by Mary Hoban
Settled at last, and with Julia now in the care of his mother, Tom finally turned his mind to finding employment. He wrote to Newman, asking him if there might be any work in Dublin, possibly preparing pupils for the Catholic University there, of which Newman was now the rector. Newman responded immediately. He realised the Arnold name would be a drawcard for potential students, and he was thrilled at the prospect of having Dr Arnold’s son at his university, particularly considering how energetically Dr Arnold had opposed him and Catholicism. He offered Tom a temporary position as Professor of English Literature at £200 a year. As an added inducement, he told Tom he could also tutor youths at £10 a head. Tom hesitated. Even the tantalising prospect of actually working with Newman could not outweigh the unease he felt about his stutter and the impact it might have on his capacity to teach. But with no other employment in sight, he decided to go to Dublin. Julia encouraged him to go, although the thought of his being with Newman repulsed her. And she hated his leaving her at such a crucial time — her child would soon be born — but they would all be destitute if he did not secure a position quickly.
Julia now found herself alone in the midst of his family, and although she felt embraced by them, she struggled with life in the quiet house. There was a strong religious atmosphere — daily psalms and lessons were read aloud — and there was a sense of discipline quite unlike anything she had known. It was such a different world to that of Hobart, where she had been at the centre of a large social circle, prominent among it her laughing, energetic sisters and her ironic, placid father. Once more a stranger in a foreign place, Julia felt this difference more strongly with each letter from Tasmania, particularly when Gussie wrote of her fiancé James Dunn’s election to the parliament and the visits and parties that she and Ada had made and attended. In an attempt to escape the pain of their absence, Julia retreated regularly to Mrs Arnold’s garden. Its wild strawberries and raspberries, its birch trees, its rhododendrons growing like weeds on mossy banks, and the long silky grass in the parts left to go wild, filled her with a sense of abundance.
As the weeks passed, she grew to like and trust her mother-in-law, despite their very different temperaments and their very different attitudes. They were certainly bonded in their opposition to Tom’s conversion, but for all Mrs Arnold’s sympathy for Julia and her disapproval of Tom’s actions, she was uncomfortable with Julia’s overt opposition to Tom and to his change of religion. Mrs Arnold, like Tom, held a firm conviction that a wife must support her husband, regardless of her own views. Julia found this tolerance baffling, and, instead of finding the vocal support she had believed she would, she found that Mrs Arnold’s apparent reasonableness made her seem all the more unreasonable. Her reaction was to straighten her back and set her mouth in defiance of Tom even more. It was she and her children Tom was hell-bent on converting, not Mrs Arnold, and she knew that Tom would stop at nothing to achieve this. She was right.
In Dublin, Tom had already discussed Julia’s conversion with Newman, who was keen to keep Julia away from Tom, concerned that she might temper his devotion to his new-found faith. He told Tom that if Julia were to live in Dublin with him, she would in all likelihood become intimate with the Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Whately, an old friend of Dr Arnold’s, thereby hindering her likely conversion. Tom, eager that Julia join him in Dublin, was sure that any intimacy between Whately and Julia was improbable, as Whately would never excuse or think well of those who, like Tom, have been educated in full Protestant light, and have then fallen away. As it was, they were both wrong. Julia had no intention of ever converting to Catholicism, and her resolve in this matter did not depend on any relationship she might or might not develop with Archbishop Whately.
With letters now the sole source of communication between them, Julia found their differences abating and the deep attraction they held for each other surfacing. The humour and intimacy between them was palpable once more. She used her letters to describe to him her drives and visits in the neighbourhood and to express her wifely concerns, among them, whether Tom had flannel drawers. He, on the other hand, recounted all the university gossip, the attempts being made to entice aristocratic and wealthy Catholics to it, and the pleasure of finding himself unexpectedly among an Oxford and Cambridge coterie of men who, for various reasons, had found themselves part of Newman’s great Catholic experiment. He talked of the possibility of making £300 a year, still insufficient to maintain his family in the manner they were used to, and he expressed concern about his stammer, but, most importantly, he reassured Julia that he would be home for the birth. It was a promise he kept.
