Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman Part 9

"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 _attaches_ (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 protege 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 G.o.dhead. 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.

CHAPTER VI

FRANCIS NEWMAN AS A TEACHER

Francis Newman was certainly one of the greatest mathematical and cla.s.sical scholars of his day. So that when the authorities of University College secured him for their staff, they knew that they could have obtained no better man for their purpose.

As a teacher he showed an infinite fertility of method in dealing with the young men who, there for the purpose of learning, yet did not always _want_ to learn! He had, in especial, that rather vague and narrow definition of genius--"an infinite capacity for taking pains." He "took"

them always with any scholar who had failed to grasp his meaning in some one of his instructions. He could put the whole matter in some absolutely new light--take it from an utterly different point of view; so that, while giving another chance to the slow-witted, he did not keep his whole cla.s.s waiting. The quality of teaching is not strained. It is doubtful if it is capable of being learnt, if not in the first instance, in some measure, innate. Lying dormant in a man's being--even if, perhaps, its presence is unrecognized by its owner--it can certainly be developed by him when he is conscious of it. But if the power in embryo be absent, it is a difficult matter indeed to attain by effort any capacity of which one has not already the beginnings in oneself. Indeed, a famous writer of another age has written the word "impossible" against this attempt.

Frank Newman could, and would, take any trouble to help any dull student over some mathematical or cla.s.sical stile, but he was not an adept at quickly getting into touch with that Presence which has moved, in whimsical measure, through the ways and by-ways of this life since the world began with coat of many colours, upon which the sun of merry imagination was always sparkling, and cap and bells which could for the moment ring sudden, spontaneous mirth across the shadows of the darkest day. If in medieval days it could cross the cell of some grave and reverend monastery, and guide the hand of some sculptor busy at his gargoyle for some majestic church, surely it could, with the greatest ease in the world, cross the threshold of some crowded cla.s.s-room where a learned, absorbed professor was endeavouring to gain the attention of a number of young men rejoicing in their youth and on the look-out for the first suggestion of the Spirit of Humour. Frank Newman was not quick at appreciating the quips and cranks, the--to others--irresistibly mirth- provoking sallies of humour. He was not quick at seeing a joke. And when middle age was well past with him, he did not always see when he had himself been provocative of an upset of gravity on the part of the students. He did not always discover in time the pranks and designs for diverting the course of true knowledge in which the average young Englishman loves to indulge. He had not a very close focus for this sort of thing, and probably the reason was, that he was so absolutely absorbed in the subject which he was teaching or upon which he was lecturing. But in teaching a mixed cla.s.s of boys or young men it is a _sine qua non_ that one possesses a "mind's eye" with easily adjustable focus, as in a photographic camera; otherwise one cannot keep in mental touch with those members of the cla.s.s who "come to" play "and remain to" distract the attention of fellow-students. Another reason why Newman did not appeal to these non-studious ones was attributable to the fact that he was, in many ways, very eccentric both in manner and dress. Now, everyone who knows the average English boy at all, knows that if there is one thing he cannot stand it is eccentricity. To be eccentric is to be taboo. As regards the "correct" thing to wear, and the "correct" thing to do and how to do it, he is generally quite as particular as the average young woman over fashion. And anyone who offends in these respects has his name written upon the ostracisic sh.e.l.l. If it happens to be a master--well, his peculiarities are quite enough to divert the boy's attention successfully from the weightier matters in which the master is vainly endeavouring to instruct him.

Sir Alfred Wills, Mr. Winterbotham, Sir Edward Fry, Mr. William de Morgan, and others, to whose kindness I am indebted for many reminiscences of Professor Newman as a teacher, tell me that he had many eccentricities which perpetually aroused their sense of humour. Sir Edward Fry tells me that his manner, when he himself was at college in 1848, was "somewhat nervous, perhaps even a little irritable, and he was not exactly popular as a professor. But his lectures were very interesting and stimulating."

He adds that he was "a very brilliant scholar, with a tendency towards eccentricity."

This eccentricity showed itself in various forms, but one very noticeable one was that of dress. I am told by a friend that he often dressed in the onion fashion--three coats one over the other, and the last one--green!

