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Hale White

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"William Hale White" redirects here. For William Hale-White (the son of William Hale White), see William Hale-White.
This article is about the British writer. For the English footballer, see Mark Rutherford (footballer).

William Hale White
1887 crayon drawing by Arthur Hughes
Born(1831-12-22)22 December 1831
Bedford, England
Died14 March 1913(1913-03-14) (aged 81)
Groombridge, England
EducationBedford Modern School
Known forAuthor

William Hale White (22 December 1831 – 14 March 1913), known by his pseudonym Mark Rutherford, was a British writer and civil servant.[1][2] His obituary in The Times stated that the "employment of a pseudonym, and sometimes of two (for some of 'Mark Rutherford's' work was 'edited by his friend, Reuben Shapcott'), was sufficient to prove a retiring disposition, and Mr. Hale White was little before the world in person."[2]

Life, career and memorials

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Plaque in Carshalton
Plaque at his birthplace, Bedford

White was born in Bedford. His father, William White, a member of the Nonconformist community of the Bunyan Meeting, became well known as a doorkeeper at the House of Commons and wrote sketches of parliamentary life for the Illustrated Times.[3][4] A selection of his parliamentary sketches was published posthumously, in 1897, by Justin McCarthy, the Irish nationalist MP, as The Inner Life of the House of Commons.[5]

White himself was educated in Bedford at Bedford Modern School, then known as the English School,[6] until the family moved to London.[7] In 1848 he entered the Countess of Huntingdon's College, Cheshunt to train for the Congregational Ministry.[8] He developed increasingly unconventional views and in 1850 wrote to Thomas Carlyle who responded with a full reply encouraging him to stand by his convictions.[9] White later entered New College, London, but the further development of his views prevented him taking up that career and he was expelled for questioning aspects of scripture.[10] Hale White became known as a dissenter.[11]

In 1852 he was employed by John Chapman to work as a personal assistant and subscription tout at The Westminster Review.[12] White was an early proponent of women's rights.[13] Having worked alongside her for The Westminster Review, White was a friend of George Eliot and they both lodged at 142 Strand, London which was owned by John Chapman.[14][15] White wrote an article about his friendship with George Eliot for The Bookman in August 1902 entitled George Eliot as I knew her.[16]

In 1854, White joined the civil service, first as a clerk at the Registrar General's Office at Somerset House and later as a clerk at the Admiralty.[3][7] In 1861 he began writing newspaper articles to increase his income, having met and married Harriet Arthur in 1856 at the Congregational Church in Kentish Town, and started a family.[7][10]

As a journalist he wrote for The Aberdeen Herald, The Birmingham Post, The Morning Star, The Nonconformist, The Rochdale News and The Scotsman.[12] Over fourteen years he wrote parliamentary sketches for The Birmingham Post.[12] He also contributed articles on literary figures in The Contemporary Review, Macmillan's Magazine, The Spectator, The Athenaeum, The Bookman and, the nonconformist, The British Weekly, including essays on Byron, Goethe, Shelley and Dorothy Wordsworth.[12]

White had already served his apprenticeship to journalism before he made his name, or rather his pen name, "Mark Rutherford", famous with three novels, supposedly edited by one Reuben Shapcott: The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford (1881), Mark Rutherford's Deliverance (1885) and The Revolution in Tanner's Lane (1887).[3][17][18] George Orwell described Deliverance as "one of the best novels in English."[19]

Under his own name White translated Spinoza's Ethics (1883).[20] His later books include Miriam's Schooling, and Other Papers (1890), Catherine Furze (2 vols, 1893), Clara Hopgood (1896), Pages from a Journal, with Other Papers (1900), and John Bunyan (1905).[3][18]

Hale White died in Groombridge on 14 March 1913 at the age of 81.[2] One of his obituaries stated that:[21]

Mr White's novels have a poignant quality of sadness, in which, however, there is both nobility and beauty. He seems to be recording the revelation of a soul's experience, and in the simplicity and directness of his narrative, he is somewhat akin, to the great Russian novelists

André Gide, in a letter dated 4 October 1915, thanked Arnold Bennett for recommending White's works.[22] Gide so admired The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford and Mark Rutherford's Deliverance that he considered writing French translations.[22] He stated that they had lifted him out of the 'slough of despond', a reference coined by Bunyan about whom White had written.[22]

D. H. Lawrence wrote about White's work:[23]

And I have always a greater respect for Mark Rutherford: I do think he is jolly good - so thorough, so sound, and so beautiful.

