Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman Part 17

"We have been here reading aloud Mrs. Beecher Stowe's new tale, _The Minister's Wooing_ with very great pleasure. I regard her as a real 'prophetess,' and am delighted at the enormous circulation of her works. I have been stimulated to try my hand at translating into Latin five of the most eloquent pa.s.sages in the book, as a trial of the possibility of putting such things into that language. I am pleased with the result, although it is clear to me that without a development of the Latin vocabulary far beyond Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, and Seneca no one could ever be _fluent_ and free to speak on modern subjects. One has to paraphrase and go round instead of speaking outright. I am thinking I ought to know something more about Arn.o.bius and Lactantius, and see what sort of _development_ they effected; and the resolution rises in my mind that I will look to this, being hitherto quite ignorant of them.... I suppose the 'Volunteer Rifles' are talked of at Penrith as elsewhere. I regard it as a breach of faith to transform these Volunteers into Light Infantry, which seems to be the darling idea of military men."

Later on, in February, there is another letter relating to Newman's Latin _Robinson Crusoe_ and his own difficulties as to how to find out when are the times of spring and autumn in an equinoctial climate.

"I have been (as many others) a sufferer by the weather from slight bronchitis, exasperated by the coughs and noseblowings of the students, and by an ill-arrangement of the cla.s.s-rooms. I had nothing serious, but enough to force me to spend my evenings in bed, from seven o'clock almost, and keep me three entire days away from college. I have been ... busy ...

with a Latin _Robinson Crusoe_, rewritten quite freely (not a translation), that I have not been able to get back just now to Arabic; and have buried your letter in papers so deep that I lost much time the other day in a vain search for it.... In writing on Robinson's island I found my botany sadly at a loss, and have hunted the _Penny Cyclopaedia_ diligently and uselessly to learn the simplest things, such as: To an equinoctial climate, when is the spring and when the autumn? Do the leaves fall twice, or not at all? When is the chief cold? Is it when the sun is lowest, or when the clouds are thickest? Or does it depend on hail and electric phenomena, or on local relation to great mountains?"

It will be remembered that in 1859 the outbreak of the war of the Italian liberation took place. Garibaldi--the Knight of the Red Shirt--though he had settled down as a farmer on the island of Caprera, was summoned by Cavour to fight for Victor Emmanuel. He and his _Cha.s.seurs des Alpes_ went into Central Italy as chief in command, and helped to complete the annexation of the Sardinian territories. It was in August, 1860, that he made his military promenade through Naples. During the next few years he was longing to march on Rome, but he also wished to foment the rebellion in Hungary, and not to let it come to nothing.

"10 Circus Road, St. John's Wood, "London, N.W.

"_10th Nov._, 1860.

"My dear Nicholson,

"I believe I have never so much as written from Wales or Clifton to you, to denote that I was not killed on the rail. In old days I suppose that every distant journey demanded this kind of 'receipt' from a traveller; but we now travel too much to make it natural. I am reading the Book of Proverbs in Arabic, in order to work myself up in the vocabulary of morals, and am pleased to find that I know nearly all the words, although the exact _form_ of some is new to me.

"We may now congratulate one another on the 'definitive' fact of a const.i.tutional King of United Italy. Louis Napoleon, in consenting to it, appears to me to have surpa.s.sed the limits not only of ordinary kings, but of ordinary statesmen. I find that even able and temperate French writers, such as Eugene Forcat, are shocked at it.... Louis Napoleon's ... enemies outside have been Germany, Spain, Russia, Austria, Naples, and the Papacy, and inside, all the Catholic clergy and the politicians.... Do you see Garibaldi's renewed solemn promise that his flag shall be joined to the Hungarian in effecting their liberation from Austria? What I hear and _know_ of Lord Palmerston's intrigues against Hungary and _threats to Sardinia_ if she dares to a.s.sist Hungary ... fills me with indignation and no small alarm. No doubt all that intrigue can do is now employed to induce Austria to _sell_ Venetia, not in order to benefit Italy (though to this they have no objection), but in gratuitous enmity to Hungary, which (Lord Palmerston says) the English Government _will not permit_ to be separated from Austria. This I _know_ he avowed to the Sardinian Amba.s.sador, and sent the English fleet into the Adriatic as a demonstration. Happily the war is now likely to be deferred till Parliament meets, and our ministry may be severely checked in time. I trust we are only at the beginning of magnificent results in Europe and in North America....

"Your true friend,

"Francis W. Newman."

1861 was a great year for the fortunes of America. Then it was that the Civil War between the North and South (United States) first began. The question seemed to be, how far the United States might really interfere with the doings of any particular State of the Union. The North determined that they would not allow the Union to be broken up, and so they fought.

But really the true point at issue was a far bigger question than that, for it turned out that the real dispute had to do with whether slavery was to be allowed to continue, or whether it should be put an end to for good and all.

The North said it must cease, and after a war lasting five-years, this was the final decision upon which peace was made. England very nearly was brought into this war against her colonies, but happily not quite. It was probably due to Abraham Lincoln (who was most wise in his Presidentship) that this war was averted.

