Herbert Spencer / by J. Arthur Thomson.

Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Herbert Spencer / by J. Arthur Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    make a Herbert Spencer, and hundreds unknown to fame must have shared a similar heritage; but the resemblances between some of Spencer's character- istics and those of his stock are too close to be dis- regarded. Disown him as many nonconformists did, they could not disinherit him. Nonconformity was in his blood and bone of his bone. Grandparents. — Spencer's maternal grandfather, John Holmes of Derby, was a business man and an active Wesleyan, with a little more than the ordi- nary amount of faculty. The grandmother, nee Jane Brettell, is described as commonplace, but her portrait suggests a more charitable verdict. Spencer's paternal grandfather was a schoolmaster, a mechanical teacher, somewhat oppressed by life, and extremely tender-hearted. If, when a news- paper was being read aloud, there came an account of something cruel or very unjust, he would exclaim : Stop, stop, I can't bear it! Of this sensitive temperament his illustrious grandson had a large share. The most notable of the four grandparents was Catherine Spencer, nee Taylor, of good type both physically and morally. Born in 1758 and marrying in 1786, when nearly 28, she had eight children, led a very active life, and lived till 1843 : dying at the age of 84 in possession of all her faculties. A personal follower of John Wesley, intensely religious, indefatigably unselfish, combining unswerving integrity with uniform good temper and affection, she had all the domestic virtues in large measures. Her grandson has said that nothing was specially manifest in her, intellectually considered, unless, indeed, what would be called sound common