HIS MARRIAGE: HIS MOTHER'S DEATH:
HIS CLASSICAL TUTORSHIP AT BRISTOL IN 1834
In Francis Newman's diary is this entry:--"On June 27th, my birthday, I
first saw Maria Kennaway at Escot." [Footnote: Escot, Ottery St. Mary, S.
Devon, now in the possession of the present Sir John Kennaway, M.P.]
Evidently the attraction between them was mutual, for the engagement
followed quickly, and they were married the same year.
Maria Kennaway was the daughter of the first Sir John Kennaway, who was
born at Exeter in 1758. In 1772 he sailed to India with his brother, the
late Richard Kennaway. In 1780 he received his captain's commission, and
in 1786 Marquis Cornwallis made him one of his aides-de-camp. I quote from
_New Monthly Magazine_ for 1836, which gave an account of some incidents
in the first Sir John Kennaway's life at the time of his death. [Footnote:
I am indebted for this account to the courtesy of the present Sir John
Kennaway.]
[Illustration: MARIA KENNAWAY
FRANCIS NEWMAN'S FIRST WIFE
From a miniature
PHOTO BY MESSRS. WEBSTER, CLAPHAM COMMON
BY KIND PERMISSION OF SIR JOHN KENNAWAY]
"In 1788 Lord Cornwallis sent him as envoy to the Court of Hyderabad to
demand from the Nizam the cession of ... Guntoor. In this mission he was
eminently successful, not only obtaining that which he came to demand, but
inducing the Nizam to enter into a treaty of offensive and defensive
alliance against Tippoo Sultan. For this service His Majesty was pleased
to create him a baronet (1791), and he received a mark of still further
approbation from the Court of Directors (East India Company) in a vote
which they passed to take out the patent of creation at the Company's
expense." Later, Sir John arranged a definite peace between the Nizam's
Commissioner and the Mahrattas with those of Tippoo Sultan. From this time
forward Sir John remained as Resident at the Court of the Nizam. But as
his health had suffered greatly from the Indian climate, he came back to
England in 1794, and the East India Company voted him "the unusual grant
of a pension of £500 per annum" on his retirement from official duties.
Soon after his return to England he met and married Charlotte Amyatt, and
went to live at Escot, Ottery St. Mary. Here their family of twelve
children was reared. Sir John, though his official life was over, yet
busied himself in many local matters. He acted as deputy-lieutenant and as
colonel-commandant of local militia and yeomanry. Then later, in advanced
age, there fell upon him a great trouble: he lost his sight entirely.
Curiously enough, his brother (who had served in the Civil Service of the
East India Company) suffered the same deprivation.
Everyone who remembers her describes Maria Kennaway, Sir John's daughter,
as possessing great beauty and attraction. She had hitherto spent her
girlhood in the daily service of the poor around her home. She and her
sisters started village schools in the neighbourhood, and taught the
children constantly the religious duties in which they themselves had
grown up.
Maria Kennaway--a Plymouth Sister as regards her religious profession--was
a girl of deep and earnest faith. After her marriage to Francis Newman, it
became a real grief to her to find that he was drifting further and
further away towards agnosticism. Loving him devotedly as she did, her
constant prayer was that he might return to his former faith: that the
"cloud," as she called it, which was over him might be dispersed, and that
he should believe as she did.
Like Moses, she never in this life saw her "Promised Land" (she never
doubted that he would _die_ in faith), for when she died in July, 1876
(devotedly nursed by her husband), she knew that _he_ thought, as he bent
over her at the end, that it was probably a _last_ farewell for both.
I give here, as it seems an appropriate place, Newman's letter (to Dr.
Nicholson) on his wife's death:--
"15 Arundel Crescent,
"Weston-super-Mare,
"_21st July_, 1876.
"My dear Nicholson,
"For more than forty years I have been in possession of a heart that loved
me ardently: that happiness is no more. But I kept my treasure ten years
longer than I had any reason to expect. Yesterday we committed my beloved
to the grave....
"I saw her declining in strength through failure of appetite, but ever
hoped for finer weather and change of air to restore her. But the fine
weather came too late to restore her. From want of blood her heart became
fatally weak, and she died just as her brother did, the late Sir John
Kennaway, through failure of the heart and consequent mortification of the
feet. I now believe that local death began on the night of the 5th. Her
sufferings in the feet were great, and we could do nothing to allay them.
