Newman and His Contemporaries

by Edward Short

  Now what can I say in answer to your letter? First, that your case is mine. It is for years beyond numbering – in one view of the matter for these 50 years – that I have been crying out ‘I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength without cause and in vain: wherefore my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God.’ Now at the end of my days, when the next world is close upon me, I am recognized at last at Rome. Don’t suppose I am dreaming of complaint – just the contrary. The Prophet’s words, which expressed my keen pain, brought, because they were his words, my consolation. It is the rule of God’s Providence that we should succeed by failure; and my moral is, as addressed to you, Doubt not that He will use you – be brave – have faith in His love for you – His everlasting love – and love Him from the certainty that He loves you.”86

  Newman’s understanding of how failure brought him closer to God also figures in his prayers, where he is most himself. Apropos Newman’s prayers, the Oratorian Father Henry Tristram wrote: “They are not the stiff, rather formal and stilted work of a man composing meditations for general use. Far from it, they are intensely personal, saturated through and through with Newman. It is he who is praying and none other; and as he prays, his mind is thronged with thoughts of his past sins and present needs, of the graces bestowed and of his failure to correspond, of the providence of God watching over him in his maturity, as in his boyhood and youth, of opportunities given and missed, but above all of God’s infinite condescension, and unwearied love.”87 If this is hardly the stuff of panegyric, it is of the essence of hagiography. In acknowledging his own personal failures, and praying for the grace to overcome them, Newman was following the saints, whose own interiors he studied so closely, though his contemporaries could not have known the uncompromising honesty with which he undertook this most Christian of duties.

  My most Holy Lord and Sanctifier, whatever there is of good in me is Thine. Without Thee, I should but get worse and worse as years went on, and should tend to be a devil. If I differ at all from the world, it is because Thou hast chosen me out of the world, and hast lit up the love of God in my heart. If I differ from Thy Saints, it is because I do not ask earnestly enough for Thy grace, and for enough of it, and because I do not diligently improve what Thou hast given me. Increase in me this grace of love, in spite of all my unworthiness. It is more precious than anything else in the world. I accept it in place of all the world can give me. O give it to me! It is my life.88

  Here was Newman at his most “finely aware and richly responsible.” When it came to understanding himself, he proved his own most insightful contemporary.

  Bibliographical Note

  The two biographers who have done the best work on John Henry Newman are Meriol Trevor and Ian Ker. Meriol Trevor’s two-volume biography, which consists of Newman: The Pillar of the Cloud and Newman: Light in Winter (1962) is excellent on the personal aspects of Newman’s life; it is also full of copious quotation from Newman’s work, chosen by the great Oratorian, Father Charles Stephen Dessain, who was also the founding editor of Newman’s 33-volume Letters and Diaries, which began appearing in 1961. Ian Ker’s great intellectual life, John Henry Newman (1988), which OUP has published in a revised edition, remains the definitive life. It also includes a good epilogue on recent developments regarding the Cardinal.

  Stephen Dessain wrote a good short biography of Newman, as did Richard Holt Hutton. Brian Martin also wrote a useful short biography, John Henry Newman: His Life & Work (1990), which is illustrated. Then, too, John Holloway has an excellent chapter on Newman in his book, The Victorian Sage: Studies in Argument (1953). Ronald Begley has an exhilaratingly good piece called “Metaphor in the Apologia and Newman’s Conversion,” in Newman and Conversion, edited by Ian Ker (1997). There are also good essays about Newman in Newman after 100 Years (1990), edited by Ian Ker and Alan Hill—especially one about Newman’s preaching by the literary critic Eric Griffiths. There is also a good piece called “Newman the Writer” by Geoffrey Tillotson, in Geoffrey and Kathleen Tillotson’s Mid-Victorian Studies (1965). Ian Ker wrote a good overview of Newman’s career for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and James Anthony Froude wrote a witty account of the Oxford Movement in Short Studies on Great Subjects called “The Oxford Counter-Reformation” (1882).

  About the Oxford Movement, Newman’s own Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864) and Dean Church’s The Oxford Movement (1890) are the best accounts. Peter Nockles’ The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship 1760–1857 (1994) is also worth looking at.

  There are good books on special aspects regarding Newman, including Joyce Sugg’s Ever Yours Affly: John Henry Newman and his Female Circle (1997), Ian Ker’s Newman and the Fullness of Christianity (1993), Paul Shrimpton’s A Catholic Eton? Newman’s Oratory School (2005), Henry Tristram’s Newman and His Friends (1933), Madeleine Beard’s Faith and Fortune (1997), and The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman (2009) edited by Ian Ker and Terrence Merrigan. A good overview of Newman’s work is provided in Ian Ker’s The Achievement of John Henry Newman (1990).

