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. He is 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 shor ...

. Like Forster, he was a

humanist Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humanism" ha ...

, 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 King ...

and admired the freethinking Moncure D. Conway.

Life

Nathaniel Wedd was born in

Northumberland Northumberland ( ) is a ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North East England, on the Anglo-Scottish border, border with Scotland. It is bordered by the North Sea to the east, Tyne and Wear and County Durham to the south, Cumb ...

in 1864, though he was raised in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. 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 The City of London School, also known as CLS and City, is a Private schools in the United Kingdom, private day school for Single-sex education, boys in the City of London, England, on the banks of the River Thames next to the Millennium Bridge, ...

, he went up to

King's College, Cambridge King's College, formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, is a List of colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college lies beside the River Cam and faces ...

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. ...

, and

Oscar Browning Oscar Browning (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 prof ...

. Wedd was a member of the

Cambridge Apostles The Cambridge Apostles (also known as the 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. History Student ...

, a secret society, alongside

Roger Fry Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 – 9 September 1934) was an English painter and art critic, 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 ...

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 phil ...

. 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 (; ) was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and the brother of Electra and Iphigenia. He was also known by the patronymic Agamemnonides (), meaning "son of Agamemnon." He is the subject of several ...

,'' 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 an English 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 th ...

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 ( ; ; ) is a port city in North East Scotland, and is the List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, third most populous Cities of Scotland, Scottish city. Historically, Aberdeen was within the historic county of Aberdeensh ...

, followed by University College, Dundee, 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 Hereford ( ) is a cathedral city and the county town of the ceremonial county of Herefordshire, England. It is on the banks of the River Wye and lies east of the border with Wales, north-west of Gloucester and south-west of Worcester. With ...

at the age of 76, on 27 September 1940. He was described in his obituary in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' 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