In the year 1840 Francis Newman was made Classical Professor in Manchester New College. That same year saw Dr. Martineau appointed Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy at the same college. It will be remembered that for thirty-seven years Manchester New College had been at York, and had now but just returned to its name-place.
Here then began the friendship which lasted unbroken until death.
Both men were keen searchers—each in his own way—after religious truth. For both it was a subject that practically affected their whole lives. But while in Martineau the result was a deep theology which found its satisfaction in the fold of Unitarianism, in Newman dogma of any sort was practically an unknown quantity. He drifted further and further from revealed religion, until many of his letters and writings became to the Christian minds of some who read them exceedingly painful. It is true that before he died Mr. Temperley Grey, the minister who attended him in his last illness, declared that there was a return to his original faith, but still nothing can alter the effect of the written word, and there is a passage in one of Newman's own letters which illustrates this fact very clearly. "It is a sad thing to have printed erroneous fact. I have three or four times contradicted and renounced a passage … but I cannot reach those whom I have misled." In those last nine words there is a world of unexpressed regret—regret which no after endeavour can eradicate. Both spoken and written words go to far mental ports, and very often-from being out of our ken—unreachable ones for us. No later contradiction can reach them and undo the once-made impression.
Martineau and Newman were not of one mind in the matter of religion. The letters which passed between them show that; but they show, too, that no dispute separated them. If for a time some painful passage in a letter of Newman's troubled his friend, the matter was dealt with with straightforward candour and unfailing forbearance and gentleness. There were no harsh words between them. Both of them were naturally, innately sweet and kindly in disposition. Even in matters of dispute which concerned that subject which occupied so large a part in both their minds, difference of opinion could not "separate very friends."
It will be remembered that the year before the regular correspondence between the two began, Martineau had written a paper criticizing Newman's Phases of Faith.
Before giving Newman's letters, perhaps a few words on Martineau himself would not be out of place here. He came of an old Huguenot family. Mr. Jackson, from whose biography of him I am quoting, says that Gaston Martineau, who, tradition tells us, was a surgeon of Dieppe, came to England after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and that though first he went to London to live, yet that eventually he settled down at Norwich, and here all his children were born. The youngest of them became the father of James Martineau, the theologian. He was born in the same year as Francis Newman, and died just seven years before he did.
In the bringing up and early training of both men there was a large element of Puritanism. Many of the most severe Calvinistic doctrines held sway in Newman's home life, and even if the atmosphere was a little less thickly charged with religious thunderclouds in the early environment of Martineau, yet certainly, from all accounts, Sunday was pre-eminently a day that "hid its real meaning and brightness behind a frowning face." I cannot help quoting here a story which a little reveals the sort of religious atmosphere which brooded over the day and the point of view brought to bear on it by James Martineau's mother when he was a boy. The mother had gone to church one Sunday evening, and left word in her little home circle that they were to read the Bible.
When she came back she put the probing question to James: "What had he read?" His answer was: "Isaiah." She at once replied that he couldn't have read the whole; and he answered promptly, "Yes, mother, I have, skipping the nonsense."
From eight years old to fourteen James Martineau went, as a day scholar, to Norwich Grammar School. After school life he came to the conclusion that he wished to give his life to the ministry, and as, of course, the English universities were not open to anyone who refused to sign the Thirty-nine Articles, he was sent to Manchester College. Here it became evident to everybody that he was a student who would let nothing interfere with his work. His masters were struck by his accurate habits of mind and great perseverance in research.
In 1835 his ministry in Liverpool, as pastor in Paradise Street Chapel, began, and to his work here was joined his work at Manchester New College, which, as I mentioned before, began in 1840, the same year as Newman's own connection with the college. But when, in 1853, the college was transplanted to London, for four years Martineau continued to live as a minister in Liverpool, and yet he kept up his classes at the college (six hours by train from Liverpool).
In 1857 he was asked to come and live in town and devote his whole time to his college work, and this he agreed to do. There were not then many students, but among them were names which after years were destined to make famous, and among these were Alexander Gordon, Estlin Carpenter, and Philip Wicksteed.
In 1858 he was appointed minister to Little Portland Street Chapel. Formerly the congregation belonging to the chapel were rigid, unbending Unitarians. With the advent of Martineau began the newer, broader views of Unitarianism. Throughout the years which now were to be passed in London, Dr. Martineau's labours were unceasing as scholar, thinker, and theologian. It is said that, though he wrote and taught so much, yet he never let his reading be interfered with; he was always adding to his stores of knowledge. For fifty years he was recognized as one of the most profound thinkers of his day, as well as one of the finest writers.
The first letter from Francis Newman to Martineau, from which I quote, is dated December, 1850, from Brighton:—
Dr. Martineau from Newman.
"I seem to be out of joint with you in the two highest interests of man— Religion and Politics … I am … become a Republican by principle, for the continent Jefferson always held that constitutional monarchy was a simple impossibility in a large continental country where great armies were kept up; and I think the history of a millennium in Europe demonstrates it. All royalties were in their origin constitutional; but in the long run no dynasty ever resisted the temptation to overthrow the barriers which fenced it in. Our liberties seem to me rightly ascribed to the fact that we are insular, and need only a navy for protection. Sweden for the same reason is able to retain its liberties…. I think that in the order of Providence, royal power has served the purpose of uniting nations in larger masses than would else have held together.
"Where it has done this without destroying municipal organization it is clearly good in its result—as in Great Britain, Sweden, Germany; … but having served this function, it seems to me that Royalty (unless it could again become elective) has done its work, and ought not to be regretted…. On doctrinaire grounds, either to unsettle it where it works well, or to desire to enforce it where it has violated its pledges and forfeited all claims to love and devotion, seems to me a mistake similar in kind.
