William Hale White

“ But, notwithstanding her little affectations, p. 43she was always glad to let us go to Oakley with Jane, not that she wanted to get rid of us, but because she loved her. Nothing but good did I get from my wholly unlearned nurse and Oakley. Never a coarse word, unbounded generosity, and an unreasoning spontaneity, which I do think one of the most blessed of virtues, suddenly making us glad when nothing is expected. A child knows, no one so well, whereabouts in the scale of goodness to place generosity. Nobody can estimate its true value so accurately. ”

“ Almost every Sunday some woman was carried out fainting. Do what I could it was impossible to keep awake. When I was quite little I was made to stand on the p. 46seat, a spectacle, with other children in the like case, to the whole congregation, and I often nearly fell down, overcome with drowsiness. My weakness much troubled me, because, although it might not be a heinous sin, such as bathing on Sunday, it showed that I was not one of God’s children, like Samuel, who ministered before the Lord girded with a linen ephod. ”

“ 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, ennoblement! . . . 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. ”

“ Another effect which Wordsworth had upon me, and has had on other people, was the modification, altogether unintentional on his part, of religious belief. He never dreams of attacking anybody for his creed, and yet it often becomes impossible for those who study him and care for him to be members of any orthodox religious community. At any rate it would have been impossible in the town of Bedford. His poems imply a living God, different from the artificial God of the churches. ”

“ 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 passed middle life, and took charge of the church in Fetter Lane. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To the east towards fenland, the country is flat, and the river is broad, slow, and deep. Towards the west it is quicker, involved, fold doubling almost completely on fold, so that it takes sixty miles to accomplish thirteen as the crow flies. Beginning at Kempston, and on towards Clapham, Oakley, Milton, Harrold, it is bordered by the gentlest of hills or rather undulations. At Bedford the navigation for barges stopped, and there were very few pleasure boats, one of which was mine. The water above the bridge was strictly preserved, and the fishing was good. ”

“ Finally, it was not possible now to get a living in Bedford as a bookseller. The drawing class in the school was fairly good, and I believe I had profited by it. Anyhow, I loved drawing, and wished I might be an artist. The decision was against me, and I was handed over to a private tutor to prepare for the Countess of Huntingdon’s College at Cheshunt, which admitted students other than those which belonged to the Connexion, provided their creed did not materially differ from that which governed the Connexion trusts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The subject of the lecture was the inspiration of the Bible. The two students before mentioned were members of this class, and asked some questions about the formation of the canon and the authenticity of the separate books. They were immediately stopped by the Principal in summary style. “I must inform you that this is not an open question within these walls. There is a great body of truth received as orthodoxy by the great majority of Christians, the explanation of which is one thing, but to doubt it is another, and the foundation must not be questioned.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ My father wrote and published a defence of us, entitled To Think or not to Think, with two noble 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. ”

“ The Reply is an admirable specimen of the way in which a controversy should be conducted; without heat, the writer uniformly mindful of his object, which is not personal distinction, but the conviction of his neighbour, poor as well as rich, all the facts in order, every point answered, and not one evaded. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 p. 68“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. ”

“ The elders of the church at Bedford belonged mostly to the middle class in the town, but some of them were farmers. Ignorant they were to a degree which would shock the most superficial young p. 20person of the present day; and yet, if the farmer’s ignorance and the ignorance of the young person could be reduced to the same denomination, I doubt whether it would not be found that the farmer knew more than the other. ”

“ Your son has very singular gifts for painting. I think the work he has done at the College nearly the most promising of any that has yet been done there, and I sincerely trust the apparent want of perseverance has hitherto been only the p. 7disgust of a creature of strong instincts who has not got into its own element—he seems to me a fine fellow—and I hope you will be very proud of him some day—but I very seriously think you must let him have his bent in this matter—and then—if he does not work steadily—take him to task to purpose. ”

“ 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, p. 12except 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. ”

“ He was found by those who had followed him, and in the darkness and confusion they did not recognize him. They picked him up, thinking he was the man for whom they had been sent. When they reached the Swan Inn they found out their mistake, and returned to the other man. He recovered.
I had only one set of relations in Bedford, my aunt, who was my father’s sister, her husband, Samuel Lovell, and their children, my cousins. My uncle was a maltster and coal merchant. ”

“ The old meeting-house held about 700 people, and was filled every Sunday. It was not the gifts of the minister, certainly after the days of my early childhood, which kept such a congregation steady. The reason why it held together was the simple loyalty which prevents a soldier or a sailor from mutinying, although the commanding officer may deserve no respect. Most of the well-to-do tradesfolk were Dissenters. ”

“ 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 soon as the messenger, and invaded my uncle Lovell’s dining-room, reaching nearly as high as the top of the table. ”

“ 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 p. 79few! The great doctrines of Puritanism are also much nearer to the facts of actual experience than we suppose. ”

“ Once a month the members of the church, while they were seated in the pews, received the bread and wine at the hands of the deacons, the minister reciting meanwhile passages from Scripture. Those of the congregation who had not been converted, and who consequently did not belong to the church and were not communicants, watched the rite from the gallery. What the reflective unconverted, p. 19who were upstairs, thought I cannot say. The master might with varying emotions survey the man who cleaned his knives and boots. ”

“ 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 God? Can’st thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?—it is high as heaven; what can’st thou do? deeper than hell; 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 p. ”

“ In the “singing-pew” sat a clarionet, a double bass, a bassoon, and a flute: also a tenor voice which “set the tune”. The carpenter, to whom the tenor voice belonged, had a tuning-fork which he p. 18struck on his desk and applied to his ear. He then hummed the tuning-fork note, and the octave below, the double bass screwed up and responded, the leader with the tuning-fork boldly struck out, everybody following, including the orchestra, and those of the congregation who had bass or tenor voices sang the air. Each of the instruments demanded a fair share of solos. ”

“ 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 p. 11every 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! ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 p. 29mob. 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. ”

“ 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 p. 39him 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. ”