Newman and His Contemporaries

by Edward Short

  In the twenty-first century, a good deal of Arnold on religion calls to mind the relativism that has wrecked our own culture, which is the aspect of the man that makes him so appealing to Stefan Collini, one of the house intellectuals of The London Review of Books. “There is no surer proof of a narrow and ill-instructed mind,” Arnold informs his readers in Literature and Dogma, “than to think and uphold that what a man takes to be the truth on religious matters is always to be proclaimed. Our truth on these matters, and likewise the error of others, is something so relative that the good or harm likely to be done by speaking ought to be taken into account.”44 Indeed, Arnold went further: “The man who believes that his truth on religious matters is so absolutely the truth … is in our day almost always a man whose truth is half blunder, and wholly useless.”45 Newman must have marveled at how Dr. Arnold’s son was following in his father’s footsteps: the maker’s mark was on the blade. And yet unlike his father, Arnold paid close attention to the toll of unbelief, what he called “this strange disease of modern life/With its sick hurry, its divided aims/Its heads o’er tax’d, its palsied hearts …”46

  See! In the rocks of the world

  Marches the host of mankind,

  A feeble, wavering line,

  Where are they tending?—A God

  Marshall’d them, gave them their goal.

  Ah, but the way is so long!

  Years they have been in the wild!

  Sore thirst plagues them, the rocks,

  Rising all round, overawe;

  Factions divide them, their host

  Threatens to break, to dissolve …47

  In 1880, together with Lord and Lady Salisbury, the Bishop of London (John Jackson) and Dean Church, Arnold attended the reception at Norfolk House that the Duke of Norfolk held for Cardinal Newman because, as he said, “I wanted to have spoken once in my life to Newman.” Arnold’s description of the evening was characteristically mordant. “Newman was in costume—not full Cardinal’s costume, but a sort of vest with gold about it and the red cap; he was in state at one end of the room, with the Duke of Norfolk at one side of him and a chaplain on the other, and people filed before him as before the Queen, dropping on their knees when they were presented and kissing his hand. It was the faithful who knelt in general, but then it was in general only the faithful who were presented. That old mountebank Lord Ripon dropped on his knees, however and mumbled the Cardinal’s hand like a piece of cake. I only made a deferential bow, and Newman took my hand in both of his and was charming. He said, ‘I ventured to tell the Duchess I should like to see you.’”48

  In 1888, Arnold died of a heart attack at the age of 66—the same thing that killed his father at the same age. T. S. Eliot summed up his career by saying “He is the poet and critic of a period of false stability. All his writing in the kind of Literature and Dogma seems to me a valiant attempt to dodge the issue, to mediate between Newman and Huxley; but his poetry, the best of it, is too honest to employ any but his genuine feelings of unrest, loneliness and dissatisfaction.”49 Arnold himself would say as much himself in that wistful confection, “The Scholar-Gypsy:”

  Thou waitest for the spark from Heaven; and we,

  Light half-believers of our casual creeds,

  Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will’d,

  Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,

  Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill’d;

  For whom each year we see

  Breeds new beginning, disappointments new;

  Who hesitate and falter life away,

  And lose tomorrow the ground won to-day—

  Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too?50

  To understand why poetry became such a necessary asylum for Arnold it is necessary to look at his prose. The work in which he gave his most sustained account of his cultural and social views is Culture and Anarchy (1869), in which he wrote: “The whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically.” Arnold only vaguely defined the culture for which he was advocating. “More and more he who examines himself will find the difference it makes to him, at the end of any given day, whether or no he has pursued his avocations throughout it without reading at all; and whether or no, having read something, he has read the newspapers only. This, however, is a matter for each man’s private conscience and experience. If a man without books or reading, or reading nothing but his letters and the newspapers, gets nevertheless a fresh and free play of the best thoughts upon his stock notions and habits, he has got culture. He has got that for which we prize and recommend culture; he has got that which at the present moment we seek culture that it may give us. This inward operation is the very life and essence of culture, as we conceive it.”51 To claim that reading newspapers might become a matter for private conscience betrayed the ostentatious high-brow in Arnold, for whom newspapers were reprehensibly vulgar. Something of this occasionally amusing pose (which Oscar Wilde would later perfect) can be seen in his discussion of the English aristocracy. Apropos this passage, it is striking how many middle-class opponents of Disraeli’s Tory democracy would complain about the political pact that Gladstone’s great opponent forged between the working classes and the aristocracy. Yet Arnold knew English society well enough to recognize that this was a pact forged long before Disraeli arrived on the scene, though Arnold omits to mention the two passions that gave the pact its indissolubility: gambling and drink.

