Books: The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford
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Mark Rutherford >> The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford
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Mardon laughed and said -
"Ah, Mary, there is no sea front here, and no garden."
I took up my hat and said I must go. Both pressed me to stop, but I
declined. Mardon urged me again, and at last said -
"I believe you've never once heard Mary sing."
Mary protested, and pleaded that as they had no piano, Mr. Rutherford
would not care for her poor voice without any accompaniment. But I,
too, protested that I should, and she got out the "Messiah." Her
father took a tuning-fork out of his pocket, and having struck it, Mary
rose and began, "He was despised." Her voice was not powerful, but it
was pure and clear, and she sang with that perfect taste which is
begotten solely of a desire to honour the Master. The song always had
a profound charm for me. Partly this was due to association. The
words and tones, which have been used to embody their emotions by those
whom we have loved, are doubly expressive when we use them to embody
our own. The song is potent too, because with utmost musical
tenderness and strength it reveals the secret of the influence of the
story of Jesus. Nobody would be bold enough to cry, THAT TOO IS MY
CASE, and yet the poorest and the humblest soul has a right to the
consolation that Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
For some reason or the other, or for many reasons, Mary's voice wound
itself into the very centre of my existence. I seemed to be listening
to the tragedy of all human worth and genius. The ball rose in my
throat, the tears mounted to my eyes, and I had to suppress myself
rigidly.
Presently she ceased. There was silence for a moment. I looked round,
and saw that Mardon's face was on the table, buried in his hands. I
felt that I had better go, for the presence of a stranger, when the
heart is deeply stirred, is an intrusion. I noiselessly left the room,
and Mary followed. When we got to the door she said: "I forgot that
mother used to sing that song. I ought to have known better." Her own
eyes were full; I thought the pressure of her hand as she bade me good-
bye was a little firmer than usual, and as we parted an over-mastering
impulse seized me. I lifted her hand to my lips; without giving her
time to withdraw it, I gave it one burning kiss, and passed out into
the street. It was pouring with rain, and I had neither overcoat nor
umbrella, but I heeded not the heavens, and not till I got home to my
own fireless, dark, solitary lodgings, did I become aware of any
contrast between the sphere into which I had been exalted and the
earthly commonplace world by which I was surrounded.
CHAPTER VII--EMANCIPATION
The old Presbyterian chapels throughout the country have many of them
become Unitarian, and occasionally, even in an agricultural village, a
respectable red-brick building may be seen, dating from the time of
Queen Anne, in which a few descendants of the eighteenth century
heretics still testify against three Gods in one and the deity of Jesus
Christ. Generally speaking, the attendance in these chapels is very
meagre, but they are often endowed, and so they are kept open.
There was one in the large, straggling half-village, half-town of D-,
within about ten miles of me, and the pulpit was then vacant. The
income was about 100 pounds a year. The principal man there was a
small general dealer, who kept a shop in the middle of the village
street, and I had come to know him slightly, because I had undertaken
to give his boy a few lessons to prepare him for admission to a
boarding-school. The money in my pocket was coming to an end, and as I
did not suppose that any dishonesty would be imposed on me, and
although the prospect were not cheering, I expressed my willingness to
be considered as a candidate.
In the course of a week or two I was therefore invited to preach. I
was so reduced that I was obliged to walk the whole distance on the
Sunday morning, and as I was asked to no house, I went straight to the
chapel, and loitered about in the graveyard till a woman came and
opened a door at the back. I explained who I was, and sat down in a
Windsor chair against a small kitchen table in the vestry. It was
cold, but there was no fire, nor were any preparations made for one.
On the mantel-shelf were a bottle of water and a glass, but as the
water had evidently been there for some time, it was not very tempting.
I waited in silence for about twenty minutes, and my friend the dealer
then came in, and having shaken hands, and remarked that it was chilly,
asked me for the hymns. These I gave him, and went into the pulpit. I
found myself in a plain-looking building designed to hold about two
hundred people. There was a gallery opposite me, and the floor was
occupied with high, dark, brown pews, one or two immediately on my
right and left being surrounded with faded green curtains. I counted
my hearers, and discovered that there were exactly seventeen, including
two very old labourers, who sat on a form near the door. The gallery
was quite empty, except a little organ, or seraphine, I think it was
called, which was played by a young woman. The dealer gave out the
hymns, and accompanied the seraphine in a bass voice, singing the air.
