Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman Part 19

"My dear Nicholson,

"I have been pressed to make some reply to Dr. Henry's Vaccination pamphlet; but excused myself on the ground that it was not pleasant to me to be in public opposition to him, for he was son of an intimate friend of mine;... I have no special knowledge. I look on it from outside the medical art....

"Now in the contents of the pamphlet I read: 'Small-pox--never produced at present _de novo_.'...

"I make sure that it never _could_ have spread, unless the conditions had in all the other places been highly congenial.... Predisposing causes cannot long acc.u.mulate and fester, without curdling into vital action. The _provisional a.s.sumption_ with me concerning smallpox, is, that wherever its predisposing causes exist, there the disease will not long be absent.

In new foci it may meet new influences which modify its aspect, so that medical men do not recognize it; but that signifies not....

"Now, what is Dr. Henry's proof?...

"Is there so much as one disease, the origin of which has been recorded scientifically? What he calls 'the primitive origin' of small-pox has not been recorded to us scientifically: yet he does not on that account doubt that it did once arise 'spontaneously.' I judge just in the same way, when it breaks out now in an English country village. What does the 'scientific record' mean? We cannot have a medical man in every room of every house at every moment examining what is under the shirt and shift, with microscope in hand, to see the disease come of _itself_,... Dr. Henry goes on to say, 'and it APPEARS to have spread solely by infection or contagion.' It _appears!_ This is so modest, that the reader fancies he may grant it. But the next words are: 'TWO CONCLUSIONS FOLLOW from this,' etc. etc. In short, he has forgotten that it is only 'it appears,' and fancies that it was c indisputably certain and manifest.' ... After all; if unhealthy conditions are among the prerequisites of small-pox, we have only to remove the unhealthy conditions, and shall not need vaccination (if it were ever so safe): and if you do not remove unhealthy conditions, you are sure of other diseases quite as bad however you may modify the name."

_Letters from_ 1872 to 1882 (_to Dr Nicholson_).

The first letter of this series is dated 26th December, 1872, from Weston- super-Mare, and is concerned chiefly with his wife's terrible fall, and also with the movement of the peasants under the initiative of Joseph Arch.

The name of Joseph Arch is too well known to need more than a few words in explanation of the reason why he came to help forward this movement as he did. He was born in Warwickshire in the year 1826, and was essentially one of those who, having determined to rise from the ranks--_rose_. He educated himself during the time while he was working as farm-labourer.

Those who have read Father Benson's _Sentimentalists_, and also Robert Louis Stevenson's book on the same subject, will not fail to understand how complete and full is the education which comes to a man through both doors--that of physical labour, and that of mental as well. Joseph Arch started in 1872 the National Agricultural Labourers' Union. Soon he had freed the peasantry from many of their former disabilities. Later he went to Canada to find out as much as he could about emigration and labour questions. In 1885-6 he stood for the N.W. Division of Norfolk.

"_26th Dec_., 1872.

"My dear Nicholson,

"Did I, or did I not, tell you of my wife's mishap from a terrible fall downstairs? Her right hand will be for a long while stiff from having been tied for nine weeks with a splint on the inside, no finger being allowed to move. This, I am a.s.sured, is hospital practice; but it is vehemently condemned by others, and in her case, at least, I believe it was wrong.

Whether she will ever recover her _thumb_, I am not sure; for I fear it is still dislocated at the base. She necessarily gives us a great deal to do; I have to act as her amanuensis, besides oiling, shampooing, etc.

