In 1826 Francis Newman gained, as it is said, with no special effort, one of the best Double Firsts in classics and mathematics ever known. He had a Fellowship in Balliol College, was Emeritus Professor later, and considered to be one of the most promising, brilliant men at his University. Many thought his intellect superior to that of his better- known brother. Many thought also, later on, that, as I have said, all his life he was more or less overshadowed by the fame of that elder brother.
Francis Newman never took his M.A. degree, and for this reason: he felt he could not conscientiously sign the Thirty-nine Articles, in which all had to profess belief. He could not reconcile this signing with his inner convictions. Rather than do violence to them he preferred being without the degree. No one could say of him that all his life long he did else than bear his convictions boldly emblazoned on his shield. There could never be any doubt of what he thought. He could not beat about the bush in his beliefs—he would not keep them secret—he did not care for unpopularity in the least. His great aim was to fight—at whatever odds— for whatever he felt by dogged conviction. He was often wrong; but never cowardly, never philandering, never vacillating. "I am anti-everything," as he said humorously of himself. And so he was. He was, in a sense, "anti-everything," and though, sometimes through the training of previous environments, sometimes through other reasons, he was "anti" things that were right and of good report, he was never against social reform—never against "the cause that needs assistance"; never against the oppressed wherever and whenever they crossed his path. Newman thus gave up his Balliol Fellowship, and with it—more or less—his chances of a brilliant worldly career.
Briefly stated, these are the chief events of the years that followed the taking of the Double First at Oxford. In 1827 he met Maria Rosina Giberne, who was to strongly influence his life for the next six years. In 1828 he was working with his brother at Littlemore; in 1829, I imagine, he met and felt strongly in sympathy with some of those with whom, later, the missionary journey to Syria was planned—Lord Congleton, Mr. Groves, Dr. Cronin, and others.
People have said that Newman gave up all worldly hopes of fame for the sake of this missionary venture. It may be that that is true in part. But, for myself, I cannot help seeing too that there may very well have been other powerful reasons which also influenced him in the matter. It was about this time that he asked my aunt, Maria Rosina Giberne, to whom he was passionately attached, to marry him, and was refused. I think it very probable that this may have been a strong reason why he wished to break up the old life and go for change abroad.
Originally there had been some idea that Francis Newman should take Holy Orders, as well as his brother. This is evidenced by a poem by the latter. Later, contrary tides swung the former from the mooring of the Anglican Church. He could not sign her Thirty-nine Articles; he could not agree with many of her doctrines. He drifted more and more away from her. Then he fell in with Lord Congleton (then Mr. Parnell) and Mr. A. N. Groves— both deeply religious men, though neither of them Churchmen.
Lord Congleton [Footnote: Memoir of Lord Congleton, by Henry Groves.] had been given no definite religious training in his youth, though his mother taught him to say daily prayers. Then, when a young man, he felt a deep dissatisfaction with this vague religious teaching he had received, and he began to read more and more in the New Testament, until at length he became a Christian by sheer conviction. He felt his conversion as a revelation.
Mr. Groves, who was a well-known dentist in Devonshire, felt about the same time a great stirring towards missionary work. He offered his services to the Church Missionary Society. He often stayed in Dublin with Lord Congleton. In 1828, when they were walking together, one of those strange mystical approaches of soul to kindred soul took place.
"This, I doubt not, is the mind of God concerning us, that we should come together not waiting on any pulpit or minister, but trusting that the Lord would edify us together by ministering as He pleased." Lord Congleton adds: "At the moment he spoke these words I was assured my soul had got the right idea, and that moment (I remember it as if it were but yesterday) was the birth-place of my mind as a 'brother.'"
He mentions here Edward Cronin (who in 1830 formed one of the missionary party with which Frank Newman was associated), at that time an Independent, "but his mind was at the same time under a like influence, as I may say of us all."
[Illustration: PHOTO OF LORD CONGLETON (LEADER OF SYRIAN MISSIONARY JOURNEY) FROM HIS "LIFE" BY GROVES]
I should perhaps say here (I have the information from the Memoir of Lord Congleton before mentioned), that the special truths by which Lord Congleton, Mr. Groves, and Dr. Cronin were led then, were: "The oneness of the Church of God, involving a fellowship large enough to embrace all saints, and narrow enough to exclude the world. The completeness and sufficiency of the written Word in all matters of faith, and preeminently in things affecting our Church life and walk—the speedy pre-millennial advent of the Lord Jesus."
All three of the men just named had made surrender of all that the world had to offer them, Lord Congleton giving the whole of his fortune to missionary work. It was he who provided most of the things needed for the journey.
In 1830 (September) the following party left Dublin:—Lord Congleton (whom in future it will be simpler to call by his family name of Mr. Parnell, as Newman thus mentions him in his diary, the Personal Narrative, which he kept throughout this journey to the East); Mr. Cronin; his mother Mrs. Cronin, and her daughter Nancy Cronin (to whom Lord Congleton was engaged); and Francis Newman. There was also a Mr. Hamilton, but later on he found the work not suited to him, and returned to England. [Footnote: Mr. Groves had already gone as a missionary to Bagdad in 1829, and they were to join him later.]