A weak whisper might be perceived from the rest of the congregation,
but nothing more.
I was somewhat taken aback at finding in the Bible a discourse which
had been left by one of my predecessors. It was a funeral-sermon,
neatly written, and had evidently done duty on several occasions,
although the allusions in it might be considered personal. The piety
and good works of the departed were praised with emphasis, but the
masculine pronouns originally used were altered above the lines all
throughout to feminine pronouns, and the word "brother" to "sister," so
that no difficulty might arise in reading it for either sex. I was
faint, benumbed, and with no heart for anything. I talked for about
half-an-hour about what I considered to be the real meaning of the
death of Christ, thinking that this was a subject which might prove as
attractive as any other.
After the service the assembly of seventeen departed, save one thin
elderly gentleman, who came into the vestry, and having made a slight
bow, said: "Mr. Rutherford, will you come with me, if you please?" I
accordingly followed him, almost in silence, through the village till
we reached his house, where his wife, who had gone on before, received
us. They had formerly kept the shop which the dealer now had, but had
retired. They might both be about sixty-five, and were of about the
same temperament, pale, thin, and ineffectual, as if they had been fed
on gruel.
We had dinner in a large room with an old-fashioned grate in it, in
which was stuck a basket stove. I remember perfectly well what we had
for dinner. There was a neck of mutton (cold), potatoes, cabbage, a
suet pudding, and some of the strangest-looking ale I ever saw--about
the colour of lemon juice, but what it was really like I do not know,
as I did not drink beer. I was somewhat surprised at being asked
whether I would take potatoes OR cabbage, but thinking it was the
custom of the country not to indulge in both at once, and remembering
that I was on probation, I said "cabbage."
Very little was spoken during dinner-time by anybody, and scarcely a
word by my hostess. After dinner she cleared the things away, and did
not again appear. My host drew near the basket stove, and having
remarked that it was beginning to rain, fell into a slumber. At twenty
minutes to two we sallied out for the afternoon service, and found the
seventeen again in their places, excepting the two labourers, who were
probably prevented by the wet from attending.
The service was a repetition of that in the morning, and when I came
down my host again came forward and presented me with nineteen
shillings. The fee was a guinea, but from that two shillings were
abated for my entertainment. He informed me at the same time that a
farmer, who had been hearing me and who lived five miles on my road,
would give me a lift. He was a very large, stout man, with a rosy
countenance, which was somewhat of a relief after the gruel face of my
former friend. We went round to a stable-yard, and I got into a four-
wheeled chaise. His wife sat with him in front, and a biggish boy sat
with me behind.
When we came to a guide-post which pointed down his lane, I got out,
and was dismissed in the dark with the observation--uttered good-
naturedly and jovially, but not very helpfully--that he was "afraid I
should have a wettish walk." The walk certainly was wettish, and as I
had had nothing to eat or drink since my midday meal, I was miserable
and desponding. But just before I reached home the clouds rolled off
with the south-west wind into detached, fleecy masses, separated by
liquid blue gulfs, in which were sowed the stars, and the effect upon
me was what that sight, thank God, always has been--a sense of the
infinite, extinguishing all mean cares.
I expected to hear no more from my Unitarian acquaintances, and was
therefore greatly surprised when, a week after my visit, I received an
invitation to "settle" amongst them. The usual month's trial was
thought unnecessary, as I was not altogether a stranger to some of
them. I hardly knew what to do, I could not feel any enthusiasm at the
prospect of the engagement, but, on the other hand, there was nothing
else before me. There is no more helpless person in this world than a
minister who is thrown out of work. At any rate, I should be doing no
harm if I went.
I pondered over the matter a good deal, and then reflected that in a
case where every opening is barred save one, it is our duty not to
plunge at an impassable barrier, but to take that one opening, however
unpromising it may be. Accordingly I accepted. My income was to be a
hundred a year, and it was proposed that I should lodge with my friend
the retired dealer, who had the only two rooms in the village which
were available.
I went to bid Mardon and Mary good-bye. I had not seen either of them
since the night of the song. To my surprise I found them both away.
