Alexander Henderson

“ McCrie is not a showman with a hero on view, but an historian of principles and policy. His biography of Melville (November 1819) pursues the theme of the Scottish national career under the influence of the Reformation. The post-Reformation church history of Scotland he did not treat with the same fulness: his life of Alexander Henderson (1583?-1646) [q. v.] , in the 'Christian Instructor,' vol. x., is little more than a personal sketch. ”

“ In 1822 he was invited by Prince Alexander (Galitzin) to assist the Russian Bible Society in translating the Scriptures into various languages spoken in the Russian empire. After twenty years of foreign labour Henderson returned to England, and in 1825 was appointed tutor of the Mission College, Gosport. In 1830 he succeeded Dr William Harrison as theological lecturer and professor of Oriental languages in Highbury Congregational College. In 1850, on the amalgamation of the colleges of Homerton, Coward and Highbury, he retired on a pension. ”

“ His salary was 300l. a year. Although closely occupied with the Cape reductions, he made with his assistant during ten years upwards of sixty thousand observations, chiefly of planets and zodiacal stars, in themselves of high excellence, but vitiated (as was reported by the commission of 1876) by large errors, due to the expansiveness under heat of the sandstone piers of the transit instrument.
Henderson married in 1836 the eldest daughter of Alexander Adie, a well-known optician in Edinburgh ”

“ Henderson’s next public opportunity was in the famous Assembly which met in Glasgow on the 21st of November 1638. He was chosen moderator by acclamation, being, as Baillie says, “incomparablie the ablest man of us all for all things.” James Hamilton, 3rd marquess of Hamilton, was the king’s commissioner; and when the Assembly insisted on proceeding with the trial of the bishops, he formally dissolved the meeting under pain of treason. ”

“ The duty of drafting these formularies was put upon Henderson by the assembly. His other occupations stood in the way; moreover, he saw the necessity of co-operation with England. ‘We are not to conceive,’ he wrote to Baillie, on 20 April 1642, ‘that they will embrace our form. A new form must be set down for us all.’ Pleading his health, which always suffered in Edinburgh, and the weakness of his voice, he asked to be transferred to a country charge. He declined the principalship of St. Andrews, and was released from active duty, but was persuaded to remain in Edinburgh. ”

“ To the Uxbridge conference, opened 30 Jan. 1645, Henderson was commissioned both by the Scottish assembly and the English parliamentary committee as a manager of the proposed religious settlement. On leaving Uxbridge he obtained a passport for Holland, but appears to have remained in London. He thought of returning to Scotland in October, but sent Baillie in his stead. On 27 April 1646 Charles left Oxford for the Scottish army, reaching Newcastle-on-Tyne on 13 May. In hope of inducing him to take the ‘league and covenant,’ Henderson was sent for. ”

“ Henderson is a very pleasant young man, so far as I can judge, and a clever one, likely to make his own way in the world, with the help of all the very great friends he has. But is he to be thoroughly depended on? ”

“ This over-liberal potion of "Cough Drops" works swift wonders in Henderson's sensitive, excitable organism. He is soon upon his feet221 again, and, as he says gaily to himself, "As bright as ever, and well-nigh as strong." A sensuous delight in existence again thrills his torpid being; a wild eager craving to taste once more its long withheld joy! "Die to-night? ”

“ But it was hardly fair, one journal pointed out, to hold Henderson responsible for his untimely death.
Even Jack Delancy, when the crushing news was brought him at the club, where he sat talking with Major Fairfax, although he saw his own ruin in a flash, said, “It wouldn't have happened if Henderson had lived.”
“Not so soon,” replied the Major, hesitatingly.
“Do you mean to say that Henderson and Mavick and Mrs. Henderson would have thrown me over?”
“Why, no, not exactly; but a big machine grinds on regardless, and when the crash comes everybody looks out for himself.” ”

“ Henderson’s mind, his roominess for all thoughts, and his still reserve, his lentitude, made, as we have said, his expressions clear and quiet, to a degree that a coarse and careless man, spoiled by the violence and noise of other pulpit men, might think insipid. ”