* * * * *
"Must not a time of weakness come when Austria is bankrupt—when an Emperor of Russia is a dotard or a child, when provinces of Russia become disaffected, or an army mutinies; or again, when France and Austria seriously fall out?… You see I am dosing you with some of my most pungent stuff, in proof that I trust your strength of stomach …
"Your affectionate friend,
"FRANCIS W. NEWMAN."
In the letter which follows, Newman touches on two well-known personalities of his day—Frederica Bremer and Charles Kingsley. He mentions the fact of his having been engaged to meet Kossuth as the reason why the first attempt to meet Miss Bremer was unsuccessful. It will be remembered that Miss Bremer came to England in order to collect material for her Life in the Old World. (This year was also the date of Kossuth's first visit to our shores.) Miss Bremer was Swedish by descent, but Finnish by birth, for she was born in Finland in the year 1801.
As regards Kingsley, in 1850 he had published tracts on "Christian Socialism." Alton Locke had already come out and met with scorn on the part of the Press, though working men—who recognized Kingsley as their truest friend—welcomed it gladly. In 1851—a year of great trouble and distress all over England—he thought out plans to drain parts of Eversley (his parish), for there had been many cases of fever there, and Kingsley was pre-eminently a practical Christian. He was also far ahead of his time (as all great men invariably are), and he saw clearly how inseparably close in this present world is the connection between physical matters and spiritual. He recognized that if a man is living in unsanitary conditions, it affects in a very real though inexplicable way his spiritual life. He could trace the connection in a parishioner's life history between bad drainage and drunkenness: later on—though it might perhaps be very much later on—a "bee-in-the-bonnet" of his child: and he saw in this unhappy, unfortunate Little Result the outcome of someone's sinful failure in his duty to his neighbour in years gone by, when the first insanitary conditions were allowed to live and be mighty.
In some senses drainage, therefore, has a decided effect upon the spiritual life of men and women. Everyone probably will remember Dr. Nettleship's resolute assertion, that "even a stomach-ache could be a spiritual experience."
And so Kingsley pushed forward the drainage improvements in his parish, and considered it, what in very truth it was, a fitting subject for the energies of a parish priest, at work night and day for the betterment of the souls and bodies of his parishioners.
I cannot avoid quoting here Francis Newman's own strongly expressed views on drainage of the land:—
"Now, the drains being out of sight, it is morally certain that defects will exist, or be caused by wear and tear, unseen. In one place evil liquids and gases will percolate; in another evil accumulations will putrefy. Instead of blending small portions of needful manure quickly with small portions of earth that needs it, we secure in the drains a slow putrefaction and a permanent source of pestilence; we relieve a town by imposing a grave vexation and danger on the whole neighbourhood where its drains have exit; we make the mouth of every tide river a harbour and storehouse of pollution; and after thus wasting an agricultural treasure we send across the Atlantic ships for a foul commerce in a material destined to replace it….
"It was quite notorious forty years ago that the refuse of the animal was the food of the vegetable, and ought to be saved for use, not wasted in poisoning waters. How could well-informed men delude themselves into an approval of this course? Only one explanation occurs: they despaired of returning to Nature. They assumed that we must live by artifice, and they entitled artifice 'Science.'"
I return now to the letter from Newman to Martineau:—
Dr. Martineau from Francis Newman.
"Southampton, Wednesday, "8th Oct. 1851.
"My dear Martineau,
"Your interesting letter was sent to me by Monday afternoon, and first told me that Miss Bremer was in London, which I learned only by a pencil note on the outside, '142 Strand.' That evening I was going to see my two sisters—one returned from the Continent, and one come from Derby. And on Tuesday morning I was engaged to come hither to meet Kossuth! So I fear I have missed Miss Bremer. But, from to-day's news, I fear there is no chance of K. arriving till next Monday or Tuesday; and I shall probably go back to-morrow. I will try to see Miss Bremer immediately, but am much disappointed.
"I have had a little correspondence with Mr. Kingsley lately—rising out of a recent lecture of his, the practical results and practical principles of which gave me great pleasure. He says he has 'done his work' of protesting and denouncing capitalists, and now hopes to give himself to construction and practical creation; and much as I fear some of his generalizations, I hope great good from his purely excellent aims, and the amount of aid he can command. He agrees most heartily with my denunciation of large towns as the monster evil, and takes the matter up agriculturally thus: No country can be underfed while it returns to the soil what it takes out of it"—[The italics are my own. Is not this sentence of infinite value to us to-day?]—"for, in the long run, the soil will always give back as much as it receives. Every country impoverishes itself which pours into the rivers and sea the animal refuse which ought to be restored to the soil.
"No community can avoid this prodigality, unless its inhabitants live upon the soil. Therefore towns ought not to exceed the size at which the whole animal refuse can be economically saved and directly applied to agriculture.
"To me it seems that every reason—moral, political, agricultural, economical, sanitary—converge to this same conclusion; and I apply Delenda est Carthago to every city in Europe.
"On the subject of masters and servants, he says, 'Masters should be considered "infamous" who hired servants by the day or week, and not by the year; or who dismissed old servants without any other reason than to lower wages; but such a thing, to be possible and effective, must be mutual. The servant must have no power to leave a good master in order to raise his wages. But at present, while the servant is under no bonds to the master, and does not like to bind himself, it seems to me quite impossible to treat the masters as having any moral responsibility for the servants more than for foreigners. When we buy tea, we cannot ask whether the Chinese get a comfortable livelihood by selling it at that price.' That is an extreme and clear case to which we approach in every commercial transaction in proportion as the other party claims that the relation shall be one of mere marketing….
"Ever yours affectionately,
"Francis W. Newman."