"_14th June_, 1861.

"The interest of American affairs almost swallows up with me those of Italy, Poland, Hungary; though I am on the whole in decided good heart as to them all, i.e. as to everything but India. Everywhere else the tide seems to me to have turned for the better; but in India that is by no means clear to me. I hope our Government has discovered its error as regards America.... The glorious patriotism and unanimity of the North none could absolutely foresee; but that the attempt to break up the Union would goad the pro-slavery faction of the North into intense hostility of feeling to the South, appeared to me so clear and certain that I predicted it in print. That their backers and merchants should so lavish their private fortunes for the war was more than I dared to hope. I think the Union gets a new heart from this time."

"10 Circus Road, London, N.W.

"My dear Nicholson,

"I hope that the capture of New Orleans, now fully attested, pretty well tranquillizes your mind, and justifies us in believing that we see the beginning of the end.

"Events have not even yet taken the scale from the eyes of deluded people here. I still hear on all sides the doleful lament that 'the successes of the North are much to be regretted, since they _can only prolong the war_.' Mr. Gladstone [Footnote: Then Chancellor of the Exchequer.] has just printed his recent Manchester speech, in which he sympathizes with the South, because he does not trust the soundness of the North in the cause of freedom!... I am calmly told that it is not for the _interest of England_ that America should be so strong, and it is better for herself, and for us, that she break up! England may have all India, but the United States may not have one Mississippi, or keep the mouth of her own river. I have never felt so unutterably ashamed for my own country, for it affects public men and the press of London _on all sides_, with exceptions which may be easily counted. Are you not delighted with the progress of India for the better? It appears in the public news in many ways; but besides, I have papers from Oudh and Calcutta which interest me extremely, and give me the most cheerful hopes of the future. The change introduced by the extinction of the Company's rule is prodigiously beyond what I ever dared to expect in so short a time. I am beginning to print (for very limited circulation!) a Latin _Robinson Crusoe_--chiefly to please a lady-teacher, my favourite pupil. It is not a translation, but an imitation. My wife is just returned from Brighton, where I spent Easter--but did _not_ go to the rifle review. I feel unable to take interest in it, until Secret Diplomacy is abolished. At this moment there is no security that Lord Russell is not intriguing against Hungary, while possessing liberal views for Italy."

It is necessary here, I think, to add that the Hon. East India Company had, so long ago as 1833, been deprived of its commercial privileges; but still its directors practically ruled India under the Board of Control, which Pitt originated. Later, in 1858, Lord Palmerston brought in a bill which was its death-blow. The Company was to be abolished, and the Home Government reigned in its stead in India.

In July, 1863, Newman severed his long connection with University College, and evidently looked forward with great pleasure to uninterrupted time for writing and studying.

"I am finally severed from University College, but do not as yet know how much difference that means, since this is my natural vacation. I suppose that next October I shall begin to realize the greatness of the change for good or evil. (The enclosed photogram makes my face dirty, and one eye too dark; yet seen through a magnifier it is really good.) I seem to have an Augean stable to cleanse in reducing my papers to simplicity, and burning acc.u.mulations of thirty years. I am not likely to write less, but perhaps more, in anonymous ways, which impedes one's concentrating oneself on one subject, if that be desirable: as to which I cannot make up my mind. The danger of overworking the brain I see to be extreme if one has one subject and that all paper work and private work.

"I have now got my house, to keep on with right to leave at a quarter of a year's notice."

As the following letters make much mention of the struggle through which the United States was pa.s.sing, it is perhaps as well to give, briefly, a few details of the happenings which were then taking place.

In 1856, when the Republican army was first started to put an end to the extension of slavery, Lincoln, who was the most prominent man against the pro-slavery party, took the lead as the most active servant of the cause.

But there was another, working perhaps more quietly, but quite as resolutely against slavery, whose name should never be forgotten. William Lloyd Garrison--a man of the same age as Newman--started in 1831 a paper called _The Liberator_, with no capital or subscriptions. This paper he carried on for thirty-five years until slavery was abolished in the United States, although he received constantly letters threatening his a.s.sa.s.sination. He came to England in 1833, and on his return he started the American Anti-Slavery Society. Before that was accomplished, however, in every way possible he had spread over the whole of the States pamphlets etc., urging on his people the pressing need of the abolition of the slave trade. Then in 1863 (July) General Grant's success in capturing Vicksburg gave back to the Union the full control of the Mississippi river. By 1864 Grant was in full command of the Union Army. But _the_ aim of the Abolitionists had been triumphantly attained before then, for on 1st Jan., 1863, President Lincoln declared that all slaves in the States then in a state of rebellion should be free. Only two years later this man, who had done so much to rid his country of a degrading trade, was a.s.sa.s.sinated.

The following letter is dated 4th Aug., 1863:--

"... I hope that you now, with me, believe that the era of Southern 'successes' (i.e. hard and HOPEFUL _resistance_) is finally past. I believe nothing now remains but the resistance of despair, which cannot long animate the ma.s.ses. Hatred of the free negro may awhile move them.

