The Early Life of Mark Rutherford | Page 5

to Bill, so that Keziah cannot see him, puts up
his left hand to the side of his face and winks violently.
"I suppose it's one o'clock as usual, Mr. Lovell, at the Red Lion?" My
uncle laughs as he moves to the gate.
"I tell you what it is, Mr. Fitchew, you're a precious rascal; that's what
you are."
At one o'clock an immense dinner is provided at the Red Lion, and
thither the debtors come, no matter what may be the state of their
accounts, and drink my uncle's health. Such was Uncle Lovell. My
father and mother often had supper with him and my aunt. After I was
ten years old I was permitted to go. It was a solid, hot meal at nine
o'clock. It was followed by pipes and brandy and water, never more
than one glass; and when this was finished, at about half-past ten, there
was the walk home across the silent bridge, with a glimpse downward
of the dark river slowly flowing through the stone arches.
I now come to my father. My object is not to write his life. I have not
sufficient materials, nor would it be worth recording at any length, but I
should like to preserve the memory of a few facts which are significant
of him, and may explain his influence upon me.
He was born in 1807, and was eight years old when his father died: his
mother died seven years earlier. He had a cruel step-mother, who gave
to her own child everything she had to give. He was educated at the
Grammar School, but the teaching there, as I have said, was very poor.

The step-mother used to send messages to the head master begging him
soundly to thrash her step-son, for he was sure to deserve it, and school
thrashing in those days was no joke. She also compelled my father to
clean boots, knives and forks, and do other dirty work.
I do not know when he opened the shop in Bedford as a printer and
bookseller, but it must have been about 1830. He dealt in old books, the
works of the English divines of all parties, both in the Anglican Church
and outside it. The clergy, who then read more than they read or can
read now, were his principal customers. From the time when he began
business as a young man in the town he had much to do with its affairs.
He was a Whig in politics, and amongst the foremost at elections,
specially at the election in 1832, when he and the Whig Committee
were besieged in the Swan Inn by the mob. He soon became a trustee of
the Bedford Charity, and did good service for the schools. In
September 1843, the Rev. Edward Isaac Lockwood, rector of St. John's,
in the town, and trustee of the schools, carried a motion at a board
meeting declaring that all the masters under the Charity should be
members of the Church of England. The Charity maintained one or two
schools besides the Grammar School. The Act of Parliament, under
which it was administered, provided that the masters and ushers of the
Grammar School should be members of the Church of England, but
said nothing about the creed of the masters of the other schools. The
consternation in the town was great. It was evident that the next step
would be to close the schools to Dissenters. Public meetings were held,
and at the annual election of trustees, Mr. Lockwood was at the bottom
of the poll. At the next meeting of the board, after the election, my
father carried a resolution which rescinded Mr. Lockwood's. The
rector's defeat was followed by a series of newspaper letters in his
defence from the Rev. Edward Swann, mathematical master in the
Grammar School. My father replied in a pamphlet, published in 1844.
There was one endowment for which he was remarkable, the purity of
the English he spoke and wrote. He used to say he owed it to Cobbett,
whose style he certainly admired, but this is but partly true. It was
rather a natural consequence of the clearness of his own mind and of
his desire to make himself wholly understood, both demanding the
simplest and most forcible expression. If the truth is of serious
importance to us we dare not obstruct it by phrase- making: we are

compelled to be as direct as our inherited feebleness will permit. The
cannon ball's path is near to a straight line in proportion to its velocity.
"My boy," my father once said to me, "if you write anything you
consider particularly fine, strike it out."
The Reply is an admirable specimen of the way in which a controversy
should be conducted; without heat, the