LAST YEARS, CHARACTERISTICS, AND SOME LETTERS RELATING TO THE _EARLY LIFE
OF THE CARDINAL_
It will be remembered that Francis Newman retired from his official duties
at University College in 1863, with the title Emeritus Professor. As most
of us are aware, this word "Emeritus" was originally given to Roman
soldiers who had served out their term and been discharged, on the
understanding of being given a settled sum of money which was practically
the equivalent of our English half-pay. The term is now used to designate
a professor who has been "honourably relieved" of his office, either
because of physical disability or on account of a term of long service
fulfilled. It is, in effect, a retiring pension.
As will have been seen by letters from Newman which precede this chapter,
he retired from the office of Professor, but in no sense from his work of
writing, studying, and lecturing. The enormous number of books published
will testify to this. His five volumes of _Miscellanies_, his
_Reminiscences of Two Exiles, Europe of the Near Future_, translation of
the _Odes of Horace_, [Footnote: Which did not meet with the approval of
Matthew Arnold.] _Handbook and Dictionary of Modern Arabic, Kabail
Vocabulary, Libyan Vocabulary, Text of the Iguvine Inscriptions, Christian
Commonwealth, History of the Hebrew Monarchy, Hebrew Theism, Early Life of
Cardinal Newman, Anglo-Saxon Abolition of Negro Slavery_, not to mention
many others, alone show how writing largely filled his days and occupied
his mind.
Besides all this work, however, he was for ever interesting himself in any
cause or society which applied to him for help, or seemed in any way to
need a champion. Indeed, as Mr. Hornblower Gill says of him, "Scholar,
translator, mathematician, historian, political economist, political
philosopher, moralist, theologian, philanthropist, he was the most copious
and various writer of his time."
For a great many years before he died Newman lived at Weston-super-Mare.
But two years before his death, in October, 1897, when he was ninety-two
years of age, he found himself, partly owing to senile decay and partly
owing to a bad fall he had had in the spring of the year, and also to loss
of eyesight, unable to take part in public affairs any longer, nor yet to
write as he had been used to do.
The unpublished article on "Land Nationalization" (which is printed in
this volume) came into the hands of Mr. William Jameson (to whose kindness
I am indebted for it) in 1886, at which time he was Hon. Secretary of the
Land Nationalization Society, and Francis Newman, Vice-President.
Mr. Jameson, at the time of sending me the article, wrote me a letter from
which I shall here quote those parts relating to his friendship with
Newman. He says, speaking of their first meeting: "There was an instant
fellowship that endears his memory to me. I was then about thirty-five,
and he past eighty. There was a quiet dignity in his manner, but no
suggestion of _old age_."
One little anecdote may be of interest.
"We left a rather stormy committee meeting together, over which Professor
Newman had presided. The _storm_ was due to one member who had a grievance
against some others. Speaking of the pity of this, Professor Newman said
to me, 'You know how very strongly my brother and myself differ in
opinion; yet this has never created the _slightest personal discord_....'"
Several years later. Professor Newman wrote Mr. Jameson a letter (on
finding out that he was suffering from overwork and the fear of subsequent
breakdown), saying these strong words of sympathy: "I charge you to give
it up. Save yourself for the years to come." He went on to say that a
friend of his own had kept working on for some cherished cause at the cost
of much mental pressure, and had ended his days in a lunatic asylum. Mr.
Jameson adds that Newman's words of counsel have often and often rung in
his ears since they were first said to him, and he attributes to the fact
that he obeyed them, his having been saved from a physical breakdown.
"Save yourself for the years to come" is a counsel which we, who are
workers, are so often in danger of forgetting. Except in extreme youth,
most men and women live far more in the present and in the past than they
do in the future which lies before them, so largely to be carved into
shape by their Present.
In April, 1887, Sir Samuel Walker Griffith, G.C.M.G., Chief Justice of
Queensland since 1893, Secretary for Public Instruction, Attorney-General
from 1874-8, 1890-3, Premier of Queensland from 1883-8, and 1890-3, was
over in England, and Francis Newman was to have been introduced by Mrs.
