should go through the usual course ofinstruction given at the Royal Academy, which, with a good deal thatis wrong, gives something that is necessary and right, and whichcannot be otherwise obtained. Mr. Rossetti and I will take care--(in fact your son's judgement is I believe formed enough to enablehim to take care himself) that he gets no mistaken bias in thoseschools. A 'studio' is not necessary for him--but a little roomwith a cupboard in it, and a chair--and nothing else--IS. I am verysanguine respecting him, I like both his face and his work. 

"Thank you for telling me that about my books. I am happy in seeingmuch more of the springing of the green than most sowers of seed areallowed to see, until very late in their lives--but it is always agreat help to me to hear of any, for I never write with pleasure tomyself, nor with purpose of getting praise to myself. I hatewriting, and know that what I do does not deserve high praise, asliterature; but I write to tell truths which I can't help crying outabout, 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 Ihave 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 housedated 1619 over the doorway. There was a pleasant garden at theback, and the scent of a privet hedge in it has never to this dayleft me. In one of the rooms was a spinet. The strings were struckwith quills, and gave a thin, twangling, or rather twingling sound. In that house I was taught by a stupid servant to be frightened atgipsies. She threatened me with them after I was in bed. Mygrandmother was a most pious woman. Every morning and night we hadfamily prayer. It was difficult for her to stoop, but she alwaystook the great quarto book of Devotions off the table and laid it ona chair, put on her spectacles, and went through the portion for theday. I had an uncle who was also pious, but sleepy. One night hestopped 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, andwe generally spent half our holiday at Walton-on-the-Naze, then afishing village with only four or five houses in it besides a fewcottages. No living creature could be more excitedly joyous than Iwas when I journeyed to Walton in the tilted carrier's cart. How Ienvied the carrier! Happy man! All the year round he went to theseaside three times a week!

I had an aunt in Colchester, a woman of singular originality, whichnone of her neighbours could interpret, and consequently theymisliked 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 apretty church about a mile and a half away, and read George Herbertin the porch. She was no relation of mine, except by marriage to myuncle, but she was most affectionate to me, and always loaded mewith nice things whenever I went to see her. The survival in mymemory of her cakes, gingerbread, and kisses; has done me more good, moral good--if you have a fancy for this word--than sermons orpunishment. 

My christian name of "Hale" comes from my grandmother, whose maidenname was Hale. At the beginning of last century she and her twobrothers, William and Robert Hale, were living in Colchester. William Hale moved to Homerton, and became a silk manufacturer inSpitalfields. Homerton was then a favourite suburb for rich Citypeople. My great-uncle's beautiful Georgian house had a marble bathand a Grecian temple in the big garden. Of Robert Hale and mygrandfather I know nothing. The supposed connexion with theCarolean Chief Justice is more than doubtful. 

To return to Bedford. In my boyhood it differed, excepting anaddition northwards a few years before, much less from Speed's mapof 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 manyof the gabled houses still remained. To our house, much like theothers in the High Street, there was no real drainage, and ourdrinking-water came from a shallow well sunk in the gravelly soil ofthe back yard. A sewer, it is true, ran down the High Street, butit discharged itself at the bridge-foot, in the middle of the town, which was full of cesspools. Every now and then the river was drawnoff and the thick masses of poisonous filth which formed its bedwere dug out and carted away. In consequence of the imperfectoutfall we were liable to tremendous floods. At such times atorrent roared under the bridge, bringing down haystacks, deadbullocks, cows, and sheep. Men with long poles were employed tofend the abutments from the heavy blows by which they were struck. A flood in 1823 was not forgotten for many years. One Saturdaynight 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, andwould soon be upon them. It arrived almost as soon as themessenger, and invaded my uncle Lovell's dining-room, reachingnearly as high as the top of the table. 

The goods traffic to and from London was carried on by an enormouswaggon, which made the journey once or twice a week. Passengersgenerally travelled by the Times coach, a hobby of Mr. Whitbread's. It was horsed with four magnificent cream-coloured horses, and didthe fifty miles from Bedford to London at very nearly ten miles anhour, or twelve miles actual speed, excluding stoppages for change. Barring accidents, it was always punctual to a minute, and everyevening, excepting Sundays, exactly as the clock of St. Paul'sstruck eight, it crossed the bridge. I have known it wait beforeentering the town if it was five or six minutes too soon, a kind ofpolish or artistic completeness being thereby given to a performancein which much pride was taken. 

The Bedford Charity was as yet hardly awake. No part of the fundswas devoted to the education of girls, but a very large part went inalmsgiving. 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 poundsa year. 

Dissent had been strong throughout the whole county ever since theCommonwealth. The old meeting-house held about 700 people, and wasfilled every Sunday. It was not the gifts of the minister, certainly after the days of my early childhood, which kept such acongregation steady. The reason why it held together was the simpleloyalty which prevents a soldier or a sailor from mutinying, although the commanding officer may deserve no respect. Most of thewell-to-do tradesfolk were Dissenters. They were taught what wascalled a "moderate Calvinism", a phrase not easy to understand. Ifit had any meaning, it was that predestination, election, andreprobation, were unquestionably true, but they were dogmas aboutwhich it was not prudent to say much, for some of the congregationwere a little Arminian, and St. James could not be totallyneglected. The worst of St. James was that when a sermon waspreached from his Epistle, there was always a danger lest somebodyin the congregation should think that it was against him it waslevelled. There was no such danger, at any rate not so much, if thetext was taken from the Epistle to the Romans. 

In the "singing-pew" sat a clarionet, a double bass, a bassoon, anda flute: also a tenor voice which "set the tune". The carpenter, to whom the tenor voice belonged, had a tuning-fork which he struckon his desk and applied to his ear. He then hummed the tuning-forknote, and the octave below, the double bass screwed up andresponded, the leader with the tuning-fork boldly struck out, everybody following, including the orchestra, and those of thecongregation who had bass or tenor voices sang the air. Each of theinstruments demanded a fair share of solos. 

The institution strangest to me now was the Lord's Supper. Once amonth the members of the church, while they were seated in the pews, received the bread and wine at the hands of the deacons, theminister reciting meanwhile passages from Scripture. Those of thecongregation who had not been converted, and who consequently didnot belong to the church and were not communicants, watched the ritefrom the gallery. What the reflective unconverted, who wereupstairs, thought I cannot say. The master might with varyingemotions survey the man who cleaned his knives and boots. The wifemight sit beneath and the husband above, or, more difficult still, the mistress might be seated aloft while her husband and herconceited maid-of-all-work, Tabitha, enjoyed full gospel privilegesbelow. 