Mr. Henry Groves says in the Memoir that the travellers started with an enormous quantity of luggage. They had practically a small library of books, a lithographic press in two heavy boxes (for printing tracts, etc.), and a large medicine chest, which was Mr. Cronin's property (he was a doctor). When one thinks how the more one travels, even in these travelling-made-easy days, the more one wishes to abridge one's requirements and whittle down one's wants, it is not difficult to understand that in 1830 the difficulties of the rough travelling were largely increased by these foods for the mind and for the stomach which travelled in the wake of the little party, nor how they were hampered by these conditions.
I now quote from Francis Newman's Personal Narrative (published 1856), which is one of the most interesting of travel books, and very graphically written in the form of letters to his friends at home. [Footnote: Newman and Lord Congleton were both at this time about twenty-three years of age.]
"River Garonne, At Anchor in Steamboat, 23rd Sept., 1830.
"We sailed finely on Saturday from Dublin, while sheltered by the Irish coast; but in the evening we tasted the Atlantic with a south-wester, which proved a bitter dose. For nearly fifty hours we tossed, with very slow progress, until all our bones were bruised, etc., etc…. I have never seen anything like the sea on the French coast.
"The Bay of Biscay fulfilled all its proverbial roughness: the whole sea was dells and knolls. It was terrible to see the pilot jump aboard while his boat was alternately tossed above our deck; he was caught by the sailors in their arms…. The custom-house officers have detained the ship so long that we are left here by the tide…. The officers were very civil. They were all amazed at the number of our packages" (as well they might be!)… "The prospect of our porterages is frightful. Think of us at the top of a hotel and an army of porters carrying up the height of three stories many hundredweights of trunks, chests, hampers, bags, baskets, to stow into our bedrooms for the night! And this misery is to be repeated everywhere….
"I talk French clumsily, yet get on somehow…. My French having been chiefly mathematical, I do not know the names of many common things…."
At Toulouse in October:—"I am already a Frenchman. If you doubt it, learn that I take wine or raisins for breakfast, and never speak to a peasant without raising my hat…. This vin ordinaire is not 'bad,' in the sense of intoxicating, but in another way. However, if it supplies the place of tea, it is vain to rail at it."
The next entry is while they were staying at Marseilles on 13th October, and concerns the cheapness of the provisions.
"All provisions appear within reach of the poorest. I have been in some very low eating-houses here, and perceive apparently poor people breakfast on meat. Nothing seems dear but milk and butter; we get none but goats' milk here…. The finest purple grapes are here 1d. or 3/4d. a pound, and as much bread as I can eat for 1-1/2d…. I had a provoking accident at BÉziers. On our leaving the barge, the carman drove off without securing our boxes—he was in a violent passion against some girl porters (a domestic institution of BÉziers)…. I roared out, 'ArrÊtez! ArriÈre! Vous n'avez pas attachÉ la corde!' But in vain; and in an instant down came from the very top the little medicine chest given me by M——. It fell on its corner, which saved the glass bottles; but every dovetailing is broken, the hinges wrenched off, the panels split."
Of course the travelling is chiefly by diligence and canal boat, and for English ladies very often terribly rough and trying. But Mrs. and Miss Cronin had resolved to face discomforts, etc., equally with their companions, and would have no little ameliorations in the way of comforts for themselves.
One great danger, too, occurred, from which they were only rescued by the promptitude of Newman and Mr. Parnell (as throughout the diary Newman alludes to Lord Congleton). Once, in travelling by canal near Marseilles, Newman found the level of the canal-boat was "dangerously high, from the arches. Once we had a narrow escape. There was a sudden cry of 'A bas!' We turned and saw we were rapidly nearing an arch which would knock off our heads. The horses kept at a short canter. Old Mrs. C. was sitting quietly on deck, wholly absorbed, and never dreaming that the sailors could be calling to her. Miss C. was sitting on a box, fast asleep. Several of us rushed at once towards them, and pulled them off their seats on to the deck. Literally they fell upon me in a heap, and we just passed safe under the arch. Mrs. C.'s bonnet and my hat got smashed."
Here comes a touch of what later on in life was to be the subject of his keenest thought—the subject of statesmanship, the chief aim of which should be the people: how to make the land sufficient for the people, how to make the people sufficient for the land—a counsel of perfection far removed from the party spirit of politicians, who then, as now, did not recognize that principles and a sacred sense of responsibility for their country should be their motive power.
"We are delayed here" (Marseilles) "for a ship. We are likely to go to Cyprus. The vintage was going while we were en route hither. I was interested to see men walking bare-legged, stained purple nearly to the knee, with treading the wine vat. I then understood the Scripture metaphor…. The men seemed to have been wading in blood…. I should deprecate a whole district being dependent for its livelihood on the sale of wine…. for as some seasons are sure to be fatal to the crop, the failure, when it comes, is universal…. To make each component part—I mean each local part—of society self-supporting, and self-relieving even in times of calamity, ought, I think, to be the aim of every statesman."
As regards sight-seeing for sight-seeing's sake, it was nil. And for a reason which seemed not to allow for any of the travellers having discretion, "We make it a tacit rule never to go ten yards to see anything; for if once we became sight-seers it is impossible to draw the line. So in fact I see nothing but what I cannot help seeing."
The next diary-tic letter is not until 14th January of the next year (1831), when the party had arrived at Aleppo.
