A Moment More: Beside Mark Rutherford's Grave

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 17; p. 140
• Main Author: Crees, Mark
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2013
• Subjects: British & Irish literature; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); English literature
• ISSN: 0954-0970

Upstairs, in another room in the same house, his wife, Harriet, was slowly wasting away from multiple sclerosis, while his youngest children, the twins, Molly and Ernest, were steadily growing in leaps and bounds. [...]at any rate, this quietly intense home life provided the context in which Hale White's memories and inner conflicts began to unfold in fictional form.7 I was drawn to Mark Rutherford not only as an historical type, a lone survivor from the bum-numbing pews of Calvinist Dissent, but because he was so skilful at quietly digging into himself at this midpoint in his life, feeling his way back into the early turmoils which had formed him. [...]from that vantage point this passage expands, moving outwards, first from the fishing place, then to the dangerous ice, the boathouse, to where 'the river widens' and finally that huge Amoldian 'foretaste of the distant sea.'15 It is as if, in this moving word-sketch, Rutherford's heart is actually expanding outwards too, as what is felt becomes secured to what is both seen and recollected. [...]for Arnold, as for George Eliot, the truth about ourselves is invariably too hard to bare for much of the time. 'The underlying implication, of a desire simply to be merged back into the created world, without any affirmation of a future life of new embodiment, flies in the face of classic Christian theology'; Tom Wright, Surprised By Hope (London: SPCK, 2007), p. 32.