The next letter, which is dated September, 1851, and which was written just after Newman's return from his Swiss tour, goes on with the same subject as the last, and also touches on the evils of suddenly introducing machinery; while it shows clearly that, in the long run, better wages are gained for the worker by its means—"Machinery is in every light the friend of the poor." He says very truly, "The first great want of the workmen is better morality and more thriftiness, not better masters or higher wages." Putting quite aside the question of whether "higher wages" are not needed by the workman, nothing can be truer at the present time than this fact, brought thus before us by Newman. It is, beyond all question, these faults which run through the bulk of the labouring classes (as we term them)—lack of the true spirit of morality and thriftiness.
It is difficult altogether to account for the reason why the lack of these characteristics is so much to the fore to-day, or to think of the remedy which shall reach and cure them. But that it is a presence in our midst is a self-evident fact. No one who has travelled much in France (to name only one other country), but is aware how vast is the gulf which divides the ways of living of our own labouring classes and of those which obtain across the water. There, thriftiness is the rule. They use a far simpler diet, and one which the land supplies them with, and are content. There is a far more healthy tone about them, even if it be a rough one, than there is among our own poor. I am constantly in France myself (it is the country of my own ancestors), and I have never failed to be struck by the absence there, in the country, of the vice which disfigures so often the home life of our villagers. You do not see there the sights that make the streets on Saturday evening in England a degrading scene. When the French villager is happy, he can be it without the aid of drunkenness. And as far as the cultivation of the land is concerned—well, we need only look at home in our "French Farming" schemes to-day and we shall find that when we want to come "back to the land," to find out how much care and industry will bring out of it, we have to send for a Frenchman to show us his country's secrets of manuring the land, so that the soil becomes precious and will yield, even from so small a space as a quarter of an acre, incalculable riches in the way of marketable goods.
As regards what Newman says about the work_women_ of England, it is impossible to agree with him. It is most assuredly not the case in thousands of instances that "there are no good workwomen out of work, or earning low wages," nor that "those who cannot get good wages are women who have spent their prime in idleness … and sew badly."
One has but to refer to the statistics with which the Christian Social Union supplies us, as well as other societies, to have this idea quickly negatived. Mrs. Carlyle's experiences and Mrs. Newman's were evidently involuntarily misleading.
There was a certain impulsiveness in discussing many subjects to which Newman seems to have been peculiarly subject. He was sometimes so led away by it as to dogmatize inaccurately or over-forcibly.
Dr. Martineau from Francis Newman.
"My dear Martineau,
"… In a day or two I am meditating a visit to Froude, who is in Wales, and too much in solitude." [Froude was then preparing or writing his History of England. It will be remembered that Cardinal Newman's influence over him at college decided him later on taking Holy Orders, but he never went beyond the diaconate.] "Gladstone's letters just now are a powerful stimulus to public opinion…. Not the Socialists only, but numbers of workmen besides treat it as an abstract wickedness in a master to offer lower wages than are at any particular time existing. They have never any objection to a rise of wages; so I cannot say they treat the existing rate as a divinely appointed amount; but they do not see that if they are unwilling to bind themselves not to strike for a rise, they ought to concede in the master a moral right to lower…. What is to be done with those who will go on enunciating and propagating dangerous general maxims as abstract axiomatic truth?… Your method of making the masters determine how many shall enter a trade will succeed; but I do not see that it will succeed in ejecting. In the years of railroad excitement the London newspapers were enormously overworked, and a great increase no doubt took place in the numbers of printers (perhaps also in their wages); now the printers for some time have been in comparative depression…. I do not contend that all lowering of wages by masters is merciful and just, but that some may be; whereas the Socialists and Co. instantly declaim against all or any lowering, without entering into any details as to present or past history of the trade. When I said that machinery is in every light the friend of the poor, I do not think I overlooked the occasional mischief caused by its sudden introduction…. The effect of machinery is in the long run a steady rise of wages as well as a cheap supply of goods: the advantage to the poor is universal and permanent, the evil is partial and transitory. Moreover, the evil is immensely aggravated by their perverseness. Three generations of hand-loom weavers have been propagated in spite of the notorious misery it must cause. Machinery does not raise the rate of profits or interest; it does raise the rate of wages: compare Manchester and Buckingham in proof…. I do not think I am at all carried into reaction by unjust attacks on capitalists, but I am very strongly by the [right or wrong] belief that the first great want of the workmen is better morality and more thriftiness, not better masters or higher wages. I have not dared to print half of what are my convictions on this head…. The sufferings of the poor from bad air and bad water are quite a separate chapter. High wages do little to cure this. Indeed, in Manchester the workmen habitually prefer to save a shilling a week in house rent and spend it in beefsteaks, when the shilling would have got them a healthy instead of an unhealthy lodging. Bricklayers' wages are at present high in London; what is the consequence? I have at present a bit of a dwarf wall building in my garden. The men leave their work; I complain; the builder replies: 'Men will not come to work on a Monday without much trouble.' I fear this means that they drink on Sunday and are very 'seedy' on Monday morning. The very men who are excited by high wages to drinking and idleness will make a violent outcry when a fall of wages takes place, and moreover will get the ear and sympathies of Maurice and Co. for their outcry."
"Maurice and Co." of course refers to Frederick Denison Maurice, who was the principal mover in the Christian Socialism of the day, as he was in all social reforms. He had met with much abuse and opposition, but still there were very many who called him "Master." Amongst these last was Charles Kingsley, who had been one of his pupils, and who had been very greatly influenced by his opinion in religion and social matters. [Footnote: Kingsley (see memoir) said to Maurice, when opposition was fiercest against him: "Your cause is mine. We swim in the same boat, and stand or fall thenceforth together."] Neither man could bear the narrowness of "parties" in religion. They always demanded more toleration, broader views, and refused to be bound by narrow creeds. It was owing chiefly to Coleridge that Maurice took Holy Orders. He was born in that year of great men, 1805, and by 1851 his socialistic ideas were well known to the world.