Frank Newman had been studying Greek and talking it with a master, and during the voyage from Marseilles landed for three days at Larnica. On the ship was an old Greek, and he used to go and talk with him to practise his Greek.
"You may be amused to hear his judgment of my Greek dialect; he called it 'very beautiful and very funny'; that is, no doubt, because I am apt to mix up too much of the old Greek, which seems grandiloquent on trifling subjects….
"Walking in the street at Larnica, I met a person whom I did not know, who, to my extreme surprise, fell on my neck and kissed both cheeks quite affectionately, I had not recognized my dirty acquaintance in this clean, well-dressed gentleman, probably fresh from the bath."
Many were the difficulties Newman and his friends had to encounter in hiring a vessel to sail to LadakÎa [Footnote: Laodicea of Syria.] on the opposite coast. At last a bargain was struck with a Turkish ship for five pounds. But the ship had battled already against the contretemps of too many voyages. She could no longer beat against the wind as once she used to do. Four times they set sail, and four times had to put back again into port. The captain had only an old French map "marked with crosses at certain places, the cross meaning porto, as the captain explained." He needed help, however, from his passengers to be quite sure which was which! In this ship they lived with discomfort for a whole month. Still, all of the friends kept well. The distance from LadakÎa to Aleppo is about 120 English miles. And this journey added to discomfort, hardship, and to hardship—lack of food for the mission party. It necessitated travelling three miles into the hills, and when a lofty bleak plain was reached, the muleteers made it clear that they were to spend the night there.
"We heaped our rudest boxes to make a wall, and on the lee side prepared a sleeping-place, stretching over it some oilskins…. We had a small supply of food in baskets…. All night the rain fell in torrents…. Our whole floor was swamped; we had to sit on carpet bags and let them get wet. Clothes, bedding, bags, baskets, were drenched, and we had to mount in the morning in the midst of rain…. The roads were river-beds…. After riding eleven hours without dismounting (the beasts never leave their walking pace)…. We had fasted the whole day, yet none of us suffered; not even old Mrs. Cronin, for whom I greatly feared."
I should add here that Francis Newman was strongly in favour of women riding astride instead of on the Early-Victorian side-saddle, which necessitates a woman riding in an artificial, twisted position. Still, at the period at which he is writing, Early-Victorian ideas about the fitness of things were so much de rigueur that Mrs. Cronin, when forced to ride astride, was terribly disturbed.
"'Ach, Edward,' said she to her son, 'I expected they would persecute and murdher us, but I never thought to ride across a mule!'… Three times did her mule come down with her, poor lady, and all three in dangerous places.
"None of the rest suffered so many falls, nor, I think, any of the laden beasts. Her son was in terrible distress at every fall, for he was carrying his infant in his arms … and he could not put the child down in the mud without danger to it."
Indeed, it must have been a very distressful journey for all, and not least for the poor little infant missionary! People may wonder what was the necessity of taking this last at all. [Footnote: Dr. Cronin and his wife were both engaged to come out to Mr. Groves. Then she died, and as he felt bound to fulfil his promise and did not like to leave the baby, he brought it too.] An old clergyman, however, once said to me, "I would rather take an infant in arms with me, than go all by myself on a journey abroad."
At last Aleppo was reached. In his letter, on 10th February to his mother, Newman says how long their stay there would be is quite uncertain. He "is taking daily lessons in Arabic, and speaking French."
"I am afraid you will not think the better of me when I tell you that I am become a smoker; and this though I had so great a dislike to it in England. I do not mean that I am always smoking—certainly not; but I have bought two pipes and amber mouthpieces, and all the apparatus; which shows that I am in earnest. When a man in college smoked cigars in his room, and we (the Balliol fellows) generally condemned it, I remember, in reply to my remark that a man who smoked made himself a nuisance, one of them said, 'It would not do to generalize; for in Germany the man who objects to smoking is the nuisance.' … If anyone calls on me I must offer him a pipe and smoke one myself; and, conversely, when I call on anyone, I must not refuse the pipe…. The pipe fills up gaps of time, and 'breaks the ice' like an Englishman's remarks on the weather….
"Now I am in for it, I will make you perfect in the theory of smoking. We have here three sorts of pipes, of which I use but one, viz. the long straight pipe. It is generally a cherry stick, and reaches from the mouth to the ground as you sit on a low sofa. The bowl is supported in a tin frame on the ground to catch the ashes; and you smoke in it tÔotÔon, which means common dry tobacco…. Ladies, as far as I know, do not smoke the straight pipe, though I have seen Mussulman females, evidently of humble rank, with the long pipe and its smoking bowl protruding from under their long veil as they walked. The second sort is called NargÎli … some pronounce it Narjili…. NargÎli means a cocoa-nut, which is used in this apparatus to hold the water through which the smoke passes. Vertically out of the cocoa-nut rises a pipe which ends in a long bowl holding the Tambac, which is a second species of tobacco having broadish yellow leaves worked up with wet. It needs a piece of red-hot coal laid upon it, and left there, to kindle it. Slanting out of the cocoa-nut proceeds upwards a second tube, a mere cane, which ends in the smoker's mouth. He grasps the vertical tube in his left fist, and, if sitting, rests the cocoa-nut on his knee. This is the way my hostess smokes—an elegant Levantine lady…. I cannot smoke through water; I find it demands too much work for my lungs. The third sort is the Hooka, a word which, I believe, means the very long flexible tube which is here substituted for the cane, while a glass vessel, standing on the ground, does duty for the cocoa-nut. The principle of the smoking … are the same as in the Nargili…. Unless it be overdone, I think the exercise from early youth must enlarge the capacity and power of the lungs…. When people have not a second pipe to offer you, they hand the pipe from their own mouth, and to wipe the mouthpiece before you suck it would be an insult."
