Of Charles Robert Newman, until the death of his brother, the Cardinal,
almost nothing was known. Some reminiscences of him by Mr. Thomas
Purnell and Precentor Edmund Venables appeared in the Athenæum at
the time of his death in 1884, and these remain the chief sources
of information concerning him. Mr. G. J. Holyoake also, in his paper
The Present Day, wrote: "If the public come to know more of Charles
R. Newman, it will be seen that all the brothers, John Henry, Francis
William, and Charles R. Newman, were men of unusual distinction of
character, and that while each held diverse views, all had the family
qualities of perspicacity, candor and conscience." But these notes
attracted little attention. Most people were under the impression
there were only two brothers, who had long figured in the public eye
as types of the opposite courses of modern thought towards Romanism
and Rationalism. Yet the real type of antagonism to Rome was to be
found in Charles Robert, who is dismissed by the Rev. Thomas Mozley
with the words: "There was also another brother, not without his
share in the heritage of natural gifts."
In a notable passage on change of religion, in his Essay in Aid of
a Grammar of Assent, chap. vii., Cardinal Newman seems to allude
to the career of himself and his brothers. He says: "Thus of three
Protestants, one becomes a Catholic, a second a Unitarian, and a
third an unbeliever: how is this? The first becomes a Catholic,
because he assented, as a Protestant, to the doctrine of our Lord's
divinity, with a real assent and a genuine conviction, and because
this certitude, taking possession of his mind, led him on to welcome
the Catholic doctrines of the Real Presence and of the Theotocos,
till his Protestantism fell off from him, and he submitted himself
to the Church. The second became a Unitarian, because, proceeding
on the principle that Scripture was the rule of faith, and that a
man's private judgment was its rule of interpretation, and finding
that the doctrine of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds did not follow
by logical necessity from the text of Scripture, he said to himself,
'The word of God has been made of none effect by the traditions of
men,' and therefore nothing was left for him but to profess what he
considered primitive Christianity and to become a Humanitarian. The
third gradually subsided into infidelity, because he started with
the Protestant dogma, cherished in the depths of his nature, that a
priesthood was a corruption of the simplicity of the Gospel. First,
then, he would protest against the sacrifice of the Mass; next he gave
up baptismal regeneration and the sacramental principle; then he asked
himself whether dogmas were not a restraint on Christian liberty as
well as Sacraments; then came the question, What after all was the
use of teachers of religion? Why should any one stand between him and
his Maker? After a time it struck him that this obvious question had
to be answered by the Apostles, as well as by the Anglican clergy;
so he came to the conclusion that the true and only revelation of God
to man is that which is written on the heart. This did for a time,
and he remained a Deist. But then it occurred to him, that this inward
moral law was there within the breast, whether there was a God or not,
and that it was a roundabout way of enforcing that law, to say that it
came from God and simply unnecessary, considering it carried with it
its own sacred and sovereign authority, as our feelings instinctively
testified, and when he turned to look at the physical world around
him, he really did not see what scientific proof there was of the
Being of God at all, and it seemed to him as if all things would
go quite as well as at present without that hypothesis as with it;
so he dropped it, and became a purus putus Atheist."
I have transcribed this lengthy, but remarkable passage, not because
I think it correctly describes the process of thought in his two
brothers, but rather as an illustration that his own imaginative
synthesis of their position derives its life and force from the fact
that he had before him concrete instances in the person of his own
nearest relatives.
Charles Robert Newman, younger brother of the Cardinal and elder
brother of the Professor, was born on June 16, 1802, being one year and
four months the junior of the former, and three years the senior of the
latter. [1] Their father, a London man, and friend of Capel the eminent
stockbroker, from having been clerk in a bank, became a partner,
though he afterwards failed at a time of great commercial depression,
both in this business and as a brewer. He was a Freemason, a musician,
and had schemes of social improvement by reclaiming waste land and
planting with trees. In religion his views appear to have been of a
broad cast approximating to those of Benjamin Franklin. The mother,
whose maiden name was Jemima Fourdrinier, was of Hugenot family, and
of religious cast of mind. There were six children, equally divided
as to sex. Harriet, the eldest girl, married the Rev. Thomas Mozley;
Jemima, the second, married Mr. John Mozley; while Mary, the youngest,
died unmarried.
Charles Robert was educated at the same school as his two brothers,
John Henry and Francis William, that of Dr. George Nicholas at Ealing,
Middlesex.
Of the influences which moulded his mind we can only speak from what
is known of his brothers. John Henry has told how, in youth, he read
Paine's tracts against the Old Testament--we presume he means the
Age of Reason--and also boasted of reading Hume, though, as he says,
this was possibly but by way of brag.