Dependent on the mother "cause" were chapels in the outlyingvillages. They were served by lay preachers, and occasionally bythe minister from the old meeting-house. One village, Stagsden, hadattained to the dignity of a wind and a stringed instrument. 

The elders of the church at Bedford belonged mostly to the middleclass in the town, but some of them were farmers. Ignorant theywere to a degree which would shock the most superficial young personof the present day; and yet, if the farmer's ignorance and theignorance of the young person could be reduced to the samedenomination, I doubt whether it would not be found that the farmerknew more than the other. The farmer could not discuss Coleridge'smetres or the validity of the maxim, "Art for Art's sake", but heunderstood 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, afact of more importance than we suppose. He understood also that hemust be honest; he had learnt how to be honest, and everything abouthim, house, clothes, was a reality and not a sham. One of theseelders I knew well. He was perfectly straightforward, God-fearingalso, and therefore wise. Yet he once said to my father, "I ain'tgot no patience with men who talk potry (poetry) in the pulpit. Ifyou hear that, how can you wonder at your children wanting to go totheatres and cathredrals?"

Of my father's family, beyond my grandfather, I know nothing. Hisforefathers had lived in Bedfordshire beyond memory, and sleepindistinguishable, I am told, in Wilstead churchyard. He wasRadical, and almost Republican. With two of his neighbours herefused to illuminate for our victories over the French, and he hadhis windows smashed by a Tory mob. One night he and a friend wereriding home on horseback, and at the entrance of the town they cameupon somebody lying in the road, who had been thrown from his horseand 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 wasfound by those who had followed him, and in the darkness andconfusion they did not recognize him. They picked him up, thinkinghe was the man for whom they had been sent. When they reached theSwan Inn they found out their mistake, and returned to the otherman. He recovered. 

I had only one set of relations in Bedford, my aunt, who was myfather's sister, her husband, Samuel Lovell, and their children, mycousins. My uncle was a maltster and coal merchant. Although hewas slender and graceful when he was young, he was portly when Ifirst knew him. He always wore, even in his counting-house and onhis wharf, a spotless shirt--seven a week--elaborately frilled infront. 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 orthree times a year to villages and solitary farm-houses to collecthis 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: theyreckoned on him with assurance. This is what generally happened. Uncle draws up at the front garden gate and gets out: I hold thereins. Blacksmith, in debt something like 15 pounds for smitherycoal, 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 thechildren? What weather it is!"

"I suppose you guess, Master Fitchew, what I've come about: you'vehad this bill twice--I send my bills out only once a year--andyou've not paid a penny. "

Fitchew looks on the ground, and gives his head a shake on one sideas if he were mortified beyond measure. 

"I know it, Mr. Lovell, nobody can be more vexed than I am, but Ican't get nothing out of the farmers. Last year was an awful yearfor 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 yearspast: now mind, I'm not going to be humbugged any longer. I musthave half of that 15 pounds this month, or not another ounce ofsmithery 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 assure as my name's Bill Fitchew. "

A little girl, about eight years old, who was hurried into herwhite, Sunday frock with red ribbons, as soon as her mother saw myuncle at the gate, runs up towards him according to secretinstructions, but stops short by about a yard, puts her forefingeron 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 suddenlyat the side door as if she had come to fetch her child who had runout unawares. 

After much hesitation: "Keziah Fitchew, sir. "

"Are you a good little girl? Do you say your prayers every morningand every evening?"

"Yes, sir. "

"Would you know what to do with sixpence if I gave it you? You'dput it in the missionary box, wouldn't you?"

Keziah thinks, but does not reply. It is a problem of immenseimportance. 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, andthither the debtors come, no matter what may be the state of theiraccounts, and drink my uncle's health. Such was Uncle Lovell. Myfather and mother often had supper with him and my aunt. After Iwas ten years old I was permitted to go. It was a solid, hot mealat nine o'clock. It was followed by pipes and brandy and water, never more than one glass; and when this was finished, at abouthalf-past ten, there was the walk home across the silent bridge, with a glimpse downward of the dark river slowly flowing through thestone arches. 

I now come to my father. My object is not to write his life. Ihave not sufficient materials, nor would it be worth recording atany length, but I should like to preserve the memory of a few factswhich 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 waseducated at the Grammar School, but the teaching there, as I havesaid, was very poor. The step-mother used to send messages to thehead master begging him soundly to thrash her step-son, for he wassure to deserve it, and school thrashing in those days was no joke. She also compelled my father to clean boots, knives and forks, anddo other dirty work. 

I do not know when he opened the shop in Bedford as a printer andbookseller, but it must have been about 1830. He dealt in oldbooks, the works of the English divines of all parties, both in theAnglican Church and outside it. The clergy, who then read more thanthey read or can read now, were his principal customers. From thetime when he began business as a young man in the town he had muchto do with its affairs. He was a Whig in politics, and amongst theforemost at elections, specially at the election in 1832, when heand the Whig Committee were besieged in the Swan Inn by the mob. Hesoon became a trustee of the Bedford Charity, and did good servicefor 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 mastersunder the Charity should be members of the Church of England. TheCharity maintained one or two schools besides the Grammar School. The Act of Parliament, under which it was administered, providedthat the masters and ushers of the Grammar School should be membersof the Church of England, but said nothing about the creed of themasters of the other schools. The consternation in the town wasgreat. It was evident that the next step would be to close theschools to Dissenters. Public meetings were held, and at the annualelection of trustees, Mr. Lockwood was at the bottom of the poll. At the next meeting of the board, after the election, my fathercarried a resolution which rescinded Mr. Lockwood's. The rector'sdefeat was followed by a series of newspaper letters in his defencefrom the Rev. Edward Swann, mathematical master in the GrammarSchool. My father replied in a pamphlet, published in 1844. 

