by Mary Hoban
When it appeared that Tom’s application had been successful, jubilation broke out, but fate intervened before any final announcement was made. Sir James Hill, the chief charity commissioner, died in October 1875, and all appointments were put on hold. Julia was staying with her cousin Fanny and Fanny’s husband, Sir Valentine Fleming, the former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Tasmania. When the news arrived, she rushed back to Oxford, knowing that this blow to Tom might trigger another crisis. She was right.
16
Into the Abyss
Tom was not there to greet her. Instead, Julia found a letter from him. Its address revealed that he was in London, but not staying with Jane and William Forster, as he usually did. It was not a good sign. Julia read on. His purpose in writing to her was there in the first paragraph. He was returning to Catholicism. Fearful that he might recoil at the last moment and fearful of her lack of moderation, he had fled Oxford rather than tell her directly. It was a long letter, in which Tom spoke of the inevitability of his act:
For, my own darling Julia, it must come some day or other. I have fought and struggled with myself, God knows, if so I might be spared the necessity of inflicting so much pain on the wife whom I love unspeakably more than everything else in the world, hard and insensible as I may sometimes seem. But, as before God, my conscience seems to leave no other way open to me, and what other guide have we in this confused world but our conscience? I would to God that you could think as I do; but as you say you cannot, you would not surely wish me to live on year after year, eternally self-condemned, and with no hope or idea to buoy me up. For though, on the whole, it has seemed best to me, everything being very perplexed, to go on as I have done, yet the time while that seemed allowable has pretty well come to an end. Do believe that my first earthly concern is now, and will be while we live, to make you happy, — as happy at least as being connected with such an unhappy erratic being as myself will let you be. For I do not deny that you may mostly justly condemn, and, from a certain point of view, despise me; and yet I feel that were I to renounce what I am firmly persuaded is the truth, I should deserve contempt much more …
Julia did not hesitate. She left her daughters — Judy and Ethel were ill, and Polly was pregnant — and rushed immediately to London where she sought the support of the Forsters and Matthew in confronting Tom with all the likely consequences of his reconversion. The chair of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford was to be decided upon later that year, and Tom had applied for it. His years of scholarly work in Anglo-Saxon history and language had placed him in a very strong position and, if elected, it would give him both financial security and the chance to become the scholar he so fervently wished to be. If he reconverted, there would be no chair and any opportunity of work in Oxford, or elsewhere in England, would be closed forever. To be Catholic once might, they had found, be overlooked, but to return to it would brook no mercy. There were the four younger children to think of — Lucy was seventeen, Frank fourteen, Judy thirteen, and Ethel eleven — and Theodore and Arthur still required assistance and probably would for some time to come. Their futures, precarious even now, were doomed if Tom failed to obtain a position that could support a family. And it wasn’t only Tom’s employment that would be threatened. Julia’s boarding scheme would also be thrown into jeopardy if he became a Catholic again. Few families would send their daughters to lodge in a house where its head was known to be a Catholic.
Neither Julia’s pleas nor those of his family had any impact on Tom. No one, least of all Julia, could convince him that he would still be able to lead a straightforward and honest life without reconverting. He argued that, as it was unlikely his reconversion would be reported in the press, nothing should hinder his chance of obtaining the Anglo-Saxon chair. Nor would it, he believed, destroy Julia’s boarding scheme. Her natural force and energy of character, her experience of life, and her maturity, ensured its success — not his religion. As far as Tom was concerned, the only threat to the family came from her lack of moderation and discretion, not his reconversion. She should simply reconcile herself to his decision and not talk about it.
Julia had tried to keep in check her utter fury at what she thought were his ravings, but it was unleashed when he told her that he was absolutely sure that one day she would agree with him that he had had to reconvert, not just for himself but for her and for his children. Utterly distraught — she had never felt a greater sense of lovelessness or loneliness — and without thinking, she issued an ultimatum. If he reconverted, she would no longer live with him.
Julia’s reactions had always been intense and spontaneous. She had never learned to contain her emotions, rehearse her responses, or construe strategies, and all Tom’s nonsensical talk about loving her and acting in her best interests simply tormented her more. Only on her journey back to Oxford did she begin to regret her haste. A woman separated from her husband was outside the bounds of polite society, and Tom, if he wished to punish her, could ban her from having any contact with her own children. In the eyes of the law they were his property, not hers, and if she was not careful, her bitterness and intransigence would damage her children as much as herself. She pondered on the vow she had made twenty years earlier when Tom had first converted and she had threatened the same thing. She had decided then that her children would always come first. And they would again. She must offer him a compromise.
Unwilling to either meet him or write to him, Julia asked Polly to tell him that if he waited until the children were a little older and his prospects were more assured, and if he still wished to become a Roman Catholic, then she would consider it her duty not to oppose him. She would also, she promised, do her very best to abstain from saying bitter or wounding words to him in the future. It was as much as she could offer. Polly added her own pleas to those of her mother, asking Tom to reconsider his position and not take this step until his doing so would cause less misery to those around him. She was sure that if, out of affection and pity for those dependent upon him, he put off his open profession of Catholicism, then God would reward his great sacrifice, and they would all understand his intention to make an open profession of Catholicism as soon as your doing so would not do grave injury to those nearest you. Above all, Polly pleaded for peace between him and Julia, for their children’s sake. Tom stepped back from the precipice.