The blinds were down and the door locked. A neighbour, who heard me
knocking, came out and told me the news. Mardon had had a dispute with
his employer, and had gone to London to look for work. Mary had gone
to see a relative at some distance, and would remain there until her
father had determined what was to be done.
I obtained the addresses of both of them, and wrote to Mardon, telling
him what my destiny for the present was to be. To Mary I wrote also,
and to her I offered my heart. Looking backward, I have sometimes
wondered that I felt so little hesitation; not that I have ever doubted
since, that what I did then was the one perfectly right thing which I
have done in my life, but because it was my habit so to confuse myself
with meditative indecision. I had doubted before. I remember once
being so near engaging myself to a girl that the desk was open and the
paper under my hand. But I held back, could not make up my mind, and
happily was stayed. Had I not been restrained, I should for ever have
been miserable. The remembrance of this escape, and the certain
knowledge that of all beings whom I knew I was most likely to be
mistaken in an emergency, always produced in me a torturing tendency to
inaction. There was no such tendency now. I thought I chose Mary, but
there was no choice. The feeblest steel filing which is drawn to a
magnet, would think, if it had consciousness, that it went to the
magnet of its own free will. My soul rushed to hers as if dragged by
the force of a loadstone.
But she was not to be mine. I had a note from her, a sweet note,
thanking me with much tenderness for my affectionate regard for her,
but saying that her mind had long since been made up. She was an only
child of a mother whom her father had loved above everything in life,
and she could never leave him nor suffer any affection to interfere
with that which she felt for him and which he felt for her. I might
well misinterpret him, and think it strange that he should be so much
bound up in her. Few people knew him as she did.
The shock to me at first was overpowering, and I fell under the
influence of that horrible monomania from which I had been free for so
long. For weeks I was prostrate, with no power of resistance; the evil
being intensified by my solitude. Of all the dreadful trials which
human nature has the capacity to bear unshattered, the worst--as,
indeed, I have already said--is the fang of some monomaniacal idea
which cannot be wrenched out. A main part of the misery, as I have
also said, lies in the belief that suffering of this kind is peculiar
to ourselves. We are afraid to speak of it, and not knowing,
therefore, how common it is, we are distracted with the fear that it is
our own special disease.
I managed to get through my duties, but how I cannot tell. Fortunately
our calamities are not what they appear to be when they lie in
perspective behind us or before us, for they actually consist of
distinct moments, each of which is overcome by itself. I was helped by
remembering my recovery before, and I was able now, as a reward of
long-continued abstinence from wine, to lie much stiller, and wait with
more patience till the cloud should lift.
Mardon having gone to London, I was more alone than ever, but my love
for Mary increased in intensity, and had a good deal to do with my
restoration to health. It was a hopeless love, but to be in love
hopelessly is more akin to sanity than careless, melancholy
indifference to the world. I was relieved from myself by the anchorage
of all my thoughts elsewhere. The pain of loss was great, but the main
curse of my existence has not been pain or loss, but gloom; blind
wandering in a world of black fog, haunted by apparitions. I am not
going to expand upon the history of my silent relationship to Mary
during that time. How can I? All that I felt has been described
better by others; and if it had not been, I have no mind to attempt a
description myself, which would answer no purpose.
I continued to correspond with Mardon, but with Mary I interchanged no
word. After her denial of me I should have dreaded the charge of
selfishness if I had opened my lips again. I could not place myself in
her affection before her father.
My work at the chapel was of the most lifeless kind. My people really
consisted of five families--those of the retired dealer, the farmer who
took me home the first day I preached, and a man who kept a shop in the
village for the sale of all descriptions of goods, including ready-made
clothing and provisions. He had a wife and one child.
Then there was a super-annuated brass-founder, who had a large house
near, and who nominally was a Unitarian, having professed himself a
Unitarian in the town in which he was formerly in business, where
Unitarianism was flourishing. He had come down here to cultivate, for
amusement, a few acres of ground, and play the squire at a cheap rate.
Released from active employment, he had given himself over to eating
and drinking, particularly the drinking of port wine. His wife was
dead, his sons were in business for themselves, and his daughters all
went to church. His connection with the chapel was merely nominal, and
I was very glad it was so. I was hardly ever brought into contact with
him, except as trustee, and once I was asked to his house to dinner;
but the attempt to make me feel my inferiority was so painful, and the
rudeness of his children was so marked, that I never went again.
