Father and Son | Page 5

and my Mother, the sects were walking in the light;
wherever they differed from them, they had slipped more or less
definitely into a penumbra of their own making, a darkness into which
neither of my parents would follow them. Hence, by a process of
selection, my Father and my Mother alike had gradually, without
violence, found themselves shut outside all Protestant communions,
and at last they met only with a few extreme Calvinists like themselves,
on terms of what may almost be called negation-- with no priest, no
ritual, no festivals, no ornament of any kind, nothing but the Lord's
Supper and the exposition of Holy Scripture drawing these austere
spirits into any sort of cohesion. They called themselves 'the Brethren',
simply; a title enlarged by the world outside into 'Plymouth Brethren'.
It was accident and similarity which brought my parents together at
these meetings of the Brethren. Each was lonely, each was poor, each
was accustomed to a strenuous intellectual self- support. He was nearly
thirty-eight, she was past forty-two, when they married. From a
suburban lodging, he brought her home to his mother's little house in
the northeast of London without a single day's honeymoon. My Father
was a zoologist, and a writer of books on natural history; my Mother
also was a writer, author already of two slender volumes of religious

verse--the earlier of which, I know not how, must have enjoyed some
slight success, since a second edition was printed--afterwards she
devoted her pen to popular works of edification. But how infinitely
removed in their aims, their habits, their ambitions from 'literary'
people of the present day, words are scarcely adequate to describe.
Neither knew nor cared about any manifestation of current literature.
For each there had been no poet later than Byron, and neither had read
a romance since, in childhood, they had dipped into the Waverley
Novels as they appeared in succession. For each the various forms of
imaginative and scientific literature were merely means of
improvement and profit, which kept the student 'out of the world', gave
him full employment, and enabled him to maintain himself. But
pleasure was found nowhere but in the Word of God, and to the endless
discussion of the Scriptures each hurried when the day's work was over.
In this strange household the advent of a child was not welcomed, but
was borne with resignation. The event was thus recorded in my Father's
diary:
E. delivered of a son. Received green swallow from Jamaica.
This entry has caused amusement, as showing that he was as much
interested in the bird as in the boy. But this does not follow; what the
wording exemplifies is my Father's extreme punctilio. The green
swallow arrived later in the day than the son, and the earlier visitor was
therefore recorded first; my Father was scrupulous in every species of
arrangement.
Long afterwards, my Father told me that my Mother suffered much in
giving birth to me, and that, uttering no cry, I appeared to be dead. I
was laid, with scant care, on another bed in the room, while all anxiety
and attention were concentrated on my Mother. An old woman who
happened to be there, and who was unemployed, turned her thoughts to
me, and tried to awake in me a spark of vitality. She succeeded, and she
was afterwards complimented by the doctor on her cleverness. My
Father could not--when he told me the story--recollect the name of my
preserver. I have often longed to know who she was. For all the rapture
of life, for all its turmoils, its anxious desires, its manifold pleasures,

and even for its sorrow and suffering, I bless and praise that anonymous
old lady from the bottom of my heart.
It was six weeks before my Mother was able to leave her room. The
occasion was made a solemn one, and was attended by a species of
Churching. Mr Balfour, a valued minister of the denomination, held a
private service in the parlour, and 'prayed for our child, that he may be
the Lord's'. This was the opening act of that 'dedication' which was
never henceforward forgotten, and of which the following pages will
endeavour to describe the results. Around my tender and unconscious
spirit was flung the luminous web, the light and elastic but
impermeable veil, which it was hoped would keep me 'unspotted from
the world'.
Until this time my Father's mother had lived in the house and taken the
domestic charges of it on her own shoulders. She now consented to
leave us to ourselves. There is no question that her exodus was a relief
to my Mother, since my paternal grandmother was a strong and
masterful woman, buxom, choleric and practical, for whom the
interests of the mind did not exist.