[Letters and Correspondence—1843]REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO MRS. J. MOZLEY Littlemore:
January 23, 1843. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO J. R. HOPE, ESQ. Littlemore:
in Fest. Conv. S. Pauli, 1843. My conscience goaded me some two months since to an act which comes into effect, I believe, in the 'Conservative Journal' next Saturday—viz. to eat a few dirty words of mine. I had intended it for a time of peace, the beginning of December, but against my will and power the operation has been delayed, and now unluckily falls upon the state of irritation and suspicion in good Anglicans which Bernard Smith's step has occasioned. I had committed myself when all was quiet. The meeting of Parliament will, I hope, divert attention. {364} P.S.—I am publishing my 'University Sermons.' You got a headache from one; it will be an act of gratitude to send you all. Shall I do so? In a letter written later Mr. Newman says: Since you have had a specimen of the book, I may add, in opposition to you, that it will be the best, not the most perfect, book I have done. I mean there is more to develop in it, though it is imperfect. My 'University Sermons' are the least theological book I have published. MRS. J. MOZLEY TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN February
20, 1843. We hear that that letter which appeared in the 'Conservative Journal,' which bears every mark of belonging to you except your name, is making a great hubbub in the world. It seems rather a mysterious document; pray what is the history of its appearance? ... Have you seen the amusing articles in the 'Record' lately? There is one imputing the Tractarians' dislike to pews to their desire of first shortening, and in the end discontinuing, sermons altogether, abolishing pews being a means of discouraging the higher classes (the especial supporters of sermons) from attending church ... Now, good-bye, dear John. I wish you sometimes gave yourself a rest, but do not try yourself too far. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO J. W. BOWDEN, ESQ. Littlemore:
February 21, 1843. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO MRS. J. MOZLEY Littlemore:
February 21, 1843. The President of Magdalen, it seems, is to ask me, for the fifth time, to be an examiner for the Johnson Theological Exhibition. My 'University Sermons' made their appearance on Saturday. The last which I preached, on the 'Purification,' lasted an hour and a half! People went about saying there was a good deal of mischief in it, and that it must be answered; but I am under no apprehensions. And so, you see, I am altogether very tranquil. Here is a letter all about myself, only excusable because it is my birthday. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO REV. S. RICKARDS Littlemore:
March 7, 1843. And yet, of course, I could not but be much pleased with your sending me the messenger who brought your note, who seems just what you describe him—an amiable, modest man. I believe, too, he has considerable academical attainments, though I am not much in the way to hear about them. I have just heard to my surprise that my 'University Sermons,' which have been published little more than a fortnight, have come to a second edition. This is unaccountable; every volume of my sermons hitherto has been a year in running through the first. As many of these are on very abstruse subjects, I cannot think that they have been bought for their contents. Our Library here is growing so much that I do not know how we shall manage for room. All our beds have been full for months, and I think we must cut our sets of rooms into two to admit more inmates. We have found no inconvenience from the winter, though certainly, on the whole, it has been a very mild one. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO MISS H. Littlemore:
March 8, 1843. … I would without scruple offer to be of such use to Mr. L. as one of your letters seemed to suggest, except that I am very sceptical about my being really of use to him. The truth is that I have a great dislike of controverting or the like with people I do not know. I do not think it answers. Very seldom have I been persuaded into the attempt, and never, I think, with success. I have hitherto succeeded in keeping people in our Church whose turn of mind, aspirations, &c., I know, but I have failed whenever I have been asked to write to strangers. As to Mr. L.'s thinking I evade the particular question he asked, it is hardly one which, as I consider, he could ask of me. I do not see that the Tridentine Decrees and our Articles are in certain points reconcilable; if I had a clear view in favour of the Decrees, as a belief in the ecumenicity of the Tridentine Council would involve, I could not sign the Articles. The very fact that I am under subscription to the Articles, implies that I cannot affirm the Council to be ecumenical. MRS. J. MOZLEY TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN March
25, 1843. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO MRS. J. MOZLEY Littlemore:
March 27, 1843. I had already been both amused and provoked to find my gross blunder about the 'fourteen.' But do not, pray, suppose I doubled the notes for semitones, though it looks very like it. The truth is, I had a most stupid idea in my head there were fifteen semitones, and I took off one for the octave. On reading it over when published I saw the absurdity. I have a great dislike to publishing hot bread, and this is one proof of the inconvenience. The greater part of the sermons, at least, cannot plead haste for their imperfection ... In answer to a question the letter goes on: As for —— [one long dead], it is difficult to speak without saying more than I wish. I impute nothing unkind or insincere, or otherwise faulty to him. It is his misfortune by the course of accident to know what very few people indeed know, and he naturally shapes his course from his anticipation of the future. If the future does not confirm his anticipation, he will seem timid and ungenerous; but if it does, he will seem more sharpsighted and wary than he deserves to be accounted. I believe I wrote under the sad feeling (for the passage had hurt me a good deal) that I was losing friends. {369} REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO J. W. BOWDEN, ESQ. April