There was also a schoolmaster, who kept a low-priced boarding-school
with a Unitarian connection. He lived, however, at such a distance
that his visits were very unfrequent. Sometimes on a fine summer's
Sunday morning the boys would walk over--about twenty of them
altogether, but this only happened perhaps half-a-dozen times in a
year.
Although my congregation had a freethought lineage, I do not think that
I ever had anything to do with a more petrified set. With one
exception, they were meagre in the extreme. They were perfectly
orthodox, except that they denied a few orthodox doctrines. Their
method was as strict as that of the most rigid Calvinist. They plumed
themselves, however, greatly on their intellectual superiority over the
Wesleyans and Baptists round them; and so far as I could make out, the
only topics they delighted in were demonstrations of the unity of God
from texts in the Bible, and polemics against tri-theism. Sympathy
with the great problems then beginning to agitate men they had none.
Socially they were cold, and the entertainment at their houses was pale
and penurious. They never considered themselves bound to contribute a
shilling to my support. There was an endowment of a hundred a year,
and they were relieved from all further anxiety. They had no
enthusiasm for their chapel, and came or stayed away on the Sunday just
as it suited them, and without caring to assign any reason.
The one exception was the wife of the shopkeeper. She was a contrast
to her husband and all the rest. I do not think she was a Unitarian
born and bred. She talked but little about theology, but she was
devoted to her Bible, and had a fine sense for all the passages in it
which had an experience in them. She was generous, spiritual, and
possessed of an unswerving instinct for what was right. Oftentimes her
prompt decisions were a scandal to her more sedate friends, who did not
believe in any way of arriving at the truth except by rationalising,
but she hardly ever failed to hit the mark. It was in questions of
relationship between persons, of behaviour, and of morals, that her
guidance was the surest. In such cases her force seemed to keep her
straight, while the weakness of those around made it impossible for
them not to wander, first on one side and then on the other. She was
unflinching in her expressions, and at any sacrifice did her duty. It
was her severity in obeying her conscience which not only gave
authority to her admonitions, but was the source of her inspirations.
She was not much of a reader, but she read strange things. She had
some old volumes of a magazine--a "Repository" of some kind; I have
forgotten what--and she picked out from them some translations of
German verses which she greatly admired. She was not a well educated
woman in the school sense of the word, and of several of our greatest
names in literature had heard nothing. I do not think she knew
anything about Shakespeare, and she never entered into the meaning of
dramatic poetry. At all points her path was her own, intersecting at
every conceivable angle the paths of her acquaintances, and never
straying along them except just so far as they might happen to be hers.
While I was in the village an event happened which caused much
commotion. Her son was serving in the shop, and there was in the house
at the time a nice-looking, clean servant-girl. Mrs. Lane, for that
was my friend's name, had meditated discharging her, for, with her
usual quickness, she thought she saw something in the behaviour of her
son to the girl which was peculiar. One morning, however, both her son
and the girl were absent, and there was a letter upon the table
announcing that they were in a town about twenty miles off and were
married.
The shock was great, and a tumult of voices arose, confusing counsel.
Mrs. Lane said but little, but never wavered an instant. Leaving her
husband to "consider what was best to be done," she got out the gig,
drove herself over to her son's lodging, and presented herself to her
amazed daughter-in-law, who fell upon her knees and prayed for pity.
"My dear," said Mrs. Lane, "get up this instant; you are my daughter.
Not another word. I've come to see what you want." And she kissed her
tenderly. The girl was at heart a good girl. She was so bound to her
late mistress and her new mother by this behaviour, that the very depth
in her opened, and she loved Mrs. Lane ever afterwards with almost
religious fervour. She was taught a little up to her son's level, and
a happier marriage I never knew. Mrs. Lane told me what she had done,
but she had no theory about it. She merely said she knew it to be the
right thing to do.
She was very fond of getting up early in the morning and going out, and
in such a village this was an eccentricity bordering almost on lunacy.
At five o'clock she was often wandering about her garden. She was a
great lover of order in the house, and kept it well under control, but
I do not think I ever surprised her when she was so busy that she would
not easily, and without any apparent sacrifice, leave what she was
doing to come and talk with me.