Bucknall (mother of Mrs. Bainsmith, the distinguished sculptor [Footnote:
Mrs. Georgina Bainsmith, F.N.B.A., member of the Royal Society of Arts,
and of the Honorary Council of the North British Academy.] to whom I am
indebted for the photo in this book of her bust of Francis Newman, which
now stands in University College, London) to Sir Samuel, at the latter's
own special desire. Unfortunately, Newman was unable to go with Mrs.
Bucknall to Sir Samuel Griffith's house, and this is his letter (kindly
lent me, with Sir Samuel Griffith's reply, by Mrs. Bucknall).
"Dear Mrs. Bucknall,
"Since you tell me that time presses, I have no way but to give up to you
my private copy of (_my_) Christian Commonwealth, which I now send you.
Very sorry I am that I could not accompany you on Sunday to Sir Samuel
Griffith's, but learning from you how graciously such a visitor from the
Antipodes expressed his desire to meet me, I am really sorry that I was
not able in person to attest my deep reverence and admiration as well as
affection for Mrs. Butler, and my conviction that only moral and spiritual
influences can quell the demon of impurity, while the _despair_ which
tries to keep it within limits by moderation and indulging it, is a folly
and an infatuation, especially when coupled with police licenses and
police espionage. Our ladies since 1869 have learned to detest the
despotic police and the despotic doctor with an intensity which time ever
increases.
"They must conquer at last: the sole question is,--after how much more
moral damage to young men and women, and how much mental agony to our
Christian martyrs.
"Our young men happily are joining this crusade. Alas, for those who mean
to be Christian, and do not know the elements of Christian sentiment.
[Footnote: See "Marriage Laws" (1867), "State Provision for Vice" (1869),
and "Remedies for the Great Social Evil" (1869), in Vol. III of F. W.
Newman's _Miscellanies_.]
"I look to you to apologize for me to Sir S. G, for offering to him a book
written by me... one which my pen has defaced....
"Most truly yours,
"F. W. Newman.
"Weston-s.-M., _19th April_, 1887."
This is Sir Samuel Griffith's answer:--
"Brown's Hotel,
"Dover Street, W.,
"_21st April_, 1887.
"Dear Mrs. Bucknall,
"Accept my best thanks for Professor Newman's writings on the _Christian
Commonwealth_ and the _New Crusade_. I really feel ashamed to deprive you
of the latter, and Professor Newman of the former, but it would be most
ungracious of me to refuse to accept them.
"Pray assure him that the value of the copy of the _Christian
Commonwealth_ is to be much enhanced by the fact that it bears his
autograph notes, and that I feel deeply honoured by the terms in which he
has been good enough to express himself in his note to you, which I have
read with great interest and which I enclose. I shall always regret that I
had not the honour and pleasure of meeting him at Weston, but my time was
too short....
"Believe me,
"Yours very faithfully,
"S. W. Griffith."
Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Pennington were great friends of Newman's, and he
often stayed with them from time to time. By the kindness of Mrs.
Pennington I am able to quote from some letters written by him in 1881-90,
and one much earlier, in 1875, in which he laments the death of Mrs.
Blackburn. Mrs. Blackburn was a sister of Mr. Pennington's, and one of the
most munificent of contributors to the United Kingdom Alliance in its
early days, who (I am told by Mrs. Pennington) often denied herself many
luxuries in order to be able to make her contributions larger. She
describes her as one of the best women she had ever known.
Newman, in his letter to Mr. Pennington in 1875, says of Mrs. Blackburn:--
"I have known her ever since Michaelmas 1869, when the revelation was
first made to us of the Contagious Diseases Act; and at the Congress of
Social Science at Bristol she was pleased to receive my hospitality. My
esteem for her was great and ever increasing...."
He goes on to say that his dread of cold and chills makes him fear a long
journey, "though it is mortifying to me not to meet you and Mrs.