  The Barbarians brought with them that staunch individualism, as the modern phrase is, and that passion for doing as one likes, for the assertion of personal liberty, which appears to Mr. Bright the central idea of English life, and of which we have, at any rate, a very rich supply. The stronghold and natural seat of this passion was in the nobles of whom our aristocratic class are the inheritors ; and this class, accordingly, have signally manifested it, and have done much by their example to recommend it to the body of the nation, who already, indeed, had it in their blood. The Barbarians, again, had the passion for field-sports; and they have handed it on to our aristocratic class, who of this passion too, as of the passion for asserting one’s personal liberty, are the great natural stronghold. The care of the Barbarians for the body, and for all manly exercises; the vigour, good looks, and fine complexion which they acquired and perpetuated in their families by these means,—all this may be observed still in our aristocratic class. The chivalry of the Barbarians, with its characteristics of high spirit, choice manners, and distinguished bearing,—what is this but the attractive commencement of the politeness of our aristocratic class? In some Barbarian noble, no doubt, one would have admired, if one could have been then alive to see it, the rudiments of our politest peer. Only, all this culture (to call it by that name) of the Barbarians was an exterior culture mainly. It consisted principally in outward gifts and graces, in looks, manners, accomplishments, prowess. The chief inward gifts which had part in it were the most exterior, so to speak, of inward gifts, those which come nearest to outward ones; they were courage, a high spirit, self-confidence. Far within, and unawakened, lay a whole range of powers of thought and feeling, to which these interesting productions of nature had, from the circumstances of their life, no access. Making allowances for the difference of the times, surely we can observe precisely the same thing now in our aristocratic class.52

  Max Beerbohm, a shrewd admirer of Arnold, got at something of his essence when he observed: “Surely it is because M.A. was so genuinely solemn (and even desperate) at heart that we love his outbursts of fun so much. Without the contrast of what underlies h
is writing, how much less delicious would be what suddenly now and again bubbles up!”53 In the case of Culture and Anarchy, these “outbursts of fun” do save what would otherwise be an impossibly confused, vague, schoolmasterly performance.

  After referring to his Barbarians, Philistines and Populace as a “humble attempt at a scientific nomenclature,” he proceeds to describe how his various puppets confound license with liberty.

  All of us, so far as we are Barbarians, Philistines, or Populace, imagine happiness to consist in doing what one’s ordinary self likes. What one’s ordinary self likes differs according to the class to which one belongs, and has its severer and its lighter side; always, however, remaining machinery, and nothing more. The graver self of the Barbarian likes honours and consideration; his more relaxed self, field-sports and pleasure. The graver self of one kind of Philistine likes fanaticism, business, and money-making; his more relaxed self, comfort and tea-meetings. Of another kind of Philistine, the graver self likes trade unions; the relaxed self, deputations, or hearing Mr. Odger speak. The sterner self of the Populace likes bawling, hustling, and smashing; the lighter self, beer. But in each class there are born a certain number of natures with a curiosity about their best self, with a bent for seeing things as they are, for disentangling themselves from machinery, for simply concerning themselves with reason and the will of God, and doing their best to make these prevail;— for the pursuit, in a word, of perfection.54

  Muddled as the conclusion of this might be, Arnold’s insistence that “doing as one likes” is not the same thing as pursuing perfection is a theme to which Newman returned often as well. Some claim that Newman sanctions “doing as one likes” because he somehow shares the self-approving notion of conscience that soi-disant liberal Catholics prize. But Newman agreed with Arnold that “doing as one likes” is a recipe for anarchy. In his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, Newman could not have been clearer that, for him, conscience could not warrant “doing as one likes.”