"As to the milliners and tailors, my wife has the same experience as Mrs. Carlyle, that there are no good workwomen out of work, or earning low wages. Mrs. Wedgwood tells me that the Ladies' Committee could not get women to make the shirts…. Those who cannot get good wages are women who have spent their prime in idleness, and cannot work well enough to satisfy ladies. They sew badly, and get a poor pittance from the shops. As to tailors, I give more for a coat by four or five shillings than I did twenty-five years ago…. Until our national morality is much improved, and our moral organization repaired, there must be a large body of persons without any trade, art, or connection who will throw themselves into what seems to be the easiest art, and by their numbers will swamp it….
"Ever your affectionate
"Francis W. Newman."
It should be mentioned here that in 1853 Manchester New College was moved to London, but that it was not until 1857, that Dr. Martineau went to live in town, in order to devote his time chiefly to the important work which devolved upon him in connection with it. This he continued to do until 1885. Newman had been appointed in 1846 to the chair of Latin in University College, a post he held until 1863.
The next letter of this period, addressed to Martineau, gives one an insight as to the effect of beauty of scenery upon Newman. He was far removed from the ordinary point of the rapid traveller of to-day, who only seems to want to cover great distances at rapid speed, and can therefore have no conception at all of what we might call the "atmospheric environment" of a place, which can only be felt by quiet moving, as Newman expresses it, "from point to point," to "see how aspects and proportions change."
Dr. Martineau from Francis Newman. "Grisedale Bridge, "Patterdale, near Penrith, "31st July 1854.
"My dear Martineau,
"I have been faithless in not writing to you before now….
"We are more delighted than ever with Patterdale. Probably enough you know the beauties of your neighbourhood so well, and esteem them so highly, that you turn as deaf an ear as I do to all praises of other parts. I have so strong a sense of the inexhaustibility of beauty, that it aids me to repress the restlessness which is kindled by other persons' praises of what is unknown to me….
"Unless I had my own carriage I get little pleasure from touring. What I want is to stop at the beautiful places, and go from point to point and see how aspects and proportions change; this in fact you seldom do well except on foot and at leisure. The walks here are inexhaustible, for persons who can carry with them their book or other occupation, and stay out four or five hours; but you want reasonably dry weather, else indeed the swampiness of the mountains greatly lessens the number of feasible or pleasant walks, besides impairing the beauty.
"I only get a newspaper once a week, and in such a crisis feel hungry for news as the week goes on." [The "crisis," of course, was the near approach at this time of the beginning of those hostilities which were to end in the Crimean war.] "Lest the Eastern question should flag in interest by lingering, lo! the Spanish insurrection breaks on us. I do not yet dare to hope European benefits from Spain: should such be the ultimate result, it will be a striking illustration how incalculable is the course of events, while the general end is not very obscure.
"Mr. Charles Loring Brace, of America (who, you may know, was imprisoned in Hungary), sent to me an introduction from Theodore Parker. It is highly probable he had one to you….
"The post summons.
"Ever yours, "F. W. N."
Harriet Martineau, sister of Dr. Martineau, was fifty-three years of age when Newman wrote to her brother about her illness. Practically for the whole of her life she had been more or less of an invalid. Even as a girl she suffered so much from deafness and wretched health, that she was hardly ever free from anxiety and depression. Nevertheless she did not let her ill-health prevent her from earning her livelihood by writing. Before she made her name by the publication of her stories on political economy, she experienced endless difficulties in her efforts to get publishers for her books. But no sooner had these stories appeared than her fame was assured, and money came in, so to speak, by handfuls, so that all financial troubles were altogether at an end.
From 1839 till 1844 she was so terribly out of health that no treatment produced any effect, until someone suggested that mesmerism should be tried, and this succeeded so well that she recovered a certain amount of strength and was able to go on with her writing. Nevertheless, that it did not wholly restore her health is evident from the fact that in 1855, when Newman was writing to her brother, he mentions her "formidable fainting fits" and daily pains in the head. "Her letter tells me," he says, "how very bad she is, that every day she feels shot in the head"; but he goes on to say that he does not despair of her better health because (as indeed her numerous books testify), her "body is so subject to her mind." It is, I think, necessary to remember that in 1844, when Miss Martineau tried mesmerism as a cure for her continued ill-health, mesmerism was practically taking its first steps in the English medical world. This science of healing, which began to be recognized in England about the middle of the eighteenth century, through the medium of the afterwards discredited Mesmer, has "in its day played many parts" and had more names than one. In the first instance it was called mesmerism, then animal magnetism, while to-day, when it has forced its way through incredulity, distrust, and opposition of all sorts, and come to the front in very truth, it faces us as a power which bids fair to be more and more with us as time goes on under the name of Hypnotism.
Perhaps few people remember the name of the man who really brought animal magnetism into prominence in the middle of the last century. Yet James Braid, the Scotch surgeon, who then lived at Manchester, and pursued with untiring thoroughness and perseverance his studies in the then little- known science, was really the shoulder that pushed hypnotism into our midst. It was Braid, indeed, who caused the name of "hypnotism" to eject that of "mesmerism" in England. He was never properly appreciated during his lifetime. But if he was not, he was only one of numerous examples which are always being brought up before our eyes (among those of our countrymen who have rendered their country signal services), who illustrate the famous English quotation, "Thus angels walked the earth unknown, and when they flew were recognized"
Braid, however, proved effectually that the mesmeric phenomena depend altogether on the physiological condition of the person operated on, and not on the power of the operator.
Dr. Martineau from Newman.
"7 P.V.E., "17th Feb., 1855.
