The Early Life of Mark Rutherford | Page 7

at the composing desk in his printing office, he used to declaim Byron by heart. That a Puritan printer, one of the last men in the world to be carried away by a fashion, should be vanquished by Byron, is as genuine a testimony as any I know to the reality of his greatness. Up to 1849 or thereabouts, my father in religion was Independent and Calvinist, the creed which, as he thought then, best suited him. But a change was at hand. His political opinions remained unaltered to his death, but in 1851 he had completed his discovery that the "simple gospel" which Calvinism preached was by no means simple, but remarkably abstruse. It was the Heroes and Hero Worship and the Sartor Resartus which drew him away from the meeting-house. There is nothing in these two books directly hostile either to church or dissent, but they laid hold on him as no books had ever held, and the expansion they wrought in him could not possibly tolerate the limitations of orthodoxy. He was not converted to any other religion. He did not run for help to those who he knew could not give it. His portrait; erect, straightforward-looking, firmly standing, one foot a little in advance, helps me and decides me when I look at it. Of all types of humanity the one which he represents would be the most serviceable to the world at the present day. He was generous, open-hearted, and if he had a temper, a trifle explosive at times, nobody for whom he cared ever really suffered from it, and occasionally it did him good service. The chief obituary notice of him declared with truth that he was the best public speaker Bedford ever had, and the committee of the well-known public library resolved unanimously "That this institution records with regret the death of Mr. W. White, formerly and for many years an active and most valuable member of the committee, whose special and extensive knowledge of books was always at its service, and to whom the library is indebted for the acquisition of its most rare and valuable books." The first event in my own life is the attack by the mob upon our house, at the general election in 1832, to which I have referred. My cradle--as I have been told--had to be carried from the front bedroom into the back, so that my head might not be broken by the stones which smashed the windows.
The first thing I can really see is the coronation of Queen Victoria and a town's dinner in St. Paul's Square. About this time, or soon after, I was placed in a "young ladies'" school. At the front door of this polite seminary I appeared one morning in a wheelbarrow. I had persuaded a shop boy to give me a lift.
It was when I was about ten years old--surely it must have been very early on some cloudless summer morning--that Nurse Jane came to us. She was a faithful servant and a dear friend for many years--I cannot say how many. Till her death, not so long ago, I was always her "dear boy". She was as familiar with me as if I were her own child. She left us when she married, but came back on her husband's death. Her father and mother lived in a little thatched cottage at Oakley. They were very poor, but her mother was a Scotch girl, and knew how to make a little go a long way. Jane had not infrequent holidays, and she almost always took my sister and myself to spend them at Oakley. This was a delight as keen as any which could be given me. No entertainment, no special food was provided. As to entertainment there was just the escape to a freer life, to a room in which we cooked our food, ate it, and altogether lived during waking hours when we were indoors. Oh, for a house with this one room, a Homeric house! How much easier and how much more natural should we be if we watched the pot or peeled the potatoes as we talked, than it is now in a drawing-room, where we do not know what chair to choose amongst a dozen scattered about aimlessly; where there is no table to hide the legs or support the arms; a room which compels an uncomfortable awkwardness, and forced conversation. Would it not be more sincere if a saucepan took part in it than it is now, when, in evening clothes, tea-cup in hand, we discuss the show at the Royal Academy, while a lady at the piano sings a song from Aida?
As to the food at Oakley, it was certainly rough, and included dishes not often seen at home, but I