Her breathlessness (also from weakness of the heart) we could aid by
fanning. She knew she could not recover, and only prayed for 'release.'
Her prayer was granted early on Sunday morning, 16th July.
"Of course I feel very desolate, and to live quite alone in declining
years [Footnote: Some few years later he married his first wife's devoted
friend and companion who had lived with them for eleven years, and who
took the greatest care of Newman till he died in 1897.] seems unnatural
and unhealthful; but I cannot form any decisions at present. I am
conscious of excellent health and unbroken strength, and after forty years
of happy love should be very ungrateful to repine.
"By God's help I mean to be cheerful and active....
"I am, your affectionate friend,
"F. W. Newman."
This is the epitaph Newman had placed over his wife's grave:--
"With no superiority of intellect, yet by the force of love, by sweet
piety, by tender compassion, by coming down to the lowly, by unselfishness
and simplicity of life, by a constant sense of God's Presence, by devout
exercises, private and social, she achieved much of Christian saintliness
and much of human happiness.
"She has left a large void in her husband's heart.
"Obiit, _16th July_, 1876."
Newman always spoke of his wife as "the most affectionate and tender-
hearted of mortals." There was always a very great affection between them.
His letters all show this. Their married life was a long intercourse of
happiness, _un_-"chequered by disputes." [Footnote: "Marriage is one long
conversation, chequered by disputes."--R. L. Stevenson.] Still, there was
not (as is shown, I think, in many ways) strong community of interests.
For in all Newman's laborious philological studies--his learned lectures,
articles, and researches, scriptural and literary, his speculations in the
realms of deep thought--she was to all intents and purposes practically
outside his mental door. She was never greatly inclined to join in the
society of his learned friends; but this was more from a sense of modesty,
because she was afraid of not being in sympathy with them; because she
thought that she was not clever enough.
She had the greatest admiration for her husband. It is easy, of course, to
understand that when Frank Newman came back from his missionary journey he
was just the sort of young man who would take a girl's fancy. It was a
thing not to be surprised at that she fell in love with him. She was
keenly interested in home missionary work among the poor villagers of her
own home. She knew that he had come through great dangers in his journey
to the Holy Land as a missionary. He had not then definitely cast aside
his old beliefs--that was to come later; _now_ he was on the brink of it,
and he was alone on this inward, personal brink. _She_ would not yet be
aware of it. Very probably he seemed a hero in her eyes, because of all
the dangers he had braved to preach the Gospel, and because he was one of
the most intellectual men of his day: had taken high honours at Oxford,
and had given them up for the sake of what he believed to be right.
In the beautiful little Devonshire town of Ottery St. Mary, very possibly
he was the greatest man who had come across her life's path. He very
evidently cared for her; the inevitable next thing seemed to be to care
for him. At that time his name was in everybody's mouth. Miss Frere wrote,
in 1833, that "the brother of Mr. Newman (John Henry Newman) is a young
man of great promise, who has left the fairest prospect of advancement in
England to go as a missionary to Persia."
At any rate, Destiny had brought them together, and they were married.
As a woman said once to me, "There is no choosing in love"--once the
_meeting_ has happened, all free choice is at an end.
Mrs. Francis Newman was not very strong, and later in life developed
greater delicacy. It will be remembered that Newman's mother and sisters
were living at Oxford at this time, and he was anxious some time later to
bring his bride to see them. Unfortunately she fell ill, and the treatment
given for her illness proved quite a mistaken one; consequently her
recovery was much slower than it need otherwise have been. The journey
was, besides, a tiring one for her in her state of health. They had to go
from Bristol to Oxford, for by this time Newman was settled at Bristol
College as classical tutor. He had previously been tutor in Dublin for a
short time.
In 1836 Francis Newman went through the ceremony of Baptism at a chapel in
Bristol. I say advisedly, "went through the ceremony," for I believe both
he and his brother had received the rite in early childhood, when their
father was alive.
Mr. George Hare Leonard, University College, Bristol, has kindly sent me
some information as regards Francis Newman's work at Bristol, as also has
Mr. Norris Mathews, the City Librarian of the Municipal Public Libraries
there.