"My dear Martineau,
"You will believe that the state of your sister's health gives me much concern. She has kindly written twice to me. The second letter tells of formidable fainting fits, which I cannot explain away; yet, as I told her in my reply to her first, her symptoms in general are so similar to my own that I cannot but hope her physician views them too seriously, and does her harm by it. I, on the whole, believe that my own heart is unsound organically (distended), but my experience certainly is that the less I attend to it in detail the better, though I must in prudence avoid impure air and other evils. Her second letter tells me as a decisive proof how very bad she is, that every day she feels shot in the head.
"Now this is exactly the symptom I have for nine months been struggling to subdue, and as my wife knows, I am, week by week, balancing whether to put myself under a doctor for it…. The spasm which distresses me comes at the crisis when I ought to go to sleep, and so wakes me up. I could not get rid of it even in the summer, on days on which I had least mental effort, and was in all other respects conscious of great vigour….
"I went to a physician to complain of sleeplessness and got the reply that it was my heart that was diseased…. Your sister's body is so subject to her mind that I do not despair that, either through mesmerism restoring sleep or in some other way, she may rally far beyond her present expectation. I know a lady who was dying of brain fever, and could get no sleep until the physician called in a mesmerist; this gained sleep for her, and by that alone she recovered without medicine."
Dr. Martineau was one of the founders of the National Review in 1855, and frequently contributed articles to it. This next letter treats mainly of the proposed lines on which the magazine was to be run—its politics, points of view, etc.
Dr. Martineau from Newman.
"14th June, 1855.
"My dear Martineau,
"I have seen with interest that your scheme of the National Review is resumed, and I am told that you and Walter Bagehot are the political editors. Supposing that your politics are not essentially different from those of the Westminster the Review is of practical interest to me, in spite of my unfortunate collision last year, for which I hope you have forgiven me. I wrote in the last Westminster the last article on the "Administrative Example of the United States," and in the forthcoming number I have written the second article on "International Immorality." I wrote them freely, and indeed could not comfortably take money from Chapman in his present circumstances, but I would much rather write for the National Review if I am admissible…. I value forms of government in proportion as they develop moral results in individual man; and if I now am democratic for Europe, it is not from any abstract and exclusive zeal for democracy, all the weaknesses of which I keenly feel, but because the dynasties, having first corrupted or destroyed the aristocracies, and next become hateful, hated, and incurable themselves, have left no government possible which shall have stability and morality except the democratic. In England my desire is to ward off this result, to which, I think, our aristocracy are driving fast by uniting their cause with the perfidious immoralities of the Continent.
"Your political prospectus seems to me to be delusive by its vagueness. I mean, that it is no sort of security after misunderstandings between editors and writers. I think it is liable practically to lead to the result that one man's mind seems undesirably to assume the authority of a confederation;… but where Truth is sought, this is not easily borne. Have you considered whether you may not do as the Revue des Deux Mondes, which admits independent essays with the writer's name signed? I value the convenience of anonymous writing, and I do not wish to see it destroyed; but it is undoubtedly abused and overdone, and I think every movement in the opposite direction has its use."
I think that when reviewing many of Newman's ideas—ideas considered as strongly tending to socialism of a sort—it is wise to bear in mind these words in this letter: "If I now am democratic for Europe, it is not from any abstract or exclusive zeal for democracy, all the weaknesses of which I keenly feel." For they show very clearly that his was a mind which refused any party labelling. The reform was the thing with him, and the means by which this was brought about were only secondary and subordinate.
In September, 1856, Newman was at Ventnor; and though apparently still suffering from his heart and indigestion, found that he was able to bathe in the sea with much pleasure to himself. He gives voice to his surprise that, in those days, there should be so strong a feeling against "mixed bathing," as the term is: and he quotes articles and letters which he had seen in which disgust was expressed at "ladies bathing within reach of telescopes" and "at the indecency of promiscuous bathing"! This excessive over-prudishness, which has always, since early Victorian days, distinguished England, possesses as much vitality (even when, happily, dying) as that of the conger eel, whom no killing seems really to kill!
The earlier part of the letter deals with the disputes of the "three tutors against Dr. Hawkins," Provost of Oriel in 1830, and also with the proposal that his brother, John Henry Newman, should be made third secretary of the local Bible Society.
In the Letters of Rev. J. B. Mozley, D.D., edited by his sister in 1884, there is a good deal of information given about the Oxford of that day, and this account of the dispute in 1830 occurs in one of Dr. Mozley's letters from Oriel College:—
"All sorts of rumours have gone abroad respecting the differences between the tutors, and it has received a most amusing variety of versions. It has been described as a strike for advance of wages or more pupils, which of course has fitted well into the probable falling off of the college consequent on the Heresy: at Tunbridge, a friend … was told, the junior fellows had combined to turn out the Provost! For my part, I think it no more use trying to send abroad a correct account of it, for it is not easy to make it obvious to the meanest capacities, and everybody nowadays seems to feel himself justified in contending that to be truest which is the most consonant to his understanding…. I take it there is little doubt of H. Wilberforce being elected here, to Oriel, next year … he is considered sure of his Double First…."
Of the Rev. Mr. Hill, mentioned by Newman as the "old secretary of the Bible Society," Dr. Mozley speaks in connection with the constant opposition and ill-humoured references to Pusey which at that time were rife at Oxford.
As regards "Bulteel" of Exeter College, Dr. Mozley thus speaks of him: "Bulteel's sincere belief is that there is a new system of things in the course of revelation now, as there was in our Saviour's time, and that God has given him the power of working miracles for the same reason as He gave it to the Apostles—in order to convince unbelievers…. There can be little doubt that Bulteel is partially deranged. I should not be much surprised if, before long, he attempts miracles of a more obvious kind."
