The Early Life of Mark Rutherford Part 2

At a meeting of the council, on the 13th February, 1852, it was resolved that our opinions were "incompatible" with the "retention of our position as students". This resolution was sent to us with another to the effect that at the next meeting of the council "such measures" would be taken "as may be thought advisable". At this meeting my father, together with the father of one of my colleagues attended, and asked that our moral character should be placed above suspicion; that the opinions for which we had been condemned should be explicitly stated, and that we should be furnished with a copy of the creed by which we were judged. The next step on the part of the council was the appointment of a committee to interview us, and "prevent the possibility of a misapprehension of our views". We attended, underwent examination once more, and once more repeated the three requests. No notice was taken of them, but on 3rd March we were asked if we would withdraw from the college for three months in order that we might "reconsider our opinions", so that possibly we might "be led by Divine guidance to such views as would be compatible with the retention of our present position". Idiomatic English was clearly not a strong point with the council. Of course we refused. If we had consented it might have been reasonably concluded that we had taken very little trouble with our "views".

Again we asked for compliance with our requests, but the only answer we got was that our "connexion with New College must cease", and that with regard to the three requests, the council "having duly weighed them, consider that they have already sufficiently complied with them".

It is not now my purpose to discuss the doctrine of Biblical Inspiration. It has gone the way of many other theological dogmas.

It has not been settled by a yea or nay, but by indifference, and because yea or nay are both inapplicable. The manner in which the trial was conducted was certainly singular, and is worth a word or two. The Holy Office was never more scandalously indifferent to any pretence of justice or legality in its proceedings. We were not told what was the charge against us, nor what were the terms of the trust deed of the college, if such a doc.u.ment existed; neither were we informed what was the meaning of the indictment, and yet the council must have been aware that nothing less than our ruin would probably be the result of our condemnation.

My father wrote and published a defence of us, ent.i.tled To Think or not to Think, with two n.o.ble mottoes, one from Milton's Areopagitica and the other some lines from In Memoriam, which was read in those days by people who were not sentimental fools, and who, strange to say, got out of it something solid which was worth having. The days may return when something worth having will be got out of it again.

To the question, "Will you explain the mode in which you conceive the sacred writers to have been influenced?" my father replied-- "Rather a profound question, that. A profounder, I venture to say, never agitated the mind of a German metaphysician. If the query had been put to me, I should have taken the liberty to question the questioner thus: 'Can you explain to me the growth of a tree? Can you explain how the will of man influences the material muscles?--In fact the universe is full of forces or influences. Can you trace whence it came and how it came? Can'st thou by searching find out G.o.d? Can'st thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?--it is high as heaven; what can'st thou do? deeper than h.e.l.l; what can'st thou know?'" To the council's inquiry whether we believed a statement because it was in the Bible or because it was true, my father replied partly with a quotation from the celebrated Platonist divine, John Smith, of Cambridge--"All that knowledge which is separate from an inward acquaintance with virtue and goodness is of a far different nature from that which ariseth out of a living sense of them which is the best discerner thereof, and by which alone we know the true perfection, sweetness, energy, and loveliness of them, and all that which is [Greek text], that which can no more "be known by a naked demonstration than colours can be perceived of a blind man by any definition or description which he can hear of them."

This pamphlet was written in 1852, three years after I entered Cheshunt College, when my father declared to me that "a moderate Calvinism suited him best". In 1852 he was forty-five years old.

He had not hardened: he was alive, rejecting what was dead, laying hold of what was true to him, and living by it. Nor was the change hurried or ill-considered which took place in him between 1849 and 1852. What he became in 1852 he was substantially to the end of his days.

The expulsion excited some notice in the world then, although, as I have said, the controversy was without much significance. The "views" of Dr. Harris and the rest of the council were already condemned. Here are some letters, not before printed, from Maurice and Kingsley on the case. The closing paragraph of Maurice's letter is remarkable because in about a twelvemonth he himself was expelled from King's College.

"MY DEAR SIR,

"I beg to thank you for your very able and interesting pamphlet. I know one of the expelled students, and have every reason to think highly of his earnestness and truthfulness.

