Chapter 3. Last Days at Littlemore (1845-1846){79} IN Oxford itself, events hurried on to a climax. Left without the restraining hand of Newman, W. G. Ward and his friends emphasised the most Roman interpretation of the Movement, and the paradox soon became intolerable. In the summer of 1844, W. G. Ward published his 'Ideal of a Christian Church,' in which he claimed to remain a clergyman of the Church of England while holding 'the whole cycle of Roman doctrine.' The book was condemned at the famous meeting of Convocation on February 13, 1845, and its author deprived of his degrees. A vote of censure on Tract 90 was proposed on the same occasion, but defeated by the veto of the two proctors, personal friends of Newman—Mr. Guillemard and Mr. R. W. Church. The Movement was already mortally wounded by Newman's retirement, and this event was, in Dean Stanley's words, its 'closing scene.' Up to then, although blow after blow had been struck at the party—the episcopal charges against the Tracts, the institution of the Jerusalem Bishopric, the censure of Pusey's sermon on the Holy Eucharist,—no disaster had been quite irretrievable. Newman had indeed prepared his friends for his coming defection from Anglicanism, yet the more sanguine hoped against hope that the prospect might change, that the Church of England might keep him, and that the cause of the Movement might still triumph. Now the party was finally defeated. 'It was more than a defeat,' writes Dean Church, 'it was a rout in which they were driven headlong from the field.' Newman remained absolutely impassive. 'That silence,' writes the same witness, 'was awful and ominous.' We know from the 'Apologia' what he was going through {80} at this time, his steadily growing conviction that he ought to join the Church of Rome, his fear lest he might in so momentous a step be acting on a view which would subsequently change. I have found one letter, and one only, in which he pours out his whole heart on the subject. It was written to Henry Wilberforce in the spring of 1845, after reading the autobiography of his old friend, Blanco White, who had ceased to be a Christian before he died. The letter gives a vivid picture not only of Newman's mind at the moment, but of his thoughts concerning his own past history. 'Littlemore, Dom. V post Pasch. Ap. 27, 1845. 'Blanco White's book then shows more and more that one knows the lie of the country. It is an additional testimony to the fact that to be consistent one must believe more or less than we are accustomed to believe. Of course it may be said that one ought not to attempt to be consistent, {81} which is systematizing—but to do each duty by itself as it comes, without putting things together, or saying that two and two make four. Well, I will not debate this, but, when a person feels that he cannot stand where he is, and has dreadful feelings lest he should be suffered to go back, if he will not go forward, such a case as Blanco White's increases those fears. For years I have an increasing intellectual conviction that there is no medium between Pantheism and the Church of Rome. If intellect were to settle the matter, I should not be now where I am. But other considerations come in, and distress me. Here is Blanco White sincere and honest. He gives up his country, and then his second home,—Spain, Oxford, Whately's family,—all for an idea of truth, or rather for liberty of thought. True, I think a great deal of morbid restlessness was mixed with his sincerity, an inability to keep still in one place, a readiness to take offence and to be disgusted, an unusual irritability, and a fear of not being independent, and other bad feelings. But then the thought forcibly comes upon one, Why may not the case be the same with me? I see Blanco White going wrong yet sincere—Arnold going wrong yet sincere. They are no puzzle to me; I can put my finger on this or that fault in their character and say, Here was the fault. But they did not know the fault, and so it comes upon me, How do I know that I too have not my weak points which occasion me to think as I think. How can I be sure I have not committed sins which bring this unsettled state of mind on me as a judgment? This is what is so very harassing, as you may suppose. 'Blanco White's book has tried me in another way. I am nearly the only person he speaks with affection of in it among his English friends—at least he says more about me than anyone else ... It seems as if people were just now beginning to praise me when I am going. It seems an omen of my going that they praise me. Their praises are valedictions, funeral orations. Rogers, James Mozley, and now Blanco White. The truth is I have had so little praise that I do not understand it, and my feelings have been a mixture of bitter and sweet such as I cannot describe. I do not think it raises feelings of elation as to what I am—at least Blanco White has not, because he speaks of what is gone and over; it hardly seems I that he speaks of—I, this old dry chip who am worthless, but of a past I. No one has spoken well of me. My friends who have had means of knowing me have spoken against me ... Others have kept silent in my greatest trouble. The mass of men in Oxford who knew me a little {82} have shown a coldness and suspicion which I did not deserve. In the affair of No. 90 few indeed showed me any sympathy, or gave me the least reason to believe that I was at all in their hearts. I have not thought of all this, indeed it comes to me now as a new thought by the contrast of what Blanco White says of me, which is light showing the previous darkness. I say to myself, Is it possible I was this? and then a second set of feelings succeeds. It is over—my spring, my summer, are over, and what has come of it? It seems Blanco White thought so and so of me,—others then I suppose thought in a degree the same; but what has come of it? ... and now my prime of life is past and I am nothing. What has often seemed mysterious to me has been that, whereas my [ergon] seems to be direction or the oversight of young men, I have all along been so wonderfully kept out of that occupation. And I get intellectually (not morally) fidgetted at the mystery, and think what my influence would have been in anything like station, when it has been what it is among people who never saw me. And now it is all gone and over, and there is no redress, no returning, and I say with Job, "O that it were with me as in years past, when the candle of the Lord shone on me." And yet, carissime, I don't think anything of ambition or longing is mixed with these feelings, as far as I can tell. I am so desperately fond of my own ease, like an old bachelor, that having duties, being in office, &c., is an idea insupportable to me. Rather I think of it in the way of justice, and with a sort of tenderness to my former self, now no more. 'How dreadful it is, to have to act on great matters so much in the dark—yet I, who have preached so much on the duty of following in the night whenever God may call, am the last person who have a right to complain.' I think this letter tells us of a mind really made up. Old reasons for hesitation remain, but their force is nearly spent. Newman himself has told us that he was already on the death-bed of his Anglican life; and we may perhaps continue the metaphor by saying that by the summer of 1845 he had reached the end of the death-struggle. The rest was the peaceful awaiting of the final deliverance. He was between two lives. His Anglican life was over; his life in the Catholic Church had not begun. His connection with Oxford affairs and with the Movement was at an end. Of Oxford men {83} only intimate friends now saw him. He had begun to write his work on the 'Development of Christian Doctrine' in the previous autumn. It soon absorbed his whole mind, and he resolved to complete it before finally effecting the change of Communion. He made no plans for the future. He lived externally as one lives from day to day in the sick chamber—passing an uneventful existence, seeing a few familiar friends, and saying his prayers. Both Anglican friends and the Catholics at Oscott were prepared to receive any day the news of his departure. But the death-bed, as often happens in the literal passing of a life, was so unexpectedly prolonged as to try the patience of onlookers. Dr. Wiseman's eagerness to know more of the prospect was especially keen. He had with him at Oscott, as a theological student, Bernard Smith [Note 1], a recent convert, formerly rector of Leadenham, an old friend and quondam curate of Newman. Mr. Smith consented to pay Newman a visit at Littlemore to ascertain how matters really stood. His visit was on June 26. Newman received him coldly at first, and left him to the care of the rest of the Littlemore community. Later on he reappeared and asked Mr. Smith to remain for dinner. The guest from Oscott was on the look-out for the smallest sign of his intentions from one who was apt, as Dean Stanley has said, 'like the slave of Midas to whisper his secret to the reeds.' And a sign came—light but unmistakable. At dinner Newman was attired in grey trousers—which to Bernard Smith, who knew his punctiliousness in matters of dress, was conclusive evidence that he no longer regarded himself as a clergyman. Mr. Smith returned to Oscott and reported that the end was near [Note 2]. Among Newman's Anglican friends, too, there was first an interval of suspense, and then they witnessed definite signs of the great changes which were at hand. 'There was a pause,' says Dean Church. 