Read Ebook: Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman by Sieveking I Giberne Isabel Giberne Newman Francis William Contributor

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TO THE READER WHO UNDERSTANDS.

PHOTO OF FRANCIS NEWMAN From a Daguerreotype of 1851. Photo by Mr. John Davies, Weston-super-Mare.

SEALE'S COFFEE HOUSE, OXFORD Now demolished. Done from an old drawing in the year when Francis Newman and John Henry Newman stayed there with Blanco White.

WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD Specially photographed for this Memoir.

MARIA ROSINA GIBERNE From a painting by herself.

DR. MARTINEAU From the painting by A. E. Elmslie.

FRANCIS NEWMAN In middle age. From photo by John Davies, Weston-super-Mare.

FACSIMILE OF LETTER FROM FRANCIS NEWMAN, DECEMBER, 1855 20 WHITE ROCK PLACE, AND 1A CARLISLE PARADE, HASTINGS From photos taken in 1909 by Valentine Edgar Sieveking.

LOUIS KOSSUTH

CERTIFICATE OF HUNGARIAN FUND

FACSIMILE OF LETTER FROM KOSSUTH TO MESSRS. SIEVEKING, JANUARY, 1854

CARDINAL NEWMAN From an oil painting by Miss Deane, of Bath. Photo by Messrs. Webster, Clapham Common.

TO THE READER WHO UNDERSTANDS

MY DEAR READER,

Rightly understood, the two points of view, as regards Religion, of the brothers, Cardinal Newman and Francis Newman, which most separated them, would, together, have approached the realization of a great conception.

"I was not ever thus..... I loved to choose and see my path, but now Lead Thou me on!"

Over Francis Newman, dogma and the authority of the Church had no sway. He dimly discerned a religion which should move forward with men's advance in knowledge. He imagined an unformalized inward revelation which should reveal new truths to those who passionately desired Truth above all things. And when all is said, the union of Authority given in the past, with the very real mental development which makes for spiritual progress in the present, is not antagonistic to a wise, strong breadth of view in the conception of a perfect Church.

But in both points of view, carried to extremes, there are grave perils to the man who thinks. And I find it impossible to avoid saying here that Francis Newman did not realize this risk when he refused to "ask for the old paths," and determined to "see and choose his path" alone and unaided. We know what the endeavour to found a new church in Syria ended in. We know how, later, he wrote, held back by no reverence for revealed religion, no reverence for other men's belief in it. Many of his writings therefore are painful reading. Though from very early boyhood he had been really a keen seeker after true religion, an earnest student of the Holy Scriptures, and a deep thinker, yet, very soon after he had reached young manhood, it began to be realized by all who knew him that he was very evidently breaking away from all definite dogmatic faith. He was bent, so to speak, on inventing a new religion for himself.

Gradually every year made the spiritual breach wider between him and those who held the Christian Faith. Soon he did not hesitate to say out, in very unguarded language, what he really thought of doctrines which he knew were precious to them. Sometimes to-day, indeed, in reading his books, one comes across some statement in letter, article, or lecture flung out almost venomously; and one steps back mentally as if a spiritual hiss had whipped the air from some inimical sentence which had suddenly lifted its heretical head from amongst an otherwise quiet group of words.

At the end of life it is said that he showed signs of some return to the early faith of his boyhood. That he said, just before his death, to Rev. Temperley Grey, who was visiting him in his last illness, "I feel Paul is less and less to me; and Christ is more and more."

And those who knew that side of him which was splendid in its untiring effort for the betterment of mankind--for the righting of wrongs to women, and others unable to achieve it for themselves--cannot but hope that the faith of earlier days was his once more, before he passed into the silence that lies--as far as we are concerned in this world--at the back of Death.

I remember being told once, that of Stanley it was said by someone who knew him well, that she had always felt that "he believed more than he knew he did."

And when one thinks how Francis Newman looked up in faith--even though it was an absolutely undogmatic, formless faith--to a God who watched over mankind, one may hope that he too "believed more than he knew he did."

This message of Social Reform sounded in men's ears fifty years ago.

In his memoir it sounds again to-day.