"I feel a delicacy in p.r.o.nouncing any judgement upon the conduct of the Heads of the College, as I belong to another, and I might seem to be biased by feelings of Sectarianism and of rivalship. But there are many of your thoughts by which we may all equally profit, and which I hope to lay to heart in case I should be brought into circ.u.mstances like those of the judges or of the criminals.

"Faithfully yrs, F. D. MAURICE.

July 27, 1852.

21 Queen's Square, Bloomsbury."

"EVERSLEY. Sat.u.r.day.

"DEAR SIR,

"I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your very clever and well- written pamphlet, which I have read with no surprise but with most painful interest; and I beg to thank you for the compliment implied in your sending it to me. Your son ought to thank G.o.d for having a father who will stand by him in trouble so manfully and wisely: and as you say, this may be of the very greatest benefit to him: but it may also do him much harm, if it makes him fancy that such men as have expelled him are the real supporters of the Canon and inspiration of Scripture, and of Orthodoxy in general.

"I said that I read your pamphlet without surprise. I must explain my words. This is only one symptom of a great and growing movement, which must end in the absolute destruction of 'Orthodox dissent'

among the educated cla.s.ses, and leave the lower, if unchecked, to "Mormonism, Popery, and every kind of Fetiche-worship. The Unitarians have first felt the tide-wave: but all other sects will follow; and after them will follow members of the Established Church in proportion as they have been believing, not in the Catholic and Apostolic Faith, as it is in the Bible, but in some compound or other of Calvinist doctrine with Rabbinical theories of magical inspiration, such as are to be found in Gaussen's Theopneustic--a work of which I cannot speak in terms of sufficient abhorrence, however well meaning the writer may have been. Onward to Strauss, Transcendentalism--and Mr. John Chapman's Catholic Series is the appointed path, and G.o.d help them!--I speak as one who has been through, already, much which I see with the deepest sympathy perplexing others round me; and you write as a man who has had the same experience. Whether or not we agree in our conclusions at present, you will forgive me for saying, that every week shows me more and more that the 'Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Faith', so far from being incompatible with the most daring science, both physical, metaphysical, and philological, or with the most extended notions of inspiration, or with continual inrushes of new light from above, a.s.sumes them, a.s.serts them, and cannot be kept Catholic, or true to itself, without the fullest submission to them. I speak as a heartily orthodox priest of the Church of England; you will excuse my putting my thoughts in a general and abstract form in so short a letter. But if your son--(I will not say you--for your age must be, and your acquirements evidently are--greater than my own) if your son would like to write to me about these matters, I do believe before G.o.d, who sees me write, that as one who has been through what he has, and more, I may have something to tell him, or at least to set him thinking over. I speak frankly. If I am taking a liberty, you will pardon the act for the sake of the motive.

I am, dear Sir, "Your obedient and faithful servant, "C. KINGSLEY."

It would be a mistake to suppose that the creed in which I had been brought up was or could be for ever cast away like an old garment.

The beliefs of childhood and youth cannot be thus dismissed. I know that in after years I found that in a way they revived under new forms, and that I sympathized more with the Calvinistic Independency of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than with the modern Christianity of church or chapel. At first, after the abandonment of orthodoxy, I naturally thought nothing in the old religion worth retaining, but this temper did not last long. Many mistakes may be pardoned in Puritanism in view of the earnestness with which it insists on the distinction between right and wrong. This is vital.

In modern religion the path is flowery. The absence of difficulty is a sure sign that no good is being done. How far we are from the strait gate, from the way that is narrow which leadeth unto life, the way which is found only by few! The great doctrines of Puritanism are also much nearer to the facts of actual experience than we suppose.