Newman says that the Turks are supposed to have a great tenderness for animals. There is a popular saying, which he quotes, "A Turk cares more for the life of a cat than of a man." The following curious scene was witnessed by him in a town on his way to Aleppo:—
"A goat was to be killed, and we had some chance of a bit if one of us would seize a part of the animal before it was dead. There stood the victim and its priest.
"In front was a row of cats, sitting up with all the gravity of Egyptian gods, or like the regiment of cats which were the van of Cambyses against Egypt. On the other side a regiment of dogs. When the scarlet flood spouted on to the ground the dogs took their portion of it. I know not what etiquette or what hint from the sacrificer suddenly dispersed them: then the cats came in due order and took their portion…. Peace was wonderfully kept between dogs and cats; but when it came to dividing the offal, the cats had plenty of screaming, and, I rather think, some fighting. The number of these wild cats here is a real nuisance."
In May we get another insight into the carrying out of Newman's precept to himself, always to "live in Rome as the Romans."
"I believe you know it was always our idea that we must put on native habits wherever we went, so far at least as to encounter no needless friction. I had not then considered how seriously such change may after a time affect one's own character, and the thought sometimes crosses the mind anxiously.
"We smoke. Well. I say to myself, 'I must try not to be wedded to this practice: I hope to leave it off the moment it proves inexpedient.'…. I have taken to the Syrian gown and slippers; to walk actively in these is arduous and, I suppose, very singular. Here is a question: May not my bodily habit change with it? and may not that affect my mind?… The gown is ridiculously feminine, beyond what I had been aware; not merely in length and amplitude, but above the girdle it is puffed out into two bosoms, which are used as pockets" (no doubt the sinus of the Romans). "… Some things which in company we do as seldom as possible, such as to blow the nose, or (worse still) to spit, seem to be utterly forbidden here…. The natives are reserved in the use of a pocket-handkerchief as the most fastidious English lady…. I believe Xenophon praises the Persians for never spitting in company." (Would that our own working classes could, in this respect, be more Persian in their habits!) "Are not all Eastern manners probably a plant of very ancient growth?" Then, on religion: "I did not understand till lately how unintelligible to people here is a religion which is not external and almost obtrusive. We are certainly thought much better of, because, two of our party having pretty good voices, we commonly sing praises in daily worship…. To pray standing, or, as I should rather say, lying flat, at the corners of the streets is not ostentation here: for so many do it that it has no pre- eminence…. I always looked to see a missionary church formed in these countries; but I did not foresee what I now discern, that it would not be recognized as Christians at all, but be esteemed a mere Anglicism, not by papists merely, but by Moslems too. I do not know, after all, whether that could be ever a permanent obstacle. I believe not; for it is not the name, but the goodness of Christianity that must prevail. However, the now current idea here is, that the English are very good men, but have no religion—which means, as I said, no exterior; and in so far our exterior inspires something of respect…. I had resolved to read the Koran through—not in the original, but in a translation—that I might get some insight into the Mussulman mind…. But I confess to you I have broken sheer down in the attempt, … the book makes no impression on my mind. I cannot find where I left off when I recur to it. That so tedious and shallow a work can meet such praises gives me a lower and lower idea of the power of mind in these nations. I now think that the Arabs are captivated by the tinkle and epigrammatic point of an old and sacred dialect, while Turks and Persians take its literary beauty as a religious fact to be believed, not to be felt. How wonderful is the power of tradition!"
In July, Newman and his party were still at Aleppo. By now they had become well accustomed to the native foods, but had at last come to the conclusion that the meat (mutton) was certainly not good; unfortunately it formed a large proportion of the stews. One dish consisted of rice, dressed with butter and salt This is called "PilÁu" (pronounced "ow"), and apparently is the same as that common in Russia to-day, which is delicious.
"This pilÁu is, fundamentally, rice dressed with butter and salt: the rice is thrown into boiling water, and is boiled for twenty minutes only. This is the highest luxury of the Bedouins. We saw a company of them dine on it. They scraped the hot outside of the rice with the tips of their fingers, squeezed it into a ball in their hand, and shot the ball into their mouth. The dexterity of this, so as not to burn their fingers, miss their mouths, nor drop about their garments, is astonishing…. Carrots with lemon or sour milk make delicious fritters…."
It was during this month that the news came to them from Bagdad that Mr. Groves (who, it will be remembered, had been there for some time, expecting them later to join him) had just lost his wife from plague; that she had been the only one who had caught the disease. Newman himself, about this time, had a sharp attack of fever. Dr. Cronin was much alarmed about him; indeed, he believed him to be dying, and leeched his temples and bled his right arm. Then he tried calomel, and he said that he had resolved on opening his temporal artery if his pulse had kept as rapid as at first it was.