My very hearty thanks are due to the following persons who have most kindly helped me in this "Memoir," by lending me letters and photographs; by writing reminiscences, and giving information, etc.: Sir John Kennaway, Bart., Sir Alfred Wills, Sir Edward Fry, Mr. William de Morgan, Father Bacchus, Mr. Talfourd Ely, Mr. Winterbotham, the present Rector of Worton, Mr. Norris Mathews, Mr. George Hare Leonard, Mr. George Pearson, Miss Humphreys, Miss Nicholson, Mrs. Heather , Miss Bruce, Miss Toulmin Smith, Miss Gertrude Martineau, Miss Elizabeth Pearson, Mrs. Georgina Bainsmith, sculptor, Rev. Thomas Smith, Mrs. Kingsley Tarpey, Dr. Makalua, and many others.

MEMOIR AND LETTERS OF FRANCIS W. NEWMAN

HIS ANCESTORS

Of all the influences which have most to do in the making of an individual, heredity is perhaps the greatest. It is the crucible in which the gold and dross of many generations of his ancestors are melted down and remixed in the man, who is, indeed, "a part of all" from whom he claims descent.

Dr. Maudsley says very definitely that the faults, the disabilities, of men and women of to-day, are sometimes an undesirable inheritance. "Mental derangement in one generation is sometimes the cause of an innate deficiency, or absence of the moral sense in the succeeding generation."

But even with no definite aim of this kind, the study of a long chain of ancestors of some great man cannot fail to be of special interest. And those of the subject of this memoir contain among their number many honourable names--names of those who have done real and unforgettable service to their country.

Francis Newman's father, John Newman, is said to have belonged to a family of small landed proprietors in Cambridgeshire, who originally came from Holland--the name having been formerly spelt "Newmann." Thus it will be seen, as I shall shortly show, that Francis Newman had Dutch blood in his veins, both on his father's and mother's side.

Louis Grolleau, early in the seventeenth century, lived at Caen; and later emigrated to Groningen. To me, everything seems to point to the fact that the Fourdriniers and Grolleaus were in some way connected, either in friendship or relationship. First, we find them resident at Caen: later, at Groningen; and then again, later on still, members of both families marry at Wandsworth, and there both Paul Fourdrinier's wife and her sister, who married the son of a Captain Lloyd, are buried.

Some authorities believe him to have been identical with the Pierre Fourdrinier who married, in 1689, Marthe Theroude. But if this was the case, then he was not the Peter Fourdrinier who accompanied Paul to England in 1720. Other authorities, again, attribute the engravings I have just mentioned as having been the work of Paul Fourdrinier. At any rate, it is certain that Paul Fourdrinier belonged to the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. He died in February, 1758, and was buried at Wandsworth.

His son Henry--by now the English spelling of the name is adopted--was born February, 1730. He married Jemima White, and died in 1799. Apparently now for the first time the interest in the town of Wandsworth ceased, for the records show that both Henry and his wife were buried in St. Mary Woolnoth. And now we come to the direct ancestors of Francis Newman, for Henry Fourdrinier and Jemima White, his wife, were the parents of Jemima, who married at St. Mary's, Lambeth, in 1799, John Newman of the firm of Ramsbottom, Newman & Co., and gave birth in 1801 to John Henry, the future Cardinal, and in 1805 to the subject of this memoir, Francis William.

Perhaps the most interesting of all the Fourdrinier family was the Henry Fourdrinier, the eldest brother to the mother of Francis Newman. He was born in 1766 at Burston Hall, Staffordshire, and lived until 1854. His father was a paper-maker, and both he and his brother Sealey gave up their time almost entirely to the invention of paper machinery. This invention was finished in 18O7, and then misfortune fell upon them: the misfortune that so often descends like the "black bat night" upon those who have spent all their money, thought, and labour on the effort to launch their self-designed ship upon the uncertain sea of trade.

The Fourdrinier brothers had spent ?60,000 upon this venture, and the immediate result of the finished invention was bankruptcy to the unfortunate inventors. Then, in 1814, the Emperor Alexander of Russia promised to pay them ?700 per annum during the space of ten years if he could use two of their paper-making machines. Of this sum they saw not a penny.

In 1840, Parliament voted the sum of ?7000 to the Fourdriniers as a tardy recognition of the great service they had rendered their adopted country by their invention. The descendant of these gifted men showed no special taste for invention along the lines taken by his ancestors, it is true; but his brilliant intellect, no doubt, owed many of its qualities to their inventive force and power. Where they made paper and spent their whole energies in inventing machines for making it quicker, Francis Newman wrote on it--used it as a medium for spreading far and wide his own splendid aims and purposes for the betterment of existing social conditions. Before all things, Newman was a Social Reformer. There was no possible doubt that, as far as that question went, he left his country further forward on the road to real progress as regarded conditions of life for her citizens, and higher, broader ideas of her duty to other nations. As far as all these questions went he did not live in vain, for to-day we are learning the wisdom of his views for justice for the oppressed and for "the cause that needs assistance."