"Knowing as I do how you sympathize with rustics and disapprove our existing Land Laws, I make sure that with me you are delighted by the movement of the peasants under the initiative of Joseph Arch to claim access to freehold land by purchase or equivalent payments. I never dared to hope such an initiative from the peasants themselves, but I always foresaw that a destruction of slavery in the U.S. would give to the States such a desire to people their territories and the South, with English immigrants, that our peasants, as soon as they became more wideawake, would have the game in their own hands, and neither farmers nor landlords could resist.... I now should not wonder to live to see ... household suffrage extended to the peasantry-and as results, coming some earlier, all soon, overthrow of the existing Drink Traffic, of Contagious Diseases Act, Army Reform on a vast scale, Female Equality with Men in the Eye of the Law, overthrow of Landlords' predominance.... I wonder whether abolition of Foreign Emba.s.sies must precede a serious grapple with the National Debt. I doubt whether any nominally free State ever had such an Augean Stable left to it by forty years' eminently active legislation. "In corruptissima Republica plurimae leges," sounds like it. Without carving England and Ireland into States, I do not think the work can be got through: if indeed we are to avoid new wars with Ireland and India, which may G.o.d avert!...

"Your constant friend,

"F. W. Newman."

I quote next from a note written three years later, which ascribes his health to the Triple alliance of his three "Anti's"--anti-alcohol, anti- tobacco, and anti-flesh food.

"How many a pleasant year has run its course since I first visited you at Penrith! It was the summer of 1842, I think, that we ascended High Street together, a company of seventeen.

"It is my fancy that I could walk as well now: yet I believe it would make me lazy for a week after. Moderate exertions are surely best when one is past seventy, yet my spirits are inexhaustible, and my sense of health perfect. Seriously I attribute this to the TRIPLE ABSTINENCE [from alcohol, from narcotic (tobacco), and from flesh meat]....

"Your affectionate friend,

"F. W. Newman."

The same year he states in a letter to Dr. Nicholson that the Vegetarian Society is that in which he feels most active interest, "though I am a Good Templar and am earnest in nearly all the _Women's_ Questions." And in another, written in August, "I here, as usual" (at Ventnor), "get the luxury of fine fruit at this season (and the unusual luxury of mushrooms), but I do protest that their demand of 4s. a pound for grapes is enough to frighten Cato the elder. [Footnote: Marcus Portius Cato, born at Tusculum 234 B.C., pa.s.sed his childhood on his father's farm. In later years he wrote several works on husbandry, its rules, etc. When he was elected Censor in 184 he made great efforts to check national luxury and to urge a return to the simpler life of his Roman ancestors. He was very strict and despotic as regards contract prices paid by the State, and constantly altered those for food, carriages, slaves, dress, etc.] The price of lodgings at Shanklin and here is much higher than two years back. It seems to me that everything is going up, here, in America, on the Continent, and in India; yet I do not see how to impute it to the increased supply of gold. I think that the working cla.s.ses are everywhere demanding and getting a larger share of the total which is produced....

"Believe me your true friend,

"F. W. Newman."

Four years elapse between this letter and the next from which I shall quote. During this interval Newman's wife died (16th July, 1876), and was mourned long and sincerely. He was now seventy-one years of age, and had, as his letters show, begun already to feel lack of power and health. It was evident to himself towards the end of the eighteen months which followed her death that he should not be able to live alone, and yet there was no relation he could ask to come and be with him.

In December, 1879, the following letters were written by Newman to Dr.

Nicholson concerning his second marriage to Miss Williams, who had for many years lived with his first wife, and been very devoted in her care and attention to her.

"_29th Dec_., 1879.

"My dear Nicholson,

"I felt very warmly the kindness of your letter which congratulated me on my remarriage, and I have often desired to write to you that you might feel how unchanged is my regard for you, though circ.u.mstances do not at all carry me so far north as your dwelling. I may briefly add, that a year's experience quite justifies my expectation. The marriage was not in my estimate an experiment, which might succeed or fail.... That my wife's health is not robust, I certainly grieve, but she is nineteen years my junior. Our love and trust has only increased month by month.... This black edge" (of the note paper) "is for my only surviving sister, whose death is just announced to me. She was my fondest object of boyish love, and it is impossible not to grieve. On the other hand, I had long expected it, and did not at all think she would survive _last_ winter.... I believe she was loved and respected by _everyone_ who knew her, as truly she deserved to be. I feel good consolation in this.... For three years our public doings have been to me so mournful and dreadful--with no power anywhere to stay the madness of the Court and Ministry,--that I have been made unwilling to write about them. Retribution for such deeds seemed to me certain, inevitable: it seems to be coming more speedily than I had expected. Stormy controversies must in any case be here encountered. But ever since 1856 (I might date from the day when Lord Dalhousie went to India--1848?) we seem to have been storing up wrath and vengeance against ourselves,--worse and worse at home as well as abroad, since the death of Peel. I never admired Peel: he had to trim to the Tories: but I now see how moderate Peel kept them, and in comparison how wise Peel was.