That he often wore trousers edged with a few inches of leather, and that his hats were not immaculate. Well, perhaps it has never been quite understood from what part of old and unfashionable attire the Spirit of Humour winks at one with such twinkling fun in the corner of its eye that laughter is irresistible. But none the less, few there are of us who have not--though it may be against our steadier and wiser judgment--at some time or other caught sight of that wink, and laughed spontaneously. To everyone who saw it, when the relics were collected and placed in his old house in Cheyne Row, Carlyle's old 'top' hat was irresistibly funny.

Nothing loses caste more completely than a top hat when it is behind the time, and the shine is off the silk.

Sir Alfred Wills mentions, in the reminiscences which follow, which he has kindly sent me, that at one time Newman "took to walking from his house"

(in town) "to the college and back in cap and gown." This, however, was not such a startling vagary of costume in a London street as was that of a certain professor of my acquaintance, very absent-minded and dreamy, who, intent on making some abstruse point clear to a young lady pupil, walked one evening round and round a London square with her, talking earnestly, and attired in his top hat and dressing-gown!

As regards Newman's teaching of Latin, Sir Alfred Wills says that "much the best thing that" he "got from" him "was the practice in writing" it.

He tells us that his lectures showed signs of the most profound research, and that he took untiring trouble in explaining any difficulty which had arisen. If the difficulty had been that of some member of one of his cla.s.ses, he would not keep the whole cla.s.s waiting while he went over the difficult part of the lesson again, but he would approach the subject from an altogether different point of view, and throw, for the cla.s.s _in toto_, a new light upon it.

Of course it was not only in Latin that he wished to make pupils think of it as a "spoken language," for Mr. Darbishire tells us that "one of his special endeavours was to accustom his students to deal with Greek _as a spoken language_" [Footnote: It will be remembered that Francis Newman introduced the "new" p.r.o.nunciation of Latin.] (as, for instance) "in reading Greek plays." Mr. Darbishire further tells us that Newman was accustomed to have a series of meetings in his study for conversation in Latin.

As regards old methods of teaching Latin, I should like to quote from a paper on "Modern Latin" which Francis Newman wrote in 1862, because there is very much in what he says which shows where the failure of the old system comes in:--

"In general the old method was one of repet.i.tion: _it dealt immensely in committing Latin to memory_. Ridiculous as was the system of giving to boys a Latin syntax in the Latin language, it at any rate did accustom them to the reiteration of a small number of words expressed in very simple sentences, and conveying knowledge of _immediate utility_.... While I nevertheless believe that at most schools the boys still learn grammar by heart, I venture to remark that the newer method of teaching, so far as known to me, has immensely lessened the _quant.i.ty_ of Latin which is thus learned....

"Further, it seems to me that we want what I may call a Latin novel or romance--that is, a pleasing _tale_ of _fiction_ which shall convey numerous Latin words which do not easily find a place in poetry, history, or philosophy. Nothing has struck me as being so much to the purpose as an imitation of the story of Robinson Crusoe, which brings in much that is technical to special occupations--as in nautical affairs--carpentering, fowling, pottery, basket-making, agriculture, etc.... If anyone had genius to produce in Terentian style Latin comedies worthy of engaging the minds and hearts of youth (for I can never read a play of Terence to a young cla.s.s without the heartache), I should regard this as a valuable contribution."

I pa.s.s on now to some reminiscences, kindly contributed by Sir Alfred Wills, of the professor in relation to his University College students in 1846:--

"I have a very distinct recollection of the personality of Mr. F. W.

Newman. He was appointed to the Professorship of Latin in University College in 1846, and I entered the college in October, 1846, and attended his first lecture and all those he delivered in the course of that session.

"He was of middle stature, very well made, with a face that always reminded me of the type of the North American Indian, with which I was familiar from Mrs. Catlin's book published in 1841. His complexion was dark, his hair very black and with no tendency to curl, and he wore it long, and his nose was aquiline. He differed from the Indian type, however, in that his face was rather narrow than broad.

"His voice was particularly clear and 'carrying,' and every syllable could be heard. I ought to have added to my description that his eyes were blue, bright, very expressive, and his smile, not very often seen, peculiarly sweet and engaging. He was decidedly eccentric. At one time, in dirty winter weather, he wore trousers of which the lower six or eight inches were of black leather; and at another time, upon what occasion I forget, he took to walking from his house to the college and back in cap and gown.