After the expulsion I was adrift, knowing no craft, belonging to no religious body, and without social or political interest. I engaged myself to a schoolmaster. The story of my very brief stay with him has been elsewhere told with some variation, but I may as well relate it here so as to make my little history complete. The school was somewhere in Stoke Newington. I got there in the evening when it was quite dark. After a word or two with my chief I was shown into a large school-room. Two candles were placed on a raised desk, and this was all the light permitted for the illumination of the great empty s.p.a.ce round me. The walls were hung with maps, and the place of honour on the end wall was occupied by a huge drawing of the globe, in perspective, carefully coloured. This masterpiece was the work of the proprietor, an example of the precious learning which might be acquired at his "establishment". After I had sat down for a few minutes a servant brought me my supper, placed it on a desk, and showed me my bedroom. I ate my meal, and after some time, as n.o.body came to see me, I thought I had better go to bed. I had to ascend a ladder, which I pulled up after me. When I had shut the door I looked out of window. Before me lay London and the dull glare of its lights. There was no distinct noise perceptible; but a deadened roar came up to me. Over in the south-west was the house of the friend I had left, always a warm home for me when I was in town. Then there fell upon me what was the beginning of a trouble which has lasted all my life. The next afternoon I went to the proprietor and told him I could not stay. He was greatly amazed, and still more so because I could give him no reason for leaving.

He protested very reasonably that I could not break my engagement at the beginning of term, but he gave me permission to look for a subst.i.tute. I found a Scotch graduate who, like myself, had been accused of heresy, and had nothing to do. He came the same day, and I went back to --- Terrace, somewhere out by Haverstock Hill. I forget its name; it was a dull row of stuccoed ugliness. But to me that day Grasmere, the Quantocks, or the Cornish sea-coast would have been nothing compared with that stucco line. When I knocked at the door the horrible choking fog had rolled away: I rushed inside; there was a hearty embrace, and the sun shone gloriously. Still, I had nothing to do.

At this point I had intended to stop. A good part of my life henceforward has appeared under disguise in one of my books, but I think on reconsideration it will be better to record here also what little remains to be told about myself, and to narrate it as history. I called on several publishers and asked for employment, but could get none till I came to John Chapman, editor and proprietor of the Westminster Review, as well as publisher, mainly of books which were theologically heretical, and, I am sorry to say, did not pay. He lived at 142 Strand.

As the New College council had tested my orthodoxy, so Chapman tested my heresy and found that I was fit for the propagandist work in No. 142 and for its society. He asked me if I believed in miracles. I said "Yes and no". I did not believe that an actual Curtius leaped into the gulf in the Forum and saved Rome, but I did believe in the spiritual truth set forth in the legend. This reply was allowed to pa.s.s, although my scepticism would have been more satisfactory and more useful if it had been a little more thorough.

I was soon taken off the Westminster, and my occupation now was to write Chapman's letters, to keep his accounts, and, most disagreeable, to "subscribe" his publications, that is to say, to call on booksellers and ask how many copies they would take. Of George Eliot, who lodged at No. 142, I have often spoken, and have nothing to add. It is a lasting sorrow to me that I allowed my friendship with her to drop, and that after I left Chapman I never called on her. She was then unknown, except to a few friends, but I did know what she was worth. I knew that she was not only endowed with extraordinary genius, but with human qualities even more precious. She took the kindest notice of me, an awkward creature not accustomed to society. It is sad that youth should be so confident in its own resources that it will not close its hand upon the treasure which is placed inside it. It was not only George Eliot by whom I neglected to profit. I might have seen Rachel. I recollect the evening, and I believe I was offered a ticket. It was not worth while to walk a couple of hundred yards to enrich myself for ever! I knew intimate friends of Caroline Fox, but I made no effort to become acquainted with her. What a difference it would make to me now, living so much in the past, if Penjerrick, with a dream of its lawn sloping southward and seaward, and its society of all the most interesting people in England, should be amongst my possessions, thrusting out and replacing much that is ugly, monotonous, and depressing. I would earnestly, so earnestly, implore every boy and girl religiously to grasp their chances. Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven.

There was one opportunity, however, I did not miss, and this was Caleb Morris. About him also I have written, but for the sake of continuity I will repeat some of it. He had singular influence, not only over me, but over nearly every young man whom he met. He was originally an Independent minister in Wales, where the people are mostly Dissenters, but he came to London when he had not pa.s.sed middle life, and took charge of the church in Fetter Lane. He was tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, erect, but was partly disabled by a strangely nervous temperament which, with an obscure bodily trouble, frequently prevented him from keeping his engagements.