'It was no secret what was coming. But men lingered. It was not till the summer that the first drops of the storm began to fall. Then, through the autumn and the next year, friends whose {84} names and forms were familiar in Oxford one by one disappeared and were lost to it. Fellowships, livings, curacies, intended careers were given up. Mr. Ward went. Mr. Capes, who had long followed Mr. Ward's line and had spent his private means to build a church near Bridgewater, went also. Mr. Oakeley resigned Margaret Chapel and went. Mr. Ambrose St. John, Mr. Coffin, Mr. Dalgairns, Mr. Faber, Mr. T. Meyrick, Mr. Albany Christie, Mr. R. Simpson of Oriel, were received in various places and various ways; and in the next year Mr. J. S. Northcote, Mr. J. B. Morris, Mr. G. Ryder, Mr. David Lewis.' [Note 3] 'We sat glumly at our breakfasts every morning,' adds the same writer elsewhere, 'and then someone came in with news of something disagreeable—someone gone, someone sure to go.' When the summer of 1845 brought the first group of conversions, three months were yet to run before the great leader moved. I find in Newman's private diary the bare record of events at an uneventful period, but friends have left us materials for some picture of the time. Living with him constantly at Littlemore were his dear friends Ambrose St. John, J. B. Dalgairns, Richard Stanton, and E. S. Bowles; while Albany Christie (afterwards the well-known Jesuit) and John Walker (afterwards Canon Walker) were frequent visitors. The inmates of the house at Littlemore were leading a life of the utmost self-denial and simplicity. Divine office was recited daily. There were two meals in the day—breakfast, consisting of tea and bread {85} and butter taken standing up, and dinner. In Lent no meat was eaten. The rule of the community prescribed silence for half the day [Note 4]. Reading, writing, and praying were the occupations of the morning; and later Newman would often take his disciples for a walk. Then he was his old fascinating self. While walking so fast that his companions could hardly keep pace with him, he conversed on all subjects—except the one which was most anxiously pressing on him. To Ambrose St. John alone he spoke in secret of that all-absorbing topic. In public his conversation was of current politics, of literature, and still more of early Oxford memories, of Keble, Hawkins, Blanco White. Whately was a favourite theme. He and other old friends, whose intimacy belonged to the past, were held in the affectionate grasp of that clinging memory. After dinner, again, Newman conversed with the others for a short time. The rest of the day he was working in the library or in his room. He went into Oxford occasionally to visit Pusey. Oakeley came to see him now and again from Rose Hill, where he was often the guest of W. G. Ward, who had taken a cottage there after his marriage. R. W. Church, W. J. Copeland, Mark Pattison, W. Palmer, and other friends would call or dine; but even such 'events' took place but once or so in the week. It was at this time that he sat for the well-known picture by Richmond, visiting London at intervals for the purpose. For his Anglican friends these interviews were the leave-takings of a death-bed. Their paths were to divide, and if intercourse were ever renewed it would be as though in another world, with relations totally changed. On July 7 his sister Jemima—Mrs. John Mozley—came with her husband to stay at a cottage close by him and remained a fortnight, and Newman walked or dined with her almost daily. A little note to St. John on the day after her departure seems to bring before us the peaceful atmosphere and homely details of his life at Littlemore during those months: {86} Littlemore: July 18, 1845. 'There is a sort of consensus against your favourite tin canister. Dalgairns is not the least loud in his reprobation of its top. 'We have a most splendid show of lilies—no wonder, for Bowles has just told us it has been discovered at home that he has robbed his mother's garden of every bulb; so they are to go back in the autumn. He has cut one off stalk and all, and it stands in the hall breathing sweetness and looking majestically. 'I suppose I shall see Dodsworth in town tomorrow. I am at Sir W.
Ross's at 2, and at 11 at Richmond's on Monday; then I hope to return. All this time the 'Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine' was growing. The book gave him infinite trouble, and wore him out mentally and physically. A letter of June 1845 to Mrs. William Froude tells us something of what it cost him: 'Did I tell you I was preparing a book of some sort to advertise people how things stood with me? ... Never has anything cost me (I think) so much hard thought and anxiety, though when I got to the end of my "Arians" thirteen years ago, I had no sleep for a week, and was fainting away or something like it day after day. Then I went abroad and that set me up. At present I have been four months and more at my new work, and found I had vastly more materials than I knew how to employ. The difficulty was to bring them into shape, as well as to work out in my mind the main principles on which they were to run. I spent two months in reading and writing which came to nothing, at least for my present purpose. I really have no hope it will be finished before the autumn—if then. I have not written a sentence, I suppose, which will stand, or hardly {87} so. Perhaps one gets over sensitive even about style as one gets on in life. My utmost ambition, in point of recreation, is to lay aside the actual writing for three weeks or so in the course of the time, and take to reading and hunting about. Our time is so divided here that I have not above 6 or 7 hours a day at it, and it is so exhausting, I doubt whether I could give more. I am now writing it for the first time, and have done three chapters, out of 4 or 5. Besides re-writing, every part has to be worked out and defined as in moulding a statue. I get on as a person walks with a lame ankle, who does get on and gets to his journey's end—but not comfortably.' The mental tension to which these words bear witness was visible to his friends and comrades. He stood—so the late Father Stanton told me—for hours together at his high desk writing, and seemed to grow ever paler and thinner, while the sun appeared to shine through the almost transparent face. As the task neared its end he would stand the whole day, completing and revising it with the infinite care which was his wont. This great work is too well known to need full analysis here. It purported directly to justify what were regarded as Roman corruptions and additions to the primitive creed, as legitimate developments. The Anglican creed accepted developments as well as the Roman. The Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon imposed additions to the defined creed as well as the Council of Trent. The Anglicans (as he argued) attempted to arrest this normal principle of intellectual growth; the Roman Church more consistently allowed it to continue its work. But the philosophy of the book went deeper than the theological controversy of the hour. It applied the great principle of life as a test of truth in religion. In a really living system there are changes which, far from being corruptions, are the natural response of a living social body to changing conditions. New questions are asked; new answers given. But the new answers were but the fuller expression of the original genius of the system. He regards Christianity as an idea with many aspects which were successively elicited and exhibited in fresh opportunities, and as having at the same time its own distinctive and unique genius which every aspect serves to illustrate. It grows into {88} a definite philosophy or system of belief. As circumstances change 'old principles reappear under new forms. It changes with them in order to remain the same. In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often.' Thus he accounts for and justifies the proud claim of the Catholic Church to be semper eadem, in spite of the changes in its outward form and polity—the growth of ritual, the assimilation of extraneous philosophies by its theological schools, the changes in the method pursued in those schools, its fresh definitions of dogma, the varieties in its social standing at different epochs, in the Catacombs, in the theocracy of the thirteenth century, in the apostasy of the nineteenth. Thus he formulates the principle which explains why the Reformers who claimed to do away with the wanton innovations of Rome in religion were by the Church boldly accused of that very crime which they denounced. They discarded later additions and went back to the primitive text of the Scriptures, yet they were roundly styled by Rome, novatores, or innovators. The Protestants had in their antiquarian zeal discarded the principle of life and of true identity. Their rediscoveries from primitive times were for the living Church novelties or dead anachronisms. The Catholic Church herself had the identity of uninterrupted life and genuine growth. The identity of the Church still in communion with Rome with the Church of earlier ages is presented in three singularly vivid pictures in the course of Newman's work, and they served as the inspiration of his life in after-years. I refer to the historical parallels between the Roman Catholic Church of the nineteenth century and the Church of the chief periods he surveys in his narrative—the Church of the Apostolic period, of the Nicene period, and of the fifth and sixth centuries. In each case the parallel is given in his work after the exhibition of a mass of facts which he had accumulated during many weeks, and we feel the imaginative intellect of the poet-historian to be burning at white-heat, while the style never loses its self-restraint. Here is the first: 'If there is a form of Christianity now in the world which is accused of gross superstition, of borrowing its rites and {89} customs from the heathen, and of ascribing to forms and ceremonies an occult virtue;—a religion which is considered to burden and enslave the mind by its requisitions, to address itself to the weak-minded and ignorant, to be supported by sophistry and imposture, and to contradict reason and exalt mere irrational faith;—a religion which impresses on the serious mind very distressing views of the guilt and consequences of sin, sets upon the minute acts of the day, one by one, their definite value for praise or blame, and thus casts a grave shadow over the future;—a religion which holds up to admiration the surrender of wealth, and disables serious persons from enjoying it if they would;—a religion, the doctrines of which, be they good or bad, are to the generality of men unknown; which is considered to bear on its very surface signs of folly and falsehood so distinct that a glance suffices to judge of it, and careful examination is preposterous; which is felt to be so simply bad that it may be calumniated at hazard and at pleasure, it being nothing but absurdity to stand upon the accurate distribution of its guilt among its particular acts, or painfully to determine how far this or that story is literally true, what must be allowed in candour, or what is improbable, what cuts two ways, or what is not proved, or what may be plausibly defended;—a religion such that men look at a convert to it with a feeling which no other sect raises except Judaism, Socialism, or Mormonism, with curiosity, suspicion, fear, disgust, as the case may be, as if something strange had befallen him, as if he had had an initiation into a mystery, and had come into communion with dreadful influences, as if he were now one of a confederacy which claimed him, attested him, stripped him of his personality, reduced him to a mere organ or instrument of a whole;—a religion which men hate as proselytizing, anti-social, revolutionary, as dividing families, separating chief friends, corrupting the maxims of government, making a mock at law, dissolving the empire, the enemy of human nature, and "a conspirator against its rights and privileges";—a religion which they consider the champion and instrument of darkness, and a pollution calling down upon the land the anger of heaven;—a religion