As regards Hurrell Froude, Fellow and tutor of Oriel College, he, John Henry Newman, and Pusey were all three close friends in 1822. Hurrell Froude exercised a strong influence over J. H. Newman, and it was he who was one of the leaders in the Tractarian movement in 1833. He was a man of wonderful genius and originality, and it was a distinct loss to the world when, in 1836, he died. I cannot help quoting here the "private critique" written in 1838, and quoted by Miss Mozley in her volume, with reference to his Remains:—
"It is very interesting and clever, but I must say I felt as if I was committing an impertinence in reading his private journal-probably the most really private journal that ever was written…. I am very curious to know what kind of sensation his views will make, uttered so carelessly, instead of in Keble's, or Pusey or Newman's grand style."
With respect to Dr. Hawkins, the Provost (whose influence was in many ways a powerful one with J4 H. Newman), I quote two passages from letters of Dr. Mozley. One is dated 1836 and the other 1847 (during the Gladstone Election):—
"The Provost alluded in the most distant way to the sore subject (the condemnation of heretics) last Sunday. He observed that it was a disgusting habit in persons finding fault with other people's theology. Nothing so tended to make the mind narrow and bitter. They had much better be employing themselves in some active and useful way. This is laughable as coming from the Provost, who has been doing nothing else but objecting all his life." And:—
"The Provost has behaved very characteristically. He has been for once in his life fairly perplexed; and he has doubled and doubled again, and shifted and crept into holes; at last vanished up some dark crevice, and nothing was seen but his tail. One thought one was to see no more of him, when, on one of the polling mornings, he suddenly emerged, like a rat out of a haystack, and voted for Round. The Heads, in fact, have been thoroughly inefficient. The election has literally gone on without them. They have done nothing."
Dr. Martineau from Francis Newman.
"18th Sept., 1856.
"My dear Martineau,
"Your welcome letter finds me still here. I certainly did not contemplate that I was speaking for the public ear on such a subject. I have a pain from it (chiefly from a sense, perhaps, that I should not like my brother to know or suspect that the information came from me), yet I cannot blame your proceeding, or question your right, so carefully and tenderly as you guard against objection…. The Rev. Mr. Hill, Vice-Principal of St. Edmund's Hall, was the old secretary of the (local) Bible Society. The Rev. Benjamin Parson Symons (now warden of Wadham College) is he who proposed and carried that my brother should be a third secretary.
"I think I told you that Symons was the second secretary; but I now doubt whether the second was not Rev.—— Bulteel, of Exeter College, then an evangelical preacher of St. Ebb's Church in Oxford, much attended by Edmund Hall men. The after vote rescinding my brother's secretaryship was proposed by Benjamin Newton, a young Fellow of Exeter College, if this is of any importance…. The affair of the three tutors against Dr. Hawkins was told me exactly as I had it from my brother's lips; but the whole must have been strictly public. The other tutors were Robert Isaac Wilberforce (since Archdeacon and Roman Catholic), Richard Hurrell Froude, known by his Remains; and a much older man, Dornford, now a rector in Devonshire, who adhered to Hawkins. This took place in 1830, when my brother was only twenty-nine, Wilberforce his junior, and Hurrell Froude my junior in the University; probably my equal in age, i.e. then twenty-five; so it was young Oxford versus old. When the three tutors resigned (whose youth was a result of the Oriel Fellows going off so quick), Hawkins brought into the tutorship young Coplestone, as he was called—a nephew of the Bishop;… I almost think that for a time he resumed lecturing himself: but it will not do to say so…. I have here found out (after more than ten years' cessation) that I can swim as well as ever, and without discomfort to my heart. I am becoming quite zealous for my daily swim, even when (as to-day) the south-west gives us rather too much sea, to the chagrin of the bathing men. Perhaps you have seen various letters in The Times, etc., on the indecency of promiscuous bathing, etc. I cannot understand why they all direct their attack to the wrong point, and insist on driving people into solitudes and separations very inconvenient, instead of demanding that, as on the Continent, both sexes be clad in the water. Last year I saw an article that expressed disgust at ladies bathing within reach of telescopes! There is here such a colony of foreigners, that I hope they may teach this lesson. Besides the Pulszkys, who are a family of twelve persons, there are seven of Kossuth's household, a large family of Marras (Italian), three of Janza (Viennese), two or more Piatti's (Italian), who keep company together, and very many of whom bathe statedly. Mrs. Pulszky is not well this year for swimming; but last year she swam daily, with her husband and an intimate male friend at her side. He will not let her swim in the sea without him, and is amazed at English husbands consenting to abandon their wives as they do. Mrs. Walter, her mother, is a devoted bather, and whenever the breakers are formidable has the aid of one or other male friend. It is a new fact to me, that the Viennese ladies, as a thing of course, are taught to swim in the Danube. There are regular teachers of swimming for both sexes, and a sort of diploma is granted to those who swim well enough to be at home in the water." [This is a phrase that was used to me; it now occurs to me that it may have been merely metaphorical, when the teacher says Macte virtute, etc., and concludes his lessons.]
"Of course, our climate does not allow the facilities of tropical waters (where alligators and sharks, however, are not facilities!); but the sea is fit for bathing with us as many months as the Danube, though I suppose never so warm as the Danube at its warmest…. If I could be with you at Derwentwater again, I think I should be less indisposed to try an oar. Indigestion or sleeplessness, not exertion, seems to be the chief enemy of my heart, which yet cannot bear exertion when so suffering. I am giving myself abundant ease, and never enjoyed myself with so much 'abandon.' We both like this place extremely.
"With kindest regards to all around you,
"I am, very affectionately yours,
"F. W. Newman."
In 1857, as I mentioned before, Dr. Martineau came up to London to live, having been asked by the authorities of Manchester New College to take more share in the work there than he had hitherto done. He was made Principal of the College in 1868, and held the post until 1885.