“ Even at the clubs the talk was about these things and the opportunities for getting them.
There was a rumor about town that Henderson was a good deal extended. It alarmed a hundred people, not on Henderson's account, but their own. When one of them consulted Uncle Jerry, that veteran smiled.
“Oh, I guess Henderson's all right. But I wouldn't wonder if it meant a squeeze. Of course if he's extended, it's an excuse for settling up, and the shorts will squeal. I've seen Henderson extended a good many times,” and the old man laughed. “Don't you worry about him.” ”

“ All men are sinners, you know,” she added, with a laugh; “even my paragon of a nephew, John Temple!”
“What about him?” asked Henderson, sharply.
“Oh, he posed a great deal as a saint, but I don’t quite believe in it all. Now sit down and tell me about Miss Churchill. Do you suppose she was induced to run away by John Temple?”
“How can I tell?” answered Henderson, darkly, with lowering brow. ”

“ Henderson’s exuberant spirits prevented his ever speaking without giving vent to slang, bad puns, or sheer good-humoured nonsense.
“Aren’t you in that form, Kenrick?” asked Walter, as he saw him diverging to the right.
“Oh no! dear me, no!” said Henderson. “I am, but the eternal friend is at least two forms higher; he, let me tell you, is a star of no ordinary magnitude; he’s in the Thicksides”—meaning the Thucydides’ class. “You’ll require no end of sky-climbing before you reach his altitude. ”

“ You often rally me on my lack of enterprise and ambition, on my hermit habits. The truth is, Henderson, I am a strained and unseaworthy craft, for whom the harbor and shore are the safest quarters. I have lost trust in myself, and dare not put out to sea without feeling the strong hand of a friend with me. ”

“ He was a half-and-half man—too lazily clever to be quite honest, and too honest to be quite a criminal. Poor Jack Henderson! A good man gone wrong—let that be his epitaph when it comes to setting up his headstone. ”

“ The temperature lowered every moment. Henderson instinctively felt that this was but the beginning of the storm. He picked himself up without useless regrets for his pony, and made his way on.
The saffron hue turned to blackness, and then out of the murk shot a living green ball of fire, and ploughed into the earth. Then sheets of water, that seemed to come simultaneously from earth and sky, swept the prairie, and in the midst of it struggled Henderson, weak as a little child, half bereft of sense by the strange numbness of head and dullness of eye. ”

“ There went abroad, therefore, an impression of her amiability, her fabulous wealth in jewels and apparel, her graciousness and her cleverness and her domesticity. Her manners seemed to the reporters those of a “lady,” and of this both her wit and freedom from prudishness and her courteous treatment of them convinced them. And the best of all this was that while it was said that Henderson was one of the boldest and shrewdest of operators, and a man to be feared in the Street, he was in his family relations one of the most generous and kind-hearted of men. ”

“ An extraordinary suppressed energy was visible in every line of John Henderson's body as he sat crouching over the fire; and a look of irrepressible excitement smoldered in the eyes that gazed into the glowing coals. He was barely twenty-three years old, but the self-control that comes from endurance and privation sat unmistakably on his knitted brows and closed lips. He was neither handsome of feature nor graceful of figure, yet there was something more striking and interesting than either grace or beauty [Pg 4] in the strong, youthful form and the strong, intelligent face. ”

“ In carrying the young lady to Woodlands, and leaving her there, Sir Robert, although apparently under the compulsion of circumstances, was acting advisedly. He knew Henderson to be a man of excellent character and great respectability; and in the secrecy and mystery he observed, he sought to preclude all possibility of his interference in the affair ever reaching the ears of the king. What he had told to old Morton, he knew would go no further; that person having been an intimate friend of the young lady's father, and of course interested in all that concerned her welfare. ”