which they associate with intrigue and conspiracy, which they speak about in whispers, which they detect by anticipation in whatever goes wrong, and to which they impute whatever is unaccountable;—a religion the very name of which they cast out as evil, and use simply as a bad epithet, and which from the impulse of self preservation they would persecute if they could;—if there be such a {90} religion now in the world, it is not unlike Christianity as that same world viewed it when first it came forth from its Divine Author.' [Note 5] And the Nicene period, with its parallel, is given as follows: 'On the whole, then, we have reason to say that if there be a form of Christianity at this day distinguished for its careful organization and its consequent power; if it is spread over the world; if it is conspicuous for zealous maintenance of its own creed; if it is intolerant towards what it considers error; if it is engaged in ceaseless war with all other bodies called Christian; if it, and it alone, is called "catholic" by the world, nay, by these very bodies, and if it makes much of the title; if it names them heretics, and warns them of coming woe, and calls on them, one by one, to come over to itself, overlooking every other tie; and if they, on the other hand, call it seducer, harlot, apostate, Antichrist, devil; if, however they differ one with another, they consider it their common enemy; if they strive to unite together against it, and cannot; if they are but local; if they continually sub-divide, and it remains one; if they fall one after another, and make way for new sects, and it remains the same; such a form of religion is not unlike the Christianity of the Nicene era.' [Note 6] Finally, and with a closer detailed resemblance to the Roman Catholic Church of today, we have his summary of the position and characteristics of the Church in communion with Rome in the fifth and sixth centuries: 'If then, there is now a form of Christianity such that it extends throughout the world, though with varying measures of prominence or prosperity in separate places; that it lies under the power of sovereigns and magistrates, in different ways alien to its faith; that flourishing nations and great empires, professing or tolerating the Christian name, lie over against it as antagonists; that schools of philosophy and learning are supporting theories or following out conclusions hostile to it, and establishing an exegetical system subversive of its Scriptures; that it has lost whole Churches by schism, and is now opposed by powerful communions once part of itself; that it has been altogether or almost driven from some {91} countries; that in others its line of teachers is overlaid, its flocks oppressed, its churches occupied, its property held by what may be called a duplicate succession; that in others its members are degenerate and corrupt, and surpassed in conscientiousness and in virtue, as in gifts of intellect, by the very heretics whom it condemns; that heresies are rife and bishops negligent within its own pale; and that amid its disorders and fears there is but one Voice for whose decisions its people wait with trust, one Name and one See to which they look with hope, and that name Peter, and that see Rome;—such a religion is not unlike the Christianity of the fifth and sixth centuries.' [Note 7] In this third parallel we seem to see his final reply to all that could be urged against his change, and his support in any trial which it might bring. In each of the first two parallels he hails as a note of the Church in each age the false judgments of its enemies. But in the last, true judgments in its disfavour—the very reasons which might be alleged to hold him back—are allowed for. The inferiority of Roman Catholics, if it so proved, in intellectual gifts and even in virtue, to the friends of his Oxford days, was admitted as consistent with the exclusive claims of Rome. The first parallels were but the fulfilment of a beatitude—for men spoke evil of the Church falsely. The last takes account of the very arguments of those hostile critics who spoke truly. What mattered the shortcomings of his future comrades if they were members of the "Church of Athanasius"! Not given to strong phrases, he has told us that to live in imagination in the Church of the Fathers had for years been to him 'a paradise of delight.' [Note 8] And now, in the keen mental life which this book had aroused, all the past was alive. He seems in its pages to see the Catholic Church of history as one great aula in which the Fathers are collected at one end and Pope Gregory XVI. stands at the other. With heart and mind in such a state, the resolution he had made to wait until the book was published was not proof against even slight determining causes. He found those around him, whose simpler minds were strangers to his own resolve to resist the promptings of impulse for a fixed time, on the {92} point of being received. Ambrose St. John and Dalgairns were on a holiday and wrote that they had actually joined the Church of Rome. Henry Wilberforce, on the other hand, who still hoped against hope to keep Newman in the Church of England, wrote urging him against being received in Advent or at Christmas—hoping that delay might yet save him. Newman accepted this advice as an excuse to move not later, but earlier. Dalgairns had been on September 27 to Aston to be admitted into the Church by Father Dominic the Passionist. Father Dominic was to come to visit his convert at Littlemore on October 8 on his way to Belgium. Here was the occasion which Providence supplied. Here was the 'kindly light' which relieved his uncertainty and marked out for him the immediate course. On October 3 he addressed a letter to the Provost of Oriel resigning his Fellowship. On the same day he wrote to Pusey informing him of this act, and adding, 'anything may happen to me now any day.' On October 5 he notes in his diary, 'I kept indoors all day preparing for general confession.' Oakeley was with W. G. Ward at Rose Hill, and dined with Newman that evening. On October 7 St. John returned to Littlemore, and Newman had with him when he took the great and solemn step the one disciple to whom he habitually opened his whole mind. On this day he wrote thus to Henry Wilberforce: Littlemore: October 7, 1845. 'I could have wished to delay till my book was actually out, but having all along gone so simply and entirely by my own reason, I was not sorry to accept this matter of time at an inconvenience, to submit myself to what seemed an external call. Also I suppose the departure of others has had something to do with it, for when they went, it was as if I were losing my own bowels. {93} 'Father Dominic has had his thoughts turned to England from a youth,
in a distinct and remarkable way. For thirty years he has expected to be
sent to England, and about three years since was sent without any act of
his own by his superior. He has had little or nothing to do with
conversions, but goes on missions and retreats among his own people. I
saw him over here for a few minutes on St. John the Baptist's day last
year, when he came to see the chapel. He is a simple quaint man, an
Italian; but a very sharp clever man too in his way. It is an accident
his coming here, and I had no thoughts of applying to him till quite
lately, nor should, I suppose, but for this accident. 'Littlemore: October 7, 1845. 'On Thursday or Friday, if it be God's will, I shall be received. We
expect St. John back today. On the evening of October 8 Father Dominic was expected, and almost at the same time Stanton, who had been absent for a few weeks, returned. Father Dominic was to arrive at Oxford by the coach in the afternoon. Up to the very day itself Newman did not speak to the community at Littlemore of his intention. Dalgairns and St. John were to meet the Passionist Father in Oxford. The former has left the following account of what passed: 'At that time all of us except St. John, though we did not doubt Newman would become a Catholic, were anxious and ignorant of his intentions in detail. About 3 o'clock I went to take my hat and stick and walk across the fields to the Oxford "Angel" where the coach stopped. As I was taking my stick Newman said to me in a very low and quiet {94} tone: "When you see your friend, will you tell him that I wish him to receive me into the Church of Christ?" I said: "Yes" and no more. I told Fr. Dominic as he was dismounting from the top of the coach. He said: "God be praised," and neither of us spoke again till we reached Littlemore.' It was then pouring with rain. Newman made his general confession that night, and was afterwards quite prostrate. Ambrose St. John and Stanton helped him out of the little Oratory. On the morrow his diary has this record: 'admitted into the Catholic Church with Bowles and Stanton.' Next day Newman made his first communion in the Oratory at Littlemore, in which Mass was said for the first time, and Father Dominic received Mr. and Mrs. Woodmason and their two daughters. Newman walked into Oxford in the afternoon with St. John to see Mr. Newsham, the Catholic priest. On the eleventh Father Dominic left. On the same day Newman paid a visit to W. G. Ward at Rose Hill, and Charles Marriott came to see him at Littlemore [Note 9]. Thus very quietly and without parade took place the great event dreamt of for so many years—with dread at first, in hope at last. The MS. of the 'Essay on Development' {95} lay unfinished on his desk. Newman now added a few lines to it which give the best contemporary picture of his mind at the time—'one of those passages,' writes Mr. Hutton, 'by which Newman will be remembered as long as the English language endures.' 'Such,' he wrote, 'were the thoughts concerning "The Blessed Vision of Peace" of one whose long-continued petition had been that the Most Merciful would not despise the work of His own hands, nor leave him to himself; while yet his eyes were dim, and his breast laden, and he could but employ Reason in the things of Faith. And now, dear reader, time is short, eternity is long. Put not from you what you have here found; regard it not as mere matter of present controversy; set not out resolved to refute it, and looking about for the best way of doing so; seduce not yourself with the imagination that it comes of disappointment, or disgust, or restlessness, or wounded feeling, or undue sensibility, or other weakness. Wrap not yourself round in the associations of years past, nor determine that to be truth which you wish to be so, nor make an idol of cherished anticipations. Time is short, eternity is long. Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace, quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum.' The neophytes henceforth followed the simple rule of life prescribed by Father Dominic. On Sunday, October 12, the little church of St. Clement's, Oxford, saw for the first time the group from Littlemore—St. John, Dalgairns, Stanton—accompanying Newman to Mass. On the 16th the same quartet again visited it to receive Communion. John Walker was admitted into the Church at Oxford on {96} the 21st, Oakley on the 29th, on which day Father Dominic paid a second visit to Littlemore. On the 23rd Dalgairns accompanied the rest of the Littlemore party to Mass at St. Clement's and then left for Oscott en route for France, where he was to read theology with his friend M. Lorain at Langres. R. W. Church and James Robert Hope (afterwards Hope-Scott) were the only Anglican friends whom Newman saw before going up to Oscott on the 31st to receive Confirmation at the hands of Dr. Wiseman. Of the meeting between Newman and Wiseman on this occasion the late Canon Bernard Smith, who was present, gave me the following account: 'The meeting between the two men was characteristic. The great Oxford leader, who had at last owned that Rome had conquered, had come, as it were, to surrender his sword to the man who had so strenuously urged surrender as his only course. Orders disowned, preferments resigned, he came in poverty and simplicity to ask for Confirmation at the hands of the Bishop. His faith and conviction brought him to Oscott, but they could not untie his tongue or rid him of the embarrassment which belonged to the situation. In company with John Walker and Ambrose St. John, he was ushered into the Oscott guest-room, and in a few minutes Bishop Wiseman, with Mr. Bernard Smith and Father Ignatius Spencer [Note 10], entered the room. The embarrassment was mutual, and Wiseman could scarcely find words for more than formal inquiries about the journey. Any touch of exultation, or any expression of commonplace and conventional congratulation, would, as all felt instinctively, outrage a situation in which the leading mind was so highly wrought that silence seemed the only possible course. The two principal figures sat almost silent, while their companions talked more readily to each other. A message which shortly announced that a boy was waiting to go to Confession to the Bishop gave Wiseman an excuse for retiring, which he accepted with significant alacrity. 'The Confirmation was given on November 1, the feast of All Saints, and the ice was then broken and much conversation on the past and future ensued.' The period which followed will be best depicted by a {97} liberal selection from Newman's letters—many of them hardly more than notes. Father Whitty [Note 11], who often saw him and his brother converts at that time, used to say that they gave him an idea of the early Christian community of apostolic days. The letters they exchanged are marked by absolute simplicity. There is no attempt in them at literary form. They are direct and objective rather than reflective. Discussion and reasoning belonged to the past. The time had come for Faith and Action. Intense reality brings a certain reserve, and the letters show, what Father Whitty also noted in his recollections, that the converts were far less apt to talk effusively of religion after their reception than before. With Newman himself there was the lasting happiness of coming into port, as he has expressed it, after a rough sea [Note 12]. But the past struggle left its scars and its fatigue, and he, personally, in his absolute candour, disowned the lively sentiments which younger followers experienced. We see in his own letters, as in those of the others, the sense of a great work before them—namely, the chivalrous attempt to win what was a lost cause in the world's eye. They were to restore England to the obedience of the Catholic Church, so long dethroned; and they assumed the designation of the eighteenth-century Jacobites—'those who went out in '45.' There is something of the sense of adventure apparent in many of the letters. They are like the simple and practical intercourse between men who are founding a settlement in the wilds. Elaboration of speech and feeling disappears before the effort to find or make their way in unfamiliar country. The past was broken with. What Oxford was doing or saying of them was a matter only of momentary interest when it was brought before them. Their thoughts, as their prospects, were elsewhere. They had come into a new land. The note of what critics term 'proselytism' is at this time observable. The movement seemed for the moment destined to bear its fruit by a large accession to the Catholic Church. It was a direct attempt to lead men to leave {98} the Communion in which they were born. Conversions actual and prospective are a favourite subject in the letters. Many names of persons not heard of before or since appear in them. An excitement, a keen sense of pleasure in action in its nature transient, hangs over the period of this novitiate in the Church of their adoption. It is to some extent present in Newman's own letters, which tell of constant activity, though he now and again sighs for rest. If the causes I have suggested gave rise to great reserve among the converts in speaking openly and reflectively of religion, association with the English Catholics of the old school doubtless fostered it. The deep and undemonstrative piety of such men as Dr. Newsham of Ushaw, and Dr. Weedall the former president of Oscott, was accompanied with suspicion and dislike of phrases and professions. 'Deeds, not words,' was the Ushaw motto, and the spirit of this motto was prevalent even to excess in the English Catholics of that time. Newman has himself described in the sermon he preached at Dr. Weedall's grave 'that old school of Catholics which had characteristics so great and so special,' who were 'simple, single-minded, blameless, modest, and true,' having 'nothing extravagant, nothing fitful, nothing pretentious.' But the depth of feeling which possessed Newman is occasionally apparent in a chance line or sentence in a letter, when he speaks of the constant nearness of the Blessed Sacrament in his Catholic home. The speech and writing then of the converts were for the most part very simple, sometimes almost childlike. And we must fill in the picture by bearing in mind some characteristics noted by Father Whitty—their total disregard for comforts and conventionalities, the daily life of prayer and self-denial, with the morning meditation and Mass as its mainspring; the sense of brotherhood among the neophytes. The Confirmation at Oscott was a landmark, and Dr. Wiseman wrote of it as follows in a letter to Dr. Russell of Maynooth: 'Newman came on the Eve of All Saints with Messrs. St. John and Walker, and was followed by Mr. Oakeley. Those from Littlemore had been confirmed here the Sunday before. On All Saints, Newman, Oakeley, and the other {99} two were confirmed, and we had ten quondam Anglican clergymen in the chapel. Has this ever happened before since the Reformation? Newman took the name of Mary; Oakeley, Bernard and Mary. Newman stayed with us Sunday and half of Monday, and he and all his party then expressed themselves, and have done so since, highly gratified by all they saw and felt. Oakeley stays with us altogether. Newman's plans are not finally determined, nor will they be till his book is finished. But he opened his mind completely to me; and I assure you the Church has not received, at any time, a convert who has joined her in more docility and simplicity of faith than Newman.' Before Newman and St. John left the College, plans began to form themselves definitely for the future. The day was commemorated by a joint gift of a Roman missal to Newman from Ambrose St. John and the absent brother, John Bernard Dalgairns. Newman placed in it the following inscription in which he added to the customary initials of himself and each of his friends that of their Confirmation name: 'J. H. M. NEWMAN The 'Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine' appeared in the course of the month. Dr. Wiseman judged that it would be a more effective plea for the Catholic religion if it received no theological revision. It was published as it stood [Note 13]. 'The conversion of England'—for which the English Catholics sighed during the long reign of Elizabeth, long retaining the phrase in Stuart times after hope for the reality was practically extinguished—was now once more seriously talked of and prayed for. Newman at no time ignored adverse omens; but Father Robert Whitty used to describe {100} the scale of hope and feeling among Catholics at this moment as quite exceptional. There was a general sense that supernatural agencies were in operation, and there was in the atmosphere that faith which works wonders. For years the old English Catholics had laughed at the bare idea of the Oxford School submitting to the Holy See. Their Catholicism had been treated as unpractical antiquarianism. So unlooked-for a marvel as the conversion of Newman and his friends brought a reaction, and men were now prepared for any marvels that might follow [Note 14]. Newman's own imagination dwelt on the early triumph of the despised and superstitious sect of Christians in an empire yet greater in its day than the British Empire of the nineteenth century. Sanguine confidence of great visible achievement was utterly alien to his nature. But he never lost the sense that God can do all things even through insignificant instruments; and he saw day by day the accession of recruits conspicuous for piety or ability. Where would it end, and what might it not lead to? We cannot read his letters written at the time without seeing that the thought was present to him of great possibilities in the future. But his immediate care was to do his own duty, leaving the result, great or small, to God. He was slow to make over-definite plans—rather waiting for a further sign in the course of events. He hesitated even before becoming a priest. He was opposed to founding an Order or Congregation for the neophytes at once, preferring to wait on events, and accepting after some consideration Wiseman's offer of the Old Oscott College—close to the existing college—as a temporary residence for the Oxford converts. A visit to Rome {101} seemed to him from the first an essential preliminary to any decisive step. The early days of November brought a fresh batch of converts. Newman tells Dalgairns in a letter, as a 'great secret,' of the impending visit of Frederick Faber to Oscott, when he, Watts-Russell, Francis Knox, and eight others are to be 'received.' He welcomes Dr. Wiseman's proposal that they should migrate from Littlemore and be his neighbours at Old Oscott. 'It seems the right thing as well as necessary,' he writes, 'in the first place to submit ourselves to the existing system and to work ourselves out through it. If we are worth anything we shall emerge.' He felt that he must be in touch with the Catholic community as a whole. 