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TITLE: THE EARLY LIFE OF MARK RUTHERFORD
AUTHOR: MARK RUTHERFORD
EBOOK: E06606 (O'Briens Book Cellar)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Transcribed from the 1913 edition 

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.

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