There is something in the letter which follows which must have made a very special appeal to Martineau—for this reason: that there is in it a passionate "abandon" quite foreign to Newman's usual style. He seems to have given rein to a sudden impulse of enthusiasm for his friend, and his letter, from start to finish, is full of it. He is evidently longing that Martineau should find in his London audience all the appreciation which his great talents deserved. And perhaps this is the thought which prompted those sentences which seem to urge him to curb the powerful steeds of his intellectual vigour, and not to give so lavishly or in such unstinted measure as in his sermons he had hitherto been accustomed to do. Newman says that in his preaching "there is superfluous intellectual effort." He adds that from "intellectual persons "he has heard the complaint that the "effort to follow is too great"; and he entreats him to prepare each sermon "with less intellectual effort, though, of course, not with less devotional purpose."
Dr. Martineau from Newman.
"7 P.V.E., "30th May, 1857.
"My dear Martineau,
"Perhaps you are already pulling up your tent-pegs: rather a heart- breaking work, especially to those who so love beauty and have surrounded themselves within doors with so much. You need, dear friend, a broad and fruitful field in London for your spiritual activity to recompense the great—the very great—sacrifices you must make in parting from all that you have loved in Liverpool. I have felt this so deeply that I never knew exactly how to wish that you might come to London; and, indeed, this place, so emphatically dissipated," [that is, mente dissipatÁ distractÁ] "does not prize its great minds so much as smaller places would. … Beloved friend, you know that great expectations are formed of you. It is hard, most hard, not to let this draw you into great intellectual effort, from which I fear much. For your literary lecturing, of course, I have no word of dissuasion. But let me assure you that in your preaching there is superfluous intellectual effort. It would be spiritually more effective if there were far less perfection of literary beauty and less condensation of refined thought and imaginative metaphor. I hear again and again from intellectual persons the complaint that the effort to follow your meaning is too great, and impairs both the pleasure and profit of listening to you. I myself am conscious that wonder and admiration of your talent is apt to absorb and stifle the properly spiritual influence, and when I read your sermons, I often pause so long on single sentences as to be fully aware that I could have got little good from hearing them. I know that no two men's nature is the same, and habit is a second nature. Do not imagine that I wish you not to be yourself. (There is no danger of that.) But I am sure that by cultivating more of what the French call 'abandon'—by preparing with less intellectual effort for each separate sermon—though, of course, not with less devotional purpose—and by letting your immediate impulse have a large play in comparison to your previous study, there will be less danger of overworking your mind and fuller effect on those who are to benefit. … I dare say you received from me the new volume of Religious Duties. Its author seems to me primitively to have belonged to what you call the class of ethical minds, but to have passed beyond it, and now to be at once Passionate and Spiritual. And is not this the natural and rightful thing, that though we begin with a fragmentary, we tend towards an integral religion? This book has been to me most delightful and profitable, and I trust you will also find it so. Such a revelation of a pure, tender, ardent spirit is itself an inexpressible stimulus, and has given me quite a flood of joy and sympathy.
"The doctrine of immortality so unhesitatingly avowed (?) affects me as nothing from Theodore Parker on the same subject ever did. The love and joy in God flowing out of it is so spontaneous and kindling as to make me long to say,—I now no longer hope only, but I am sure. In any case I do rejoice that others can so believe, and I pray that if this be a mere cloud over my eyes, it may at length be taken away. Not that I have any deficiency of happiness from this, but I have a great deficiency of power, and I am painfully out of sympathy with others by it.
"I want to cultivate, if I knew how, rather more free communication with those who supremely love God as the Good One, and who will bear with me! I much need this, if I could get it. But however shut up I may seem, believe that a fire of love for you burns in my heart. With warm regards to Mrs. Martineau,
"Your affectionate friend,
"F. W. Newman."
I should like to quote here words illustrative of this side of Newman's personality, that side which reveals him "at once passionate and spiritual," longing to attain to religious truth, and not railing against the forms of dogma which have led other men into "the kingdom of heaven," as was his too frequent habit. These words were written by him when he seemed to himself to have reached some measure of spiritual intuition, and there is great beauty in them:—
"None can enter the kingdom of heaven without becoming a little child. But behind and after this, there is a mystery revealed to but few, namely, that if the soul is to go on into higher spiritual blessedness it must become a woman. Yes, however manly thou be among men, it must learn to love being dependent; must lean on God, not solely from distress or alarm, but because it does not like independence or loneliness…. God is not a stern judge, exacting every tittle of some law from us…. He does not act towards us (spiritually) by generalities… but His perfection consists in dealing with each case by itself as if there were no others."
And now, before concluding this chapter, I take two much later letters written by Newman to Martineau; one is dated 1888 and the other 1892. The first one is written quite clearly—which is wonderful when one remembers that he was then eighty-three—and the other, four years later, is cramped and not so easy to decipher. Still, in the first of these letters he himself says, "I have to write as slow as any little schoolboy… and cannot help some blunders." He had been to Birmingham on the 20th June to see Cardinal Newman, and mentions how travelling by rail tried his head. The latter part of the letter relates to a big dinner composed chiefly of Anglo-Indians and their attachÉs. There is one lighted sentence near the end which brings before one's mental eye his often-expressed "Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin," with regard to the Indian Empire, our past misgovernments, and our present failure to recognize old promises: "The glorification of our Indian policy only made me melancholy."
The "degree" which Martineau was to receive was no doubt his "Doctor of Divinity" degree which he took in 1884 (Edinburgh). Dr. Jowett, it will be remembered, was, throughout his whole life, closely identified with Balliol College. He was Fellow in 1838, tutor of his college from 1840 till 1870, when he was chosen as Master. Ruskin (to whom reference is made in the second letter) gave the larger part of his originally large fortune to the founding of St. George's Guild. This was intended to be a sort of agricultural community of "old-world virtues" for young and old, "and ancient and homely methods." One of his great aims was the promoting of home industries. As regards Newman's reference to politics at the end of letter No. 2 in 1888, Gladstone's Government was but just breathing after the sharp tussle they had been through with the Home Rule party, with Parnell at their head. In 1886 Gladstone had brought in the measure which was to give Ireland a "statutory parliament." This was practically the signal for a disastrous rent which tore his party in two, and was the precursor of their defeat at the next General Election.