Pennington, and many other earnest friends of this very important cause."
In 1881 Gladstone was Prime Minister, and stayed in office for five years.
For almost the whole of this time the country was hardly ever at peace.
The Transvaal rebellion was started in 1880 and later our own troops were
defeated by the insurrectionists; whereupon the Government promptly
surrendered the Transvaal.
About this time Newman writes to Mrs. Pennington:
"_I am not a member of Cambridge University, nor indeed of Oxford
University since 1830. If I had kept my name on the book, I should have
paid £6 a year, if I remember; that is, £300 in these fifty years; and as
I never took my M.A. degree (because of the 39 Articles), I should even
then have no vote.
"I now act on the fixed rule _not to take any long journey in the winter
months_, except from real duty. Experience guides me, and I refuse even
pressure from very friendly quarters.... I am melancholy about this
Cabinet and Mr. Gladstone, and ashamed to be an Englishman. All comes to
me like a domestic calamity. And Parliament is so overworked that
_English_ misrule cannot be corrected. I look on _Ministers in the House_
as nearly our worst nuisance. But I must not begin on our defective and
evil institutions...."
Then in 1890 the letters begin more and more to show a change in his
handwriting. He no longer wrote in his original firm, clear style, but in
a crabbed, cramped manner. His words now were often difficult to decipher,
and the letters of the words very shaky and undecided, bearing witness
very plainly of the trembling hand of Age. After mentioning the immense
number of letters which he had to answer, and how the trouble of replying
was almost beyond his strength, he says, "The sister-like affection of my
honoured friend Anna Swanwick has ... again and again won me to London;...
but the place seems never to agree with me. Partly the whirl by night and
day, I suppose, is my bane; still more, the endless meeting of fresh and
fresh small talk, with the fatigue of _listening_, and the impression on
my brain of miscellaneous memories when I ought to sleep. In Oxford, from
like causes, I became as it were 'daft,' and from forgetfulness of the
right words could not complete an English sentence. A like affection came
on me in London last summer, and I had to break away suddenly, to the
disappointment of friends, because my own sense of _idiotcy_ was
unbearable. Rest and sleep sufficed to restore me when I reached home. The
inability to get out the right word, if (for instance) _suddenly_ asked
'to what station I am going,' is enough to make me seem insane or half
asleep.... I am increasingly aware that my _brain_ is my weakest part....
On the whole I am healthy, and agile in all movement as are few men of my
age (two doctors fancy that _all_ men of eighty-five have pulses as
_disorderly_ as mine!)...."
[Illustration: CARDINAL NEWMAN
FROM AN OIL PAINTING BY MISS DEANE, OF BATH.
PHOTO BY MESSRS. WEBSTER, CLAPHAM COMMON]
As regards the work on the _Early Life of the Cardinal_, which was
published at this time, he says:--
"I am (_under a sense of duty_) writing concerning the late Cardinal quite
a different side of his character from that which for fifty years the
public have heard. I knew him as eminently generous as to money, but so
fanatical as to embarrass judgment of his character. Another weakness I
confess and _lament_. I can write large. I begin everything with
resolution so to write. But as soon as I think only of the substance, and
forget the manner, my writing so dwindles that I can hardly read it
myself. I suppose that weakness of the fingers is the cause. I see how
deficient they are of flesh."
In September, 1890, he wrote the following letters to Rev. J. K. Tucker,
Rector of Pettaugh, Suffolk, who was an old friend of Newman's, and to Mr.
John Henry Tucker, [Footnote: Which have been kindly lent me by Mr. John
Warren.] from which I make quotations:--
"Ever since my brother's death (Cardinal J. H. N.) I am overwhelmed with
letters, and now am writing more and longer every day than my fingers can
well manage, for publishers eager for my MS."