'It is quite necessary to see people,' Newman writes to Ambrose St. John on November 19; and the next few months saw him active in intercourse with the old Catholics and converts. Newman has described in a well-known passage what the 'Roman Catholic' body had been in his eyes and in the eyes of the average Englishman in his boyhood. Catholics were wholly external to English society, which had in their regard 'the sort of knowledge possessed of Christianity by the heathen of old time, who persecuted its adherents from the face of the earth and then called them a gens lucifuga, a people who shunned the light of day.' [Note 15] And though his study of their theology had since been so complete, and he had had some intercourse with individuals, he had as yet no knowledge of the English Catholics as a body. He was now to enter a new society. The Roman Catholics had in 1845 made considerable strides since the days of his boyhood. Their schools and colleges which Newman was now to visit were flourishing institutions, and they were all in some sense historic, and recalled that ordeal of persecution which he held to be the normal lot of faithful Christians. They were the outcome of two gigantic exhibitions of intolerance in high places towards the Catholic religion. For they were all the descendants of houses of education abroad, built by the Catholics of England when Elizabeth banished them from their own land and a {102} Catholic house of education in England was liable to immediate confiscation; and they owed their actual existence to the French Revolution, which drove religious houses and colleges alike from France. A kinder spirit than that of Elizabeth or Robespierre now allowed them to settle and thrive on English soil. St. Edmund's College and Ushaw were direct heirs to Douai College—founded by Cardinal Allen in Elizabeth's reign, and finally suppressed under the Terror in 1793. Stonyhurst represented the Jesuit College at St. Omer. Prior Park was somewhat different in its story and character. The house was originally a picturesque country seat near Bath, and remained so up to 1829, the year of Catholic Emancipation, when it was bought by Bishop Baines, the Vicar Apostolic of the western district, as an episcopal residence. The Bishop added to it a school and a college for divinity students. Bishop Baines was a Benedictine, a man of great personal gifts, and was destined (so Cardinal Wiseman testifies in his 'Last Four Popes') by Leo XII. to be the first Cardinal resident in England. The death of Leo XII. prevented his elevation to the purple, and he devoted his energies to the success of his college at Prior Park, on which he left the impress of his own piety, refinement, and culture. During his long absence in Rome Dr. Thomas Brindle, his coadjutor, another Benedictine and a man of somewhat similar stamp, had administered the government of the diocese and of the college; and at Dr. Baines's death in 1843 Dr. Brindle was his successor in both capacities. Visits were now arranged to St. Edmund's College and to Prior Park. Ushaw and Stonyhurst were to follow later. Newman made acquaintance with Dr. Griffiths, the Vicar Apostolic of the London district, and with Father Brownbill, the well-known Jesuit, who received so many of the converts into the Church. He had probably been suspicious of Dr. Griffiths, as the opponent of those more enterprising Catholics of whom Dr. Wiseman was the chief, and the result of the interview was a pleasant surprise. The visit interested him and the general outlook was encouraging, though the report of a letter from Father Dominic to the Tablet describing his reception evidently tried his fastidious temper [Note 16]. {103} The following extracts are from letters to Ambrose St. John: 'Temple: November 20, 1845. 'Faber &c. were received on Monday. Whether I go St. Edmund's tomorrow or Saturday depends on Knox, whom I shall hear from tomorrow. 'I dine with Badeley today. 'Yesterday I was at Moorfields—today at Lincoln's Inn Fields Chapel. I have seen Oakeley several times, and breakfasted with Christie this morning. There's a journal for you.' 'The Temple: November 22, 1845. 'A letter has come from the Pope addressed to Dr. Wiseman, congratulating "Joannem Henricum Newman, Puseistorum factionis ducem" on his recovery from the heresy in which "miserrimé jacuerat." It has the Pope's autograph signature. Also he transmitted to me a kind letter from Cardinal Acton ... 'Carissime, I was much taken with those St. Edmund's people. Dr. Cox [Note 18] is very pleasing, and Mr. Whitty is one of the most striking men I have seen. I hope I see him as he is, for a more winning person I have not met with. I really seemed to form a sudden friendship with him, as the ladies in "the Rovers." He is in appearance almost as young as you are, quite a boy. Everything I saw impressed me with the one idea you got elsewhere, of simplicity. 'Christie was confirmed this morning. Estcourt [Note 19] is still in trouble. He is to be received about December 16.' On the 24th he repaired to Oscott to discuss his plans with Dr. Wiseman, and wrote thence to Frederick Bowles, who was with Ambrose St. John at Littlemore: 'St. Mary's, Oscott. Nov. 25/45. 'I found Faber and Knox [Note 20] were in Birmingham, having come for the chance of seeing me. Knox is a very young looking man aged 23. He may come to Littlemore any day, so be ready for him. 'Faber proposes to go with me on a visit to Ushaw and Stonyhurst. We are setting out Thursday or Friday ... 'I had more to tell you—but Faber has been sitting here an hour and more, and driven things from my head. This gas makes my head and eyes ache.' To Ambrose St. John he wrote on the following day: 'St. Mary's, Oscott: November 26, 1845. 'This is a most portentously windy place. I am in the Stranger's Room—the chimney almost vibrating—my ankles fanned with a continuous stream of air, and the shrieking and screaming of the keyhole and casements making me shiver. See what stuff I am putting into my letter for want of matter. But I can't help writing to dear Littlemore, now that I am a pilgrim at a distance from it. I suppose it is good penance going from home.' The plans for the future framed themselves, as Newman wished, only gradually. And Bishop Wiseman, ever elastic and keen in initiation, was prepared to leave the converts, if they finally accepted his offer of Old Oscott, with an undefined programme, until more thought and further experience of the several capacities of recruits should enable them to make the prospect more definite. One or two priests, good theologians and experienced directors, were at first to live with them for their guidance. The Bishop's programme for the new apostles of the Church was one of preaching and writing, chiefly with a view to counteracting the anti-Christian influences of the day [Note 21]. While Wiseman welcomed the neophytes with enthusiasm, and their general reception among Catholics was cordial, there remained a few who looked at them askance, holding that nothing good could come from Oxford Puseyism. The ascetic life at Littlemore was disparaged as due to pride and a love of singularity. Good Father Dominic was indignant at this jarring note, and published in a second letter to the Tablet his own reflections on what had occurred, and a description of the scene of the conversions which were the topic of the hour. This production of the holy and simple Italian priest was so quaint and characteristic that it deserves to be given at length: 'The events that have lately happened at Littlemore, will undoubtedly draw the attention of many reflecting persons. Friends and enemies will alike be attracted to their {106} consideration, and both will draw the consequence which their hopes or fears may suggest … 'Men are but too commonly inclined to connect the idea of a great event with the idea of some great place, where they imagine it to have occurred; but in this they are not unfrequently deceived. Sinai, whereon the law was given to Moses, is a large mountain, it is true; so also Jerusalem, where Solomon's temple was built, was a large city. But Bethlehem was a small town, and Calvary a despicable place; here, however, the great mysteries of our redemption were accomplished. Under the new dispensation great things have been but seldom connected with great places. This will serve to give some hint of the idea the reader is to form of Littlemore. When he hears this name he is liable to figure to himself some large and magnificent building, but he is very much deceived. 'Littlemore is a village about two or three miles from Oxford. It presents nothing charming in its aspect or situation, but is placed in a low, flat country; it exhibits no delightful villas, nor agreeable woods and meadows, but one unvaried uniform appearance, rather dull than pleasant. In the midst of this village we meet with a building, which has more the look of a barn than a dwelling house; and in reality, I think it formerly was a barn. This unsightly building is divided by a number of walls, so as to form so many little cells; and it is so low that you might almost touch the roof with your hand. In the interior you will find the most beautiful specimen of patriarchal simplicity and gospel poverty. To pass from one cell to another, you must go through a little outside corridor, covered indeed with tiles, but open to all inclemencies of the weather. At the end of this corridor, you find a small dark room, which has served as an oratory. In the cells nothing is to be seen but poverty and simplicity—bare walls, floors composed of a few rough bricks, without carpet, a straw bed, one or two chairs, and a few books, this comprises the whole furniture!!! The refectory and kitchen are in the same style, all very small and very poor. From this description one may easily guess what sort of diet was used at table; no delicacies, no wine, no ale, no liquors, but seldom meat; all breathing an air of the strictest poverty, such as I have never witnessed in any religious house in Italy or France, or in any other country where I have been. A Capuchin monastery would appear a great palace when compared with Littlemore. 'Now, in this house, I may say barn, the best geniuses of the Anglican Church have retired, and lived together for {107} about six years—persons of birth, learning, and piety, who possessed, or at least might have possessed, the richest livings and fellowships which the Church of England can bestow on her followers. 'This is indeed a surprising fact, one which ought to excite the attention and thoughts of every reflecting person. Why did these men take such a resolution? Through pride, perhaps? So, at least, I have heard from some: but how uncharitable! how unjust! how groundless such a suspicion! Those who entertain such an idea, might in the same way calumniate our Blessed Saviour, his Apostles, and all the followers of the Gospel. 'Why, then, have these men confined themselves to such a place? Why!