  The rule and measure of duty is not utility, nor expedience, nor the happiness of the greatest number, nor State convenience, nor fitness, order and the pulchrum. Conscience is not a long-sighted selfishness, nor a desire to be consistent with oneself, but a messenger from Him who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by His representatives. Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ …55

  Agreed though they might be on the dangers of self-will, Arnold and Newman profoundly disagreed on its remedy. For Arnold, culture was the solution; while for Newman it was obedience to conscience, formed not by “a desire to be consistent with oneself,” but by the authority of the Magisterium.

  Another striking aspect of Culture and Anarchy is Arnold’s contention that his thoroughly materialist notion of culture—which he defined as “a study of perfection”—had something to do with the Oxford Movement. The very fact that he should invoke Newman and the Tractarians in this context reveals the supple confusions that beset him whenever he attempted to justify his skepticism.

  Oxford, the Oxford of the past, has many faults; and she has heavily paid for them in defeat, in isolation, in want of hold upon the modern world. Yet we in Oxford, brought up amidst the beauty and sweetness of that beautiful place, have not failed to seize one truth:—the truth that beauty and sweetness are essential characters of a complete human perfection. When I insist on this, I am all in the faith and tradition of Oxford. I say boldly that this our sentiment for beauty and sweetness, our sentiment against hideousness and rawness, has been at the bottom of our attachment to so many beaten causes, of our opposition to so many triumphant movements. And the sentiment is true, and has never been wholly defeated, and has shown its power even in its defeat. We have not won our political battles, we have not carried our main points, we have not stopped our adversaries’ advance, we have not marched victoriously with the modern world; but we have told silently upon the mind of the country, we have prepared currents of feeling which sap our adversaries’ position when it seems gained, we have kept up our own communications with the future. Look at the course of the great movement which shook Oxford to its centre some thirty years ago! It was directed, as any one who reads Dr. Newman’s Apology may see, against what in one word may be called “liberalism.” Liberalism prevailed; it was the appointed force to do the work of the hour; it was necessary, it was inevitable that it should prevail. The Oxford movement was broken, it failed; our wrecks are scattered on every shore …56

  The reference here to “our wrecks” was revealing. However much the rhetorician in Arnold might wish to cover himself in the mantle of Tractarianism, he had nothing to do with the Oxford Movement, a fact which was made patent when he suggested that the Movement had been launched to gratify “the keen desire for beauty and sweetness” or “to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world.” Here was an interpretation of Tractarianism that would have richly appealed to Hurrell Froude’s sense of the ridiculous. Arnold’s characterization of what the Tractarians opposed and what opposed them was equally tell-tale. According to Arnold, the liberalism that the Tractarians opposed was “the great middle-class liberalism, which had for the cardinal points of its belief the Reform Bill of 1832, and local self-government, in politics; in the social sphere, free-trade, unrestricted competition, and the making of large industrial fortunes; in the religious sphere, the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion.”57 This is so far off the mark it is funny. And by borrowing Edmund Burke’s memorable phrase Arnold only called attention to the emptiness of his rhetoric, though no amount of rhetoric could conceal the fact that Arnold had no grounds for involving Newman or the Tractarians in his vague brief for the benefits of culture, especially a culture that should somehow spring from the grave of religion. In this regard, it is amusing that Newman should have instructed his publisher to send Arnold a copy of his Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects (1872), which includes The Tamworth Reading Room (1841). If Arnold took the time to read this witty polemic, he might have paused over this sentence: “If we attempt to effect a moral improvement by means of poetry, we shall but mature into a mawkish, frivolous and fastidious sentimentalism.”58