Although Julia was profoundly grateful, she was also deeply mortified that once again he had acted, not as a result of what she herself had said, but because of what others had said. Nonetheless, she wrote to him immediately, eloquently, and thoughtfully. Alive to love, and pain, and shame, she expressed both her deep love for him and the anguish she had suffered as a result of her upbringing:
What can I say to you that will make you believe that you are still dearer to me than life? You may doubt it, but God knows it is true. … Never shall I forget the feeling of hopeless misery with which I left London where you were, to return to my, as it seemed to me desolate home. I do love you my darling in spite of all I have said and done, and a life apart from you would I am sure for me be a very short one. You must be blind indeed if you have not often felt sure of my love for you. Could a woman watch every change in a man’s health and every change in his countenance as I have watched yours if she did not care for him. … I do not know nor can I understand what has brought about your present determination but I concluded it is in consequence of what your brothers and sisters have said to you, & the utter ruin to your family which must have resulted if you had carried out the intentions mentioned in your letter to me written last Saturday. I can only feel that you have done, at their solicitation what you would never have done at mine, and I know that in many ways I have deserved that this should be so, but it is none the less bitter for this knowledge. I wish to say now that if at any future time you should have got permanent work which will enable us to live together, and will not have to be given up in consequence of your professing the R.C. religion, & your heart and consci
ence still urge you to do so, that I will offer no opposition to your doing so. I do not mean to say that your doing so will ever cease to be a trial to me, but it is one that I shall feel bound for your sake to bear. If you can forgive me for all I have said and done do. You know well all the disadvantages of my early training, with such a training as yours I might have been different. Few families have been blessed with such a home training as yours, and certainly very few in our rank of life have been cursed with such as mine. I have often thought how much more it would have been for your happiness if when you learnt the facts connected with my childhood, you had banished all thought of me from your mind, of love from your mind. My heart is very full but I have great difficulty in expressing all I feel. … Do write to me and tell me that you still love me, and believe me when I say that many many times when my tongue has been most bitter, I have loved you most.
Tom was likewise remorseful and passionate in his response:
My dearest Julia
God knows I love you most dearly; I feel indeed deeply humiliated and dejected, but it is at myself and my own insane conduct, not at anything on your part; for what you said & did considering your vehemence of nature, & the circumstances of the case, was far from unpardonable. I wonder now how I could ever have arrived at such a state of mind as to think myself free to make such a move at present. It is not the case that the solicitations of my brothers & sisters turned me; they did not solicit me at all; some things that they said perhaps made me realize what I was about more accurately; but before I saw them I had begun to doubt whether I was doing right, and on Monday night I lay awake the greater part of the night, and in that time the desolation that would ensue on my act painted itself to me in very vivid colours. I felt supremely miserable; however by the middle of the day on Tuesday I had resolved to draw back. But it is idle to go over it all again; what has past will have the effect of making me think more meanly of myself as long as I live; but, as the Bible says, ‘it is good for us to be humbled.’ What you say as to the future is kind & generous, and all that could be fairly expected of you …
Ever dearest dearest Julia,
Your loving husband.
His conscience soothed once more, Tom returned to Oxford. There, he continued to work furiously on his translation of Beowulf — if finished, it would certainly strengthen his chances for the Anglo-Saxon chair — and Julia began to hope for a more secure future. It was not to be. On the very eve of the election and without any warning, Tom withdrew as a candidate for the chair, telling the electors that he was returning to the Church of Rome. His promise to Julia, made only nine months earlier, that he would not reconvert until there could be no consequences for her or their children, was broken.
17
Separate Lives
The English novelist Rose Macaulay, a distant relative of Tom’s, grew up listening to stories of his religious migration from one church or no church to another and back again. She used these stories as the inspiration for her satirical novel Tale Told by an Idiot which begins in 1879 with Mrs Garden coming briskly into the drawing room and telling her six children that poor papa has lost his faith again. The children are more irritated than concerned with their father’s loss of faith. Mr Garden’s daughter Victoria, who was named for her father’s victory over unbelief in the year she was born, knew it was coming because his sermons have been so funny lately, and he’s been reading Comte all day in his study. His son Maurice, who has fought and lost the battle of belief, asks cynically what religion he is joining this time, and Rome, who was named for the church of which her father was a member at the time of her birth, is annoyed that they might have to move, as their father always likes to live near a place of worship dedicated to his creed of the moment.
Sadly, this ironic, genteel scene, written by Macaulay some forty years later, bore little similarity to the way events unfolded at Laleham. Julia did not hear of Tom’s decision from him, but from others. Having informed the electors of the chair first, and without informing Julia, Tom left Oxford immediately for Birmingham, where Newman received him back into the Roman Catholic Church. When Julia discovered Tom’s whereabouts, she sent a blistering letter to Newman, cursing him from the bottom of her heart, blaming him for Tom’s decision, and accusing him of having succumbed once more to the temptation of having Dr Arnold’s son under his yoke, despite knowing that Tom was weak and unstable with a wife and eight children to support. Newman’s attitude towards Julia was equally vituperative. It was, he wrote to his old friend Maria Giberne, also a Catholic convert,
fitting, by way of contrast, that so sweet a fellow as Arnold should have such a yoke fellow — but except as an aesthetic contrast, it is marvellous that such a pair should be.