3, 1843. I was going to write to you about a plan I have of editing in numbers 'Saints of the British Isles.' Is there any one which you would like to take? Some are appropriated, but I hardly know which are in your way since you are a Continentalist. St. Boniface struck me. Anselm and Lanfranc are in Church's hands, who has a sort of right to them. I mean the work to be historical and devotional, but not controversial. Doctrinal questions need not enter. As to miracles, I think they may be treated as matters of faith—credible according to their evidence. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO MRS. J. MOZLEY Littlemore:
April 30, 1843. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO MRS. T. MOZLEY May
24, 1843. A present from a quasi stranger [Mr. Rhodes] has just been made to me for our chapel, of two red granite columns; {370} they are only five feet high, but, if Egyptian, will cut up into many thin shafts. Perhaps these may be enough to form part of a stone pulpit [and another anonymous 200l. for the same purpose]. We think of reseating the chapel this summer. A finger organ has been given us [by an undergraduate]. We shall do everything we can at once, for, for what we know, our time at Littlemore may be short. I do not see how I can go on holding the living in the face of the episcopal Charges of the two last years—but I shall not decide the point myself. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO REV. J. KEBLE Littlemore:
May 29, 1843. S. is cast off by the 'Quarterly,' and appears holding out signals of distress and flags of truce to us. George Denison has been very urgent with us here to get up a protest against the unecclesiastical clauses of the Factory Bill, a subject on which he is full of fury. I told him nothing would be done ... Pusey is much better, though hardly off his sofa. No news about his sermon beyond what I have said above. Again: Saturday,
June 3, 1843. To a lady residing at a distance from Oxford, Mr. Newman writes on the subject of Dr. Pusey's suspension: Oriel
College: June
4, 1843. Every one here thought it from the first a very impolitical step on the part of the Heads of Houses, for if there is a Puseyite who is revered it is Dr. Pusey, by all parties. And their mode of proceeding—appointing a board known to be hostile to him, and not giving their reasons, or marking particular passages—has increased the annoyance even of moderate men. It is difficult to predict the ultimate effects. If his cause is taken up extensively it will damage the Heads. If not, it will tend to alienate still more from the Church persons of whose attachment to it there is already cause to be suspicious. It is one of those events which tend to bring matters to a crisis, without carrying with them any intimation on which side it will be decided. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO J. W. BOWDEN, ESQ. Littlemore:
July 25, 1843. MRS. J. MOZLEY TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN July
27, 1843. Now, I do so wish, John, you would pay us a visit. I will practise hard to get up some Beethoven. Jacob Abbott's visit was quite romantic. I should like to hear his side. His explanation reminds me of your saying, that No. 90 was written for one set of people and read by another. The following particulars relating to Jacob Abbott's call on Mr. Newman, here alluded to, are taken from 'Essays Critical and Historical.' [Note 1] 'The author of the "Corner Stone" met my strictures with a Christian forbearance, and a generosity which I can never forget. He went out of his way, when in England in 1843, to find me out at Littlemore, and to give me the assurance, both by that act and by word of mouth, that he did not take offence at what many a man would have thought justified serious displeasure. I think he felt, what really was the case, that I had no unkind feelings towards him, but spoke of his work simply in illustration of a widely spread sentiment in religious circles, then as now, which seemed to me dangerous to Gospel faith.' I have no other record of the incident than the following two paragraphs in a well-known newspaper of the day: From the 'English Churchman.' A few Sundays ago a stranger who had been observed joining very attentively both in the morning and afternoon services at Littlemore, begged permission in the evening to introduce himself to Mr. Newman. It proved to be none other than the well-known author of the 'Corner Stone' and the 'Young Christian,' and the object of his call was to express his deep and sincere obligations to Mr. Newman for the severe strictures which had been made upon his work some time since in the 'Tracts for the Times.' He confessed that they had the greatest effect upon his mind, and that he should write very differently now. Mr. Newman asked if there were {373} anything that he should wish altered in a subsequent edition of the Tract, but Mr. Abbott admitted the entire fairness of the review, and wished nothing to be withdrawn or altered. To the Editor of the 'English Churchman.' Littlemore:
October 6. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO REV. J. KEBLE Friday,