[Illustration: DR. CRONIN ONE OF THOSE WHO WENT TO SYRIA WITH FRANCIS NEWMAN IN 1830 BY KIND PERMISSION OF MRS. CRONIN PHOTO BY MESSRS. WEBSTER, CLAPHAM COMMON]
In Aleppo, he tells us in one of his letters home, "madmen are looked on as sacred characters… there are no madhouses in the land…. Certainly in England the results of turning all the mad loose would be awful.
"But when one sees the entire satisfaction there is here with so ugly and revolting a state of things, and the inability people have to conceive the inconvenience of it… I am driven to speculate…. Is insanity excessively rare here, so that outrages, if they do occur, are naturally very few? or is the insanity… always of the imbecile kind? Or is insanity, at its worst, mollified by the respectful treatment which it meets, as vicious horses by kindness?
"… Here is a people without lunatic asylums. Well, their lunatics are few or harmless; what a comfortable coincidence! If insanity among us is caused by strong passions in one class and by intoxication in another, while the Turkish populations are nearly free from both… it implies a higher average morality…. Add to this there are no abandoned women here."
Five months after the first attack of fever Newman was taken ill of a far worse one, which gave a great shock to his nervous system. He was in real danger of losing his life this time, possibly because, Dr. Cronin being absent, there was no one to treat him. He suffered, too, greatly from continual sleeplessness. When he was recovering, Dr. Cronin, who by now had returned, ordered horse exercise for him, and Mr. Parnell very generously bought a horse for him.
In December, 1831, Mr. and Mrs. Parnell [Footnote: Mr. Parnell meant to have been married to Miss Cronin at Bordeaux, but this was found to be impossible, so he was obliged to wait till they reached Aleppo, where the ceremony took place in the early part of the year 1831.] went to LadakÎa to help Mr. Hamilton, whose health had more or less broken down, secure a vessel to take him to France en route for England. He determined to see him safely on board. Mrs. Parnell also insisted on coming with her husband. But the travelling was rough, and she had had a bad fall from her ass, and besides had been ill and had no doctor at hand.
Mr. Hamilton went away in the ship, but Mrs. Parnell became more and more weak, until at last she died. Immediately on hearing of her death. Dr. Cronin set out, full of sorrow at the loss of his sister, to see if he could be of any help to Mr. Parnell. Newman writes:—
"The brother and mother here are so deeply afflicted, that I ask: What does the noble-hearted bridegroom suffer, but so lately a bridegroom?
"I am astounded at the reverse. Two months back she was hanging over my pillow weeping and kissing me as a dying man; now am I in youthful vigour, and she is in her grave.
"What a meek and quiet spirit was she, active to laboriousness, though refined in person. Affectionate she was, very dear to me also, but unspeakable is the loss to others. This is the third wife taken from those whom I desired as comrades: one died in Dublin, one in Bagdad, now one in LadakÎa….
"No blame against Mr. P. ought to be mixed with sympathy for this melancholy event. His wife's brother, on medical grounds, saw no objection to the journey…. Few English ladies are in body so well adapted as she was to bear the inconveniences, the long weariness, or the dangerous exposures of Turkish travel."
At last the time was come for the journey to Bagdad. Francis Newman and his friends went with their own horses, and with European saddles and stirrups.
"The native broad travelling saddle overlaps the animal's sides like a table, and tilts both ways. To get up at the side without help is a feat almost impossible. Many a time Mr. Parnell got off to search after some article of food or convenience for old Mrs. Cronin. To get up again, his most successful way was to make a run from behind and divaricate on to the horse's tail, like a boy playing at leap-frog; but the beast was always frightened, and bolted before he was well on. You will imagine the rest!… but we were all equally ludicrous, and indeed it is quite a serious inconvenience."
The next entry mentions the return of Mr. Parnell. He told them that Mr. Hamilton seemed absolutely unable to learn a foreign language, and this undermined his spirits and health, and made him a depressing companion.
On 25th April Newman and his friends started from Aleppo. They had not anticipated such serious difficulties as befell them during this journey. In the first place, they were not aware of the habits of the camel (at all events, his habits in the spring of the year). They found to their consternation that they work from two or three in the morning and travel till ten. Many people, not natives, had assured them that camels never travel by night, so they were the more unprepared for this unwelcome fact. The night travelling might not have mattered for younger people, but on old Mrs. Cronin the discomfort fell heavily. She had to be "forced out of her bed at one o'clock in the midst of the sharp cold of the night, and then have to ride when she ought to sleep. The effect of it on her (for she did not sleep by day) frightened us so much that at last we bought the drivers over to our hours…. The caravanserai at Aintab is so disagreeable a place for Mrs. Cronin that we enquired for a private house, and… we have hired one at the absurd price of three-halfpence sterling! It has a large grassy yard, very convenient for our horses, We have now only four, with the ass…."
However, they were not long at Aintab, for they were summoned before the Governor and accused of selling four Turkish Testaments. Then, being unable to deny having done so, the Governor said, "You must leave Aintab immediately." He provided camels, and they had perforce to go, as they had been so dictatorially bidden. But this was not all. A mob of fanatics beset them, followed them out into the country, and then pelted them with stones—first with small ones, but later with bigger ones, which could easily have stunned anyone who was hit by them. Presently a man galloped up and tried to seize Newman's horse's bridle, but he beat him off with an umbrella. Some of the crowd called out that the Governor had ordered them to be killed.