  Even the Cambridge moralist Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900), who went from Rugby to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he taught ethics for many years, before succumbing to the table-tapping and hypnotism that attracted so many learned Anglicans, saw the absurdity of Arnold’s trying to tout his own vague notions of culture by invoking Newman. Writing in response to Arnold’s book in Macmillan’s Magazine, Sidgwick argued that “Liberalism to Dr Newman may have meant something of all this; but what (as I infer from the Apologia) it more especially meant to him was a much more intelligent force than all these, which Mr. Arnold omits … Liberalism, Dr. Newman thought … wished to extend just the languid patronage to religion that Mr. Arnold does. What priesthoods were good for in the eyes of Liberalism were the functions, as I have said, of spiritual police; and that is all Mr. Arnold thinks they are good for at present; and even in the future (unless I misunderstand him), if we want more, he would have us come to culture. But Dr. Newman knew that even the existing religions, far as they fell below his ideal, were good for much more than this; this view of them seemed to him not only shallow and untrue, but perilous, deadly, soul-destroying; and inasmuch as it commended itself to intellectual men, and was an intelligent force, he fought against it, not, I think, with much sweetness or light, but with a blind, eager, glowing asperity which, tempered always by humility and candour, was and is very impressive. Dr. Newman fought for a point of view which it required culture to appreciate, and therefore he fought in some sense with culture; but he did not fight for culture, and to conceive him combating side by side with Mr. Matthew Arnold is almost comical.”59

  If there were comical elements in Arnold’s analysis of the tensions within late Victorian society—his descriptions of his “Liberals”, “
Philistines” and “Barbarians” are always entertaining—there was also something distinctly authoritarian in his recommendation of the state as the repository of the culture he wished to see flourish. For Arnold, “a State in which law is authoritative and sovereign, a firm and settled course of public order, is requisite if man is to bring to maturity anything precious and lasting now, or to found anything precious and lasting for the future. Thus, in our eyes, the very framework and exterior order of the State, whoever may administer the State, is sacred; and culture is the most resolute enemy of anarchy, because of the great hopes and designs for the State which culture teaches us to nourish. But as, believing in right reason, and having faith in the progress of humanity towards perfection, and ever labouring for this end, we grow to have clearer sight of the ideas of right reason, and of the elements and helps of perfection, and come gradually to fill the framework of the State with them, to fashion its internal composition and all its laws and institutions conformably to them, and to make the State more and more the expression, as we say, of our best self, which is not manifold, and vulgar, and unstable, and contentious, and ever-varying, but one, and noble, and secure, and peaceful, and the same for all mankind,—with what aversion shall we not then regard anarchy, with what firmness shall we not check it, when there is so much that is so precious which it will endanger!”60 The usefulness of such vague effusions for those advocating Marxist statism is obvious. Stefan Collini is surely right when he says in his entry on Arnold in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography that “Politically, his leanings were always towards an enlarged liberalism … Certainly, no writer who was as severe as Arnold was on the deforming power of inequality and who referred to the French Revolution as ‘the greatest, the most animating event in history’ could easily be accommodated in the ranks of conservatism.”61 Yet whenever Arnold attempted to define his understanding of the State, he only compounded this vagueness. In “Democracy” (1861), in answer to those who argued, as he says, that the State is little more than “a string of minister’s names” and “their judgment on national affairs no “better than that of the rest of the world,” Arnold replied that ministers “have two great advantages from their position: access to almost boundless means of information, and the enlargement of mind which the habit of dealing with great affairs tends to produce.”62 What is striking about this and indeed about Culture and Anarchy as a whole is how much of it recalls the belief in the moral force of knowledge that characterized Sir Robert Peel’s Tamworth Reading Room, a belief which Newman had a good deal of fun lambasting in his ‘Catholicus’ letters to The Times.63