THE TWO BROTHERS--SCHOOL AND COLLEGE DAYS

In 1800 John Newman married Jemima Fourdrinier, and in the year 1801 John Henry, the future Cardinal, was born. The latter and the subject of our memoir were in effect the two sheaves before whom all the rest bowed down. There were four other children: Charles Robert, Harriette Elizabeth, Jemima Charlotte, and Mary Sophia.

It was not until his last half-year that one of the greatest spiritual influences of his life began. It was one of those seemingly curious chances which sometimes change a man's, or a woman's, whole outlook; and beginning, as it seems at the time, quite casually, quite unconsciously, lead not only the one chiefly concerned, but others, far afield into absolutely new environments.

Quite, as it seems, by chance, the destiny of a lifetime approaches through the conventional door of everyday life--steals up, lays the hand that none can resist on the handle of some door which opens of itself into a new, a wider world. Before one is aware of it, perhaps, one's feet have crossed the threshold into the Land of the New Outlook, and "old things are passed away."

In August, 1816, John Henry Newman found himself at school, in a sense alone, because his special personal friends there had left, and thus he began to be thrown more and more under the influence of the Rev. Walter Mayer , who was one of the classical masters. Long religious talks with him had a great effect upon his mind, and he himself traces much of his spiritual development to Mr. Mayer's point of view in religion. He was what is known as a "high Calvinist." When school was over for John Henry and Francis Newman, Mr. Mayer's influence was not lost, for both the brothers wrote to him, and stayed with him, when some time later he became curate to the Rev. William Wilson at Worton.

When his brother left school and went straight to Trinity College, Oxford , Frank remained on at Ealing for a time; and then, when he was seventeen, went up to Oxford to join him, and be with him through the Long Vacations in preparation for entering Worcester College in 1822. In Anne Mozley's volume there occur several entries regarding this time from J. H. Newman's letters. For instance, on 25th Sept., "Expecting to see Frank. I am in fact expecting to see you all. I shall require you to fill him full of all of you, that when he comes I may squeeze and wring him out as some sponge."

It is necessary, before touching further on the college life of the two famous brothers, to remember that early in life there was a strong spiritual antagonism between them as regarded their points of view-- religious, social, political, etc. And this notwithstanding the fact that a very real affection for each other existed in both, which made the inevitable disputes in no sense unfriendly bouts, but only the exercise of two keen wits of very different calibre.

Both had been trained in a home of strict Calvinism. Both had eminently religious tendencies. Both, when the time came for judging for themselves, threw aside the grim tenets which they had been taught as children to believe, and struck into absolutely different paths.

There is a very pathetic incident in their home life, which occurred just before Frank Newman went to college, which reveals to the thoughtful reader a world of information as to what was the attitude of thought in that household.

I quote from J. H. Newman's diary:--

I quote this chiefly to show that at sixteen Francis Newman was certainly under the Calvinistic influence still, and that he was very dogged in upholding its rules and restrictions. During the last months of the year 1822, the latter read with his brother at Oxford, and from time to time, in his letters home, J. H. Newman mentions him as working and reading in preparation for entering Worcester College.

It is necessary here to mention a great blow which fell on the Newman family soon after John Henry Newman had gone to college. His father's bank failed. There was no bankruptcy, and everyone was paid in full, but still it naturally proved a time of great family trial; for though his father took the Alton brewery and tried to make his way in this new line, yet it was not a successful venture. Happily, by this time, J. H. Newman was not only able to maintain himself, but also to help his people. Rev. T. Mozley mentions that in 1823 Newman had been elected to a Fellowship at Oriel, adding that "it was always a comfort to him that he had been able to give his father" , "this good news at a time of great sorrow and embarrassment."

In 1826 Francis Newman took first-class honours in classics and mathematics, and gained a Fellowship in Balliol College. The college authorities described his as one of the best "Double Firsts" ever known. As, however, he felt conscientiously unable to sign the Thirty-nine Articles, he was obliged to resign his Fellowship, and could not take his M.A. degree.

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