Because they considered that the Gospel was better than worldly wisdom;
because they looked upon the salvation of their souls as something far
above the possession of rich livings, and heaven much superior to earth.
The man that is not stirred up by these examples is inexorable in his
blindness. O men, O Englishmen, hear the voice of Littlemore. Those
walls bear testimony that the Catholic is a little more than the
Protestant Church, the soul a little more than the body, eternity
a little more than the present time. Understand well this little
more, and I am sure you will do a little more for your
eternal salvation. A letter from Newman to Dalgairns early in December gives a vivid picture of this time—of conversions certain and probable, and of the doings of old Oxford friends. 'Littlemore: December 10, 1845. 'I dined with Johnson [Note 27] yesterday, who was in good spirits, and very glad to see Walker and me. St. John and I are to go soon. Church was there, who seems nearly the only person who is not too sore to bear the meeting ... I saw Pusey on my way to Prior Park with Coffin—he was tried to see me, and looked thin and pale. St. John was with me. He [Pusey] had begun my book and asked if I meant that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity was developed just as the Papal Supremacy. He has been extremely pained to find from Faber's and Oakeley's proceedings that after all we really do mean to proselytise, instead of considering ourselves transferred to another part of the vineyard. He has said he {109} did not wish to hear from Faber again, and that another spirit besides love was at the bottom of the movement of certain persons. He was pierced, as if by a new thing, at the conversion of a Miss Munro, whom he and Oakeley knew. It took him quite by surprise … 'Oakeley has settled at St. Edmund's, meaning to be at Oscott till over Christmas—he left this place for Oscott this morning. Dr. Wiseman has been most singularly kind about it, showing no suspicion at all though Oakeley changed his mind about Oscott. 'My book came to a second edition at once. Toovey wants a second
1,500, but I cannot help thinking 1,000 will be enough. We have just got
a piano for Walker, and I have been tuning my violin [Note
28]. I hope
that is not wrong in Advent ... [Frederick] Capes was very flourishing—his
wife is to be received nearly directly. His brother [Note
29], a proctor
in Doctor's Commons, has just been received and given up 1,200l.
a year or thereabouts. These two Capes's have done together the greatest
thing that has been done in money matters ... Another letter to the same friend, six days later, describes visits to Prior Park and St. Edmund's and records what were practically the final arrangements for taking possession of Old Oscott, although Newman did not give his formal decision until a little later in the month: 'Littlemore: December 16, 1845. 'Dr. Griffiths I was much pleased with. I sat with him an hour. He quite took away my scruples about ordination—did I tell you? He fully allowed, as they did at Oscott, that Anglican orders were but doubtful—i.e. some said they were good, others not. But he said that excepting in Baptism, a condition was not expressed—that in Confirmation and Ordination it was implied in the intention of the administrator. And he gave this curious proof of it—that now and then they repeat their own confirmations and ordinations—i.e. when there is some doubt—and that without condition—so that they do nothing to ours which they do not do to their own under like circumstances. 'As to Prior Park, Dr. Brindle is a gentleman in the true sense of the word—and I think is just what Capes described. I do not think it a school of perfection, but of sensible, as well as earnest (for I do think so) religion. In the Bishop's house the whole set out is gentlemanlike—yet accompanied with the deep impression of religion as an objective fact, which I should not expect to see in an Anglican House (parsonage) equally gentlemanlike. How can it be otherwise with the Blessed Sacrament in it? I think I should get on well with Dr. B. and the bursar Mr. Shaddock, who is very like an Oxford resident of 50 years old, say a fellow of Magdalen or St. John's, in externals. I was amused at the set out. I saw Lord Clifford there. They would not let me herd with the theological students, which I wished to do—but I believe their mode of living is very plain. There cannot be greater contrasts than are presented by Oscott, Prior Park, and Old Hall Green one with another. 'Do not expect to have such oppressive letters from me always—I am idle just now. I have no resolution to read this over.' At Christmas time a systematic round of visits to the Catholic colleges was arranged. The account in his diary of this effort to make personal acquaintance with his co-religionists is minute as to dates and places. With Knox, Walker, and St. John, Newman had a farewell dinner at the Observatory on Christmas Day, and next morning, after breakfasting at Magdalen with the 'father of ritualism,' J. R. Bloxam [Note 30], went with Coffin to London and on to St. Edmund's, where his {111} friendship with Mr. Whitty was renewed. The 29th saw him again at Oscott, where he found old friends—Estcourt, Neave, Penny, Oakeley, Christie, Capes. Ambrose St. John and Capes joined him next day, and visits were paid to Bishop Walsh and to Father Dominic at Aston, and to Faber, who was in Birmingham. Old Oscott was carefully reconnoitred and arranged for the future. On the 7th of January he passed some days with Mr. Ambrose Lisle Phillipps at Grace Dieu, Coffin and Capes being fellow-guests [Note 31], and visited the Trappist Monastery of Mount St. Bernard and Dr. Briggs, the Vicar Apostolic, with whom he went on the 12th to Ushaw (then under Dr. Newsham's presidency), calling on Bishops Mostyn and Riddell on the way. At Ushaw he stayed until the 15th, witnessing the President's feast day. By Dr. Newsham himself he was more impressed than by any Catholic dignitary except only Bishop Wiseman. On the 16th, with St. John, Newman took route for Stonyhurst travelling by Todmorden and Burnley, and ending up with a ten-mile walk through Erfield and Whalley. At Hodder, the junior Jesuit house near Stonyhurst, he found his old Oxford friend George Tickell in the novitiate and Oakeley in retreat. On the 18th, with St. John, he proceeded to Preston, where he visited the Jesuit priests, and then went in the evening to Birmingham, arriving there at 1 A.M. Here he came upon J. B. Morris and other friends, who had just been received into the Church. The 19th saw him at Bishop Eaton, and Bishops Brown and Sharples took him to Liverpool. He visited the churches and dined with Dr. Youens, the Vicar-General, returning at night to Bishop Eaton. The 21st found him again in London at the end of his wanderings—'a pilgrim,' he writes to a friend, 'without peas in my shoes.' He dined on the 22nd with Badeley and James Hope, returning to Littlemore on the following day, finding Pusey to greet him; and the faithful R. W. Church came to him next day from Oxford. 'My wanderings lasted through a month' (he writes to Henry Wilberforce)—'such a life is a great trouble to me, but {112} I was received with the most unaffected singlehearted kindness everywhere, and saw nothing but what made me feel admiration and awe of the system in which I find myself.' His disciple, and old family friend, Miss Maria Rosina Giberne, had just been received into the Church by Mr. Brownbill. Miss Giberne, a lady of remarkable gifts, belonging to a Huguenot family, played an important part in a later chapter of Newman's life. He wrote to her at this time as follows: 'As you say, "one step enough for me"—let us hope and believe that that Most Merciful Hand, which has guided us hitherto, will guide us still—and that we shall, one and all, you as well as I and my Littlemore infants, all find our vocation happily. We are called into God's Church for something, not for nothing surely. Let us wait and be cheerful, and be sure that good is destined for us, and that we are to be made useful.' Another letter to the same correspondent a week later, tells us much of his own feelings at this time: 'Littlemore: Jan. 28, 1846. 'I am sorry I did not tell you any thing about the impressions I
formed of things and persons in my wanderings. If any thing takes me to
Cheltenham, I will give you an account of all I have seen. Everything
has been as I could wish it to be. I have received most abundant cordial
single-hearted kindness—and have found a great deal to admire—and
everywhere the signs of an awful and real system. I was especially
pleased with Ushaw College, near Durham, with the professors and above
all the President, Dr. Newsham. The Bishops have been especially kind to
me, and I think I have made the friendship of some of them, as far as it