There was one endowment for which he was remarkable, the purity ofthe English he spoke and wrote. He used to say he owed it toCobbett, whose style he certainly admired, but this is but partlytrue. It was rather a natural consequence of the clearness of hisown mind and of his desire to make himself wholly understood, bothdemanding the simplest and most forcible expression. If the truthis of serious importance to us we dare not obstruct it by phrase-making: we are compelled to be as direct as our inheritedfeebleness will permit. The cannon ball's path is near to astraight line in proportion to its velocity. "My boy, " my fatheronce said to me, "if you write anything you consider particularlyfine, strike it out. "

The Reply is an admirable specimen of the way in which a controversyshould be conducted; without heat, the writer uniformly mindful ofhis object, which is not personal distinction, but the conviction ofhis neighbour, poor as well as rich, all the facts in order, everypoint answered, and not one evaded. At the opening of the firstletter, a saying of Burkitt's is quoted with approval. "Paintedglass is very beautiful, but plain glass is the most useful as itlets through the most light. " A word, by the way, on Burkitt. Hewas born in 1650, went to Cambridge, and became rector, first ofMilden, and then of Dedham, both in Suffolk. As rector of Dedham hedied. There he wrote the Poor Man's Help and Young Man's Guide, which went through more than thirty editions in fifty years. Therehe wrestled with the Baptists, and produced his Argumentative andPractical Discourse on Infant Baptism. I have wandered throughthese Dedham fields by the banks of the Stour. It is Constable'scountry, and in its way is not to be matched in England. Althoughthere is nothing striking in it, its influence, at least upon me, isgreater than that of celebrated mountains and waterfalls. What apower there is to subdue and calm in those low hills, overtopped, asyou see it from East Bergholt, by the magnificent Dedham half-cathedral church! It is very probable that Burkitt, as he took hiswalks by the Stour, and struggled with his Argument, never saw theplacid, winding stream; nor is it likely that anybody in Bedford, except my father, had heard of him. For his defence of the schoolsmy father was presented at a town's meeting with a silver tea-service. 

By degrees, when the battle was over, the bookselling business verymuch fell off, and after a short partnership with his brother-in-lawin a tannery, my father was appointed assistant door-keeper of theHouse of Commons by Lord Charles Russell. He soon became door-keeper. While he was at the door he wrote for a weekly paper hisInner Life of the House of Commons, afterwards collected andpublished in book form. He held office for twenty-one years, and onhis retirement, in 1875, 160 members of the House testified in avery substantial manner their regard for him. He died at Carshaltonon February 11, 1882. There were many obituary notices of him. Onewas from Lord Charles Russell, who, as Serjeant-at-Arms, had fullopportunities of knowing him well. Lord Charles recalled a meetingat Woburn, a quarter of a century before, in honour of Lord JohnRussell. Lord John spoke then, and so did Sir David Dundas, thenSolicitor-General, Lord Charles, and my father. "His, " said LordCharles, "was the finest speech, and Sir David Dundas remarked tome, as Mr. White concluded, 'Why that is old Cobbett again MINUS hisvulgarity. '" He became acquainted with a good many members duringhis stay at the House. New members sought his advice and initiationinto its ways. Some of his friends were also mine. Amongst thesewere Sir John Trelawney and his gifted wife. Sir John belonged tothe scholarly Radical party, which included John Stuart Mill andRoebuck. The visits to Sir John and Lady Trelawney will never beforgotten, not so much because I was taught what to think aboutcertain political questions, but because I was supplied with astandard by which all political questions were judged, and thisstandard was fixed by reason. Looking at the methods and theprocedure of that little republic and at the anarchy of to-day, withno prospect of the renewal of allegiance to principles, my heartsinks. It was through one of the Russells, with whom my father wasacquainted, that I was permitted with him to call on Carlyle, anevent amongst the greatest in my life, and all the happier for mebecause I did not ask to go. 

What I am going to say now I hardly like to mention, because of itsprivacy, but it is so much to my father's honour that I cannot omitit. Besides, almost everybody concerned is now dead. When he leftBedford he was considerably in debt, through the falling off in hisbook-selling business which I have just mentioned, caused mainly byhis courageous partisanship. His official salary was not sufficientto keep him, and in order to increase it, he began to write for thenewspapers. During the session this was very hard work. He couldnot leave the House till it rose, and was often not at home till twoo'clock in the morning or later, too tired to sleep. He was neverable to see a single revise of what he wrote. In the end he paidhis debts in full. 

My father was a perfectly honest man, and hated shiftiness evenworse than downright lying. The only time he gave me a thrashingwas for prevarication. He had a plain, but not a dull mind, andloved poetry of a sublime cast, especially Milton. I can hear himeven now repeat passages from the Comus, which was a specialfavourite. Elsewhere I have told how when he was young and stood atthe composing desk in his printing office, he used to declaim Byronby heart. That a Puritan printer, one of the last men in the worldto be carried away by a fashion, should be vanquished by Byron, isas genuine a testimony as any I know to the reality of hisgreatness. Up to 1849 or thereabouts, my father in religion wasIndependent and Calvinist, the creed which, as he thought then, bestsuited him. But a change was at hand. His political opinionsremained unaltered to his death, but in 1851 he had completed hisdiscovery that the "simple gospel" which Calvinism preached was byno means simple, but remarkably abstruse. It was the Heroes andHero Worship and the Sartor Resartus which drew him away from themeeting-house. There is nothing in these two books directly hostileeither to church or dissent, but they laid hold on him as no bookshad ever held, and the expansion they wrought in him could notpossibly tolerate the limitations of orthodoxy. He was notconverted to any other religion. He did not run for help to thosewho he knew could not give it. His portrait; erect, straightforward-looking, firmly standing, one foot a little inadvance, helps me and decides me when I look at it. Of all types ofhumanity the one which he represents would be the most serviceableto the world at the present day. He was generous, open-hearted, andif he had a temper, a trifle explosive at times, nobody for whom hecared ever really suffered from it, and occasionally it did him goodservice. The chief obituary notice of him declared with truth thathe was the best public speaker Bedford ever had, and the committeeof the well-known public library resolved unanimously "That thisinstitution records with regret the death of Mr. W. White, formerlyand for many years an active and most valuable member of thecommittee, whose special and extensive knowledge of books was alwaysat its service, and to whom the library is indebted for theacquisition of its most rare and valuable books. " The first eventin my own life is the attack by the mob upon our house, at thegeneral election in 1832, to which I have referred. My cradle--as Ihave been told--had to be carried from the front bedroom into theback, so that my head might not be broken by the stones whichsmashed the windows. 

The first thing I can really see is the coronation of Queen Victoriaand a town's dinner in St. Paul's Square. About this time, or soonafter, I was placed in a "young ladies'" school. At the front doorof this polite seminary I appeared one morning in a wheelbarrow. Ihad persuaded a shop boy to give me a lift. 