Evidently, though the family was brought up in the habit of Bible
reading, there was considerable freedom allowed as to the direction of
their studies. While the father lived family prayer was unknown, nor
was there any inculcation of dogma. "We read," says Francis William,
"the Psalms appointed by the church every day, and went to the parish
church on Sunday."
Francis William Newman, in his "Contributions, Chiefly to the Early
History of Cardinal Newman," says: "In opening life, my brother
C. R. N. became a convert to Robert Owen, the philanthropic Socialist,
who was then an Atheist. [2] But soon breaking loose from him,
Charles tried to originate a 'New Moral World' of his own, which
seemed to others absurd and immoral, as well as very unamiable. He
disowned us all, on my father's death, as 'too religious for him.' To
keep a friend, or to act under a superior, seemed alike impossible
to him. His brother (the late Cardinal) humbled himself to beg a
clerkship for him in the Bank of England; but Charles thought it
'his duty' to write to the Directors letters of advice, so they could
not keep him. Nor could he keep any place long. He said he ought to
take a literary degree at Bonn: his two brothers managed it for him,
but he came away without seeking the degree. His brother-in-law,
the Rev. Thomas Mozley, then took him up very liberally; but after
my sister Harriet's death, J. H. N. and I bore his expenses to his
dying day. His meanness seemed to me like that of an old cynic;
yet his moderation was exemplary, and at last he undoubtedly won the
respect of the mother and daughter who waited on him."
In this, which is nearly all he has to say of this elder brother,
it appears to me Professor Newman has either said too little or
too much. The title of his work did not necessitate any reference
to Charles Robert; but having said so much he should at least have
explained further. For instance, in reference to the visit to Bonn,
it was exceedingly natural in the second brother seeking to take a
degree, since both his senior and junior had a college education. That
he did not share in this advantage may have well tended to sour
his life. Mr. Meynell explains why he returned without seeking the
degree. He says: "But he came away without even offering himself for
examination, a step he explained by saying that the judges would not
grant him a degree because he had given offence by his treatment of
faith and morals [it is a Catholic who writes] in an essay which they
call teterrima." Charles may have acted with extreme imprudence, both
in regard to the bank directors and the Bonn examiners; but we should
need to know the cases before we can determine whether he was actuated
by wilful waywardness or by adherence to a higher than common standard
of conduct. Each of the brothers had evidently exquisite sensitiveness
of conscience, though, as proved by the Professor's last book--that
unique criticism of a brother who died at ninety by another aged
eighty-five--they could not always enter into sympathy with each other.
Of this we may be quite sure. The life of one who had thought himself
into Atheism, yet contemplated becoming a tutor, must have been a most
uncomfortable one. The treatment he was likely to receive could not
be calculated to evoke his better qualities. Finding everywhere his
Atheism a bar to his advancement, whose is the fault if it resulted
in a character of petulance and cynicism, and in--what it evidently
did result in--a largely wasted life?
The Rev. Edward Venables, Precentor of Lincoln, speaks of him as having
been, between 1834 and 1844, usher in a large school for farmers' sons,
kept by a Mr. Allfree at Windmill Hill, in the parish of Herstmonceaux,
Sussex, where Julius Charles Hare, Archdeacon of Lewes, was rector,
and John Sterling for a short while curate. Mr. Venables says Newman
"interested Archdeacon Hare very much, and I have often heard him
speak of the long conversations he had had with him on literary
and philosophical subjects, and of the remarkable mental power he
displayed. At that time the future Cardinal's brother had entirely
discarded the Christian faith, and declared himself an unbeliever
in revelation." There can be no doubt the tribute from Hare, a man
of very superior culture, was deserved, though the archdeacon also
expressed the opinion "there was a screw loose somewhere."