can be done in a day or two. Dr. Wiseman's offer of Old Oscott was finally accepted and the parting from Littlemore was now imminent. '"Obliviscere populum tuum" and "domum patris tui" has been in my ears for the last twelve hours,' he wrote to Ambrose St. John when all was settled. 'I realise more and more that we are leaving Littlemore, and it is like going on the open sea.' The next month was given to packing and preparations for departure. Occasional intercourse with friends is recorded in the diary, with the W. G. Wards, Allies, David Lewis, and J. B. Morris, and a visit from that remarkable woman, Princess E. Galitzin. Ambrose St. John {114} and Stanton went to Oscott on the 12th to make all ready. Pusey's unconquerable optimism made him wish to see and talk with Newman before he left Oxford. More than once he begged Newman to come and see him, but the interviews were simply painful [Note 33]. Newman anxiously superintended the packing of his beloved books before leaving Littlemore. His letters to St. John tell of the painful struggle with the material world which the removal involved. 'Littlemore: February 16, 1846. 'We must have all the book boxes emptied by Monday. Boswell cannot come till Tuesday morning, and then he is to unpack in a day, a sad Shrove Tuesday. He begins at 8. 'Stanton must write to Walker to come on Monday. I shall bring C. Woodmason with me. Then we shall be eight. You, I, Stanton, J. Morris, Walker, Bowles, C. W. and Montgomery—besides Boswell and his man. We must work simultaneously at different boxes; and relieve each other. Boswell thinks it will last from 8 to 4. He brings 7½ tons. I have been packing here from morning to night these three days. You may think what a whirl I and Bowles are in. Knox has come—Pusey was here today ... 'Pusey's visit has made me very sad. How right I was in saying it was better not to meet! He urged me to call on him on Sunday evening. 'I think we need not begin our rule of silence till the first week of Lent, but just as you will. 'I shall delay accepting Dalgairns' invitation (to M. Lorain's at Langres). I am afraid I shall have too many engagements and obligations on me. They only dissipate me. {115} The other day I declined Mr. Whitty's offer to join the Confraternity of the Sacred Heart on that ground. I want a little peace. These things are exciting. The very remembering them is a trial.' 'February 17, 1846. 'Littlemore: February 19, 1846. 'Stanton or you have carried off the closet key, and but for my own private key we should have been tealess, wineless, jamless. Just before you went, when I came in to breakfast, I saw a key on a plate, which I seized with much secret commendation of your or Stanton's thoughtfulness, but it turns out to be the key of Bowles's box—who, I believe, had lost it, and is much puzzled to make out how it got there. 'I think we shall have a harvest of conversions after Lent, but do not repeat it. I would suggest the propriety of our having some prayers through Lent on the subject ... Lewis yesterday gave us the news, from a person not a gossip, that Pusey's whole nunnery is moving—don't repeat this. We have not heard from Knox. Bishop Sam has (at the Bishop of London's instance) taken to task Chepnell of St. Peter le Baily for speaking in praise of the Blessed Virgin: he has defended himself by Bishop Solly. This was on Thursday last—nothing more has occurred. If Pusey is in that distress about his nunnery, I doubt whether I shall say to him what I had intended. It will be striking the raw.' One by one his friends left Littlemore for Oscott to make all ready. He writes on February 15 to Mrs. William Froude: '… Part of us are gone—part going—I shall, I suppose, remain the last, as I came in first. A happy time indeed have I had here, happy to look back on, though suspense {116} and waiting are dreary in themselves;—happy, because it is the only place perhaps I ever lived in, which I can look back on, without an evil conscience. In Oxford indeed, where I have been near 30 years from first to last, I trust I have all along served God from the day I went there—but in those many years, amid the waywardness and weakness of youth and the turmoil of business, of course many things must have occurred to leave sad thoughts on the memory. Nay even my responsibilities at St. Mary's, as one who had the care of souls, have always all along weighed most oppressively on me and do still. Alas, I will not speak against my circumstances, when my own personal fault is so great. Yet how dreadful is a cure of souls in the English Church, an engagement, with no means to carry it into effect—a Jewish yoke! Oxford then is not to me in the 20 to 30 years I have been there more or less, what Littlemore has been for 4 or 6. Doubtless if my life here for these last years were placed in the light of God's countenance, it would be like a room when a sunbeam comes into it, full of hidden unknown impurities—but still I look back to it as a very soothing happy period. I came into this house by myself, and for nights was the sole person here, except Almighty God Himself, my Judge; and St. Francis's "Deus meus et omnia," was ever and spontaneously on my lips. And now, so be it, I shall go out of it by myself, having found rest.' February 22 saw the final parting from Littlemore and Oxford. Left alone, he writes on his last evening, his forty-fifth birthday (February 21), to Henry Wilberforce: 'I am here today by myself—all my friends gone—and the books. Tomorrow I leave here, for dinner at the Observatory, where I sleep. On Monday morning I go off for Oscott, Birmingham. 'I have had a very trying time, parting with the people. I came into this bower by myself—I quit it by myself. Very happy times have I had here, (though in such doubt)—and I am loth to leave it. Perhaps I shall never have quiet again—Shall I ever see Littlemore again?' The end is thus chronicled in the diary: 'Feb. 22. Went to mass at St. Clement's for last time with C. Woodmason. Fly came for me and my luggage at four o'clock to take me to Johnson's, where I dined with Lewis, Buckle, Copeland and Bowles, who came from Hendred. Church and Pattison came in the evening. {117} Called on Ogle. Pusey came up to Johnson's late at night to see me. 'Feb. 23. Went off by 8½ o'clock with Bowles for Maryvale via Leamington. Got there before 5 o'clock. St. John missed us in Birmingham. Walker came. Thus we were six—St. John, J. Morris, Stanton, I, Bowles, Walker.' To W. J. Copeland, his curate at Littlemore, he wrote thus of his final leave-taking: 'I quite tore myself away, and could not help kissing my bed, and mantelpiece, and other parts of the house. I have been most happy there, though in a state of suspense. And there it has been that I have both been taught my way and received an answer to my prayers. Without having any plan or shadow of a view on the subject, I cannot help thinking I shall one day see Littlemore again, and see its dear inhabitants, including yourself, once again one with me in the bosom of the true fold of Christ.' We know from the 'Apologia' all that the final severance from Oxford cost him. May we believe that he has described that last morning in Reding's parting from Oxford in 'Loss and Gain'? 'The morning was frosty, and there was a mist; the leaves flitted about; all was in unison with the state of his feelings. He re-entered the monastic buildings, meeting with nothing but scouts with boxes of cinders, and old women carrying off the remains of the kitchen. He crossed to the Meadow, and walked steadily down to the junction of the Cherwell with the Isis; he then turned back. What thoughts came upon him! for the last time! There was no one to see him; he threw his arms round the willows so dear to him, and kissed them; he tore off some of their black leaves and put them in his bosom. "I am like Undine," he said, "killing with a kiss."' The tenderness of his feelings at this moment poured itself out as it did so rarely in the first letter written from his new home—again to Henry Wilberforce: 'February 26, 1846. 'I am writing next room to the Chapel. It is such an incomprehensible blessing to have Christ's bodily presence in one's house, within one's walls, as swallows up all other privileges and destroys, or should destroy, every pain. To know that He is close by—to be able again and again through the day to go in to Him; and be sure, my dearest W., when I am thus in His Presence you are not forgotten. It is the place for intercession surely, where the Blessed Sacrament is. Thus Abraham, our father, pleaded before his hidden Lord and God in the valley. 'My last morning at Littlemore, when I was by myself, the call of Abraham, as you know in the English service, was the subject of the lesson—and when I got here the first office was that of St. Matthias, who took his place in the Apostolate later than his brethren. 'I have brought here your little reading-desk which was Wood's. I had not the heart to let it remain behind. (You should not have lost it, if it had.) It formed part of the altar on which Father Dominic offered Mass, and from which I received my first communion, last 11th of October. 'Please come and fetch it—I can't help saying so—excuse this
importunate letter, and believe me, Top | Contents | Biographies | Home Notes1. Afterwards Canon of Southwark and vicar of Great Marlow. 2. This incident and one or two which follow have
been already related by the present writer in the Life and Times of
Cardinal Wiseman. 3. Oxford Movement, p. 341. These names
nearly all became well known in the Roman Catholic Church as time went
on. Robert Coffin became Superior of the Redemptorists at Clapham and
afterwards Bishop of Southwark. Frederick Faber and John Bernard
Dalgairns were famous as writers and preachers at the London Oratory, of
which Father Faber was the Superior. Frederick Oakeley was a Canon of
Westminster and Missionary Rector at Islington, and became a popular
writer among Roman Catholics. Mr. Meyrick joined the Society of Jesus.