It was when I was about ten years old--surely it must have been veryearly on some cloudless summer morning--that Nurse Jane came to us. She was a faithful servant and a dear friend for many years--Icannot say how many. Till her death, not so long ago, I was alwaysher "dear boy". She was as familiar with me as if I were her ownchild. She left us when she married, but came back on her husband'sdeath. Her father and mother lived in a little thatched cottage atOakley. They were very poor, but her mother was a Scotch girl, andknew how to make a little go a long way. Jane had not infrequentholidays, and she almost always took my sister and myself to spendthem at Oakley. This was a delight as keen as any which could begiven me. No entertainment, no special food was provided. As toentertainment there was just the escape to a freer life, to a roomin which we cooked our food, ate it, and altogether lived duringwaking hours when we were indoors. Oh, for a house with this oneroom, a Homeric house! How much easier and how much more naturalshould we be if we watched the pot or peeled the potatoes as wetalked, than it is now in a drawing-room, where we do not know whatchair to choose amongst a dozen scattered about aimlessly; wherethere is no table to hide the legs or support the arms; a room whichcompels an uncomfortable awkwardness, and forced conversation. Would it not be more sincere if a saucepan took part in it than itis now, when, in evening clothes, tea-cup in hand, we discuss theshow at the Royal Academy, while a lady at the piano sings a songfrom Aida?

As to the food at Oakley, it was certainly rough, and includeddishes not often seen at home, but I liked it all the better. Mymother was by no means democratic. In fact she had a slightweakness in favour of rank. Somehow or other she had managed toknow some people who lived in a "park" about five or six miles fromBedford. It was called a "park", but in reality it was a biggarden, with a meadow beyond. However, and this was the greatpoint, none of my mother's town friends were callers at the Park. But, notwithstanding her little affectations, she was always glad tolet 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 mywholly unlearned nurse and Oakley. Never a coarse word, unboundedgenerosity, and an unreasoning spontaneity, which I do think one ofthe most blessed of virtues, suddenly making us glad when nothing isexpected. A child knows, no one so well, whereabouts in the scaleof goodness to place generosity. Nobody can estimate its true valueso accurately. Keeping the Sabbath, no swearing, very right andproper, but generosity is first, although it is not in theDecalogue. There was not much in my nurse's cottage with which toprove her liberality, but a quart of damsons for my mother wasenough. Going home from Oakley one summer's night I saw somemagnificent apples in a window; I had a penny in my pocket, and Iasked how many I could have for that sum. "Twenty. " How we gotthem home I do not know. The price I dare say has gone up sincethat evening. Talking about damsons and apples, I call to mind afriend in Potter Street, whose name I am sorry to say I haveforgotten. He was a miller, tall, thin, slightly stooping, wore apepper-and-salt suit of clothes, and might have been about sixtyyears old when I was ten or twelve. He lived in an ancient house, the first floor of which overhung the street; the rooms were low-pitched and dark. How Bedford folk managed to sleep in them, windows all shut, is incomprehensible. At the back of the house wasa royal garden stretching down to the lane which led to the mill. My memory especially dwells on the currants, strawberries, andgooseberries. When we went to "uncle's", as we called him, we wereturned out unattended into the middle of the fruit beds if the fruitwas ripe, and we could gather and eat what we liked. I am proud tosay that this Potter Street gentleman, a nobleman if ever there wasone, although not really an uncle, was in some way related to myfather. 

The recollections of boyhood, so far as week-days go, are veryhappy. Sunday, however, was not happy. I was taken to a religiousservice, morning and evening, and understood nothing. The eveningwas particularly trying. The windows of the meeting-house streamedinside with condensed breath, and the air we took into our lungs waspoisonous. Almost every Sunday some woman was carried out fainting. Do what I could it was impossible to keep awake. When I was quitelittle I was made to stand on the seat, a spectacle, with otherchildren in the like case, to the whole congregation, and I oftennearly fell down, overcome with drowsiness. My weakness muchtroubled me, because, although it might not be a heinous sin, suchas bathing on Sunday, it showed that I was not one of God'schildren, like Samuel, who ministered before the Lord girded with alinen ephod. Bathing on Sunday, as the river was always before me, was particularly prominent as a type of wickedness, and I read insome book for children, by a certain divine named Todd, how a wickedboy, bathing on the Sabbath, was drawn under a mill-wheel, wasdrowned, and went to hell. I wish I could find that book, for therewas also in it a most conclusive argument intended for a child'smind against the doctrine, propounded by people called philosophers, that the world was created by chance. The refutation was in theshape of a dream by a certain sage representing a world made byChance and not by God. Unhappily all that I recollect of theremarkable universe thus produced is that the geese had hoofs, and"clamped about like horses". Such was the awful consequence ofcreation by a No-God or nothing. 

In 1841 or 1842--I forget exactly the date--I was sent to what isnow the Modern School. My father would not let me go to the GrammarSchool, partly because he had such dreadful recollections of histreatment there, and partly because in those days the universitieswere closed to Dissenters. The Latin and Greek in the upper schoolwere not good for much, but Latin in the lower school--Greek was nottaught--consisted almost entirely in learning the Eton Latin grammarby heart, and construing Cornelius Nepos. The boys in the lowerschool were a very rough set. About a dozen were better than theothers, 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. Schoolbegan at seven in the morning during half the year, but later inwinter. At half-past eight or nine there was an interval of an hourfor breakfast. It was over when I got home, and I had mine in thekitchen. It was dispatched in ten minutes, and my delight in coldweather then was to lie in front of the fire and read Chambers'Journal. Blessings on the brothers Chambers for that magazine andfor the Miscellany, which came later! Then there was Charles andMary Lamb's Tales of Ulysses. It was on a top shelf in the shop, and I studied it whilst perched on the shop ladder. Anothermemorable volume was a huge atlas-folio, which my sister and Icalled the Battle Book. It contained coloured prints, withdescriptions of famous battles of the British Army. We used to lugit into the dining-room in the evening, and were never tired oflooking at it. A little later I managed to make an electricalmachine out of a wine bottle, and to produce sparks three-quartersof an inch long. I had learned the words "positive" and "negative", and was satisfied with them as an explanation, although I had notthe least notion what they meant, but I got together a few friendsand gave them a demonstration on electricity. 