The task of teaching the Sussex rustics was, as Precentor Venables
remarks, intolerably irksome to a man of Newman's high intellectual
power. It was like chopping logs with a fine-edged razor. His
relations with his principal became strained, and a tussle between
the usher and his class led to his dismissal. At this time he
was miserably poor. Precentor Venables says: "To Hare he lamented
the narrow-mindedness of his brothers John and Francis, who, as he
asserted, had entirely cast him off, and left him to fight his way in
the world unaided, because of his professed infidelity, in which the
younger of the two, then an ardent Evangelical, was before very long
to follow him." No reproach whatever is due to the younger brother on
this account, and the elder is probably as little blameworthy. John
Henry could not be expected to recommend as tutor one whose views
upon faith and morals he considered unsound. Francis William had
gone to Bagdad with the object of assisting in a Christian mission,
and intercourse with Mohammedans and other studies were but gradually
loosening his orthodoxy. After his return, and when his works and
professorship at London University assured his position, he put himself
into regular monthly communication with his brother. In the meantime
he had been assisted by his sister Harriet's husband. But the iron had
already entered his soul; he was an Atheist and an outcast. Forced to
receive the bounty of relatives who deplored his opinions, he seems to
have resented their kindness as an attempt to bribe his intellectual
conscience. The world rang with the fame--as theologian, historian,
poet, and preacher--of the elder, whose creed he had outgrown and
despised; while his convictions, to the full as honest, everywhere
stood in his way, and were contemned as an offence against faith and
morals. He had no contact with minds congenial to his own, and doomed
himself to the life of a recluse.
Each of the brothers was of a retiring, meditative disposition. Reading
the Apologia Pro Vita Sua of the eldest, one may see how this
contributed towards his seeking a refuge in the Catholic Church. The
same disposition of mind may be traced in the Phases of Faith of
the youngest, equally impelling him from the evangelicalism of his
surroundings and leading to the rejection of historic Christianity,
and finally to the surrender of all belief in revelation. In Charles
Robert Newman the same qualities were seen to excess, removing him
from contact with his fellows to the life of a solitary thinker in
a quiet Welsh watering-place. From about 1853, he had a room in a
small cottage on the Marsh road, Tenby.
Mr. Thomas Purnell, who says he had for years "the inestimable
privilege of enjoying his close intimacy," remarks, "never before
or since have I met a man endowed with as rare an intellectual
equipment." Mr. Purnell thus describes his own first visit to the
recluse: "He stood at the top of the topmost stair. I cannot imagine a
more distinguished head and face. There was a touch of Mephistopheles
in him. There was also a touch of Jupiter Olympius. Although dressed
in ill-fitting clothes, and with a sort of blanket over his shoulders,
he appeared to me to be the ideal of courtly grace. He bowed me without
a word into his apartments. This was in the roof of the building,
and the only light came from a window which opened with a notched iron
bar. The room was as meagrely furnished as Goethe's study in Weimar. A
bed, a chest of drawers, a table and two or three chairs, with a few
books, constituted the whole goods and chattels." Mr. Purnell says
"his health, means and inclination made him averse to society. The
rector called on him, but was not admitted; visitors to the town who
had known his brothers would send in their cards, but they received no
response; local medical men, when they heard he was ill, volunteered
their services, but they were declined with courteous thanks conveyed
by letter."
It appears he but seldom left his house, and when he went out he did
not often enter the town, but took his exercise in the road which
led into the country. Dressed in a pea-jacket, with a shawl or a rug
thrown across his shoulders, and with a sou'-wester over his head, he
marched erect, looking neither to left nor right. He wore shoes, and,
as his trousers were short, displayed an interval of white socks. The
lads and lasses were apt to regard such a figure with derision.
It was through Mr. Purnell that he communicated the papers here
reprinted to the Reasoner. Although but of the character of fragments,
they bespeak an original mind. The secret of the Cardinal's great
influence and strength was that what he spoke and wrote came not
from books, but forthright out of his own head and heart. The topics
with which his brother deals were those only needing the mind,
and his treatment shows they were viewed in the dry light of an
original intellect. The Reasoner ceased soon after the appearance
of these papers, and thus closed the one opening for his literary
activity. Francis William Newman was, at least till the present year,
unaware that his arguments for Theism were challenged by his own
brother under the signature of "A Recluse." He informs me that he
had never heard that anyone would publish anything from his pen, and
that he heard that at his death, in March, 1884, he left a box full
of manuscripts, which were destroyed as useless. Whether this was done
by order of his relatives, whether the landlady decided the question,
or whether the vicar or neighbors were called in, will perhaps remain
as unknown as the worth of the manuscripts. The following specimens
are all by which the latter question can be judged.
Mr. Meynell says that two years before he died he had a short visit
from his eldest brother. It must have been a strange meeting, and
one worthy the brush of a great artist. Surely in all England there
were not two men of eighty whose thoughts were so divergent or two
brothers whose lives were so diversified. The one a saintly cardinal,
called by the Pope the Light of England, who, by his rare urbanity,
had gained the respect of all, replete with all that should accompany
old age--as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends: the other,
fallen, too, into the sere and yellow leaf, and without them all--poor,
solitary, unknown and despised, a scorn and wonderment to his nearest
neighbors. And all from following his own thought that had made him
a purus putus Atheist.
J. M. Wheeler.