Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman Part 5

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 s.p.a.ce- 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.

CHAPTER IV

HIS MARRIAGE: HIS MOTHER'S DEATH: HIS CLa.s.sICAL TUTORSHIP AT BRISTOL IN 1834

In Francis Newman's diary is this entry:--"On June 27th, my birthday, I first saw Maria Kennaway at Escot." [Footnote: Escot, Ottery St. Mary, S.

Devon, now in the possession of the present Sir John Kennaway, M.P.]

Evidently the attraction between them was mutual, for the engagement followed quickly, and they were married the same year.

Maria Kennaway was the daughter of the first Sir John Kennaway, who was born at Exeter in 1758. In 1772 he sailed to India with his brother, the late Richard Kennaway. In 1780 he received his captain's commission, and in 1786 Marquis Cornwallis made him one of his aides-de-camp. I quote from _New Monthly Magazine_ for 1836, which gave an account of some incidents in the first Sir John Kennaway's life at the time of his death. [Footnote: I am indebted for this account to the courtesy of the present Sir John Kennaway.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARIA KENNAWAY FRANCIS NEWMAN'S FIRST WIFE From a miniature PHOTO BY MESSRS. WEBSTER, CLAPHAM COMMON BY KIND PERMISSION OF SIR JOHN KENNAWAY]

"In 1788 Lord Cornwallis sent him as envoy to the Court of Hyderabad to demand from the Nizam the cession of ... Guntoor. In this mission he was eminently successful, not only obtaining that which he came to demand, but inducing the Nizam to enter into a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance against Tippoo Sultan. For this service His Majesty was pleased to create him a baronet (1791), and he received a mark of still further approbation from the Court of Directors (East India Company) in a vote which they pa.s.sed to take out the patent of creation at the Company's expense." Later, Sir John arranged a definite peace between the Nizam's Commissioner and the Mahrattas with those of Tippoo Sultan. From this time forward Sir John remained as Resident at the Court of the Nizam. But as his health had suffered greatly from the Indian climate, he came back to England in 1794, and the East India Company voted him "the unusual grant of a pension of 500 per annum" on his retirement from official duties.

Soon after his return to England he met and married Charlotte Amyatt, and went to live at Escot, Ottery St. Mary. Here their family of twelve children was reared. Sir John, though his official life was over, yet busied himself in many local matters. He acted as deputy-lieutenant and as colonel-commandant of local militia and yeomanry. Then later, in advanced age, there fell upon him a great trouble: he lost his sight entirely.

Curiously enough, his brother (who had served in the Civil Service of the East India Company) suffered the same deprivation.

Everyone who remembers her describes Maria Kennaway, Sir John's daughter, as possessing great beauty and attraction. She had hitherto spent her girlhood in the daily service of the poor around her home. She and her sisters started village schools in the neighbourhood, and taught the children constantly the religious duties in which they themselves had grown up.

Maria Kennaway--a Plymouth Sister as regards her religious profession--was a girl of deep and earnest faith. After her marriage to Francis Newman, it became a real grief to her to find that he was drifting further and further away towards agnosticism. Loving him devotedly as she did, her constant prayer was that he might return to his former faith: that the "cloud," as she called it, which was over him might be dispersed, and that he should believe as she did.

Like Moses, she never in this life saw her "Promised Land" (she never doubted that he would _die_ in faith), for when she died in July, 1876 (devotedly nursed by her husband), she knew that _he_ thought, as he bent over her at the end, that it was probably a _last_ farewell for both.

I give here, as it seems an appropriate place, Newman's letter (to Dr.

Nicholson) on his wife's death:--

"15 Arundel Crescent, "Weston-super-Mare, "_21st July_, 1876.

"My dear Nicholson,

"For more than forty years I have been in possession of a heart that loved me ardently: that happiness is no more. But I kept my treasure ten years longer than I had any reason to expect. Yesterday we committed my beloved to the grave....

"I saw her declining in strength through failure of appet.i.te, but ever hoped for finer weather and change of air to restore her. But the fine weather came too late to restore her. From want of blood her heart became fatally weak, and she died just as her brother did, the late Sir John Kennaway, through failure of the heart and consequent mortification of the feet. I now believe that local death began on the night of the 5th. Her sufferings in the feet were great, and we could do nothing to allay them.

Her breathlessness (also from weakness of the heart) we could aid by fanning. She knew she could not recover, and only prayed for 'release.'

Her prayer was granted early on Sunday morning, 16th July.

"Of course I feel very desolate, and to live quite alone in declining years [Footnote: Some few years later he married his first wife's devoted friend and companion who had lived with them for eleven years, and who took the greatest care of Newman till he died in 1897.] seems unnatural and unhealthful; but I cannot form any decisions at present. I am conscious of excellent health and unbroken strength, and after forty years of happy love should be very ungrateful to repine.

"By G.o.d's help I mean to be cheerful and active....

"I am, your affectionate friend,

"F. W. Newman."

This is the epitaph Newman had placed over his wife's grave:--

"With no superiority of intellect, yet by the force of love, by sweet piety, by tender compa.s.sion, by coming down to the lowly, by unselfishness and simplicity of life, by a constant sense of G.o.d's Presence, by devout exercises, private and social, she achieved much of Christian saintliness and much of human happiness.

