Father and Son | Page 6

Her daughter- in-law, gentle as she
was, and ethereal in manner and appearance- -strangely contrasted (no
doubt), in her tinctures of gold hair and white skin, with my
grandmother's bold carnations and black tresses--was yet possessed of a
will like tempered steel. They were better friends apart, with my
grandmother lodged hard by, in a bright room, her household gods and
bits of excellent eighteenth-century furniture around her, her miniatures
and sparkling china arranged on shelves.
Left to my Mother's sole care, I became the centre of her solicitude. But
there mingled with those happy animal instincts which sustain the
strength and patience of every human mother and were fully present
with her--there mingled with these certain spiritual determinations
which can be but rare. They are, in their outline, I suppose, vaguely
common to many religious mothers, but there are few indeed who fill
up the sketch with so firm a detail as she did. Once again I am indebted
to her secret notes, in a little locked volume, seen until now, nearly
sixty years later, by no eye save her own. Thus she wrote when I was

two months old:
'We have given him to the Lord; and we trust that He will really
manifest him to be His own, if he grow up; and if the Lord take him
early, we will not doubt that he is taken to Himself. Only, if it please
the Lord to take him, I do trust we may be spared seeing him suffering
in lingering illness and much pain. But in this as in all things His will is
better than what we can choose. Whether his life be prolonged or not, it
has already been a blessing to us, and to the saints, in leading us to
much prayer, and bringing us into varied need and some trial.
The last sentence is somewhat obscure to me. How, at that tender age, I
contrived to be a blessing 'to the saints' may surprise others and puzzles
myself. But 'the saints' was the habitual term by which were indicated
the friends who met on Sunday mornings for Holy Communion, and at
many other tunes in the week for prayer and discussion of the
Scriptures, in the small hired hall at Hackney, which my parents
attended. I suppose that the solemn dedication of me to the Lord, which
was repeated in public in my Mother's arms, being by no means a usual
or familiar ceremony even among the Brethren, created a certain
curiosity and fervour in the immediate services, or was imagined so to
do by the fond, partial heart of my Mother. She, however, who had
been so much isolated, now made the care of her child an excuse for
retiring still further into silence. With those religious persons who met
at the Room, as the modest chapel was called, she had little spiritual,
and no intellectual, sympathy. She noted:
I do not think it would increase my happiness to be in the midst of the
saints at Hackney. I have made up my mind to give myself up to Baby
for the winter, and to accept no invitations. To go when I can to the
Sunday morning meetings and to see my own Mother.
The monotony of her existence now became extreme, but she seems to
have been happy. Her days were spent in taking care of me, and in
directing one young servant. My Father was forever in his study,
writing, drawing, dissecting; sitting, no doubt, as I grew afterwards
accustomed to see him, absolutely motionless, with his eye glued to the
microscope, for twenty minutes at a time. So the greater part of every

weekday was spent, and on Sunday he usually preached one, and
sometimes two extempore sermons. His workday labours were
rewarded by the praise of the learned world, to which he was
indifferent, but by very little money, which he needed more. For over
three years after their marriage, neither of my parents left London for a
single day, not being able to afford to travel. They received scarcely
any visitors, never ate a meal away from home, never spent an evening
in social intercourse abroad. At night they discussed theology, read
aloud to one another, or translated scientific brochures from French or
German. It sounds a terrible life of pressure and deprivation, and that it
was physically unwholesome there can be no shadow of a doubt. But
their contentment was complete and unfeigned. In the midst of this,
materially, the hardest moment of their lives, when I was one year old,
and there was a question of our leaving London, my Mother recorded in
her secret notes:
"We are happy and contented, having all things needful and pleasant,
and our present habitation is hallowed by many sweet associations.