  For Newman’s own writings, there are four good anthologies: The Genius of John Henry Newman, edited by Ian Ker (1989), which OUP is reissuing; Newman: Prose and Poetry, edited by Geoffrey Tillotson (1957) in the Reynard Library; A Newman Anthology edited by William Samuel Lilly (1949); and a superb little anthology edited by the Oratorian Henry Tristram called The Living Thoughts of Cardinal Newman (1948), which maps out some of the more combative aspects of Newman’s thought. Readers might also like to hunt down Letters of John Henry Newman (1957) edited by Derek Stanford and Muriel Spark and A Packet of Letters: A Selection of the Correspondence of John Henry Newman (1983) edited by Joyce Sugg. For Newman’s sermons, readers should also get hold of Ian Ker’s John Henry Newman: Selected Sermons (1994), which has an excellent introduction and a characteristically pithy preface by Henry Chadwick.

  Another little anthology worth buying is Realizations: Newman’s Selection of his Parochial and Plain Sermons (1964), in the Foreword of which Muriel Spark brightly observes: “In [Newman’s] own time his persuasive power was greatly feared. But what did it consist of? Simplicity of intellect and speech. Simplicity is the most suspect of qualities; it upsets people a great deal. I think it was this, more than his actual doctrine, that caused suspicion to gather round the Vicar of St. Mary’s.”

  In addition to these anthologies, there are several good editions of Newman’s separate works: Ignatius has a useful one-volume edition of his Parochial and Plain Sermons. Francis J. McGrath, F.S.M. has done a wonderful job finishing the editing of Newman’s unpublished Anglican sermons, which OUP is publishing. Notre Dame launched a new edition of Newman’s writings some time ago, but the volumes are overpriced, poorly produced and dully edited. Oxford recently published a good scholarly edition of Newman’s Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford (2006) edited by Earnest and Tracey, though it is ruinously expensive. Ian Ker’s editions of The Idea of a University (1976) and An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1985) are worth looking at, as is Martin Svaglic’s great edition of the Apologia (1967).

  For the nineteenth-century context relevant to Newman, readers can consult any number of books. Elizabeth Longford’s wonderful Queen Victoria (1964) gives a good general overview. Andrew Robert’s biography of Lord Salisbury, Victorian Titan (1999) is masterly on the political and diplomatic history of the period, which Newman followed so closely. The Oxford Book of Nineteenth Century English Verse (1964) edited by Eliot’s friend John Hayward exhibits the great poetic achievement of the period. Edward Norman’s The English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century (1984) is still the best survey. Jonathan Clark’s English Society 1688–1832 (1985) and K. Theodore Hoppen’s Oxford history, The Mid-Victorian Generation 1846–1886 (1998), are both excellent for the political history. Everything on the nineteenth century by G. M. Young is worth reading, even though he did not understand Newman. Gertrude Himmelfarb is another historian w
ho has written a number of consistently good books about the English nineteenth century; see especially The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age (1984). Michael Burleigh’s Earthy Powers: The Clash Between Religion and Politics from the French Revolution to the First World War (2005) is also worth reading. For Tractarian Oxford, Wilfrid Ward’s books on William George Ward are still indispensable, as are William Tuckwell’s Reminiscences of Oxford (1900) and the two nineteenth-century volumes in The History of the University of Oxford (1997), edited by Brock and Curthoys. Last but not least, for a good quick grasp of what Newman’s contemporaries were writing when Newman was writing, readers might wish to pick up The Spirit of the Age: Victorian Essays (2007), edited by Gertrude Himmelfarb. Of course, there are many other worthwhile primary and secondary books that readers will want to dip into—I reference a good many in the notes to my individual chapters—but those listed here will give readers unfamiliar with the period a good start.

  Select Biographical Index1

  Abbott, Jacob, (1803–1879). A congregational minister from Maine, Abbott was also an educator. From 1825 to 1829 he was Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Amherst College, and afterward he established the Mount Vernon School for Girls in Boston. He wrote over two hundred books, mostly for young people.

  Achilli, Giovanni Giacinto (1802–1860?). Italian Dominican defrocked for seducing women. In 1850 he was brought over to England by the Evangelical Alliance to lecture Protestants on the evils of Catholicism. After Newman made reference to his notorious conduct in his Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England (1851), Achilli sued him for libel. After the presiding judge, Lord Campbell, refused to admit much of the evidence amassed by Newman’s friends substantiating Achilli’s seductions, the case went against Newman and he was fined ₤100. Achilli was last heard of in upstate New York in 1860, where he left behind a suicide note.

  Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg, first Baron of (1834–1902). English historian and founder of the Cambridge Modern History, Acton was reputed to be very learned but spent most of his life making notes for books he never wrote. Educated partly in Germany under Dollinger and partly in Ireland under Wiseman, he was a liberal Catholic opposed to papal infallibility.

  Allies, Thomas William (1813–1901). Educated at Eton and Wadham College, Allies converted in 1850, after which Newman appointed him Lecturer in History at the Catholic University. Known as the ‘Bantam Cock’ because of his small stature, dapper dress and combativeness, Allies corresponded with Newman throughout his life.

  Arnold, Matthew (1822–1888). Poet, essayist and school inspector and first son of the famous Dr. Arnold of Rugby. His niece was Mrs. Humphry Ward, whose Robert Elsmere Oscar Wilde described as “simply Arnold’s Literature and Dogma with the literature left out.”