Dr. Martineau from Newman.
"6th July, 1888.
"My dear Martineau,
"I did not know that the day of Oxford Convocation was June 20th. I was engaged to the Worcester College Gaudy for the 21st. Had I known that on the 20th you were to receive the degree, I should have been tempted to come and 'assist,' though I have always had an instinctive hatred of such mobs.
"I was at Birmingham on the 20th to see my brother. The noises on the rail greatly affected my brain and stomach. Noise was increased in the bedroom at Oxford, beside which heavy goods went to the rail, and I had two bad nights, partly from that cause, aided by the mental excitement up to midnight." [It is not difficult to understand this "excitement." The meeting between the brothers was never devoid of a certain mental reticence. It must almost have been impossible to forget the fact that about the subject on which each had always been most keenly exercised, they were worlds apart.]
"When I reached home I thought myself quite well, but soon found I could not write a word without one or more blunders in several letters, and a needful epistle became a heap of unsightly blots. This is only exaggeration of a weakness becoming normal with me. I have to write as slow as any little schoolboy. My housemaid was alarmed without my knowing it; but mere rest and sleep in some days removed my wife's alarms. But I still am forced to write very slowly, and cannot help some blunders…. On the morning of the 22nd I called on Jowett, who instantly said, 'Tonight is our Gaudy; you must come to it.' I had to beg off from my Worcester College host. (I was on my way to see friends in a neighbouring village.) I sat down to dinner with 102 guests; such a company as I never before looked at. I name chiefly high Anglo-Indians and their various attachÉs (members of Balliol College): oi peri Lords Northbrook, Ripon, and Lansdowne, three Viceroys of India, and Sir Gordon Duff, late Governor of Bombay." [It will not have been forgotten that the part played by Lord Lansdowne and Lord Ripon in 1833, with respect to the Bill for the discontinuance of the East India Company's trade, was not a very distinguished one.]
"Many smaller stars, Mr. Ilbert of name well known, and (long ago to me well known) General Richard Strachy, eager for bi-metallism. He began, but alas! could not finish his elucidation to me, how it would relieve Indian finance, without anyone losing _any_thing, or any lessening of payment, or dismissing officers, or the English Government paying anything, nor any unlucky last holder of coin or paper losing. The miracle (as to me it seemed) was to be wrought, not by a double standard—that was an ignorant mistake—but by a single standard metal, composed of gold and silver in fixed ratio. I was not happy enough (or unhappy enough) to learn how this was to result; but his eagerness and confidence were to me a surprising phenomenon.
"A Worcester College man told me that your Types of Morals had already left a strong impression on younger men. I think there has not yet been time for the second great book and work.
"The glorification of our Indian Policy only made me melancholy. I hope you now get full and real rest. Though I feel as in perfect health, I have to say to myself, Non sum qualis eram, and take warnings. Pray, do you the same.
"Affectionately, to you and yours,
"F. W. Newman."
"In London vegetarianism seems going ahead. I have, still struggling through the press, Reminiscences of Two Exiles and Two Wars. The Quakers will be at once pleased and angry if that is possible."
Dr. Martineau from Newman.
"19th Aug., 1892.
"My dear Martineau,
"I seem to have allowed you to get quite out of my sight. This is a result of my practical renunciation of London, the place which seems too exciting for me. I do not wonder that you so early take refuge in far Scotland. I so mortified my dear friend Anna Swanwick last year by my sudden retreat from the overstrain of her house, that I did not dare to repeat the trial this year; indeed, I should deeply alarm my wife by attempting it, and, alas! dear Anna herself proved unable to sustain herself—due, I suppose, to the self-imposed task of her new book. Though I am myself (foolishly perhaps) reprinting a tract on Etruscan, I see how many things are better left to younger minds. I am here (near Bewdley, Worcestershire) to make personal acquaintance with a remarkable man who has made marked advances to me for more (I think) than three years. He was a protÉgÉ of Ruskin's and member of St. George's Guild. As such he was (apparently) reared under Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Carlyle more than under Ruskin, and heard all the side of English Agnosticism. But with the growth of his own mind he became dissatisfied, and now for fourteen years he has given himself to a fruit farm of four and a half acres, with a cow and kitchen-garden and pigs! and abundant poultry, and looks the type of the future English peasant. His wife and one trusty woman manage dairy and cookery with eminent success, and various sales, while he is cow-milker and gardener, student also of fruit and of the soil. It is to me an interest as a foresight of the future. He is a student of our hardest literature, and employs no labourer under him. Ignorant of foreign tongues, he reads German translations and Jowett's Plato…. A school friend of Mr. Braithwaite lately sought my acquaintance…. He tells me that Mr. Gladstone lately gave to the world the utterance that among the possibilities of the immediate future he now sees, rather than any general Agnosticism, a simple recurrence to the simple Judaic Godhead. I wish well to Gladstone's new Cabinet, but fear that the trickiness by which he led Parnell's folk to aid Salisbury's overthrow will arouse a fatal resentment. If he espouse the Indian claims, that may save him. My best regards to all yours, and earnest wishes.
"Your affectionate friend,
"F. W. Newman."
Mr. Estlin Carpenter wrote lately to me to say that he does not know of any evidence to prove that Newman and Martineau were "acquainted, or at least intimate," before the former became tutor of Manchester College. He says their correspondence ended in 1892, and he imagines that Newman's "declining health during the last two or three years made further writing impossible," but that their warm regard for each other, up to the very end, was unalterable.