On 15 December 1856, when she gave birth to another son, Tom was at Fox How. They named him Arthur, despite their first Arthur having died only a day after his birth. It was a common practice at the time, but it might have given Julia pause had she known that her own mother, Elizabeth, gave a daughter by her lover Major Deare the name of Julia.
When a few weeks later, in January 1857, Julia finally set out for Dublin, the last leg on the journey that had begun in Hobart more than six months before, neither Polly nor Willy accompanied her. While she had been waiting for the birth of Arthur at Fox How, pondering her future and that of her children, she had finally confronted what remaining with Tom would mean. She knew she had no choice but to join him — she had not come this far to separate from him now — but what of her children? The prospect of them being raised as Catholics in Dublin was now imminent. She wanted none of it nor did Tom’s mother, so, at first delicately, and then more openly, Mrs Arnold talked of the possibility of little Polly remaining with her and being educated in England, thereby keeping her safe from Catholicism. Julia was receptive to the idea — so desperate was she that her daughter not be tainted by Catholicism — and together with Mrs Arnold, she worked to convince Tom to allow Polly to remain with his mother, at least until the household was established in Dublin. He finally agreed.
It was not Julia’s intention to also leave young Willy behind when she journeyed to Dublin. Her health dictated that decision. She was still very weak after Arthur’s birth, and, knowing she had to set up house in a strange city where she knew no one, with her husband earning what she regarded as a pittance, and with four children under six to care for, she asked Tom’s sister Susy if she would care for Willy until she had regained her health and established a home in Dublin. Leaving Willy at Dingle Bank at least reduced the burden on the household and it meant, too, although Julia did not hold this hope strongly, that Willy would be, for the moment, protected from Tom’s Catholicism.
When Julia had left Hobart she knew that her future might be difficult and uncertain, but even she would have been daunted had she known the struggles to come. She was young, though, and despite all the trauma and the upheaval, she and Tom did still love one another fiercely, even if they wanted to change each other completely.
10
A New Beginning
Julia’s arrival in Dublin in January 1857 signalled a new beginning. The parameters of her life had been dramatically redrawn, and she would now have to find a way of living within them. She had married Tom and, despite his conversion, she had remained with him. She was now confronting the consequences of those decisions. Living in Catholic Ireland with a Catholic husband was not a destiny she had ever imagined for herself. It was not one that she had freely chosen, nor was it one she wanted. It had required all her natural optimism, her verve, her feistiness, to go where his conscience had taken her. Yet it was these same characteristics that compelled her to constantly resist his choice and to rebel against his overtures to lay claim to her soul and to those of their children.
Like Hobart, Dublin in 1857 was an outpost of Empire, a colonial city where many of the privileged occupations were filled by outsiders; where social life focused on the vice-regal court based at Dublin Castle; where the streets were filled with the colours and bands of the infantry; and where its imperial military officers were t
he mainstay of vice-regal social functions. But unlike Hobart, Dublin was a city in decline. Its Protestant Anglo-Irish ascendancy was diminishing just as its buildings were decaying. Its dark, disease-ridden slums were the worst in the United Kingdom. It was a city deeply divided by religion and class. It was haunted by its past and exhausted, not by a black war or a convict stain, but by the ravages of the recent famine. It was a place Julia did not want to be.
Her reality was, from the beginning, fraught and messy, and her first impressions of Dublin were complex and ambivalent. She was living in temporary accommodation, separated from her two oldest children, recovering from childbirth — her back was causing her extensive pain — and she was consumed by domestic woes. Her first priority was to find suitable accommodation that would enable them to take in students and boarders — this, Tom believed, would form another financial stream — and she was having difficulties finding reliable servants. It was a common problem. Another émigré, Elizabeth Grant, who lived in Dublin between 1851 and 1856, recorded in her diary the constant need to replace unreliable housekeepers, alcoholic butlers and light-fingered cooks. Even Dublin’s weather took some getting used to. Julia hated its cold, bleak winter. It was too like the misery of Brussels.
