Nathaniel Wedd (10 April 1864 – 27 September 1940
) was a historian, lecturer, tutor,
and a noted influence on
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English author, best known for his novels, particularly ''A Room with a View'' (1908), ''Howards End'' (1910), and ''A Passage to India'' (1924). He also wrote numerous short stori ...
.
Like Forster, he was a
humanist
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.
The meaning of the term "human ...
, who attended
South Place Ethical Society
The Conway Hall Ethical Society, formerly the South Place Ethical Society, based in London at Conway Hall, is thought to be the oldest surviving freethought organisation in the world and is the only remaining ethical society in the United Kin ...
and admired the freethinking
Moncure D. Conway
Moncure Daniel Conway (March 17, 1832 – November 15, 1907) was an American abolitionist minister and radical writer. At various times Methodist, Unitarian, and a Freethinker, he descended from patriotic and patrician families of Virginia and ...
.
Life
Nathaniel Wedd was born in
Northumberland
Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey.
It is bordered by land ...
in 1864, though he was raised in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
.
His father died while Wedd was still young, so he was principally raised by his mother.
Both of his parents were freethinkers, and encouraged this in Wedd.
From the
City of London School
, established =
, closed =
, type = Public school Boys' independent day school
, president =
, head_label = Headmaster
, head = Alan Bird
, chair_label = Chair of Governors
, chair = Ian Seaton
, founder = John Carpenter
, special ...
, he went up to
King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...
in 1883.
There, he excelled, taking firsts in both parts of the classical tripos, and was made a Fellow of King's in 1888.
Wedd's contemporaries at Cambridge included
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (6 August 1862 – 3 August 1932), known as Goldie, was a British political scientist and philosopher. He lived most of his life at Cambridge, where he wrote a dissertation on Neoplatonism before becoming a fellow. H ...
,
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English author, best known for his novels, particularly ''A Room with a View'' (1908), ''Howards End'' (1910), and ''A Passage to India'' (1924). He also wrote numerous short stori ...
,
and
Oscar Browning
Oscar Browning OBE (17 January 1837 – 6 October 1923) was a British educationalist, historian and ''bon viveur'', a well-known Cambridge personality during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. An innovator in the early development of ...
. Wedd was a member of the
Cambridge Apostles
The Cambridge Apostles (also known as ''Conversazione Society'') is an intellectual society at the University of Cambridge founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who became the first Bishop of Gibraltar.W. C. Lubenow, ''The Ca ...
, a secret society, alongside
Roger Fry
Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 – 9 September 1934) was an English painter and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developme ...
and
J. M. E. McTaggart
John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart (3 September 1866 – 18 January 1925) was an English idealist metaphysician. For most of his life McTaggart was a fellow and lecturer in philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was an exponent of the phi ...
. Wedd was highly regarded as an inspirational teacher and a devoted scholar, who put his own intellect at the service of others.
Publishing little of his own besides a translation of
Euripides' ''
Orestes
In Greek mythology, Orestes or Orestis (; grc-gre, Ὀρέστης ) was the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, and the brother of Electra. He is the subject of several Ancient Greek plays and of various myths connected with his madness an ...
,''
he is credited with playing a significant role in the reinvigoration of classics at Cambridge during his time there,
and - with Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson - fostering 'the atmosphere of inspiration and individuality that dominated the college at the turn of the century'.
Wedd was 'the decisive influence' on the young E.M. Forster.
Forster himself wrote that it was 'to him rather than to Dickinson - indeed to him more than to anyone - that I owe such an awakening as has befallen me.'
He later recalled:
Wedd... helped me by remarking in a lecture that we all know more than we think. A cry of relief and endorsement arose from my mind, tortured so long by being told that it knows less than it pretended to know.
Wedd was his classics tutor, and imbued a love for Greece and for the classics, as well as with his own social and political ideals, that stayed with Forster.
As a character, Wedd was fondly described by his contemporaries, and by subsequent biographers of them.
He was noted for possessing the:
gift of winning the confidence of the most reserved....He understood undergraduates of all kinds and cared to see only their merits, of which he was always the first and sometimes the only discoverer; and once he knew his man, he knew exactly how best to help and stimulate him.
In 1903, a group that included Wedd, Dickinson, and
G. M. Trevelyan
George Macaulay Trevelyan (16 February 1876 – 21 July 1962) was a British historian and academic. He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1898 to 1903. He then spent more than twenty years as a full-time author. He returned to the ...
founded ''The Independent Review,'' in Forster's words, 'to advocate sanity in foreign affairs and a constructive policy at home. It was not so much a Liberal Review as an appeal to Liberalism from the left to be its better self.'
In 1906, Wedd married Rachel Evelyn White (1867-1943). White had been educated at the Collegiate School in
Aberdeen
Aberdeen (; sco, Aiberdeen ; gd, Obar Dheathain ; la, Aberdonia) is a city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous city in the country. Aberdeen is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas (as Aberdeen City), and ...
, followed by
University College, Dundee
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...
, and
Newnham College, Cambridge
Newnham College is a women's constituent college of the University of Cambridge.
The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sidgwick and suffragist campaigner Millicen ...
. She taught classics at Newnham until December 1906.
In his biography of Forster, Wilfred Stone describes Wedd as 'openly and scandalously anti-God,' this facet of his character providing 'some amusing bits of King's folklore':
To complaints about his playing croquet on Sundays, he replied, "I deplore a faith so fragile that it can't survive the click of croquet balls heard on the way to Chapel."
Upon finding the South Place Institute in Finsbury, Wedd wrote admiringly of the American Moncure Conway, and the freethinking and inclusive atmosphere of South Place:
There, the appeal was to reason solely, to reasonableness, to humanity. Instead of lessons from the Prayer-book or chapters from the Bible, he read passages from Plato, from Positive philosophy, from Buddhist writers, from Confucius and Zoroaster, from Hindu philosophers... The effect of attending South Place Institute was that I became a strong partisan of the Cause of Freedom of Thought, and a correspondingly strong opponent of organised religion as an institution for limiting freedom.
Wedd died in
Hereford at the age of 76, on 27 September 1940.
He was described in his obituary in ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
'' as serving King's College 'down to the last weeks of his life... with his whole heart and rare gifts of mind and spirit.'
It described his 'genius for teaching', as well as his being 'something of a firebrand':
... indeed throughout his life his wit, his vigorous independence, and his fine audacity of language, always used in the service of his quickening sympathy with youth, made him provocative as well as stimulating, a kindler of live sparks in many stubbles.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wedd, Nathaniel
1864 births
1940 deaths
19th-century English historians
English classical scholars
Fellows of King's College, Cambridge
People from Northumberland
English humanists
Ethical movement
Alumni of King's College, Cambridge
20th-century English historians