Often and often messengers had to be dispatched late on Sunday morning to find a subst.i.tute for him at Fetter Lane, and people used to wait in the portico of the chapel until the service had well begun, and then peep through the door to see who was in the pulpit.

He was the most eloquent speaker I ever heard. I never shall forget his picture of the father, in the parable of the prodigal son, watching for his child's return, all his thoughts swallowed up in one--WILL HE COME BACK TO-DAY? When he did come--no word of rebuke.

The hardest thing in the world is to be completely generous in forgiveness. The most magnanimous of men cannot resist the temptation--BUT AT THE SAME TIME YOU MUST SEE, MY DEAREST, DON'T YOU? Almost equally difficult, but not quite, is the simple confession without an extenuating word, I HAVE SINNED AGAINST HEAVEN. The father does not hear. BRING FORTH THE BEST ROBE AND PUT IT ON HIM, AND PUT A RING ON HIS HAND AND SHOES ON HIS FEET. A ring on his hand! Shoes on his feet we can understand, but there is to be a ring, honour, enn.o.blement! . . . The first movement of repentance was--I WILL ARISE AND GO TO MY FATHER. The omissions in Morris's comment were striking. There was no word of the orthodox machinery of forgiveness. It was through Morris that the Bible became what it always has been to me. It has not solved directly any of the great problems which disturb my peace, and Morris seldom touched them controversially, but he uncovered such a wealth of wonder and beauty in it that the problems were forgotten.

Lord Bacon was Morris's hero, both for his method and his personal character. These were the days before the researches of Spedding, when Bacon was supposed to be a ma.s.s of those impossible paradoxes in which Macaulay delighted. To Morris, Bacon's Submission and his renunciation of all defence were sufficient. With what pathos he repeated Bacon's words when the Lords asked him whether the subscription to the Submission was in his own hand. "My Lords, it is my act, my hand, my heart. I beseech your Lordships, be merciful to a broken reed."

There is nothing more to be said about Chapman's. I left after an offer of partnership, which, it is needless to say, I did not accept. Mr. Whitbread obtained for me a clerkship in the Registrar- General's office, Somerset House. I was there two or three years, and was then transferred to the Admiralty. Meanwhile I had married.

The greater part of my life has been pa.s.sed in what it is now usual to contemn as the Victorian age. Whatever may be the justice of the scorn poured out upon it by the superior persons of the present generation, this Victorian age was distinguished by an enthusiasm which can only be compared to a religious revival. Maud was read at six in the morning as I walked along Holborn; Pippa Pa.s.ses late at night in my dark little room in Serle Street, although of course it was a long while after the poem made its appearance. Wonderful!

What did I see as I stood at my desk in my Serle Street bedroom?

"Day!

Faster and more fast, O'er night's brim, day boils at last; Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim Where spurting and suppresst it lay--"

There on the horizon lies the cloud cup. Over the brim boils, pure gold, the day! The day which is before me is Pippa's day, and not a day in the Strand: it is a "twelve-hours treasure": I am as eager as Pippa "not to squander a wavelet of thee". The vision still lives. The friend who stood by my side is still with me, although he died years and years ago. What was true of me was true of half a score of my friends. If it is true that the Victorian time was ugly and vulgar, it was the time of the Virginians, of David Copperfield, of Tennyson's Poems, of Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, of the Letters and Life of Lord Bacon, of Emerson's Essays, of Festus, of the Dramatis Personae, and of the Apologia. We were at the Academy at eight o'clock on a May morning to see, at the very earliest moment, the Ophelia, the Order for Release, the Claudio and Isabella, Seddon's Jerusalem, Lewis's Arab Scribe and his Frank Encampment in the Desert. The last two, though, I think, were in the exhibition of the Old Water Colour Society. The excitement of those years between 1848 and 1890 was, as I have said, something like that of a religious revival, but it was reasonable.

These notes are not written for publication, but to please two or three persons related to me by affection.