Never was there a town better suited to a boy than Bedford at thattime for out-of-door amusements. It was not too big--its populationwas about 10, 000--so that the fields were then close at hand. TheOuse--immortal stream--runs through the middle of the High Street. To the east towards fenland, the country is flat, and the river isbroad, slow, and deep. Towards the west it is quicker, involved, fold doubling almost completely on fold, so that it takes sixtymiles to accomplish thirteen as the crow flies. Beginning atKempston, and on towards Clapham, Oakley, Milton, Harrold, it isbordered by the gentlest of hills or rather undulations. At Bedfordthe navigation for barges stopped, and there were very few pleasureboats, one of which was mine. The water above the bridge wasstrictly preserved, and the fishing was good. My father couldgenerally get leave for me, and more delightful days than thosespent at Kempston Mill and Oakley Mill cannot be imagined. Themorning generally began, if I may be excused the bull, on theevening before, when we walked about four miles to bait a celebratedroach and bream hole. After I got home, and just as I was going tobed, I tied a long string round one toe, and threw the other end ofthe string out of window, so that it reached the ground, havingbargained with a boy to pull this end, not too violently, atdaybreak, about three-quarters of an hour before the time when thefish would begin to bite well. At noon we slept for a couple ofhours on the bank. In the evening we had two hours more sport, andthen marched back to town. Once, in order to make a short cut, wedetermined to swim the river, which, at the point where we were, wasabout sixty feet wide, deep, and what was of more consequence, bordered with weeds. We stripped, tied our clothes on the top ofour heads and our boots to one end of our fishing lines, carryingthe other end with us. When we got across we pulled our bootsthrough mud and water after us. Alas! to our grief we found wecould not get them on, and we were obliged to walk without them. Swimming we had been taught by an old sailor, who gave lessons tothe school, and at last I could pick up an egg from the bottom ofthe overfall, a depth of about ten feet. I have also been upsetfrom my boat, and had to lie stark naked on the grass in the suntill my clothes were dry. Twice I have been nearly drowned, oncewhen I wandered away from the swimming class, and once when I couldswim well. This later peril is worth a word or two, and I may aswell say them now. I was staying by the sea-side, and noticed as Iwas lying on the beach about a couple of hundred yards from theshore a small vessel at anchor. I thought I should like to swimround her. I reached her without any difficulty, in perfect peace, luxuriously, I may say, and had just begun to turn when I wassuddenly overtaken by a mad conviction that I should never get home. There was no real danger of failure of strength, but my heart beganto beat furiously, the shore became dim, and I gave myself up forlost. "This then is dying, " I said to myself, but I also said--Iremember how vividly--"There shall be a struggle before I go down--one desperate effort"--and I strove, in a way I cannot describe, tobring my will to bear directly on my terror. In an instant thehorrible excitement was at an end, and THERE WAS A GREAT CALM. Istretched my limbs leisurely, rejoicing in the sea and the sunshine. This story is worth telling because it shows that a person withtremulous nerves, such as mine, never ought to say that he has doneall that he can do. Notice also it was not nature or passion whichcarried me through, but a conviction wrought by the reason. Thenext 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 totake off skates in order to get past mills and weirs. The bare, flat Bedfordshire fields had also their pleasures. I had an oldflint musket which I found in an outhouse. I loaded it with hardpeas, and once killed a sparrow. The fieldfares, or felts, as wecalled them, were in flocks in winter, but with them I neversucceeded. On the dark November Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, when there was not a breath of wind, and the fog hung heavily overthe brown, ploughed furrows, we gathered sticks, lighted a fire, androasted potatoes. They were sweet as peaches. After dark we would"go a bat-fowling", with lanterns, some of us on one side of thehedge and some on the other. I left school when I was betweenfourteen and fifteen, and then came the great event and the greatblunder of my life, the mistake which well-nigh ruined italtogether. My mother's brother had a son about five years olderthan myself, who was being trained as an Independent minister. Tohim I owe much. It was he who introduced me to Goethe. Some timeafter he was ordained, he became heterodox, and was obliged toseparate himself from the Independents to whom he belonged. Mymother, as I have already said, was a little weak in her preferencefor people who did not stand behind counters, and she desiredequality with her sister-in-law. Besides, I can honestly declarethat to her an Evangelical ministry was a sacred calling, and thethought 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 abookseller. The drawing class in the school was fairly good, and Ibelieve I had profited by it. Anyhow, I loved drawing, and wished Imight be an artist. The decision was against me, and I was handedover to a private tutor to prepare for the Countess of Huntingdon'sCollege at Cheshunt, which admitted students other than those whichbelonged to the Connexion, provided their creed did not materiallydiffer from that which governed the Connexion trusts. 

Before I went to college I had to be "admitted". In most Dissentingcommunities there is a singular ceremony called "admission", throughwhich members of the congregation have to pass before they becomemembers of the church. It is a declaration that a certain changecalled conversion has taken place in the soul. Two deacons areappointed to examine the candidate privately, and their report issubmitted to a church-meeting. If it is satisfactory, he issummoned before the whole church, and has to make a confession ofhis faith, and give an account of his spiritual history. As may beexpected, it is very often inaccurately picturesque, and is framedafter the model of the journey to Damascus. A sinner, for example, who swears at his pious wife, and threatens to beat her, is suddenlysmitten with giddiness and awful pains. He throws himself on hisknees before her, and thenceforward he is a "changed character". Ihad to tell the church that my experience had not been eventful. Iwas young, and had enjoyed the privilege of godly parents. 

What was conversion? It meant not only that the noviceunhesitatingly avowed his belief in certain articles of faith, butit meant something much more, and much more difficult to explain. Iwas guilty of original sin, and also of sins actually committed. For these two classes of sin I deserved eternal punishment. Christbecame my substitute, and His death was the payment for mytransgression. I had to feel that His life and death wereappropriated by me. This word "appropriated" is the most orthodox Ican find, but it is almost unintelligible. I might perhaps say thatI had to feel assured that I, personally, was in God's mind, and wasincluded in the atonement. 

This creed had as evil consequences that it concentrated my thoughtsupon myself, and made me of great importance. God had been anxiousabout me from all eternity, and had been scheming to save me. Another bad result was that I was satisfied I understood what I didnot in the least understand. This is very near lying. I can seemyself now--I was no more than seventeen--stepping out of our pew, standing in the aisle at the pew-door, and protesting to theircontent before the minister of the church, father and motherprotesting also to my own complete content, that the witness of Godin me to my own salvation was as clear as noonday. Poor littlemortal, a twelvemonth out of round jackets, I did not in the leastknow who God was, or what was salvation. 