“ Loud yells, and after her again. She made for some high ground where there was a small wood. "Cut her off," signalled the Colonel wildly.
Impossible to cut off the hare. She gained the wood, which we surrounded. But, oh silly hare! she came out the other side. Minotaur after her like an arrow.
Then she tried to get away across Jezebel's front. But Jezebel was too quick, and Chloe came up in support.
Then the hare doubled again through Shotover and Minotaur, and we swung about. The hare was getting tired. She had run about three miles. She then doubled back again through Chloe and Jezebel. ”

“ There were ugly stories afloat, but they were put in so many forms, and followed by so many different sorts of denial, and so much importance was attached to every word Henderson uttered, and every step he took, that the general impression of his far-reaching sagacity and Napoleonic command of fortune was immensely raised. Nothing is more significant of our progress than the good-humored deference of the world to this sort of success. ”

“ Henderson, we won't keep you from the world of the parlors," said Ida; "but consider you have the entrée here whenever you want a quiet talk; and we will be friends," she said, stretching out her hand with the air of a queen.
"You honor me too much, Miss Van Arsdel," said I.
"Come now, Mr. Henderson, we can't allow our principal literary lion to be kept in secret places," said Miss Eva. "You are expected to walk up and down and show yourself; there are half a dozen girls to whom I have promised to present you." ”

“ Henderson died at his residence, 7 Greenhill Park, Edinburgh, on 27 June 1862, aged 58. He married in 1843 Hannah Matilda Exley, by whom he had seven children, all of whom survived him. His eldest son, George, practised as an architect in Edinburgh, in the firm of Hay & Henderson. ”

“ John Henderson had known little of the easy, pleasant paths of life, carpeted by wealth and sheltered by influence. His most childish and distant recollections carried him back to days of anxious poverty. His father, the elder son of a wealthy Scottish landowner, had quarrelled with his father, and at the age of twenty left his home, disinherited in favor of his younger brother. Possessed of a peculiar temperament—passionate, headstrong, dogged in his resolves, he had shaken the dust of Scotland from his feet ”

“ Hunt tells me that Swallow is so frightened of Jezebel he daren't lie down at night. But then, Hunt thinks Jezebel a sort of Bucephalus, and the more horses she kicks or bites the more pride he takes in her. He has no love for Swallow, unfortunately.
There's a distant cannonade going on to-day. We all eye each other.
June 17.
In the small-hours of to-night we leave this wonderful place. Why we were ever sent here or why moved away is one of those mysteries only known to a few staff officials.
But how we have loved it. At least I have. Some of the others—Jorrocks for instance—have been bored. ”

“ Surely you don't say that the loud, fat General Adams," she wrinkled her nose with disgust, "is superior to someone like Primo."
His shoulders slumped with dejection. "No, Shiela, but what are we to do? The roboes won't work for the human race any longer and the humans will not admit equality. Even though it does exist now." ”

“ Hannah More deplored Henderson's unprofitable way of life, and Wesley wrote in his ‘Journal’ that ‘with as great talents as most men in England he had lived two and thirty years and done just nothing.’ A story is told, however, that during his stay at Oxford the manuscripts which he had left in an unlocked trunk in his father's house at Hanham were used by a servant as materials to light the fire. ”

“ Henderson?"
"Yes, the very man; now when I recollect. Stay, was there any handkerchief found on him?"
"Yes; that," said an officer, producing a red silk handkerchief.
"Why, I gave him that," said Mr. Henderson. "It cost me 4s. 6d.; and it was that he had over his face when he robbed me of my hard-earned money!"
"It is true," said Charles; "and sorry am I for the frolic, which my companions forced me into."
"A frolic with five pounds at its credit," said Mr. Henderson. "Where is the money, sir?"
"Ah! I know, dear uncle," cried the watchful Jeannie, in a piercing treble of the clearest silver. ”

“ Henderson, however, expressed some surprise at the abruptness of his departure, and still more at the wild and desperate speed with which he had ridden away, regardless of the darkness of the night and of all obstacles that might be in the way.
It was what he himself, a good horseman, and who knew every inch of the ground, would not have done for a thousand merks; and a great marvel he held it, that the reckless rider had got a hundred yards without horse and man coming down, to the utter destruction of both. ”