Her domestic woes were in part allayed when she found a house to rent in Rathmines, a middle-class area within walking distance of the Catholic University. Like many new suburbs being developed, its drainage was suspect, its water pressure inadequate, and its refuse collection intermittent, but in the heavily sectarian climate of nineteenth-century Dublin, this was one suburb Julia felt comfortable in. It was favoured by the Protestant professional classes. Utterly repelled by the vast assemblage of Catholicism against which she had to somehow protect herself, Julia determined from the beginning that she would never fall into the ways, habits, customs, manners, or opinions of those she lived among. She had remained separate in Brussels and she would do the same in Dublin. In Brussels, though, she had been a child, unable to express her thoughts freely, but here she was an adult and could, if she chose, say exactly what she wished. It was a freedom she gave rein to and it was a freedom that her mother-in-law feared.
Mrs Arnold had witnessed Julia’s outspoken opposition to Tom’s religion at Fox How, and when Julia continued to voice this opposition in Dublin, Mrs Arnold put aside her usual diplomacy and, in the strongest words possible, reproached Julia for her bitter opposition, setting out in almost doctrinal tones the position of a wife in Victorian society:
Your letter … gives me great anxiety for what you say of pain given you, and even horror by seeing the Roman Catholics crowding round the Cross with passionate devotion makes me fear that your position in Ireland may be full of unhappiness for the present & future for both you and to Tom … I am in great anxiety that you should consider what you owe to your husband, and how much you add to all his difficulties if home irritations & want of consideration for him meet him where he might most hope for rest. I do not hesitate to say this dear Julia for you know how truly we all feel for you, & how far we are from agreement with Tom, but I could not but see how much more forbearing he has to you with regard to these painful religious differences than you were to him and in Ireland I know the bitterness is so great between Protestants & R. Catholics, that I dread unspeakably the effect this may have upon your domestic happiness and peace. Nothing can secure this, unless you resolve steadily to avoid all accusations — all hard speaking or thinking — all conversation with others which can create irritation between you & your Husband. This he owes to you on his part and you to him — and I know it will be hard, but dear Julia look to God for help remembering the bond between you, & then by his strengthening & softening & guiding spirit, you may make your husband’s home a blessed one to him. The other side of the picture I cannot bear to look at.
To soften her forthright language, Mrs Arnold signed herself your affectionate mother & friend.
Julia had never been good at heeding advice — she had not listened to her Hobart friends Bishop Nixon and Catherine Reibey — and she had never been able to adopt a serene view. She knew and understood the world instinctively, not conceptually, not rationally. She knew she had been banished from the centre of Tom’s universe, replaced by his Catholicism. Full of repugnance, but without any weapons or tools to counter it, she could only rage against her perceived exile from his world. In her wilful choice of ongoing resistance, she made her marriage a battleground. She refused to remain silent if she noticed Tom losing weight as he fasted through Lent. She remonstrated fiercely when she heard him reciting his prayers as she walked past his study. She rifled through his books, drawn and repulsed by them, wondering why they were better friends to him than she was, looking for clues as to why he had chosen Catholicism. And when his Catholic friends came to the house she felt an outsider, a pariah, believing that there was a door shut between her and a whole side of his life. She felt submerged and eclipsed and reacted with anger, resentment, mockery, never tolerance or understanding. And then, when the anger was spent, she was full of deep regret and self-abasement, wondering at her own resistance, at her own perceived evilness.
As Mrs Arnold foresaw, in this deeply mannered world where the display of any type of passion on the part of a woman was censured, Julia needed to control her involuntary horror of Roman Catholicism. But she seemed incapable of achieving this and she certainly had no desire to achieve it when it came to Newman, the man whom she believed was responsible for all the troubles that she was facing. Their relationship was, from the beginning, cold and unforgiving — on both sides. She saw him as the source of all their problems. He thought her a carping irritant. When he had received her abusive letter from Tasmania, he had branded her a shrew, and her continuing antagonism to him simply confirmed him in his belief. He had done all he could for Tom — not only had he shown him the way to God, but he had also provided him with employment when no one else would — and the argumentative, vituperative Julia was ungrateful. Her dislike and fear of him fed into her struggle to live with and beside Tom, but in the event, she did not have to deal with Newman’s physical presence for long.
