The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford | Page 6

deacon in our chapel, and every morning, soon after
breakfast, he would start off for his walk of about four miles, stopping
by the way to talk to his neighbours about the events of the day. At
eleven o'clock or thereabouts he would return and would begin work.
Everybody took an hour for dinner--between one and two--and at that
time, especially on a hot July afternoon, the High Street was empty
from end to end, and the profoundest peace reigned.
My life as a child falls into two portions, sharply divided--week-day
and Sunday. During the week-day I went to the public school, where I
learned little or nothing that did me much good. The discipline of the
school was admirable, and the headmaster was penetrated with a most
lofty sense of duty, but the methods of teaching were very imperfect. In
Latin we had to learn the Eton Latin Grammar till we knew every word
of it by heart, but we did scarcely any retranslation from English into
Latin. Much of our time was wasted on the merest trifles, such as
learning to write, for example, like copperplate, and, still more
extraordinary, in copying the letters of the alphabet as they are used in
printing.
But we had two half-holidays in the week, which seem to me now to
have been the happiest part of my life. A river ran through the town,
and on summer Wednesdays and Saturdays we wandered along its
banks for miles, alternately fishing and bathing. I remember whole
afternoons in June, July, and August, passed half-naked or altogether
naked in the solitary meadows and in the water; I remember the
tumbling weir with the deep pool at the bottom in which we dived; I
remember, too, the place where we used to swim across the river with
our clothes on our heads, because there was no bridge near, and the
frequent disaster of a slip of the braces in the middle of the water, so
that shirt, jacket, and trousers were soaked, and we had to lie on the
grass in the broiling sun without a rag on us till everything was dry
again.
In winter our joys were of a different kind but none the less delightful.
If it was a frost, we had skating; not like skating on a London pond, but

over long reaches, and if the locks had not intervened, we might have
gone a day's journey on the ice without a stoppage. If there was no ice,
we had football, and what was still better, we could get up a
steeplechase--on foot straight across hedge and ditch.
In after-years, when I lived in London, I came to know children who
went to school in Gower Street, and travelled backwards and forwards
by omnibus--children who had no other recreation than an occasional
visit to the Zoological Gardens, or a somewhat sombre walk up to
Hampstead to see their aunt; and I have often regretted that they never
had any experience of those perfect poetic pleasures which the boy
enjoys whose childhood is spent in the country, and whose home is
there. A country boarding-school is something altogether different.
On the Sundays, however, the compensation came. It was a season of
unmixed gloom. My father and mother were rigid Calvinistic
Independents, and on that day no newspaper nor any book more secular
than the Evangelical Magazine was tolerated. Every preparation for the
Sabbath had been made on the Saturday, to avoid as much as possible
any work. The meat was cooked beforehand, so that we never had a hot
dinner even in the coldest weather; the only thing hot which was
permitted was a boiled suet pudding, which cooked itself while we
were at chapel, and some potatoes which were prepared after we came
home. Not a letter was opened unless it was clearly evident that it was
not on business, and for opening these an apology was always offered
that it was possible they might contain some announcement of sickness.
If on cursory inspection they appeared to be ordinary letters, although
they might be from relations or friends, they were put away.
After family prayer and breakfast the business of the day began with
the Sunday-school at nine o'clock. We were taught our Catechism and
Bible there till a quarter past ten. We were then marched across the
road into the chapel, a large old-fashioned building dating from the
time of Charles II. The floor was covered with high pews. The roof was
supported by three or four tall wooden pillars which ran from the
ground to the ceiling, and the galleries by shorter pillars. There was a
large oak pulpit on one side against the wall, and down below,
immediately under the minister, was the "singing pew," where the
singers and