By the time Newman returned to his party Mr. Cronin was lying on the ground, and his mother declared that her son was dying. He had been set upon by men who had come to attack them, and beaten with fists, clubs, and stones. They tried their best to kill him. However, to Newman's intense surprise he was not hurt inwardly, only weak from exhaustion and pain. This was an almost unhoped-for comfort, and it was even found that he could continue his journey before evening. By this time the crowd had entirely dispersed, for an official had been sent by the Governor, and eventually he was able to quiet the people and send them off. Many of the travellers' possessions were lost, many stolen, but, at any rate, though discomforts and dangers undreamt of had been theirs, at least they were none of them seriously hurt; and that in itself was a thing for which they felt infinitely thankful. At last the Euphrates was reached.
"We saw it first in splendid contrast to a chalk desert, the most odious place through which I have travelled. We had soft chalk crumbling under foot, into which the beasts sank over their fetlocks or deeper…. When we surmounted the last chalk hills the green valley of the Euphrates burst upon us.
"It runs in a lowland excavation, bounded by opposite lines of high hills…. This valley was rich in the extreme, with trees scattered in it like England; but the sides of the hills were well wooded…. The river is very turbid, as if with white clay; it is unnaturally sweet, does not taste gritty, and is painfully cold. We presume this is from the melting of snow water…. The river is deep, rapid, smooth, and (I judge) as broad as the Thames at Blackfriars…."
He thus describes the raft they were having made to take them down the river to Bagdad:—"Rough branches of trees of most irregular shape and quite small are strung together crosswise by ties of rope, and under them are fastened a sort of flooring of goat-skins blown up like bladders…. On these is fixed a deck of planks. These rafts carry enormous weights and draw very little water."
In the Memoir of Lord Congleton the end of this journey is thus told:— "They reached Bagdad on 27th June, and were met by Mr. Groves, who had for so many months been anxiously waiting for their arrival, after sufferings neither few nor light on both sides. It is hard to realize what such a meeting would be after two such years of toil and suffering as the past had been."
SECOND PART—BAGDAD
No sooner had the missionary party at length settled down at Bagdad than more trouble fell upon them. Mrs. Cronin, who had suffered almost more from the troubles, discomforts, and dangers of the journey than perhaps her friends guessed, grew worse and worse. She told Mr. Groves "that she was come hither to die," and it proved to be true; for only a few days after her arrival she died, to the deep distress of her son. So already, besides the unceasing discomforts, dangers, and disasters which had befallen the missionaries, there had been the cost of these three lives— Lord Congleton's wife, Mrs. Groves, and now old Mrs. Cronin, worn out by the terrible weariness of their journeyings under such rough conditions.
There is one thing which has struck me very forcibly as regards Frank Newman's Personal Narrative, and it is this: Throughout the whole book there is no mention of actual missionary work—the aim and object of this journey into Syria. There are, it is true, allusions to their own private prayer-meetings (of course they were hardly what one generally understands by the word "private," but still they could not be termed public) and to the distribution of New Testaments, but no actual teaching is mentioned. Nor does Newman write his own views on the subject. The diary-letters are chiefly filled with descriptions of the "perils of the way"—it is more or less secular. To me this has always seemed strange, for there was no doubt that he was, with the others, filled with a very real religious Christian zeal then, although later his views unhappily underwent great change and alteration, until a few years before his death, when his earlier faith was restored. But this fact remains: but for one's own previous knowledge of the aim of this journey, one would hardly recognize the Narrative as a missionary's diary at all.
In the Memoir of Lord Congleton there is far more missionary spirit; but still, even there, there is but very little detailed information as to mission work. During their stay at Bagdad Lord Congleton and Mr. Groves did indeed "develop plans for missionary work" which it was hoped would soon prove successful. The former bought a large house in the midst of the city for mission purposes. At first they thought of working among the "Armenian and Roman Catholic Christian population," and also "among the Jews," but they found the Mohammedans in Bagdad "peculiarly bigoted." And they owned to themselves later that "Bagdad had proved a failure in a missionary point of view." Mr. Groves, who wrote the Memoir of Lord Congleton, indeed owns that, "To many who look at life superficially, these years may seem lost; but He who often leads us 'about' (Deut. xxxii. 10) … has purposes of which neither the one led, and still less the lookers-on, have any conception…. Thus to some these years of toil and sorrow will appear a mistake."
It is impossible to doubt the earnest faith and missionary zeal of these few who had come out to "do the Lord's work" in the East. But to many Churchmen it will be difficult to reconcile the words of Mr. Groves, that "the Coming of Christ, the powers of the Holy Ghost, were truths being brought before the Church of God" when it is remembered that they had practically severed themselves from the visible body of Christ's Church on earth, and were themselves (without Divine authority as delivered once to the Apostles) celebrating each Sunday in their house the Lord's Supper.
Constant mention is made in the Memoir of the open persecution which the mission party suffered in Bagdad, and of "the impossibility of access to the people." There were a few converts to Christianity made, but only a few; and the disappointments were many and grievous.