Mr. Lewis became well known by his Life of St. Theresa. Ambrose
St. John was Newman's fidus Achates, whose name will ever live in
the concluding paragraphs of the Apologia. J. S. Northcote became
President of Oscott and Provost of Birmingham. George Dudley Ryder was
the father of Dr. Ignatius Ryder, who succeeded Newman as Superior of
the Birmingham Oratory, and of Sir George Lisle Ryder. Of Richard
Simpson's career as the colleague of Sir John Acton in the liberal
Catholic campaign carried on in the pages of the Rambler and Home
and Foreign Review, and of Mr. Frederick Capes' work as editor of
the Rambler, some account will be given in the present work. 4. These and subsequent particulars were given me
by the late Father Stanton of the London Oratory, one of the Littlemore
community. 5. Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine (1st ed.), pp. 240-42. 6. Ibid. p. 269. 7. Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine (1st ed.), pp. 316, 317. 8. Difficulties of Anglicans, i. 324. 9. Father Dominic himself in response to a wish
expressed by many wrote to the Tablet a month later the following
simple and in parts rather quaint record of his reception of the
Littlemore group:—'The first of these conversions was that of John
Dobrée Daigairns, Esq., who made his profession of the Catholic Faith,
and received his first Communion on Michaelmas day, in this our chapel
at Aston Hall. He soon after returned to Littlemore; and I was on the
point of setting out for Belgium, when I received a letter from him,
inviting me to pass through Oxford on my way; for, he said, I might
perhaps find something to do there. I accordingly set out from here on
the 8th of October, and reached Oxford about ten o'clock the evening of
the same day. I there found Mr. Dalgairns and Mr. St. John, who had made
his profession of Faith at Prior Park on the 2nd of October, awaiting my
arrival. They told me that I was to receive Mr. Newman into the Church.
This news filled me with joy, and made me soon forget the rain that had
been pelting upon me for the last five hours. From Oxford we drove in a
chaise to Littlemore, where we arrived about eleven o'clock. I
immediately sat down near a fire to dry my clothes, when Mr. Newman
entered the room, and, throwing himself at my feet, asked my blessing,
and begged me to hear his confession, and receive him into the Church.
He made his confession that same night, and on the following morning the
Reverend Messrs. Bowles and Stanton did the same: in the evening of the
same day these three made their profession of Faith in the usual form in
their private Oratory, one after another, with such fervour and piety
that I was almost out of myself for joy. I afterwards gave them all
canonical absolution, and administered to them the Sacrament of Baptism sub
conditione. On the following morning I said Mass in their oratory,
and gave Communion to Messrs. Newman, St. John, Bowles, Stanton and
Dalgairns. After Mass, Mr. Dalgairns took me to the house of —
Woodmason, Esq., a gentleman of Littlemore; I heard his confession, and
that of his wife and two daughters, and received all four into the
Church. When I returned from Belgium, I passed through Littlemore again,
and had the happiness to find the Reverend F. Oakeley and another
reverend gentleman already received into the Church, by the Reverend R.
Newsham. I had the pleasure of administering Communion to Mr. Oakeley
and the other converts to the number of seven. I can vouch for the truth
of this much, as having been eye-witness; the rest I hope some other
eye-witness will supply.' 10. The well-known Passionist Father, youngest
son of the second Earl Spencer. He had become a Catholic in 1830, and
was at Oscott from 1839 to 1846. 11. Father Robert Whitty, S.J., was in 1845 a
young secular priest. He was later on Vicar-General of the Westminster
Diocese, and subsequently Provincial of the English Jesuits. 12. Vide Apologia, p. 238. 13. See Appendix, p. 615. 14. 'This movement is assuredly only in its
commencement,' says a writer in the Orthodox Journal of December
1, 'but I cannot help feeling that we Catholics have too often shewn
ourselves unworthy of the great mercies which have been poured upon us.
Surely these firstfruits ought to urge us to greater fervour and
diligence than we have hitherto exhibited. Above all, let us be instant
in prayer for the conversion of our country. Recent events have given a
palpable token of the efficacy of prayer. Woe be to us if we do not
persevere ... May I suggest one [name] deserving of veneration, and
which I myself have rarely omitted: one that all must respect, all must
wish well to—there is a want among the returned pilgrims without him
which all must deplore. Reader, may I recommend to your good prayers, by
name—that of DR. PUSEY?' 15. See Occasional Sermons, p. 172. [Sermon
10] 16. See p. 94 footnote [footnote
9]. 17. Miss Maria Rosina Giberne, see p. 112. 18. The President of St. Edmund's. 19. Albany Christie and Edgar Estcourt were both
received in 1845. The former became a Jesuit, the latter was from 1850 a
canon of Birmingham. 20. Francis Knox, afterwards of the London
Oratory. 21. 'What we wanted, he said, was this—a body
of men educated above the common run not for ordinary missionary
purposes but for extraordinary—principally for two objects, first to
meet the growing Germanism and infidelity of the times by literature;
next to be preachers,' &c. Letter from Newman to Hope-Scott,
dated November 28, 1845. 22. Robert Aston Coffin, afterwards a
Redemptorist and later Bishop of Southwark, was Vicar of St. Mary
Magdalene's, Oxford. He was received at Prior Park by Dr. Brindle in
December 1845. 23. On the other hand the reader should compare
with this statement the letter quoted at p. 201, in which he speaks of
his 'fulness of satisfaction' in his new religion as the 'earnest and
the beginning of the repose of heaven.' 24. Henry Formby, vicar of Ruardean,
Gloucestershire, was received into the Catholic Church on January 24,
1846. 25. R. G. Macmullen, of Corpus, afterwards Canon
Macmullen of Chelsea. 26. Mr. David Lewis, of Jesus College. 27. Mr. Manuel Johnson, the well-known
astronomer, known as 'Observer' Johnson. 28. 'Yesterday evening,' writes Walker to
Richard Stanton on December 10, 'Newman and I had some delightful duets
of Beethoven and Haydn.' 29. John Moore Capes, who was later on one of
the proprietors of the Rambler, of which first his brother and
afterwards Richard Simpson were editors. 30. The great friend of Dr. Routh, and
afterwards rector of Upper Beeding Priory, Sussex, well known as an
antiquarian writer. 31. From Grace Dieu he writes to Ambrose St.
John: 'Here I have been seized with one of my bashful fits and cannot
speak two words, if it was to keep me from starving.' 32. Isaac Williams was very ill. 33. 'Poor Pusey cannot understand,' Ambrose St.
John writes after one of them, 'what to me seemed most natural. It is
nothing more or less than your most naturally grave way of speaking when
we both called there together. To me I assure you your manner was so
much what I should have expected that any other would have been forced
and unnatural. But poor P. seems to have felt differently, for he told
Upton Richards that you "came upon him very unexpectedly and spoke
to him very sharply," he seems to have felt something or other very
keenly, for Richards used his words as argument to dissuade Morris from
joining the Church, and as a proof of a change of [ethos]
in you, I suppose. The truth is, I believe, Pusey realised in that visit
the death of any hopes he may have indulged in, of your falling in with
his unhappy theory of branches in the same vineyard.' Top | Contents | Biographies | Home Newman Reader — Works of John Henry Newman |