Mark Rutherford (William Hale White)
‘Mark Rutherford‘ was the pseudonym of William Hale White
(1831-1913). Rutherford is generally classed as a minor
Victorian novelist, and noted for his depiction of
provincial dissenting life, and of the ’loss of faith’ of
the Victorian period. There is much more to Hale White
than this. Despite working for over thirty years as a
civil servant, he wrote over a thousand newspaper
articles, translated works by Spinoza, and wrote various
works of literary criticism.
He has never had a wide following, but writers such as Andre Gide, D.H. Lawrence, and
Arnold Bennett have all praised his work. The aim of
this site is to make Mark Rutherford‘s work more widely
known (particularly his journalism), and to act as a forum
for discussions about Mark Rutherford.
Comments, criticisms, and especially contributions, are
always welcome to David
French
Recent updates
August 2018
Richard Wildman by Nick Wilde
It is with sadness that I report the death of one of our
founder members, Richard Wildman at the age of 71 of
progressive supranuclear palsy. Richard was a noted
local historian who published a number of books, mainly of
photographs on Bedford. Here is the Guardian Other
Lives obituary by his brother, Stephen:
My brother
Richard, who has died aged 71, was a respected authority
on the history and architecture of Bedford, his home
town. From Bedford Modern School he went to read
History at Clare College, Cambridge, in 1968 co-founding
with Gavin Stamp the Cambridge University group of the
Victorian Society.
While still a student,
Richard took on the Harpur Trust in defence of the
Bedford Modern School building (by Edward Blore,
1830-33) when threatened with total demolition as the
school prepared to leave the town centre. Thanks
to his efforts, its façade remains as a noble frontage
to an otherwise undistinguished commercial
development. He also took part in the
newly-founded Bedford Society’s successful campaign to
save Priory Terrace (1832), another of the town’s most
distinguished buildings, to be sensitively refurbished
by the architect Victor Farrar.
After teaching history
in Bedford and serving as a borough councillor between
1973 and 1976, he became a secondhand bookseller, his
shop in Mill Street (opposite the former Howard
Congregational Chapel of 1849, which he had also
campaigned to save) soon a constant focus of Bedford’s
cultural life.
Giving up the shop
after nearly twenty years he was Archivist for BMS and
Secretary of the Old Bedford Modernians Club for another
sixteen years until overtaken by the onset of PSP
(Progressive Supranuclear Palsy). He took pleasure
in renewing the school’s association with one of its
most famous old boys, Christopher Fry, whose last play A
Ringing of Bells, written for and dedicated to the
school, was performed at the Olivier Theatre in 2001
(happily, on Richard’s birthday).
Richard served on many local society committees,
including the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society,
the Bedford Architectural Archaeological & Local
History Society (President, 1996-2009) and the Bedford
Art Society, of which he had been President since 2010.
He wrote extensively on
the town and its architecture, notably in Bygone Bedford
(1974), Victorian and Edwardian Bedfordshire from Old
Photographs (1978), Bedford: A Pictorial History (1991)
and the Bedford volume of Britain in Old Photographs
(1995). Always ready to share his knowledge, he
helped in the publication of Bedford’s Motoring Heritage
(2003) and a history of Bedford Rugby Club.
I first met Richard Wildman when he was a student
at Cambridge and I was Reference Librarian at
Bedford Public Library in what was to become the Harpur
Suite when the new Central Library was opened next
door.
In 1981 Richard spoke at a Symposium supporting an
exhibition marking 150 years since the birth
of Mark Rutherford with a paper
illustrated with slides called “Mark Rutherford's
Bedford”. and when a group of us formed the Mark
Rutherford Society in 2003 he was a founder member.
An inaugural meeting was held on July 12th and Richard led
a short walking tour of places in Bedford associated with
William Hale White as a boy and his novels as an author.
Richard often led architectural tours of Bedford, the town
he loved and knew so much about.
We kept in touch down the years both while he was a
bookseller in Mill Street and as Archivist at Bedford
Modern School as well as through our membership of the
Bedford Archaeological and Architectural Society and
latterly Colmworth Historical Society to which toward the
end I gave him lifts with other members of what you could
call “the Bedford contingent.”
I particularly remember his wide knowledge, not just of
things Bedford but of the world in general. He had a
aptitude for mimicry, often of our mutual friend G.M Lee
the very learned scholar who haunted the library and
worked on the Oxford Latin Dictionary. Richard had a good
sense of humour but above all an amazing memory and it was
sad to see him in his last days when his mind was as sharp
as ever but his body weakening as a result of his illness.
January 2018
There will be a Mark Rutherford Society symposium hosted
by RIMAP at the University of Bedfordshire on 23 June 2018
titled 'Literature and ‘The Woman Question': More details
and call for papers
December 2015
Letters of Philip Webb to William Hale White available
via google scholar
October 2015
A new Mark Rutherford newsletter has been published.
Subscribe here.
October 2014
Web site moved from www.concentric.net/~djfrench
to www.davidfrench.org.uk/markrutherford
March 2014
The latest Mark Rutherford newsletter is
available. It contains a 'Review of the Year's Activities'
(2013) by Nick Wilde, 'Researching Mark Rutherford in the
1940s – A Letter from Wilfred Stone', 'Complaint of a
Forsaken Civil Servant' by Mark Crees , 'A Very Exciting
Time: Arthur Smith in search of William Hale White' by
Michael Brealey , 'Dorothy Vernon White and her Help to
William Hale White Biographers' by Nick Wilde, Pierre
Leyris's Introduction to the French Edition of The
Autobiography of Mark Rutherford, introduced and
translated by Nick Jacobs , a review: 'Bedford's Victorian
Pilgrim – William Hale White in Context' by Michael
Brealey, by Catherine Harland, and on the front cover a
previously unknown photograph of The Cottage, Groombridge,
the house in which Hale White died, with a note by Bob
Owens.
July 2013
Nick Wilde's report of the Mark Rutherford symposium
held on 22nd June.
August 2012
Michael Brealey, a member of the Society, has published a
book about Mark Rutherford: Bedford's Victorian Pilgrim.
It is available from the publisher's web site and from Amazon.
January 2012
Irvin Stock, author of a critical study of Hale White,
has died aged 91. His obituary in the Boston Globe
includes the following: "There is, of course, a sense in
which any serious writer is sincere — honesty is a basic
condition of his profession and some kind of truth its
necessary raw material,'' he wrote in the book, "but we
are rarely impelled, except perhaps in mitigation of the
charge of failure, to place that word in the centre of a
critical portrait. With Hale White, however, it must in
fact go in the centre: It is the chief distinction of his
work and the source of his finest effects.''
October 2011
Hale White's poem "This is
the Night.." was on Poetry Please on Sunday 2nd
October.
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