Only a year after her arrival in Dublin, Newman effectively resigned his rectorship, deeply frustrated in his attempts to develop his ideal university and thwarted by the government’s refusal to grant a charter to the university to grant degrees. He returned permanently to the Oratory in Birmingham, there to establish a school for Catholic boys on the same lines as the English public schools so that English Catholics would no longer be forced to send their sons abroad or tutor them at home.
Julia considered Newman’s departure a blessing, but Tom regretted it and began to reconsider his position at the struggling university. He had enjoyed working alongside his mentor and believed that Newman had been a victim of the distrust felt by some in the Irish Catholic hierarchy towards educated converts, particularly English ones. He also believed that one of the telling flaws of the Catholic University was the ill-educated Catholic clergy and their intellectual inferiority to the Protestant clergy. Such inferiority did not encourage Catholic gentlemen to attend the university, nor would it encourage European Catholics to send their sons there. But with no better prospects and while the university had students, Tom decided to remain in Dublin.
Once the household was settled in Rathmines, it was time for Polly and Willy to return home. It was no coincidence that at precisely this moment, Mrs Arnold wrote to Tom and Julia, pleading to keep Polly at Fox How. The child was, she said, well and happy, she had their undivided attention, and they would be delighted to keep her there. Most importantly, a former governess in Dr Arnold’s family, who had married well, had offered to pay for Polly’s school fees in England, this last observation a deliberate ploy to sway Tom. It took Julia some time to persuade him, but eventually Tom agreed that Polly could remain at Fox How. Willy, on the other hand, must return to the family. Julia had to be satisfied that her daughter, at least, would not b
e stigmatised as a Roman Catholic — she knew only too well the effects of being branded by the action of a wayward parent — and Tom had to be content that his sons, at least, would be reared as Catholics.
From the very beginning Julia was determined that her daughter’s absence would not cause any emotional distance between them. She often sent Polly gifts and clothes, and wrote to her regularly. Polly, for her part, was mostly happy with this arrangement, but she missed her family, particularly her parents and her brother Willy, and was always eager, when she could, to meet those siblings born in her absence. Both she and Julia would have been far less content with this arrangement had they known that she would pass her whole childhood separated from her mother and her family. But if Julia was able to shield her daughter from Tom’s religious fervour, there was no escaping his right to have the boys brought up as Roman Catholics, and with Willy’s return to the family, the question of his baptism arose. Although she was no more reconciled to Tom’s religion than she had been in Hobart, Julia did not send any stones through the windows of the Rathmines Parish Church when this event finally took place and Willy, aged seven, was baptised a Roman Catholic in October 1859. As to Willy? This event marked his entrance into the world of adult discord, and he finally understood why his older sister was no longer living alongside him.
It was not in Julia’s nature to stay despondent for long, and as soon as Willy returned, she began to embrace life in Dublin. Tom had been given an introduction to the Viceroy, Lord Carlisle, by the Arnold’s Fox How neighbour Harriet Martineau, and when they were invited to the annual St Patrick’s Ball at Dublin Castle, nothing, not even a painful back, could keep Julia from dancing. She quickly made friends, her eager, sympathetic temper drawing people to her. Among the first were Archbishop Whately and his family, disproving immediately Tom’s prediction to Newman that Julia would have nothing to do with the Whatelys. It was always a likely friendship as Dr Arnold and the Archbishop had been very close friends — so close that Dr Arnold had christened his youngest daughter Frances Bunsen Trevenen Whately Arnold — and the Archbishop went out of his way to welcome Tom and his young wife to Dublin, despite Tom’s conversion. In a very short time, Julia had developed a close friendship with Mrs Whately and her daughters, particularly Mary Louisa and Elizabeth Jane. Julia had always been attracted to strong and determined women, and the Whately women were no exception.