Statues in Bedford

How often does a visitor to a town wonder who 'that statue over there' is, or a resident ask 'what statue?',  having walked passed it everyday?  These questions are answered for visitors and residents of Bedford in a new guide Bedford town centre statues: a self-guided walk with street map, by BHRS-member Stuart Antrobus.

The guide features ten statues and a door with relief panels, sculpted over two and a half centuries (1768-2009), of well-known individual Bedfordians and groups who have contributed to the town and county: the First World War memorial; the South African (Boer) War memorial; John Howard; Sir William Harpur; Glenn Miller; the Meeting Group; Verso Domani;  Trevor Huddleston; Reflections of Bedford; the Bunyan Meeting bronze chapel doors; and John Bunyan. 

World War 1 memorial

Information about each statue is displayed over a double page with a photograph on one side and text on the other, describing the statue, what it commemorates, who the sculptor was and the circumstances in which the statue was put up.  Just one page of A5 text contains a fascinating amount of information and often highlights features that it would be easy to overlook, for example the art nouveau decoration on the base of the statue of John Howard.

This guide is carefully researched, beautifully illustrated and well-laid out.   It is both handy for the visitor and of lasting value to residents and those interested in the history of the town.

The booklet costs £5 and is on sale in Bedford at the Tourist Information Centre, the The  Higgins Bedford gallery and museum and the John Bunyan Museum shop.  Proceeds go to the British Schools Museum in Hitchin and can also be purchased from the museum by sending a cheque for £5.60 payable to Hitchin British Schools Trust and posted (with own address, marking the envelope 'Statues booklet') to Admin, British Schools Museum, 41/42 Queen Street, Hitchin, Hertfordshire, SG4 9TS.

 

Mark Rutherford exhibition

Continuing the Mark Rutherford theme, an exhibition at Honeywood Museum, Carshalton Surrey will be held from Wednesday 12 June to Sunday 28 July 2013. William Hale White made Carshalton his home, living at one time in the house which is now the museum. The exhibition shows how he kept his books secret from his family; and why he insisted on nine-inch thick brick walls to divide the rooms in his house. He lived a number of parallel lives but still, at 55, found time to learn to ride a boneshaker bicycle! The exhibition also gives insights into the Victorian Carshalton that he knew for almost 30 years. 

The Friends of Honeywood Museum are mounting two events during the exhibition: 

- on Friday 12 July at 7.30pm Mark Crees will give a selection of readings  - Mark Rutherford's People;

- and on Saturday 13 July at 2.30pm there will be a guided walk to places in Carshalton associated with William Hale White.  

(Tickets for both events are £3.50 (£3.00 Friends); bookings 020 8770 4297). 

Based on a contribution by Nick Wilde

Mark Rutherford (William Hale White) anniversary

Mark Rutherford, born William Hale White in Bedford in 1831, had his life celebrated on Saturday 22 June 2013 at a symposium commemorating the 100th anniversary of his death on 14 March 1913. The Symposium, organised by the Mark Rutherford Society and held at Dr Williams’s Library in London was opened by his great-grandson, John Hale-White (below) and chaired by Professor of English Literature at the University of Bedfordshire, Bob Owens.

William Hale White is generally regarded as the most important novelist of the nineteenth century to have emerged from a Nonconformist background and to have taken Nonconformist life and experience as his main subject.  He is undeservedly neglected and the Society’s aim is to redress this.  His portrait (above, left) is by Arthur Hughes, drawn in 1887.

He is best known for six novels written under the name Mark Rutherford, published between 1881 and 1896: 

The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford (1881); 

Mark Rutherford’s Deliverance (1885);

The Revolution in Tanner’s Lane (1887); 

Miriam’s Schooling (1890); 

Catherine Furze (1893); and 

Clara Hopgood (1896).

The ‘Mark Rutherford’ novels share a power and style which are distinctive in the literary history of their time. George Orwell described Mark Rutherford’s Deliverance as ‘one of the best novels written in English’. D. H. Lawrence wrote, ‘I have always had a great respect for Mark Rutherford . . . so thorough, so sound, and so beautiful’. Arnold Bennett regarded him as ‘a novelist whom one can deeply admire’. Claire Tomalin wrote that White’s novels ‘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’.

Professor Owens opened the Symposium briefly summarising Mark Rutherford’s life and importance.  Roger Pooley, Professor of English Literature at Keele University followed with an assessment of Nonconformist culture and politics in The Revolution in Tanner’s Lane. The panel closed with Professor Valentine Cunningham of Oxford University on ‘Mark Rutherford and the Plight of the Dissenting Aesthete’.

After a lunch break in which academics and enthusiasts alike discussed Mark Rutherford over a buffet lunch, some early researchers were remembered.  Nicholas Jacobs looked at the contribution of young German researcher Hans Klinke who wrote his thesis in the late 1920s as well as noting that there were translations of Rutherford's books in French, Italian and Czech as well as Japanese. Nick Wilde read a letter from 95-year-old American Wilfred Stone recalling his work on Rutherford in the 1950s and Mike Brealey (author of Bedford's Victorian pilgrim: William Hale White in context,  Paternoster Press, 2012) told us about an early British pioneer of Hale studies, Henry Arthur Smith, whose thesis appeared in 1938. The afternoon concluded with Jean-Michel Yvard, from the University of Angiers in France, who discussed whether Mark Rutherford was an agnostic or a believer and Max Saunders, Professor of English at Kings College, London (author of Self Impression: Life-Writing, Autobiografiction, and the Forms of Modern Literature, OUP, 2010), spoke about the nature of fictional autobiography.

The day finished with an entertaining monologue by Mark Crees, Chair of the Mark Rutherford Society, imagining himself at Mark Rutherford’s grave in Groombridge, Kent.

Report contributed by Nick Wilde

PS Mark Rutherford's descriptions of nonconformists in mid-nineteenth century Bedford is drawn upon by the author of BHRS's 2013 volume The Rise of Methodism: a study of Bedfordshire 1736-1751, to be published in 2014.