From them I learn that the college at which Newman was classical tutor
was, not "Queen's," as has once or twice been asserted, but Bristol
College. It was founded in 1831, and only existed ten years. Mr. Hare
Leonard tells me that it was held in a large house in Park Row, and that
it had some very distinguished pupils, Sir Edward Fry, the late Sir George
Gabriel Stokes, [Footnote: Sir George Gabriel Stokes, Lucasian Professor
of Mathematics at Cambridge since 1849, and Fellow and President of
Pembroke College, Cambridge, was born in 1819; senior wrangler, 1841.
President of Royal Society 1885. Contributed many mathematical papers and
lectures to the Royal Society and other societies at Cambridge University,
Aberdeen, Edinburgh, etc.] and Walter Bagehot being amongst them.
At this time Newman was a member of the historic Baptist chapel at
Broadmead. I think it must have been in this chapel, indeed, that he was
re-baptized (as I mentioned a little earlier), and some of the
congregation anticipated his becoming one of the sect of Plymouth
Brethren.
Perhaps it is not generally known that Bristol College undertook to give
religious instruction on Church of England lines to those boys whose
parents wished it (I quote now from Mr. George Hare Leonard's letter to
me): "This was not obligatory upon all, and there was a fierce attack on
the college by certain of the clergy, and Bishop Gray was hostile. In
1841, under the influence of Monk (Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol),
Bishop's College was founded close by, and the older and more liberal
college was unable to stand the competition, and came to an end."
I quote here [Footnote: By the kindness of Miss Humphrey, Lensfield,
Cambridge, who gave me this extract from a memoir of her father.] an
account of the school life of the Vicar of St. Mary Redclyffe, Bristol:--
"In 1835 he went to Bristol College, a school that no longer exists, of
which Dr. Jerrard, his brother William's friend and a mathematician of
some note, was principal.... He remained for two years at Bristol College,
and considered that when there he owed much to the teaching of Francis
Newman, brother of the Cardinal, a man of charming character and great
attainments (afterwards made manifest in many ways), who was then lecturer
in elementary mathematics, and subsequently corresponded with him" (the
Vicar of St. Mary Redclyffe) "on mathematical subjects when both had
become famous."
This all seems to point, I think, to the fact that Bristol College had
certainly a distinguished roll of names in its short ten years' record.
1836 was the year of Mrs. Newman's death--Francis Newman's mother. His
wife was so alarmingly ill that he was not able to be present at his
mother's funeral; and so the last time he saw her alive was on the
occasion when he brought his bride to introduce to her at Oxford.
Miss Mozley says of his mother: "She was a woman content to live, as it
were, in the retirement of her thoughts. She had an influence, though not
a conspicuous one, on all about her. The trials of life had given a weight
to her judgment, and her remarkable composure and serenity of temper and
manner had its peculiar power. Under this gentle manner was a strong will
which could not be moved when her sense of duty dictated self-sacrifice."
A month after her death Cardinal Newman had written: [Footnote: _Letters
of John Henry Newman_, Anne Mozley.] "Of late years my mother has much
misunderstood my religious views, and considered she differed from me;
[Footnote: As of course she did.] and she thought I was surrounded by
admirers, and had everything my own way; and in consequence I, who am
conscious to myself I never thought anything more precious than her
sympathy and praise, had none of it." He goes on to say: "I think God
intends me to be lonely.... I think I am very cold and reserved to people,
but I cannot ever realize to myself that any one loves me."
Those who have read Miss Mozley's _Life of John Henry Newman_ will
remember how passionately devoted to her two sons Mrs. Newman was. Once or
twice she said that though "Frank was adamant" when she had wished to get
closer in touch with his interests and sympathies when he was quite a
young man, yet she was always _quite_ in sympathy with her eldest son.
Probably as time went on and she saw the latter drifting ever further and
further into religious views with which she had never been conversant,
insensibly to herself, her manner changed when he spoke to her of how
gradually the whole scope of his religion was widening and developing in a
direction in which she felt it impossible for herself to follow him.
One wonders if she had had any knowledge of the growing agnosticism of her
other son, but probably this was unlikely.
[Illustration: DR. MARTINEAU
FROM THE PAINTING BY A. E. ELMSLIE]