Claire Tomalin, the biographer of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, wrote that White's novels:[24]

draw directly on a private store of memories and emotions, and you sense quite strongly that he took up a mask in order to be nakedly confessional in a way he could not otherwise have managed.

Mark Rutherford School in Bedford is named after him and he has a blue commemorative plaque at 19 Park Hill in Carshalton.[25] There is also a plaque above his birthplace in Bedford that was unveiled by his son, Sir William Hale-White.[26][27] When he retired from the Admiralty in 1892, he lived in Hastings for a number of years where a memorial plaque commemorates him.[7]

Family

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White's first wife, Harriet, died in 1891 of multiple sclerosis. Two of their children had died in infancy.[10] In 1907, the widower White met aspiring novelist Dorothy Vernon Horace Smith, the daughter of Horace Smith who was a magistrate and minor poet.[21] They fell in love and were married three and a half years later, but enjoyed only two years of married life before his death.[28] At the time of her marriage to White, Dorothy was forty-five years his junior.[21]

His eldest son by his first wife, Sir William Hale-White, was a distinguished doctor. His second son, Jack, married Agnes Hughes, one of Arthur Hughes's daughters. Arthur Hughes had himself produced a crayon drawing of Hale White in 1887.[29] A third son became an engineer, and White's daughter Molly remained at home to care for her father.[10]

Selected publications

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  • The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford: Dissenting Minister, Trubner and Co., London, 1881[30]
  • Spinoza's Ethics, translated from the Latin, Trubner and Co., London, 1883[31]
  • Mark Rutherford's Deliverance, Trubner and Co., London, 1885[32]
  • The Revolution in Tanner's Lane, Trubner and Co., London, 1887[33]
  • Miriam's Schooling Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., London, 1890[34]
  • Catharine Furze, T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1893[35]
  • Clara Hopgood, T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1896[36]
  • An Examination of the Charge of Apostasy against Wordsworth, Longman, 1898[37]
  • Pages from a Journal, with Other Papers, T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1900[37]
  • John Bunyan, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1905[38]
  • More Pages From a Journal, Oxford University Press, 1910[39]
  • The Early Life of Mark Rutherford (W. Hale White), Oxford University Press, 1913[37]
  • The Last Pages from a Journal, Oxford University Press, 1915. Published posthumously and prefaced by his widow, Dorothy[37]

Selected work as editor or note contributor

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Quotes

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Men should not be too curious in analysing and condemning any means which nature devises to save them from themselves, whether it be coins, old books, curiosities, butterflies, or fossils

— Mark Rutherford, The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford

To die is easy when we are in perfect health. On a fine spring morning, out of doors, on the downs, mind and body sound and exhilarated, it would be nothing to lie down on the turf and pass away