And again in October of the same year:--
"I am about to send to my publishers my _painful_ contribution to the life
of the late Cardinal, my brother. I am conscientiously bound to write it,
because in his _fifty_ years' absence from the sight of the public a new
generation has grown up ignorant of the facts, and the attempt is already
begun to puff them off for their beauty of style..,. My age being eighty-
five, I know the truths, and must tell them. I shall be howled at as
_unbrotherly_. My immediate business now is to write to numbers of
correspondents of whom you are one, whom I have necessarily neglected
while engaged in the most anxious work I have ever undertaken...."
As regards this book to which he alludes, his _Early Life of Cardinal
Newman_, everyone feels that in some sense it belittles the writer. For
there was no real need of any sort that he should have written it. From
one brother to another, such an "early history" was, from some points of
view, a disloyalty--and a disloyalty not altogether free from embittered
personal feeling.
Was there no personal feeling roused in the lives of the two men? For the
younger was practically overshadowed by the elder. It was the elder one to
whom the world kotow-ed. It was the elder who---though the younger was so
strikingly intellectual, and so strong a social reformer in many ways--
carried the world's laurels, and who was finally given the "splendid
funeral" to which Francis Newman takes exception. And there was another
reason too, which I believe exercised a strong sway over his feelings to
his brother in early youth, and brought into play, though perhaps
unrecognized by himself, the quality of emulation, followed by keen
disappointment, when failure, as regarded that incident, fell to his
share. Be that as it may, it is impossible to justify Francis Newman's
writing thus of his brother, in the "early history" to which I refer. Not
even his keen desire for truth, which some declare to have been his motive
power in the matter, accounted for it.
"I should vastly have preferred entire oblivion of him" (of the Cardinal),
"and his writings of the first forty years, but that is impossible. In the
cause of Protestants and Protestantism, I feel bound to write, however
painful to myself, as simply as if my topic were an old Greek or Latin
one." Later on he says, "I have _tried_ to cherish for him a sort of
_filial_ sentiment," but "we seemed never to have an interest nor a wish
in common." [Footnote: J. H. Newman once in speaking of his brother, said,
"Much as we love each other, neither would like to be mistaken for the
other." A sentence which seems to contain more meanings than one!] Perhaps
no words could more absolutely convey the lack of sympathy between the
brothers, than do these. "I have _tried_ to cherish for him a sort of
filial sentiment!" showing as it does, only too evidently, that there was
no spontaneity of affection between them. The only voice that called each
to each was that of old childish association and duty. Francis Newman
could not be accused of seeking personal distinction or fame for itself;
witness his giving up a very promising career at home in order to go on
his missionary journey to Syria. Witness also his open denunciation of
many existing State abuses. Witness his unceasing crusades against the
stronger party (whatever it might be), which, in his opinion, oppressed
and wronged the weaker section of the community, unable of themselves to
obtain justice and a hearing at the court of English public opinion.
All the more, then, is it difficult to explain away sentences such as
these, which seem to proceed from such an absolutely different personality
than was Frank Newman's; and yet the man who reads his memoirs of his
brother finds them almost on every page, and cannot understand their
presence there.
"The existing generation has seen him" (he is alluding to the Cardinal),
"through a mist; and if my simple statement anywhere clears away that
mist, they may almost resent my truth-speaking as an impiety." As indeed
they did--and do. Some of his own friends, indeed, urged him not to
publish the book, but he was obdurate.
"In my rising manhood I received inestimable benefits from this (my
eldest) brother.... He supported me, not out of his abundance, but when he
knew not whence weekly and daily funds were to come.... Yet a most painful
breach ... broke in on me in my nineteenth year and _was unhealable_."
This was, of course, when Francis had been at college two years, for in
those days men very often went at the age of sixteen, as he did.
But the entries of 1822 and 1823, which last would be for Francis his
"nineteenth year," give no clue to the "painful breach" which "was
_unhealable_"
Yet the fact that religious differences did begin between the two brothers
very early in life has been proved beyond all question. Proved also is it
that religious discussions were of constant occurrence between them, and
that while J. H. Newman had always a strange leaning to Churchmanship,
Frank Newman's religious tendencies drew him strongly towards dissent and
Unitarianism.
