Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman Part 6

1836 was the year of Mrs. Newman's death--Francis Newman's mother. His wife was so alarmingly ill that he was not able to be present at his mother's funeral; and so the last time he saw her alive was on the occasion when he brought his bride to introduce to her at Oxford.

Miss Mozley says of his mother: "She was a woman content to live, as it were, in the retirement of her thoughts. She had an influence, though not a conspicuous one, on all about her. The trials of life had given a weight to her judgment, and her remarkable composure and serenity of temper and manner had its peculiar power. Under this gentle manner was a strong will which could not be moved when her sense of duty dictated self-sacrifice."

A month after her death Cardinal Newman had written: [Footnote: _Letters of John Henry Newman_, Anne Mozley.] "Of late years my mother has much misunderstood my religious views, and considered she differed from me; [Footnote: As of course she did.] and she thought I was surrounded by admirers, and had everything my own way; and in consequence I, who am conscious to myself I never thought anything more precious than her sympathy and praise, had none of it." He goes on to say: "I think G.o.d intends me to be lonely.... I think I am very cold and reserved to people, but I cannot ever realize to myself that any one loves me."

Those who have read Miss Mozley's _Life of John Henry Newman_ will remember how pa.s.sionately devoted to her two sons Mrs. Newman was. Once or twice she said that though "Frank was adamant" when she had wished to get closer in touch with his interests and sympathies when he was quite a young man, yet she was always _quite_ in sympathy with her eldest son.

Probably as time went on and she saw the latter drifting ever further and further into religious views with which she had never been conversant, insensibly to herself, her manner changed when he spoke to her of how gradually the whole scope of his religion was widening and developing in a direction in which she felt it impossible for herself to follow him.

One wonders if she had had any knowledge of the growing agnosticism of her other son, but probably this was unlikely.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. MARTINEAU FROM THE PAINTING BY A. E. ELMSLIE]

CHAPTER V

FRIENDSHIP WITH DR. MARTINEAU

In the year 1840 Francis Newman was made Cla.s.sical 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 quant.i.ty. 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 pa.s.sage in one of Newman's own letters which ill.u.s.trates this fact very clearly. "It is a sad thing to have printed erroneous fact. I have three or four times contradicted and renounced a pa.s.sage ... _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 pa.s.sed between them show that; but they show, too, that no dispute separated them. If for a time some painful pa.s.sage 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 cla.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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 const.i.tutional 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 const.i.tutional; 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 ma.s.ses than would else have held together.

"Where it has done this without destroying munic.i.p.al 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 sh.o.r.es.) 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 a.s.sertion, 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 acc.u.mulations 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 a.s.sumed that we must live by artifice, and they ent.i.tled 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.