On entering the college I signed the Thirty-nine Articles, exceptingtwo or three at most; for the Countess, so far as her theology went, was always Anglican. One of her chaplains was William Romaine, thefamous incumbent of St. Anne's, Blackfriars, who on his first GoodFriday in that church administered to five hundred communicants. The book I was directed to study by the theological professor afteradmission, was a book on the Atonement, by somebody named Williams. He justified the election of a minority to heaven and a majority tohell 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 Ihad 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 terribleinvention, and the only approach to explanation I can give is thatall this belonged to a world totally disconnected from my own, andthat I never thought of making real to myself anything which thissupernatural world contained. 

The most important changes in life are not those of one belief foranother, but of growth, in which nothing preceding is directlycontradicted, but something unexpected nevertheless makes itsappearance. On the bookshelf in our dining-room lay a volume ofWordsworth. One day, when I was about eighteen, I took it out, andfell 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 theapproach of something which turned out to be of the greatestimportance, and altered my history. 

It was a new capacity. There woke in me an aptness for the love ofnatural beauty, a possibility of being excited to enthusiasm by it, and of deriving a secret joy from it sufficiently strong to make mecareless of the world and its pleasures. Another effect whichWordsworth had upon me, and has had on other people, was themodification, altogether unintentional on his part, of religiousbelief. He never dreams of attacking anybody for his creed, and yetit often becomes impossible for those who study him and care for himto be members of any orthodox religious community. At any rate itwould have been impossible in the town of Bedford. His poems implya living God, different from the artificial God of the churches. The revolution wrought by him goes far deeper, and is far morepermanent than any which is the work of Biblical critics, and it wasWordsworth and not German research which caused my expulsion fromNew College, of which a page or two further on. For some time I hadno thought of heresy, but the seed was there, and was alive just asmuch as the seed-corn is alive all the time it lies in the earthapparently dead. 

I have nothing particular to record of Cheshunt, the secludedHertfordshire village, where the Countess of Huntingdon's Collegethen was. It stood in a delightful little half park, half garden, through which ran the New River: the country round was quiet, andnot then suburban, but here and there was a large handsome Georgianhouse. I learnt nothing at Cheshunt, and did not make a singlefriend. 

In 1851 or 1852 I was transferred, with two other students, to NewCollege, St. John's Wood. On February 3, 1852, the Principalexamined our theological class on an inaugural lecture delivered atthe opening of the college. The subject of the lecture was theinspiration of the Bible. The two students before mentioned weremembers of this class, and asked some questions about the formationof the canon and the authenticity of the separate books. They wereimmediately stopped by the Principal in summary style. "I mustinform you that this is not an open question within these walls. There is a great body of truth received as orthodoxy by the greatmajority of Christians, the explanation of which is one thing, butto doubt it is another, and the foundation must not be questioned. "How well I recollect the face of the Principal! He looked like aman who would write an invitation to afternoon tea "within thesewalls". He consulted the senate, and the senate consulted thecouncil, which consisted of the senate and some well-knownministers. We were ordered to be present at a special councilmeeting, and each one was called up separately before it andcatechized. Here are two or three of the questions, put, it will beremembered, 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 writersto have been influenced?"

"Do you believe a statement because it is in the Bible, or merelybecause it is true?"

"You are aware that there are two great parties on this question, one of which maintains that the inspiration of the Scripturesdiffers in kind from that of other books: the other that thedifference is one only of degree. To which of these parties do youattach yourself?"

"Are you conscious of any divergence from the views expounded by thePrincipal in this introductory lecture?"

At a meeting of the council, on the 13th February, 1852, it wasresolved that our opinions were "incompatible" with the "retentionof our position as students". This resolution was sent to us withanother to the effect that at the next meeting of the council "suchmeasures" would be taken "as may be thought advisable". At thismeeting my father, together with the father of one of my colleaguesattended, and asked that our moral character should be placed abovesuspicion; that the opinions for which we had been condemned shouldbe explicitly stated, and that we should be furnished with a copy ofthe creed by which we were judged. The next step on the part of thecouncil was the appointment of a committee to interview us, and"prevent the possibility of a misapprehension of our views". Weattended, underwent examination once more, and once more repeatedthe three requests. No notice was taken of them, but on 3rd Marchwe were asked if we would withdraw from the college for three monthsin order that we might "reconsider our opinions", so that possiblywe might "be led by Divine guidance to such views as would becompatible with the retention of our present position". IdiomaticEnglish was clearly not a strong point with the council. Of coursewe refused. If we had consented it might have been reasonablyconcluded that we had taken very little trouble with our "views". Again we asked for compliance with our requests, but the only answerwe got was that our "connexion with New College must cease", andthat with regard to the three requests, the council "having dulyweighed them, consider that they have already sufficiently compliedwith them". 

It is not now my purpose to discuss the doctrine of BiblicalInspiration. It has gone the way of many other theological dogmas. It has not been settled by a yea or nay, but by indifference, andbecause yea or nay are both inapplicable. The manner in which thetrial was conducted was certainly singular, and is worth a word ortwo. The Holy Office was never more scandalously indifferent to anypretence of justice or legality in its proceedings. We were nottold what was the charge against us, nor what were the terms of thetrust deed of the college, if such a document existed; neither werewe informed what was the meaning of the indictment, and yet thecouncil must have been aware that nothing less than our ruin wouldprobably be the result of our condemnation. 

My father wrote and published a defence of us, entitled To Think ornot to Think, with two noble mottoes, one from Milton's Areopagiticaand the other some lines from In Memoriam, which was read in thosedays by people who were not sentimental fools, and who, strange tosay, got out of it something solid which was worth having. The daysmay return when something worth having will be got out of it again. To the question, "Will you explain the mode in which you conceivethe sacred writers to have been influenced?" my father replied--"Rather a profound question, that. A profounder, I venture to say, never agitated the mind of a German metaphysician. If the query hadbeen put to me, I should have taken the liberty to question thequestioner thus: 'Can you explain to me the growth of a tree? Canyou explain how the will of man influences the material muscles?--Infact the universe is full of forces or influences. Can you tracewhence it came and how it came? Can'st thou by searching find outGod? Can'st thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?--it is highas heaven; what can'st thou do? deeper than hell; what can'st thouknow?'" To the council's inquiry whether we believed a statementbecause it was in the Bible or because it was true, my fatherreplied partly with a quotation from the celebrated Platonistdivine, John Smith, of Cambridge--"All that knowledge which isseparate from an inward acquaintance with virtue and goodness is ofa far different nature from that which ariseth out of a living senseof them which is the best discerner thereof, and by which alone weknow the true perfection, sweetness, energy, and loveliness of them, and all that which is [Greek text], that which can no more "be knownby a naked demonstration than colours can be perceived of a blindman by any definition or description which he can hear of them. "

This pamphlet was written in 1852, three years after I enteredCheshunt College, when my father declared to me that "a moderateCalvinism suited him best". In 1852 he was forty-five years old. He had not hardened: he was alive, rejecting what was dead, layinghold of what was true to him, and living by it. Nor was the changehurried or ill-considered which took place in him between 1849 and1852. What he became in 1852 he was substantially to the end of hisdays. 