I think the latter mentions in his _Phases of Faith_ that when he first
came to college he found his brother had hung up a picture of Our Lady in
his younger brother's room, which he at once removed, and refused to have
on the walls.
The following letter is to Rev. J. K. Tucker; in it he describes himself
as a "Conscious Christian" "at the age of fourteen." But he has often
described himself as holding Christianity _without_ Christ:--
"I hold firmly in memory, that in Easter of 1836 I wished to conduct my
_bride_ to Oxford, and introduce her there to my mother and two sisters--
in those Coaching days we came from Bristol and Cheltenham en route to
Oxford. _I_ did not plan the thought of staying a night at your father's
house, in which I suppose _you and your wife_ were living. No doubt the
scheme was planned _by my wife_ to meet _her friend_. The winter of our
marriage had been one of wild snow; and the following Easter was alike
untimely. I just remember the fact of your kind hospitality fifty-four and
a half years ago, and the snow around us. In that visit to my mother (the
last time I saw her), my young wife caught inflammation of the lungs,
which I did not perceive or understand--she was so cruelly bled and
cupped, that I think she never recovered it.
"It is very kind of you to keep alive in your heart the friendship of the
two ladies. I perhaps ought to state that about two and a half years after
the death of that wife in 1876 I married her ... friend.... Else I must
have given up housekeeping, and know not into what family I could have
gone. My second wife is nineteen years my junior, yet in walking, not at
all my equal, but in affectionate care of me inestimable."
In June, 1892, he writes to J. H. Tucker, Esq.:--"I have not heard whether
your father, like me, is favoured by life continued, but I venture to send
a copy of my hymns.... To-day I have received a letter and book in
_Bengali_ from a believer in _Theosophy_, supposing me to be one of them!
Hence, I was not too early in telling my friends that since _at the age of
fourteen_ I became a Conscious Christian, no unbelief has made my hymns
less precious, _mutato saltem nomine_.... My change more than fifty years
ago was on Historical arguments mainly."
To return to the subject of Newman's last years at Weston-super-Mare.
Perhaps the most graphic descriptions of him as an old man are those
contributed as "Reminiscences" by Mrs. Kingsley-Tarpey and Mrs. Bainsmith.
We know him there as a man who, though hardly ever free from some
discomfort or pain in those days, yet never failed in that old-world
courtesy of which, alas! there is so poor a supply in the world at the
present day.
We know him as a man who was always eager to help those who came to him in
trouble or in any difficulty; nay, perhaps almost _too_ ready to believe a
cock-and-bull story of those who did not mind, for their own ends,
practising on his credulity.
A lady, a relation of the Newmans', said that once on coming to stay with
him and Mrs. Newman, she found a secretary in his study smelling strongly
of brandy. When the secretary went out of the room, Frank Newman drew
their guest aside and said, "Ah, yes, it's a sad case, poor fellow! He's
getting away from the temptation of the public-houses."
But when later the secretary's rooms were searched, there were found
numbers of brandy bottles hidden away, to prove that he evidently had
_not_ "escaped from temptation"! This lady said also that when Newman was
old people not infrequently deceived him thus, and traded on his
temperance views, and that he had had _two_ secretaries who obtained their
post on false pretences.
To conclude this chapter I should like to give one striking instance of
his tender sympathy and respect for the poor and lonely. A poor charwoman
had died at Weston-super-Mare who had, I believe, often worked in Newman's
house. He found that she had no friends to follow her body to the grave,
and so he himself, his wife and servants, walked to the funeral as
mourners to show her a last respect. It is the Idea represented by his act
which makes it serve as an unforgettable and very uncommon illustration of
a championship of those unlucky ones who have few or none to champion
them.
Could any act speak clearer of the unfailing respect and reverence for
women which distinguished Francis Newman through life? Though all others
should see the lonely funeral, there should be but the one Good Samaritan
who crossed over the road of ordinary, usual, Conventionalities to show by
his act that he recognized that class and position count for nothing
before the fact of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity and Religion.