August 25, 1843. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO MRS. J. MOZLEY Littlemore:
August 28, 1843. It has taken us all by surprise ... When he came here I took a promise of him that he would remain quiet for three years, otherwise I could not receive him. This occurrence will very likely fix the time of my resigning St. Mary's, for he has been teaching in our school till he went away. … These are reasons enough to make me give up St. Mary's, but, were there no other, this feeling would be sufficient, that I am not so zealous a defender of the established and existing system of religion as I ought to be for such a post. Years before, Mr. Newman, in his article on 'Religious Parties,' had written, 'You cannot make others think as you will, even those who are nearest and dearest to you.' [Note 2] Experience had taught him this truth; but he had to feel it with heavier force as time went on. His correspondence with his sisters pressed this growing divergence upon him, however tenderly expressed. MRS. J. MOZLEY TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN August
30, 1843. You must not think me very presuming. I am so very {375} anxious you should always be as right in everything as you have been hitherto … I have written a great deal with very little in it, and I hardly can hope you will find anything of weight in it, for I know you do not make up your mind on slight grounds. If the matter is settled in your mind, and must be so, I trust the sense of having done what you thought right will be your reward and my great consolation; for what would become of me if I could not think of you, as I always have thought with joy and gratitude, that I am your sister? Yes, dear John, I feel it cannot be otherwise; whichever way you decide it will be a noble and true part, and not taken up from any impulse, or caprice, or pique, but on true and right principles that will carry a blessing with them. Poor Aunt is a good deal distressed at what you are doing. I mentioned it, as it was better to do so now than to take her by surprise. Mr. Newman seems so have answered his sister at once. We gather this from the following letter, written the day but one after that just given: MRS. J. MOZLEY TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN September
1, 1843. The following letter, from a lady—the name unknown to the Editor—must have been forwarded to Mr. Newman by Mrs. J. Mozley: {376} FROM A LADY TO MRS. J. MOZLEY August
30, 1843. In spite of the sorrow and the fear that such a step may excite, I know it may be right to do it—and if your brother does so, I shall try to think it is; but it seems right that he should know all the consequences. We shall not leave the Church as others may. We have no longings for Rome; but it is a strong step to make our home feel cheerless, and this will tend to do it—at least for a time. But it is a large subject and you will say it far better than I. I have said this {377} as a sort of relief to my feelings; you will judge whether this view of the subject is worth noticing. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO MRS. J. MOZLEY August
31, 1843. I wonder my late letters have not prepared you for this. Have you realised that three years since I wished to do it; and that I have said so in print, and that then only a friend prevented me? It has been determined on since Lent. All through Lent I and another kept it in mind; and then, for safety, I said I would not act till October, though we both came to one view. October is coming! No time is 'the' time. You may have thought as you read, 'three years ago it would not have mattered.' Will three years hence be easier? The question is, Ought it to be done? I mention a great secret, because I do not wish others to share in the responsibility; but I will say this, that I have always said, 'I cannot go wrong when A [Keble] and B [Rogers] agree that I should do a thing.' These two men agree in this. I have not persuaded them. I wrote to one of them the other day, whether I should assign some reasons. He answered to this effect: 'No one who knows the history of No. 90 can be surprised at it. Anyone but you would have taken the step before.' My dearest Jemima, my circumstances are not of my making. One's duty is to act under circumstances. Is it a light thing to give up Littlemore? Am I not providing dreariness for myself? If others, whom I am pierced to think about, because I cannot help them, suffer, shall not I suffer in my own way? Everything that one does honestly, sincerely, with prayer, with advice, must turn to good. In what am I not likely to be as good a judge as another? In the consequences? True, but is not this what I have been ever protesting against? the going by expedience, not by principle? My sweetest Jemima, {378} of whom I am quite unworthy, rather pray that I may be directed aright, rather pray that something may occur to hinder me if I am wrong, than take the matter into your own hands. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO REV. J. KEBLE Littlemore:
September 1, 1843. Should you think it advisable for me to retain St. Mary's awhile, would you object to my trying to get someone to take my duty at Oxford entirely, i.e. Sermons and all? As to Lockhart, he was all but going over a year and a half ago, before I knew him. His friends got me to take him by way of steadying him, and I made him promise, as a condition of his coming, that he would put aside all thought of change for three years. He has gone on very well, expressed himself several times as greatly rejoiced that he had made the promise (though I saw in him no change of opinion), and set himself anxiously to improve the weak points in his character. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO REV. J. B. MOZLEY [Confidential.]