The expulsion excited some notice in the world then, although, as Ihave said, the controversy was without much significance. The"views" of Dr. Harris and the rest of the council were alreadycondemned. Here are some letters, not before printed, from Mauriceand Kingsley on the case. The closing paragraph of Maurice's letteris remarkable because in about a twelvemonth he himself was expelledfrom King's College. 

"MY DEAR SIR, "I beg to thank you for your very able and interesting pamphlet. Iknow one of the expelled students, and have every reason to thinkhighly of his earnestness and truthfulness. 

"I feel a delicacy in pronouncing any judgement upon the conduct ofthe Heads of the College, as I belong to another, and I might seemto be biased by feelings of Sectarianism and of rivalship. Butthere 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 intocircumstances like those of the judges or of the criminals. 

"Faithfully yrs, F. D. MAURICE. July 27, 1852. 21 Queen's Square, Bloomsbury. "

"EVERSLEY. Saturday. "DEAR SIR, "I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your very clever and well-written pamphlet, which I have read with no surprise but with mostpainful interest; and I beg to thank you for the compliment impliedin your sending it to me. Your son ought to thank God for having afather who will stand by him in trouble so manfully and wisely: andas you say, this may be of the very greatest benefit to him: but itmay also do him much harm, if it makes him fancy that such men ashave expelled him are the real supporters of the Canon andinspiration of Scripture, and of Orthodoxy in general. 

"I said that I read your pamphlet without surprise. I must explainmy words. This is only one symptom of a great and growing movement, which must end in the absolute destruction of 'Orthodox dissent'among the educated classes, and leave the lower, if unchecked, to"Mormonism, Popery, and every kind of Fetiche-worship. TheUnitarians have first felt the tide-wave: but all other sects willfollow; and after them will follow members of the Established Churchin proportion as they have been believing, not in the Catholic andApostolic Faith, as it is in the Bible, but in some compound orother of Calvinist doctrine with Rabbinical theories of magicalinspiration, such as are to be found in Gaussen's Theopneustic--awork 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 theappointed path, and God help them!--I speak as one who has beenthrough, already, much which I see with the deepest sympathyperplexing others round me; and you write as a man who has had thesame experience. Whether or not we agree in our conclusions atpresent, you will forgive me for saying, that every week shows memore and more that the 'Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Faith', sofar from being incompatible with the most daring science, bothphysical, metaphysical, and philological, or with the most extendednotions of inspiration, or with continual inrushes of new light fromabove, assumes them, asserts them, and cannot be kept Catholic, ortrue to itself, without the fullest submission to them. I speak asa heartily orthodox priest of the Church of England; you will excusemy putting my thoughts in a general and abstract form in so short aletter. But if your son--(I will not say you--for your age must be, and your acquirements evidently are--greater than my own) if yourson would like to write to me about these matters, I do believebefore God, who sees me write, that as one who has been through whathe has, and more, I may have something to tell him, or at least toset 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 beenbrought up was or could be for ever cast away like an old garment. The beliefs of childhood and youth cannot be thus dismissed. I knowthat in after years I found that in a way they revived under newforms, and that I sympathized more with the Calvinistic Independencyof the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than with the modernChristianity of church or chapel. At first, after the abandonmentof orthodoxy, I naturally thought nothing in the old religion worthretaining, but this temper did not last long. Many mistakes may bepardoned in Puritanism in view of the earnestness with which itinsists on the distinction between right and wrong. This is vital. In modern religion the path is flowery. The absence of difficultyis a sure sign that no good is being done. How far we are from thestrait gate, from the way that is narrow which leadeth unto life, the way which is found only by few! The great doctrines ofPuritanism are also much nearer to the facts of actual experiencethan we suppose. 

After the expulsion I was adrift, knowing no craft, belonging to noreligious body, and without social or political interest. I engagedmyself to a schoolmaster. The story of my very brief stay with himhas been elsewhere told with some variation, but I may as wellrelate it here so as to make my little history complete. The schoolwas somewhere in Stoke Newington. I got there in the evening whenit was quite dark. After a word or two with my chief I was showninto a large school-room. Two candles were placed on a raised desk, and this was all the light permitted for the illumination of thegreat empty space round me. The walls were hung with maps, and theplace of honour on the end wall was occupied by a huge drawing ofthe globe, in perspective, carefully coloured. This masterpiece wasthe work of the proprietor, an example of the precious learningwhich might be acquired at his "establishment". After I had satdown for a few minutes a servant brought me my supper, placed it ona desk, and showed me my bedroom. I ate my meal, and after sometime, as nobody came to see me, I thought I had better go to bed. Ihad to ascend a ladder, which I pulled up after me. When I had shutthe door I looked out of window. Before me lay London and the dullglare of its lights. There was no distinct noise perceptible; but adeadened roar came up to me. Over in the south-west was the houseof the friend I had left, always a warm home for me when I was intown. Then there fell upon me what was the beginning of a troublewhich has lasted all my life. The next afternoon I went to theproprietor 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 atthe beginning of term, but he gave me permission to look for asubstitute. I found a Scotch graduate who, like myself, had beenaccused of heresy, and had nothing to do. He came the same day, andI went back to --- Terrace, somewhere out by Haverstock Hill. Iforget its name; it was a dull row of stuccoed ugliness. But to methat day Grasmere, the Quantocks, or the Cornish sea-coast wouldhave been nothing compared with that stucco line. When I knocked atthe door the horrible choking fog had rolled away: I rushed inside;there was a hearty embrace, and the sun shone gloriously. Still, Ihad nothing to do. 