As I have said, the world of books in which I lived was almost
altogether shut to her, but yet she was the only person in the village
whose conversation was lifted out of the petty and personal into the
region of the universal. I have been thus particular in describing
her--I fear without raising any image of her--because she was of
incalculable service to me. I languished from lack of life, and her
mere presence, so exuberant in its full vivacity, was like mountain
air. Furthermore, she was not troubled much with my philosophical
difficulties. They had not come in her path. Her world was the world
of men and women--more particularly of those she knew--and it was a
world in which it did me good to dwell. She was all the more important
to me, because outside our own little circle there was no society
whatever. The Church and the other Dissenting bodies considered us
non-Christian.
I often wondered that Mr. Lane retained his business, and, indeed, he
would have lost it if he had not established a reputation for honesty,
which drew customers to him, who, notwithstanding the denunciations of
the parson, preferred tea with some taste in it from a Unitarian to the
insipid wood-flavoured stuff which was sold by the grocer who believed
in the Trinity.
CHAPTER VIII--PROGRESS IN EMANCIPATION
I was with my Unitarian congregation for about a twelvemonth. My life
during that time, save so far as my intercourse with Mrs. Lane, and one
other friend presently to be mentioned, was concerned, was as sunless
and joyless as it had ever been. Imagine me living by myself, roaming
about the fields, and absorbed mostly upon insoluble problems with
which I never made any progress, and which tended to draw me away from
what enjoyment of life there was which I might have had.
One day I was walking along under the south side of a hill, which was a
great place for butterflies, and I saw a man, apparently about fifty
years old, coming along with a butterfly-net. He did not see me, for
he looked about for a convenient piece of turf, and presently sat down,
taking out a sandwich-box, from which he produced his lunch. His
occupation did not particularly attract me, but in those days, if I
encountered a new person who was not repulsive, I was always as eager
to make his acquaintance as if he perchance might solve a secret for
me, the answer to which I burned to know. I have been disappointed so
many times, and have found that nobody has much more to tell me, that
my curiosity has somewhat abated, but even now, the news that anybody
who has the reputation for intelligence has come near me, makes me
restless to see him. I accordingly saluted the butterfly-catcher, who
returned the salutation kindly, and we began to talk.
He told me that he had come seven miles that morning to that spot
because he knew that it was haunted by one particular species of
butterfly which he wished to get; and as it was a still, bright day, he
hoped to find a specimen. He had been unsuccessful for some years.
Presupposing that I knew all about his science, he began to discourse
upon it with great freedom, and he ended by saying that he would be
happy to show me his collection, which was one of the finest in the
country.
"But I forget," said he, "as I always forget in such cases, perhaps you
don't care for butterflies."
"I take much interest in them. I admire exceedingly the beauty of
their colours."
"Ah, yes, but you don't care for them scientifically, or for collecting
them."
"No, not particularly. I cannot say I ever saw much pleasure in the
mere classification of insects."
"Perhaps you are devoted to some other science?"
"No, I am not."
"Well, I daresay it looks absurd for a man at my years to be running
after a moth. I used to think it was absurd, but I am wiser now.
However, I cannot stop to talk; I shall lose the sunshine. The first
time you are anywhere near me, come and have a look. You will alter
your opinion."
Some weeks afterwards I happened to be in the neighbourhood of the
butterfly-catcher's house, and I called. He was at home, and welcomed
me cordially. The first thing he did was to show me his little museum.
It was really a wonderful exhibition, and as I saw the creatures in
lines, and noted the amazing variations of the single type, I was
filled with astonishment. Seeing the butterflies systematically
arranged was a totally different thing from seeing a butterfly here and
there, and gave rise to altogether new thoughts. My friend knew his
subject from end to end, and I envied him his mastery of it. I had
often craved the mastery of some one particular province, be it ever so
minute. I half or a quarter knew a multitude of things, but no one
thing thoroughly, and was never sure, just when I most wanted to be
sure. We got into conversation, and I was urged to stay to dinner. I
consented, and found that my friend's household consisted of himself
alone. After dinner, as we became a little more communicative, I asked
him when and how he took to this pursuit.
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