The Early Life of Mark Rutherford | Page 2

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