At this point I had intended to stop. A good part of my lifehenceforward has appeared under disguise in one of my books, but Ithink on reconsideration it will be better to record here also whatlittle remains to be told about myself, and to narrate it ashistory. I called on several publishers and asked for employment, but could get none till I came to John Chapman, editor andproprietor of the Westminster Review, as well as publisher, mainlyof books which were theologically heretical, and, I am sorry to say, did not pay. He lived at 142 Strand. 

As the New College council had tested my orthodoxy, so Chapmantested my heresy and found that I was fit for the propagandist workin No. 142 and for its society. He asked me if I believed inmiracles. I said "Yes and no". I did not believe that an actualCurtius leaped into the gulf in the Forum and saved Rome, but I didbelieve in the spiritual truth set forth in the legend. This replywas allowed to pass, although my scepticism would have been moresatisfactory and more useful if it had been a little more thorough. 

I was soon taken off the Westminster, and my occupation now was towrite Chapman's letters, to keep his accounts, and, mostdisagreeable, to "subscribe" his publications, that is to say, tocall on booksellers and ask how many copies they would take. OfGeorge Eliot, who lodged at No. 142, I have often spoken, and havenothing to add. It is a lasting sorrow to me that I allowed myfriendship with her to drop, and that after I left Chapman I nevercalled on her. She was then unknown, except to a few friends, but Idid know what she was worth. I knew that she was not only endowedwith extraordinary genius, but with human qualities even moreprecious. She took the kindest notice of me, an awkward creaturenot accustomed to society. It is sad that youth should be soconfident in its own resources that it will not close its hand uponthe treasure which is placed inside it. It was not only GeorgeEliot by whom I neglected to profit. I might have seen Rachel. Irecollect the evening, and I believe I was offered a ticket. It wasnot worth while to walk a couple of hundred yards to enrich myselffor ever! I knew intimate friends of Caroline Fox, but I made noeffort to become acquainted with her. What a difference it wouldmake to me now, living so much in the past, if Penjerrick, with adream of its lawn sloping southward and seaward, and its society ofall the most interesting people in England, should be amongst mypossessions, 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. Layup for yourselves treasure in heaven. 

There was one opportunity, however, I did not miss, and this wasCaleb Morris. About him also I have written, but for the sake ofcontinuity I will repeat some of it. He had singular influence, notonly over me, but over nearly every young man whom he met. He wasoriginally an Independent minister in Wales, where the people aremostly Dissenters, but he came to London when he had not passedmiddle life, and took charge of the church in Fetter Lane. He wastall, broad-shouldered, handsome, erect, but was partly disabled bya strangely nervous temperament which, with an obscure bodilytrouble, frequently prevented him from keeping his engagements. Often and often messengers had to be dispatched late on Sundaymorning to find a substitute for him at Fetter Lane, and people usedto wait in the portico of the chapel until the service had wellbegun, 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 forgethis picture of the father, in the parable of the prodigal son, watching for his child's return, all his thoughts swallowed up inone--WILL HE COME BACK TO-DAY? When he did come--no word of rebuke. The hardest thing in the world is to be completely generous inforgiveness. The most magnanimous of men cannot resist thetemptation--BUT AT THE SAME TIME YOU MUST SEE, MY DEAREST, DON'TYOU? Almost equally difficult, but not quite, is the simpleconfession without an extenuating word, I HAVE SINNED AGAINSTHEAVEN. The father does not hear. BRING FORTH THE BEST ROBE ANDPUT IT ON HIM, AND PUT A RING ON HIS HAND AND SHOES ON HIS FEET. Aring on his hand! Shoes on his feet we can understand, but there isto be a ring, honour, ennoblement! . . . The first movement ofrepentance was--I WILL ARISE AND GO TO MY FATHER. The omissions inMorris's comment were striking. There was no word of the orthodoxmachinery of forgiveness. It was through Morris that the Biblebecame what it always has been to me. It has not solved directlyany of the great problems which disturb my peace, and Morris seldomtouched them controversially, but he uncovered such a wealth ofwonder and beauty in it that the problems were forgotten. 

Lord Bacon was Morris's hero, both for his method and his personalcharacter. These were the days before the researches of Spedding, when Bacon was supposed to be a mass of those impossible paradoxesin which Macaulay delighted. To Morris, Bacon's Submission and hisrenunciation of all defence were sufficient. With what pathos herepeated Bacon's words when the Lords asked him whether thesubscription to the Submission was in his own hand. "My Lords, itis my act, my hand, my heart. I beseech your Lordships, be mercifulto a broken reed. "

There is nothing more to be said about Chapman's. I left after anoffer of partnership, which, it is needless to say, I did notaccept. Mr. Whitbread obtained for me a clerkship in the Registrar-General's office, Somerset House. I was there two or three years, and was then transferred to the Admiralty. Meanwhile I had married. 

The greater part of my life has been passed in what it is now usualto contemn as the Victorian age. Whatever may be the justice of thescorn poured out upon it by the superior persons of the presentgeneration, this Victorian age was distinguished by an enthusiasmwhich can only be compared to a religious revival. Maud was read atsix in the morning as I walked along Holborn; Pippa Passes late atnight in my dark little room in Serle Street, although of course itwas 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 brimWhere spurting and suppresst it lay--"

There on the horizon lies the cloud cup. Over the brim boils, puregold, the day! The day which is before me is Pippa's day, and not aday in the Strand: it is a "twelve-hours treasure": I am as eageras Pippa "not to squander a wavelet of thee". The vision stilllives. The friend who stood by my side is still with me, althoughhe died years and years ago. What was true of me was true of half ascore of my friends. If it is true that the Victorian time was uglyand vulgar, it was the time of the Virginians, of David Copperfield, of Tennyson's Poems, of Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, of theLetters and Life of Lord Bacon, of Emerson's Essays, of Festus, ofthe Dramatis Personae, and of the Apologia. We were at the Academyat eight o'clock on a May morning to see, at the very earliestmoment, the Ophelia, the Order for Release, the Claudio andIsabella, Seddon's Jerusalem, Lewis's Arab Scribe and his FrankEncampment in the Desert. The last two, though, I think, were inthe exhibition of the Old Water Colour Society. The excitement ofthose years between 1848 and 1890 was, as I have said, somethinglike that of a religious revival, but it was reasonable. 

These notes are not written for publication, but to please two orthree persons related to me by affection.