Then, too, their party was lessened by the departure of Frank Newman and Mr. Kitto for England. No reason is to be traced for this decision of Newman's, and it is not easy to understand what it could have been. It happened during the spring months of the year 1833, and shortly after his second proposal to Maria Rosina Giberne and her second refusal. He had written begging her come out to Bagdad, marry him, and work with them there. No doubt her refusal was a bitter disappointment to him, and possibly he wished to go back to England (he said in his diary he did not know how long he might stay there), and try if he could not persuade her personally. But if he thought this, he was again disappointed, for his meeting with her (as I see from some papers written by my aunt and kindly supplied me from the Oratory, Birmingham), was of no more avail than before. She mentions having met him shortly after his return, and it is evident that it was a meeting not devoid of awkwardness on her part and disappointment on his.
To go back to the letters from Bagdad, after this digression, Newman gives a very graphic account of the rafts used for travelling on the river from Moosul.
[Illustrations: PERSIAN LADY AND PERSIAN SMOKING DATE, 1827 FROM PERSIA IN "MODERN TRAVELLER" SERIES BY JOSIAH CONDER (pub. 1830)]
"The rafts used for descending the river consist of a rude deck fastened to a flooring of blown-up goatskins…. They are used for swimming bladders as in the ancient world. They serve for barrels to carry water…. The skins are also used in the bazaars … for butter, treacle, honey, etc…. The raft is not rowed, except barely to keep it in the stream. It keeps twisting round and round, like a stone in the air;… but … you have all the freshness and life of a vast streaming river and all the tranquillity of a mere pond…. One day, a man who wished to go down the river on our raft swam to us on a goatskin…. As a Thames wherry to a Thames steamer, so is a goatskin to a raft…. It has no prow nor stern…. If driven ashore it may burst many of the skins, some of which indeed from time to time need to be blown and tied afresh…. The oars are enormous, as in English barges. In our small raft two men at a time rowed…. I cannot tell you now of Mr. Groves's plans. I have a great deal to learn. The political state of this city, from within and without, is the very reverse of satisfactory." Then there follows a sentence which seems to imply that Mr. Groves was expecting too much from his "monthly visits" to the Arabs in the way of moral results. Also there follows a delightful account of the native doctor's methods of dealing with his patients. He "contracts to cure the patient … for a definite sum, which is paid to him at once. If the patient thinks the price too high, the doctor lets him get worse; and when he applies anew, of course raises his demand. Nothing can be recovered if not paid down. Mr. Cronin" (the doctor travelling with them), "with all his practice at Aleppo, got fees only once or twice the whole time. He and Groves both despair of it here."
English patients when they use to their doctor the familiar phrase, "I put myself entirely in your hands," little think how completely and practically this was understood by these Bagdad doctors, who considered that a dollar in the hand is worth two promised after treatment of a case, and who, when they once had patients "in their hands," held them tight!
It is clear, I think, from the following entry that Newman did not approve thoroughly of Mr. Groves's methods of learning Arabic, any more than he seems to do of his "monthly visits" to the Arabs. He says that a friend of theirs, who had recently joined them, had studied Arabic and Persian twenty-eight years, and is an accomplished Orientalist, yet he "ridicules English notions of learning." Our religion, poetry, philosophy, science, are so opposed to everything here "that, he says, nothing but long time in the country can make an Englishman intelligible on religious subjects." To confirm this theory that a perfect knowledge of the language of the people to be taught is an absolute essential in a missionary—it is known, for an absolute fact, that missionaries have been eight years in India preaching until even they became convinced that sometimes they gave a totally wrong impression of what they were trying to teach to the natives, and therefore gave up all further efforts at teaching until they had learnt the language more thoroughly, and had it at their finger's—or, to speak more correctly, tongue's—end.
Eventually Mr. Groves came to the conclusion that for a long time to come "the wisest method" was to "avoid controversy with the Moslems." He formed schools not on the ground of "attending to the rising generation," but to aid him in the language … give him opportunities of "trying his wings (as he calls it) against Christian errors, and exciting the attention of Moslems. Indeed, several (chiefly Persians) have come privately and begged New Testaments to send to their friends in Persia. At present I conceive he has nearly the whole Christian population here in his hands." And later, "Groves has not at all disappointed me, do not think that from anything I have written. He is what I expected from his book, and a great deal more. He has a practical organizing directing energy which fits him to be the centre of many persons, especially since it is combined with entire unselfishness and a total absence of personal ambition or desire to take the lead which he does take. He is very sanguine…. I am apt to be sadly faithless, and to see nothing but difficulties."
Perhaps his lack of conviction that this effort at missionary work could make its way in spite of so many great difficulties, as well as his own bad health (he states that he had not had a single day of real health since they have been at Bagdad), had something to do with his decision to return to England.
In August, 1832, Newman had a big class of boys every afternoon to whom he taught English and Geography; he mentions that "into the latter" he puts "a vast miscellany, physical, political, historical," from his knowledge and power of talk.
On 18th Sept., 1833, he left Bagdad. There is no entry in his diary between this and the last one in August, 1832, four months earlier. No word of his parting with his friends; no word of his reluctance to give up his missionary work.
But there is, I think, a good deal more in these words written on 18th September than meets the eye:—
"I am on my way to England for reasons partly personal" (I think this hints at a hope not altogether dead, which had been his close companion through his two years of absence), "partly connected with the interests of my Bagdad friends, and my imagination is in England."
In his journey through Teheraun and thence to Tabreez, he passed through the celebrated rock of Besittoun. The sculptures there are said to represent the conquest of Darius Hystaspis.