"She has left a large void in her husband's heart.

"Obiit, _16th July_, 1876."

Newman always spoke of his wife as "the most affectionate and tender- hearted of mortals." There was always a very great affection between them.

His letters all show this. Their married life was a long intercourse of happiness, _un_-"chequered by disputes." [Footnote: "Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes."--R. L. Stevenson.] Still, there was not (as is shown, I think, in many ways) strong community of interests.

For in all Newman's laborious philological studies--his learned lectures, articles, and researches, scriptural and literary, his speculations in the realms of deep thought--she was to all intents and purposes practically outside his mental door. She was never greatly inclined to join in the society of his learned friends; but this was more from a sense of modesty, because she was afraid of not being in sympathy with them; because she thought that she was not clever enough.

She had the greatest admiration for her husband. It is easy, of course, to understand that when Frank Newman came back from his missionary journey he was just the sort of young man who would take a girl's fancy. It was a thing not to be surprised at that she fell in love with him. She was keenly interested in home missionary work among the poor villagers of her own home. She knew that he had come through great dangers in his journey to the Holy Land as a missionary. He had not then definitely cast aside his old beliefs--that was to come later; _now_ he was on the brink of it, and he was alone on this inward, personal brink. _She_ would not yet be aware of it. Very probably he seemed a hero in her eyes, because of all the dangers he had braved to preach the Gospel, and because he was one of the most intellectual men of his day: had taken high honours at Oxford, and had given them up for the sake of what he believed to be right.

In the beautiful little Devonshire town of Ottery St. Mary, very possibly he was the greatest man who had come across her life's path. He very evidently cared for her; the inevitable next thing seemed to be to care for him. At that time his name was in everybody's mouth. Miss Frere wrote, in 1833, that "the brother of Mr. Newman (John Henry Newman) is a young man of great promise, who has left the fairest prospect of advancement in England to go as a missionary to Persia."

At any rate, Destiny had brought them together, and they were married.

As a woman said once to me, "There is no choosing in love"--once the _meeting_ has happened, all free choice is at an end.

Mrs. Francis Newman was not very strong, and later in life developed greater delicacy. It will be remembered that Newman's mother and sisters were living at Oxford at this time, and he was anxious some time later to bring his bride to see them. Unfortunately she fell ill, and the treatment given for her illness proved quite a mistaken one; consequently her recovery was much slower than it need otherwise have been. The journey was, besides, a tiring one for her in her state of health. They had to go from Bristol to Oxford, for by this time Newman was settled at Bristol College as cla.s.sical tutor. He had previously been tutor in Dublin for a short time.

In 1836 Francis Newman went through the ceremony of Baptism at a chapel in Bristol. I say advisedly, "went through the ceremony," for I believe both he and his brother had received the rite in early childhood, when their father was alive.

Mr. George Hare Leonard, University College, Bristol, has kindly sent me some information as regards Francis Newman's work at Bristol, as also has Mr. Norris Mathews, the City Librarian of the Munic.i.p.al Public Libraries there.

From them I learn that the college at which Newman was cla.s.sical tutor was, not "Queen's," as has once or twice been a.s.serted, but Bristol College. It was founded in 1831, and only existed ten years. Mr. Hare Leonard tells me that it was held in a large house in Park Row, and that it had some very distinguished pupils, Sir Edward Fry, the late Sir George Gabriel Stokes, [Footnote: Sir George Gabriel Stokes, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge since 1849, and Fellow and President of Pembroke College, Cambridge, was born in 1819; senior wrangler, 1841.

President of Royal Society 1885. Contributed many mathematical papers and lectures to the Royal Society and other societies at Cambridge University, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, etc.] and Walter Bagehot being amongst them.

At this time Newman was a member of the historic Baptist chapel at Broadmead. I think it must have been in this chapel, indeed, that he was re-baptized (as I mentioned a little earlier), and some of the congregation antic.i.p.ated his becoming one of the sect of Plymouth Brethren.

Perhaps it is not generally known that Bristol College undertook to give religious instruction on Church of England lines to those boys whose parents wished it (I quote now from Mr. George Hare Leonard's letter to me): "This was not obligatory upon all, and there was a fierce attack on the college by certain of the clergy, and Bishop Gray was hostile. In 1841, under the influence of Monk (Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol), Bishop's College was founded close by, and the older and more liberal college was unable to stand the compet.i.tion, and came to an end."

I quote here [Footnote: By the kindness of Miss Humphrey, Lensfield, Cambridge, who gave me this extract from a memoir of her father.] an account of the school life of the Vicar of St. Mary Redclyffe, Bristol:--

"In 1835 he went to Bristol College, a school that no longer exists, of which Dr. Jerrard, his brother William's friend and a mathematician of some note, was princ.i.p.al.... He remained for two years at Bristol College, and considered that when there he owed much to the teaching of Francis Newman, brother of the Cardinal, a man of charming character and great attainments (afterwards made manifest in many ways), who was then lecturer in elementary mathematics, and subsequently corresponded with him" (the Vicar of St. Mary Redclyffe) "on mathematical subjects when both had become famous."

This all seems to point, I think, to the fact that Bristol College had certainly a distinguished roll of names in its short ten years' record.