  Arnold, Thomas Senior (1795–1842). Headmaster of Rugby, educated at Winchester and Oxford, whose personal influence held great sway over many of his students, including Clough, Stanley, and Thomas Hughes, author of Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857). In “The Oxford Malignants,” Arnold criticized Newman for his part in the controversy over R. D. Hampden’s Bampton Lectures (1836). Afterwards, the Tractarians, as Dean Church recalled, were “the most unpopular and suspected body of men in the Church, whom everybody was at liberty to insult, both as dishonest and absurd, of whom nothing was too cruel to say, nothing too ridiculous to believe.”

  Arnold, Thomas Younger (1823–1900). Second son of Dr. Arnold, Thomas was an inspector of schools in New Zealand as a young man. Received into the Church in 1856 despite the passionate objections of his wife, Julia, he was good friends with Arthur Hugh Clough. By 1865, he had drifted away from the Church but returned to the fold in 1876. He was appointed Professor of English at UCD in 1882.

  Badeley, Edward Lowth (1803–1868). Educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, Badeley met Newman in 1837, after which they became close friends. Badeley was called to the Bar, as a Member of the Inner Temple, in 1841, and became a leading Tractarian lawyer. Counsel for the Bishop of Exeter in the Gorham Case in 1850, he became a Catholic in 1852, and assisted Newman during the Achilli trial.

  Bellasis, Edward (1800–1873). Educated at Christ’s Hospital and the Inner Temple, Bellasis was called to the bar in 1824. After converting in 1850, he gave Newman inestimable support during the Achilli trial. His entire family was keenly fond of Newman and two of his sons joined the Oratory.

  Blennerhassett, Sir Rowland, fourth Baronet (1839–1909). Succeeded his father in 1849, and after being at school first at Downside, then at Stonyhurst, went up to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1859, after which he studied at Louvain and at Munich. He was a friend of Döllinger and Sir John Acton, sharing their liberal Catholic views. Blennerhassett left behind some interesting reminiscences of Newman.

  Bowden, Elizabeth (1805–1896). Wife of Newman’s closest Oxford friend, John Bowden, who died young, Mrs. Bowden (née Swinburne) became one of Newman’s closest and most trusted correspondents. An elegant, cultured woman, she was related to the poet Algernon Swinburne.

  Bowden, Mary Anne (1831–1867). The eldest daughter of his good friends John and Elizabeth Bowden, Mary Anne entered the Visitation Convent at Westbury in 1852 and died young, like her father, of tuberculosis. “I baptized you with water in the name of the Three Divine Persons,” Newman wrote her before her death, “and signed you with the sign of the cross … I fully believe that from that moment you were rescued from the power of Satan, and made the subject of God’s supernatural promises and supernatural graces. From your very infancy then God has chosen you, and claimed you as his own.”

  Bowden, Marianne Frances (1839–1926). The eldest daughter of Henry and Marianne Catherine Bowden, Marianne Bowden became Catholic in 1852.

  Bowles, Emily (1818–1904). Sister of Francis Bowles, who was received into the Church with Newman by the Passionist Father Barberi on 9 October 1845. Miss Bowles was converted in 1843 in Rome. Later, she served for a time as Dame of the Oratory School, while devoting most of her life to writing, translating and performing charity work in London. She was one of Newman’s confidantes.

  Brougham, Henry Peter, Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868). Lawyer, politician and frequent contributor to the Edinburgh Review. In 1810 he entered the House of Commons, in 1830 he became Lord Chancellor, and in 1835 he was instrumental in seeing the Great Reform Bill passed. Brougham also represented Queen Caroline at her trial. However, his duplicity and increasing radicalism alienated his Whig friends and he spent his last years at Cannes in retirement, where Thackeray enjoyed drinking with him. In his letters to The Times under the pseudonym “Catholicus,” which were later published as The Tamworth Reading Room (1841), Newman held Brougham and Sir Robert Peel up to scathing scrutiny for their part in the founding of a non-denominational library from which books of theology would be excluded.

  Brownson, Orestes (1803–1876). New England intellectual, preacher, writer and Catholic convert.

  Butler, Joseph (1692–1752). Bishop of Durham, he entered Oriel in 1714, after abandoning the Presbyterianism of his childhood. One of the ablest proponents of natural theology that England ever produced, Butler had a considerable influence on Newman and many others, including Keble. His Analogy of Religion (1736) was one of the sources on which Newman drew for his understanding of how probability relates to religious certainty. Newman also shared Butler’s respect for the primacy of conscience.

  Carey, Arthur (1822–1844). An Episcopal churchman who derived his Tractarian views from reading the various works of various members of the Oxford Movement. His ordination caused much rancorous controversy within the Episcopal Church in New York and around the country. Newman saw in him an American Hurrell Froude.

  Carlyle, Thomas (1795–1881). Scottish historian, essayist and moralist. Although opposed to creeds, he held that “the Religious Principle lies unseen in the hearts of all good men.”