"Our caravan did not go close enough to see the sculptures; we were probably half a mile off, but the muleteers were careful to point to them and talk of them. So too in going from Babylonia into Media by the ancient pass of Zagros, they were eager to draw my attention to the sculptures in lofty, apparently inaccessible rocks. 'Your uncle made those,' said a muleteer. At first I did not understand, but I found he meant by my uncle some infidel. No true believer, he said, could have done it…. The pass must be very ancient, and it is by far the noblest work I have seen in Asia."
The next letter is from Constantinople, 9th April, 1833.
"I am on my way to England, but do not know how long I may stay there." In his journey from Erzeroom to Scutari, he says he "became a mere animal"; he could only think of his horse's feet and his horse's footing. He never felt secure, for this reason: that the Tartar's horse, behind whom he rode, in the "ladder road" [Footnote: A "ladder road" is made by the horses all following each other in one track, and each trying to step in the steps made by the first horse.] beside the precipices, through the snow, "fell eleven times with him," and more than once fell over him. Frank Newman says his fear of falling prevented him from being able to admire the scenery, when, as often, it was grand and striking. "The Tartar starts at a fast walk, gets gradually into a shuffle, and studies the pace and power of all the beasts; at last he takes a sharp trot, but slackens before any of them lose breath. His great problem is, that the weakest horse of the set (who really sets the pace) shall come in well at last…. I never imagined I could have gained a power of sleeping for an hour, or two hours, and at last even for ten minutes … in our last week, in which I had no regular night sleep. He" (the Tartar) "could not sleep, for he had two horses carrying gold … but he dozed famously while on horseback. Dr. Kidd used to tell us that the wrist, the eyelid, and the nape of the neck went to sleep before the brain—a charitable excuse for one who drops a Prayer Book in church from drowsiness. I wish I could get Dr. Kidd to tell me whether the knee does not (at least by habit) remain awake after the brain is asleep, for I never saw the Tartar loose in the saddle even when he was all nidnodding." Then comes again the suggestion of the doubt which beset Newman that the way in which his mission party at Bagdad, and some Church Missionary workers at Constantinople laboured, was not a way which could long endure. That difficulties in the future inevitably must come as lions in the path. "Constantinople itself looks to me like mere card-houses—bright blue and bright red; and they are not much better. By being perched up so steep, they force themselves on the eye…. Perhaps I am out of humour: Constantinople is so dreadfully dear to one who comes from Asia (I pay ten piastres, or half-a-crown, for my mere bed—full London price). It is also very chilly and raw…. Yet I do enjoy the bed with sheets, it is an inexpressible luxury. How I have longed for it, but in vain, when suffering fever, to be able really to undress! But I must not write of such matters, nor of more serious ones that distract my judgment and distress me.
"I have seen the American Missionaries here. He" (Mr. Goodall) "gives himself entirely to promote the self-reform of the Armenian Church. This fundamentally agrees with what Mr. Hartley, of the Church Missionary Society, told me was the Society's proceeding against the Greek Church…. It also agrees with Groves's plan at Bagdad. I cannot censure it: I must approve it: yet I have a painful belief that it cannot long go on in the friendly way they all design…. This zeal of the Americans for Turkish Christianity is a new and striking phenomenon."
The last entry in the Personal Narrative occurs on 14th April, 1833, before Newman had left Constantinople. Very shortly after he departed, and not very long after, all his connection with this two years and a half missionary journey was a thing of the past.
It had been more or less a failure as far as regards outward consequences. Of that there seems no doubt. But there is also no doubt that it made its mark in spiritual matters in the minds of many. No doubt that it altered for some their spiritual landmarks and rubicons. No doubt that the subject of this memoir came home seeing religion from a different standpoint.
Archdeacon Wilberforce reminds us in one of his sermons, preached at Westminster Abbey, that the astronomers who built the pyramids of the Nile pierced a slanting shaft through the larger pyramid, which pointed direct to the pole-star. Then, if you "gazed heavenward through the shaft into the Eastern night, the pole-star alone would have met your gaze. It was in the ages of the past; it was when the Southern Cross was visible from the British Isles. Slowly, imperceptibly, the orientation of the planet has changed. Did you now look up into the midnight sky through the shaft in the Great Pyramid, you would not see the pole-star. New, brilliant space- worlds would shine down on you. But the heavens have not altered, and the shaft of the pyramid is not lying, or unorthodox. A new view of the heavens has quietly come, for the earth's axis has changed its place."
Very slowly too, sometimes, the axis of a personality changes its place. It may be that an entirely new point of view faces it. Some other view of life "swims into its ken." The mental eye can no longer see through the old means which served it in years gone by for lens. It is, as it were, looking at a new place in life's sky: for a time it is quite unable to reconcile its old ideas of religious astronomy with the new ones. What then? The sky is the same; but there are many ways of looking at it; and many spiritual atmospheres which cloud the outlook. Frank Newman could not reconcile at this time, nor in those which were coming, his old Calvinistic tendency of thought with new ideas which were forcing themselves in upon him. At the very end of life he saw the star of Christianity again, but this missionary journey which had just, for him, terminated, seemed to be more or less the rubicon which divided him from his old faith, and from the rationalism to which he drifted during the years while he was at Manchester, and University College, London.