— Mark Rutherford, More Pages from a Journal

Notes

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  1. ^ "White, William Hale, (22 Dec. 1831–14 March 1913), author". WHO'S WHO & WHO WAS WHO. 2007. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U192185. ISBN 978-0-19-954089-1.
  2. ^ a b c "'Mark Rutherford'". The Times. 17 March 1913. p. 42. Retrieved 19 April 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ^ a b c d  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Rutherford, Mark". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 940.
  4. ^ Brake, Laurel; Demoor, Marysa (2009). Dictionary of Nineteenth-century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland. Academia Press. ISBN 9789038213408. Retrieved 12 July 2015.
  5. ^ William White, The Inner Life of the House of Commons, edited with a preface by Justin McCarthy, MP, London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1897
  6. ^ Bedford Modern School of the black & red. OCLC 16558393 – via worldcat.org.
  7. ^ a b c d Bedford Borough Council and Central Bedfordshire Council. "Mark Rutherford (William Hale White) - Digitised Resources - The Virtual Library". culturalservices.net. Retrieved 12 July 2015.
  8. ^ "Timeline". www.davidfrench.org.uk.
  9. ^ Kent and Sussex Courier, AUGUST 4 1933, p. 9
  10. ^ a b c d Michael Brealey (8 July 2014). Bedford's Victorian Pilgrim: William Hale White in Context. Authentic Publishers. pp. 20–. ISBN 978-1-78078-351-2.
  11. ^ The Age, Annals of ENGLISH DISSENTERS, SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1946, Melbourne, Australia, p. 8
  12. ^ a b c d Brake, Laurel; Demoor, Marysa (5 November 2009). Dictionary of Nineteenth-century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland. Academia Press. ISBN 9789038213408 – via Google Books.
  13. ^ Owens, W. R.; Weedon, Alexis; Darwood, Nicola (2 July 2020). Fiction and 'The Woman Question' from 1850 to 1930. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 9781527555594 – via Google Books.
  14. ^ Stone, Wilfred H. (5 November 1956). "Hale White and George Eliot". University of Toronto Quarterly. 25 (4): 437–451. doi:10.3138/utq.25.4.437. S2CID 162039705 – via Project MUSE.
  15. ^ Ashton, Rosemary (4 November 2006). "Rosemary Ashton on Victorian publisher John Chapman". the Guardian.
  16. ^ Rintoul, M. C. (5 March 2014). Dictionary of Real People and Places in Fiction. Routledge. ISBN 9781136119323 – via Google Books.
  17. ^ Max Saunders, "Autobiografiction," Times Literary Supplement (3 October 2008), 13-15.
  18. ^ a b "Results for 'au:Rutherford, Mark,' [WorldCat.org]". worldcat.org. Retrieved 12 July 2015.
  19. ^ Orwell, George, "As I Please," 3 December 1943, Tribune.
  20. ^ Stone, Wilfred (4 November 1954). "Religion and Art of William Hale White (Mark Rutherford)". Stanford University Press – via Google Books.
  21. ^ a b c DEATH OF MR. W. HALE WHITE., VICTORIAN NOVELIST DIES AT GROOMBRIDGE, Kent and Sussex Courier, MARCH 21, 1913, p. 11
  22. ^ a b c Sheridan, Alan (5 November 1999). André Gide: A Life in the Present. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674035270 – via Google Books.
  23. ^ Lawrence, D. H. (6 June 2002). The Letters of D. H. Lawrence. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521006927 – via Google Books.
  24. ^ "Mark Rutherford - Conference - Literature and 'The Woman Question' | University of Bedfordshire". www.beds.ac.uk.
  25. ^ "WHITE, WILLIAM HALE (1831–1913)". English Heritage. Retrieved 5 August 2012.
  26. ^ "William Hale White Plaque - High Street, Bedford, Bedfordshire, UK - UK Historical Markers on Waymarking.com". www.waymarking.com.
  27. ^ THE LEICESTER MERCURY, FAMED WRITER COMMEMORATED, Native Town To Honour 'Mark Rutherford', THURSDAY, 3rd DECEMBER, 1931, p. 18
  28. ^ "Obituary of Dorothy Vernon Horace Smith, The Times". 28 August 1967. Retrieved 28 May 2016.
  29. ^ Saunders, Max (22 April 2010). Self Impression: Life-Writing, Autobiografiction, and the Forms of Modern Literature. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-161473-6 – via Google Books.
  30. ^ White, William Hale (4 November 1881). "The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford". Hodder and Stoughton – via Google Books.
  31. ^ "The London and Westminster Review". Theodore Foster. 4 November 1883 – via Google Books.
  32. ^ Rutherford, Mark (4 November 1885). "Mark Rutherford's Deliverance: Being the Second Part of His Autobiography". Oxford University Press – via Google Books.
  33. ^ Rutherford, Mark (4 November 1887). "The Revolution in Tanner's Lane". Trübner & Company – via Google Books.
  34. ^ "Brief review of Miriam's Schooling, and other Papers". The Athenaeum (3274): 124. 26 July 1890.
  35. ^ White, William Hale (4 November 1893). "Catharine Furze". Macmillan – via Google Books.
  36. ^ White, William Hale (4 November 1896). "Clara Hopgood". T. F. Unwin – via Google Books.
  37. ^ a b c d e f g Bose, T.; Colbeck, R. N. (1 November 2011). A Bookman's Catalogue Vol. 2 M-End: The Norman Colbeck Collection of Nineteenth-Century and Edwardian Poetry and Belles Lettres. UBC Press. ISBN 9780774844819 – via Google Books.
  38. ^ White, William Hale (4 November 1905). "John Bunyan". Hodder and Stoughton – via Google Books.
  39. ^ White, W. Hale (5 April 2018). More Pages from a Journal. BoD – Books on Demand. ISBN 9783732654857 – via Google Books.

References

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