"So many are the eminently good men and women in England that I am certain we must have a n.o.bler future: but that may be separated from the present time by a terrible struggle....

"I am your affectionate friend,

"F. W. Newman."

In briefly reviewing the year 1881 in its effects on nation and Government, it is necessary to cast one's thoughts back to the time when Lord Beaconsfield took office in 1874, in order to grasp the drift of Newman's next letter. In 1874 the former became Prime Minister for the second time. He had not been long in office before he made an end of Church patronage in Scotland. The next year he was carrying forward his design of procuring part ownership for England of the Suez Ca.n.a.l. He did not attach sufficient importance to the Bulgarian atrocities to set going any British interference. This in itself is an act which can find no defence. He declared Turkey must be upheld as a stronghold against the aggression of Russia. In the year 1878, Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury attended the Berlin Congress. This at once raised the former to the highest political importance, but it undid all the splendid work done by the English army, which had, at the order of a blundering, mistaken Government, been sent to obtain for England, through means of the Crimean War, a victory rendered completely null and void a short time later by the doings of this Congress at Berlin.

Then followed the Afghan and Zulu Wars and subsequent troubles and upheavals: trade depression in Ireland; and finally, in 1880, came the General Election, which restored the Liberal party to power.

"_1st Oct_., 1881.

"My dear Nicholson,

"I was glad to get your letter, but frightened when I found it open (the gum wholly fresh) and no photograph in it. [Footnote: I believe the photo given in this volume, of Dr. Nicholson, to be the one referred to here.] I feared it was taken out. But next day came the real thing. It is excellent. The slight excess of black in the left eye is perhaps quite natural. In a three-quarter face the light does not fall alike on both eyes, and we do not in real life compare a friend's two eyes (they move too quick); we see only one at a time. [Footnote: Francis Newman expressed once his theory that in the case of a photograph being taken of a man, unconsciously to himself, the expression of the portrait will in some curious manner change as his character changes.] The photo pleasantly renews my old memories....

"_Immediate_ politics sicken _me_ as well as you. I do not (with a zealous friend) groan over 1881 as unrelieved gloom, completed by the murder of an amiable and innocent President: but I deliberately conclude we are launched in a season of TRANSITION that _must_ have its sadness just as has a war: and it is wise to look on beyond the troubled years.... The course of change may largely depend on events in India which not one Englishman in a thousand dreams of. In 1881, thus far, I rejoice in the incipient elevation of Greece, and the probable deliverance of Armenia. I think the great Powers _will not_ quarrel over the carcase of Turkey: and though Frenchmen may justly make outcry against French ambition in North Africa, yet as an Englishman and a European I do not regret it. As _I_ see no power but Russia who can impart improved rule to Armenia and Persia, so no one but France can give it in North Africa. My _immediate_ interest in the politics of the High Powers is to see them combine against the Slave Trade, in Turkey, and _in the Pacific_. In domestic Politics I care _most_ for the social and moral questions, which are painful, pressing, and disgracefully delayed. But all will come; and the great question of Landed Tenure will aid the best influences....

"I am your affectionate old friend,

"F. W. Newman."

On 26th Nov., 1881, Newman caused some copies of the following letter to be printed and sent round to his friends, etc.:--

"My dear ----,