Julia was not alone in her grief and fury. Tom’s whole family, his friends, his colleagues all reacted bitterly to the news. Polly, pregnant with her second child, ran to her friends the Greens and, with uncontrollable tears, poured out the story to them. Matthew, in an absolute rage, declared that Tom was beyond redemption. Jane Forster reserved her emotion for Julia, whom, she knew, would feel it with peculiar poignancy. Bonamy Price, the professor of political economy at Oxford, and friend to both Julia and Tom, believed Tom’s decision was a blow, and he sought Jane Forster’s help to persuade him otherwise. Charles Dodgson thought his behaviour extraordinary. Even those who did not know Tom were party to the shock that reverberated through the Oxford community.
In her reminiscences written years later, Margaret Fletcher, a friend of both Judy and Ethel at the Oxford High School for Girls, recalled the day vividly. The members of the family itself were absent from school, but the faces of the girls and mistresses who boarded at Laleham bore traces of tears causing Margaret and her classmates to wonder whether there had been a death, a suicide, or some tragedy. They were told that something very terrible and sad had happened in the family and Judy and Ethel must be pitied deeply and treated particularly kindly when they returned to school. This unspecified news rolled on vaguely, oppressively, all day with various explanations being suggested including murder, until the form mistress volunteered quietly, ‘Mr Arnold has become a Catholic’.
At Laleham it was indeed as if a death had occurred. Julia sent Lucy straight back to live with the Croppers, anxious that her prospects — she was on the verge of her ‘coming out’ — would be blighted by Tom’s decision. Gussie took young Ethel to stay with her in London. Mary Hiley sent a food hamper from Woodhouse, and Tom’s wider family immediately offered monetary support to Julia. Tom was so infuriated by this offer, he categorically refused the money until it was certain that he was unable to earn enough to support his own family. He could not, or would not, believe that Julia or his children would suffer as a result of his reconversion.
Polly, torn between looking after her mother and trying to understand her father’s action, nearly miscarried, and Julia suddenly found herself nursing her eldest daughter. Only weeks after Tom’s denouement, Polly gave birth to a boy, whom she named Arnold, but Julia could find no room in her heart for joy. She felt only despair as she realised that all her attempts to shield herself, her children, and even Tom himself had come to naught.
In the world that Julia and Tom inhabited, religion was never simply about belief. It was about position, about economic stability, about possible trajectories, not just for Tom and Julia, but also for their children. Tom’s chances of getting secure, well-paid work in Oxford, indeed in the whole of England, were now extinct, unless his old mentor Newman could find him a position. His tutoring business — his livelihood, apart from writing — was finished, as no one would send their sons to live in the house of a professed Catholic. And if he remained living with Julia at Laleham, her boarding scheme would also be compromised for the same reason. Julia reacted decisively. She wrote to Tom, telling him quite bluntly that he had made his choice and he could not return to live with her in Oxford.
When Tom finally explained his
actions, it was not to Julia, but to Polly and Humphry. His behaviour, he said, was quite simple. He had left Oxford without a word to Julia because it would have led to no possible good, and might have led to much harm. It was neither tolerable nor rational to him that he remain a Protestant until he retired and then choose to be anything he desired, because it was a forcible repression of his conscience and raised a partition between him and his God. Nor could he have honourably or honestly stood as an Anglican for the Anglo-Saxon chair and then, after a few months, or a year, or two years, declared himself to be a Catholic.
He knew Julia loved him, but whenever they collided, it was not his conscience that came between them, but her passion and her pride. Julia had simply married the wrong man and should have married someone more capable of satisfying the ambition and aspiration of her nature. He knew, too, that Polly loved him, but her love could not satisfy him for the loss of the love of God. As to his other children, he did not count for very much in their lives, nor did he deserve that he should. His wavering nature prevented friends from becoming attached to him and with no sources of comfort left, his sole joy was his God, who would, he believed, provide for those he loved.
Unable to return to Oxford, and with no prospect of work in Birmingham, Tom made his way to London, where, in lonely, squalid accommodation, he turned the blowtorch onto Julia. He blamed her for all that had happened to them. Her strong nature was set with the utmost rigidity against the things that he loved and would die for. Her wilful prejudice meant he could not discuss or explore ideas with her and he was forced to look elsewhere for that intelligent cooperation and sympathy, which Nature so richly qualified her to give. The only regret he had was that he had not persevered in being a Catholic. Had he done so, she would have been reconciled to what he was, and even if she could not have joined him, she would, at the very least, not have suffered the fearful shock of his latest action. From his point of view, only she could repair the schism between them, by reconciling herself to serving God in the way that his inmost convictions told him that God ought to be served.