Littlemore: September 1, 1843. Really it is no personal feeling or annoyance under which I do it. I hope I am right in speaking openly to you, which {379} I have not done but to a very few, but now I will tell you the real cause—which others besides those to whom I have said it may guess—but which (as far as I recollect) I have only told to Rogers, H. Wilberforce, R. Wilberforce, and Keble ... Tom may suspect it and Copeland, so may Church and Marriott. Indeed, I cannot name the limit of surmisers. The truth then is, I am not a good son enough of the Church of England to feel I can in conscience hold preferment under her. I love the Church of Rome too well. Now please burn this, there's a good fellow, for you sometimes let letters lie on your mantelpiece. This matter of Lockhart's (who seems regularly to have been fascinated by Dr Gentili against his will) may have the effect of delaying my measure, but I shall be guided by others. In the
'Chronological Notes' for September 1843 are these entries: REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO MRS. J. MOZLEY September
22; 1843. It pains me very deeply to pain you, but you see how I am forced to it. You will not say, I think, that I am less affectionate to you from the bottom of my heart and loving than I ever have been. In his sister's answer are these words, 'I see what we all need is patience with the course of events, and with each other.' REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO J. W. BOWDEN, ESQ. September
29, 1843. We collected altogether 61l. at the offertory on Monday [anniversary of Dedication], and had I had my wits about me, I might have added a 5l. which had been given me for such a purpose. Eden [new Vicar of St. Mary's] seems desirous of taking Copeland as curate; but this is entre nous. What shall I add? I daresay when I have closed this I shall recollect something I ought to have said. Believe me,
my very dear Bowden, my old and true friend, REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO MRS. THOMAS MOZLEY September
29, 1843. This is a very different thing from having any intention of joining the Church of Rome. However, to avow generally as much as I have said would be wrong for ten thousand reasons. People cannot understand a man being in a state of doubt, of misgiving, of being unequal to responsibilities, &c.; but they will conclude that he has clear views either one way or the other. All I know is, that I could not without hypocrisy profess myself any longer a teacher and a champion for our Church. Very few persons know this—hardly one person, only one (I think) in Oxford, viz. James Mozley. I think it would be most cruel, most unkind, most unsettling to tell them. My dear Harriett, you must learn patience, so must we all, and resignation to the will of God. MRS. J. MOZLEY TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN October
8, 1843. Knowing all I do of you and your present opinions, I cannot call in question anything you have done, or your manner of doing it. I may deeply lament, but I cannot find fault; I cannot accuse you of being impatient, precipitate, or insincere. Far from me ever be the thought of this last. I cannot say you have not acted wisely under the circumstances, and I am sure you have acted kindly and considerately. But for many years I have anxiously watched the course, and endeavoured to ascertain particulars concerning converts to Romanism, and I must say I have never heard of anyone like yourself. All other conversions I have known anything of, men and women, seem more the fruit of excitement and restlessness than of straightforward honest conviction ... … We are indeed in a dark cloud. That small body in the Church that seemed to be at unity is rent asunder. Still I feel hope that we shall not be utterly forsaken. Amid all our troubles we have as yet our greatest privileges spared to us. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO J. W. BOWDEN, ESQ. Littlemore:
October 31, 1843. Have you seen Gladstone's article in the Colonial Quarterly? It is very kind; but like a statesman he takes a non-practical view of the matter, and gives no solution of the difficulties that cause our present distress. When persons have got into their minds that a union with Rome is necessary for their being Catholics, it is vain to tell them that they have no chance of making the English Nation submit itself to Rome. They have no plans, but view the matter as a personal one. On my return last night I found your welcome letter. [I was then at Derby from Monday to Saturday.] Under the pressure of his own misgivings and earnest desires to check impatient thought and action in others, glimpses come before us that this was a time when 'Everyone that was in distress and everyone that was discontented gathered themselves unto him.' Some of these letters of counsel seem to throw a light on Mr. Newman's habit of religious thought. In answer to the same lady [Note 4] whose difficulties have already been quoted, and who had sought his counsel, he writes: Littlemore:
November 3, 1843. As to my not speaking out, if so, you have not taken the way to make me. When a person wishes the advice and guidance of a director, he asks definite questions, he does not give a narrative at length, from which the other is to pick out by a constant unflagging acuteness the point on which he wishes or ought to have advice. It was not putting yourself in the relation of a patient to a physician. … My mind is full of various matters, many of them so painful that I have sometimes been tempted to smile at the ingenuity with which you have invented for yourself troubles. I confess I have not had time to pursue the progress of an active mind like yours from day to day, when I have so many thoughts pressing on my own, and when each successive letter from you perhaps changed or reversed the state of things in which you found yourself shortly before. I quite understand the inconveniences of your present situation. But you must recollect all places have their temptations—nay, even the cloisters. Our very work here is to overcome ourselves and to be sensible of our hourly infirmities; to feel them keenly is but the necessary step towards overcoming them. Never expect to be without such while life lasts; if these were overcome, you would discover others, and that both because your eyes would see your real state of imperfection more clearly than now, and also because they are in a great measure a temptation of the Enemy, and he has temptations for all states, all occasions. He can turn whatever we do, whatever we do not do, into a temptation, as a skilful rhetorician turns anything into an argument. It is plain I am not saying this to make you acquiesce in the evils you speak of; if such be the condition of this life, to resist them is also its duty, and to resist them with success. Nothing is more painful than that sense of unreality which you describe. I believe one especial remedy for it is to give a certain time of the day to meditation, though the cure is, of course, very uncertain. However, you should not attempt it without a good deal of consideration and a fair prospect of going on steadily with it. What I mean is the giving half an hour every morning to the steady contemplation of some one sacred subject ... You should begin by strongly impressing on your mind that you are in Christ's Presence ... Of course, there is the greatest care necessary to do all this with extreme reverence, not as an experiment or a kind of prescription or charm ... {384} REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO REV. J. B. MOZLEY Oriel:
November 23, 1843. You cannot tell how much I have been anxious about you, as to what you heard not so long ago. After your Father and Mother and my own Aunt, you have been uppermost in my thoughts. I fear your so-called indisposition is really mental disgust—nothing bodily. Gladly, my dear James, would I say anything to relieve you, but I can only say I wish to do so, if there is any good in that; nothing more. For myself, I have so long divested myself of hopes for the future, if I ever had them, that I seem to have nothing to grieve for, except the grief of others. The answer to this note does not appear, but its tone may be gathered from the following reply to it: REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO REV. J. B. MOZLEY [Private] Last summer four years (1839) it came strongly upon me, from reading first the Monophysite controversy, and then turning to the Donatist, that we were external to the Catholic Church. I have never got over this. I did not, however, yield to it at all, but wrote an article in the 'British Critic' on the Catholicity of the English Church, which had the effect of quieting me for two years. Since this time two years the feeling has revived and gradually strengthened. I have all along gone against it and think I ought to do so still. I am now publishing sermons, which speak more confidently about our position than I inwardly feel, but I think it right and do not care for seeming inconsistent. I trust you may quite rely on my not admitting despair or disgust, or giving way to feelings which I wish otherwise, {385} though, from the experience of the last four years, I do not think they are likely to be otherwise. A lady of recognised ability, the friend of a correspondent of Mr. Newman's, had earnestly wished to enter into controversy with him. In his answer to this request Mr. Newman writes:— She may—of course she has full right to—differ from me in opinion, and she remains (I fully grant) just where she was. She has not changed. I have read what she has not read, and have changed. I read first (as I was bound to do) with other people's eyes, and since I have read with my own, not being able to help it; but still I do not force my views upon her, I have not obtruded them in any way. I have felt nothing but pain; but she is resolved to get into argument with me, and I am resolved (so be it) not to argue with her. I wish to have an argument with no one; by which I mean anything between person and person. And it is very bad tact in her, for it is just the way to drive one in one's feelings further from her opinions. She is doing just what our rulers are doing on a large scale—trying to show us that we are in a false position, that we are not in our place ... Top | Contents | Biographies | Home Notes1. See Essays
Critical and Historical, vol. i. p. 100. 2.
British Critic, April 1839, p. 426. 3.
Professor Shairp eloquently recalls his feelings at hearing no longer
Mr. Newman's voice in St. Mary's. 'On these things, looking over an
interval of five-and-twenty years, how vividly comes back the
remembrance of the aching blank, the awful pause which fell on Oxford
when that voice had ceased, and we knew that we should hear it no more.
It was as when, to one kneeling by night, in the silence of some vast
Cathedral, the great bell tolling solemnly overhead has suddenly gone
still ... Since then many voices of powerful teachers may have been
heard, but none that ever penetrated the soul like his.'—Shairp's Studies
in Poetry and Philosophy, p. 255. 4.
This lady's enthusiastic temperament and her dependent circumstances
equally excited Mr. Newman's sympathies. His regard for her lasted till
the end of her restless life—one of his latest notes comparing her to
one saint in the calendar 'who never could settle.' In 1844 she
conformed to Rome. Some interesting letters of his to her, of a later
date, have recently fallen into the Editor's hands. Top | Contents | Biographies | Home Newman Reader — Works of John Henry Newman |