But, the Mississippi once open, the N.W. has no longer a party favourable to the South; and the exhaustion of the South is so marked and undeniable that the real end may be much earlier than the people think.... General Neal Dow (now a prisoner at Richmond) in his last letter to England observed that the moral end served by the prolongation of the war had notoriously been the immediate legal emanc.i.p.ation of the negroes in the Gulf States; but the further prolongation of it is to determine the future internal government and possession of landed property in these States as the guarantee for the future. But it is a hard wrench on the politicians of the North to consent to this. Lincoln and Blair evidently would still much rather export the negroes _if they could_. Lincoln will not do anything against the will of the blacks; but it is evidently his weak point to deprecate them as equal citizens."

In September, 1863, Newman and his wife were spending their holiday at Windermere. From there he writes:--

"I fear that the projects of Louis Napoleon in Mexico, and the consequent sympathies of the United States with Russia against Poland and France, make an imbroglio fatal to Poland. Now that, if the Russian Empire were organized into States possessed of substantive interior nationality (as the French plan is), this would seem to be a very lamentable result. The two Western Cabinets have so acted as to ensure that Russia and the United States shall each desire the aggrandizement of the other; and if Russia take a lesson of imperial liberality from America, her empire may terrify our grandchildren with excellent reason. But I believe that the interest of the nations, of the true people everywhere, will prevail over Cabinet ambitions as soon as slavery is effectually uprooted in America."

Never do the words "a" and "the" light up so vividly the significant gulf which lies between the absence and the presence of Fame than when the first qualifies in the first instance the name of some man at a time when he is not specially distinguished; and then, much later on, the second prefaces it as the mouthpiece of Fame. In 1863 Newman's mention of "_a_ Mr. Grace, the _recent_ celebrated victorious cricketer," proved that his world-wide fame had but then been in its initial stage.

Newman's counsel to Dr. Nicholson in _re_ cigars as injurious to appet.i.te and inflaming to the eyes, reminds one that though, as I have shown by his speech to Mr. Butler's family, he was "anti-everything," including smoke, yet he mentions constantly in his _Personal Narrative_ that in Syria during his missionary journey there in 1830-3, the fact was that he himself smoked in the fashion of the country, and by no means disliked it in his own young manhood. He begins on the Temperance and Teetotal question thus:--

"Llandudno, "_17th Sept._, 1863.

"I am reminded of it, by seeing to-day a statement made concerning cricketers, that no first-rate cricketer takes beer, ale, or spirits, which (it is said by the enthusiastic narrator) inevitably 'jaundice the eye,' nor tobacco in any form, (!) which induces a kind of stupefaction or negligence. The recent celebrated victorious cricketer, a Mr. Grace, it is said, will not take even _tea_; but prefers water. (I hope the water is better than that of Windermere!) Two months ago I was reading from a sporting newspaper about a rowing match on the Thames, and there learnt that if a rower is known to take beer or ale, it lowers the bets in his favour. In fact, no habitual drinker, though he drink _only_ for health and strength (as he thinks), is regarded to have a chance of the highest prize.

"I cannot help thinking that both wine and alcohol and tobacco lower the vital powers, and that men are strong _in spite_ of them, not by reason of them.

"Will you forgive me for suspecting that cigars lessen your appet.i.te (which is less keen surely than it ought to be), as well as inflame your eye?"

Newman goes, in his next letter, to a much more intricate subject: i.e.

cuneiform inscriptions.

He had been studying them for two months. Emanuel Deutsch, one of the great authorities on cuneiform inscriptions, gives us the following information as regards them:--

The writing itself resembles a wedge, and it has been proved that it was used by the ancient peoples of Babylonia, a.s.syria, Armenia, and Persia, as well as by other nations. It was inscribed on stone, iron, bronze, gla.s.s, or clay. The stylus which impressed the inscriptions on them was pointed, and had three unequal facets, of which the smallest made the fine wedge of the cuneiform signs. The first cuneiform writing of which we know dates from about 3800 B.C.

It was used first in Mesopotamia, and then in Persia, and the districts north of Nineveh. When it became extinct, for nearly sixteen hundred years, its very existence was absolutely forgotten. It was not until the year 1618 that Garcia de Sylva Figueroa, amba.s.sador of Philip III of Spain, on seeing them, felt convinced that these inscriptions, in a writing to which no one in the wide world possessed a key, must mean something. Therefore he had a line of them copied. In 1693 they were supposed to be "the ancient writings of the Gaures." Hyde, in 1700, trifled with them, and gave them credit for being nothing more than the architect's fancies. Witte saw in them nothing but the disfigurations of many generations of worms. Others had their own speculations as to their meaning. But Karsten Niebuhr took a big step higher and nearer to their real meaning. He made out that there were three cuneiform alphabets, because of the threefold inscriptions at Persepolis.

In 1802 Grotefend, of Hanover, put before the Academy of Gottingen the first cuneiform alphabet. Then, among other great investigators, followed Rawlinson.