There was a 'Cap and Gown' movement among the students, or some of them, in the session 1847-8, but it was not upon that occasion, for I remember seeing him in the streets in cap and gown, and during the session 1847-8, I was at home in bad health, having overworked myself. He would now and then, very seldom, ask some of the students to breakfast at his house. It was an odd mixture of hospitality and formality. He never seemed quite at his ease on such occasions, and I have a very distinct remembrance of one of these occasions.

"It was in singularly gloomy and bitter weather in the winter or very early spring of 1849. We were rather a large party. There was no fire either in the room in which we a.s.sembled or in the breakfast room; and I have not often been colder. There was only one guest who was not a student, and he was a certain Herr Vukovich (that was how the name was p.r.o.nounced) who had been Hungarian Minister of Justice during the short period when Kossuth was supreme in Hungary.

"When he came in, Professor Newman said: 'Gentlemen, this is Herr Vukovich, lately Minister of Justice in Hungary,' and then turning to Herr V., he added, 'I shall not introduce these gentlemen to you by name, as it would be of no interest to you; and besides, you would forget their names at once'; and then he went off at score with, 'I have never been able to understand, Herr Vukovich, how it is that you have never introduced the Bactrian camel into Hungary,' and then proceeded to enlarge upon the admirable suitability of the Bactrian camel to the climate, soil, roads, conditions of Hungary. Herr V. _looked_ very much as if he had never heard of the Bactrian camel.

"During the whole of the session 1846-7, Newman's lectures were the wonder of all who heard him. We read with him some of Cicero's letters to Atticus, and his stores of information of every description--antiquarian, philological, historical, and literary--were absolutely marvellous. I have never destroyed or lost my notes of them, and I feel sure that they would justify all that I have said. We all felt that we had secured for the college an intellectual giant. I had the great advantage of being, during my first session, in the senior cla.s.s in both Latin and Greek, and we had for our Greek Professor Mr. Malden, who, I should think, was unsurpa.s.sed for sound and elegant scholarship, and in whose lectures I delighted from first to last during my two sessions (1846-7 and 1848-9), but certainly during the first session, Professor Newman's lectures were those which made upon me the deepest impression, which remains unimpaired to this day.

It seemed as if no trouble was too great for him to take in preparing for them and as if nothing which could throw any light upon a set of letters, which are often obscure and difficult, ever escaped his eagle eye or his profound research. When I returned to college in 1848, I met with a profound disappointment. I have been asked for my recollections, and I must make them truthful. Professor Newman was at that time much engrossed with his theological and religious works.

"_The Soul_ was published in 1849, and whether that may account for the change or not, the fact is that the lectures of that session presented a marked contrast to those of the earlier session, and I don't think I am exaggerating when I say that they were dry and jejune to the last extent.

And I felt throughout that session that much the best thing I got from it was the practice in writing Latin, which was always an important part of his teaching, and in which he was a master himself. I am sure it is true that days often pa.s.sed without there being anything in the lectures which I cared to preserve or even to note. I had that year, however, the privilege of reading the Nicomachean Ethics with him as a private pupil, and found him as good in Greek and as interested in ill.u.s.tration as I had previously found him in his Latin lectures.

"I forbear to touch upon his private character. That impressed itself insensibly upon us as worthy of the highest respect. But it was simply from the natural effluence of a n.o.ble character, for we came rarely into anything like personal intimacy with him. He was reserved and even shy, and I doubt if any of us knew much more of him privately than I did--which was not much."

I think these reminiscences of Sir Alfred Wills bring before us very vividly the sort of intercourse which existed between professor and pupil in those days. It reveals Newman as a man with whom the pupil would not feel altogether at his ease--towards whom he would not be moved to get into close sympathy, and this, perhaps, very largely because of a certain stiffness and formality of manner which unavoidably erects a barrier before any natural, spontaneous conversation.

Sir Edward Fry mentions Newman's manner as a "nervous" one, but says that his lectures were very stimulating, leading one to infer that even if the delivery was not arresting or impressive, yet all this was made up for by the force and brilliance of the matter itself.

It will be remembered that, at any rate, in his Oxford days, J. H. Newman had not an impressive manner either.

We come now to some other keenly interesting recollections--those of Mr.