Newman and His Contemporaries

by Edward Short

  Short, Thomas (1789–1879). Fellow of Trinity College from 1816 until his death, Short encouraged Newman to sit for the Oriel Fellowship. Legendary for his rigor and dry wit, he was one of Oxford’s most famous Fellows. On returning to Trinity to receive his Honorary Fellowship in 1878, Newman visited Short in his old rooms. Years earlier, when Newman asked Short for a reference for Henry Wilberforce, Short replied that he would speak to someone at Durham University, though, as he said, “I should fear from the very miscellaneous religionists, by whom his father is perpetually besieged, and, as I suppose, duped, that his name will be the worst disadvantage which he will have to combat. But your account of the young man will go far to remove any unfavorable party impression.”

  Sibthorp, Richard Waldo (1792–1879). Fellow of Magdalen and incumbent of St. James, Ryde, Sibthorp converted briefly to Catholicism before returning to the Established Church. In Oxford Memories: A Retrospect After 50 Years (1886), James Pycroft dissented from the generally sardonic view of Sibthorpe by remembering him as “sincere but impressionable.”

  Simeon, Sir John (1815–1870). Succeeding his father as 3rd Baronet in 1854, Sir John Simeon was one of Newman’s close friends. In 1851 he was received into the Catholic Church by Father Brownbill at Farm Street. He then resigned his seat in the House of Commons, where he had represented the Isle of Wight since 1847. He entered Parliament again in 1865. A proponent of improving Catholic higher education, he was a staunch supporter of Newman’s plans to establish an Oxford Oratory.

  Simeon, Louisa Edith (1843–1895). Sir John’s daughter, and a friend of Emily Bowles, Louisa shared her difficulties concerning her Catholic faith with Newman in various letters. When she confessed that she often felt at a loss in the face of her Protestant friends’ objections to Catholicism, Newman recommended that she read the Plain and Parochial Sermons that he had written as an Anglican, telling her: “I wonder how far you know what is called Tractarianism – and if you don’t, whether a course of Tractarianism, so to say, would do you good.”

  Simpson, Richard (1820–1876). Liberal Catholic journalist, educated at Oriel, where he took a Second in Classics, Simpson was also a friend of Lord Acton. His editorship of the Rambler caused Newman much annoyance. A keen Shakespearian scholar and gifted linguist, Simpson was one of the most talented of the converts of Newman’s time. Newman was fond of him, despite or perhaps because of his provocations. “I DESPAIR of Simpson being other than he is,” he wrote to one of his correspondents; “he will always be clever, amusing, brilliant, and suggestive. He will always be flicking his whip at Bishops, cutting them in tender places, throwing stones at sacred Congregations, and, as he rides along the high road, discharging pea shooters at Cardinals who happen by bad luck to look out of window.”

  Spencer, George (1799–1864). Educated at Eton and Cambridge, Spencer— the youngest son of the 2nd Earl Spencer— converted to Rome in 1830. In 1847 he joined the Passionists, taking the name of Ignatius. In 2007 Father Ignatius’s cause for beatification was forwarded to Rome. Were Father Ingatius to be canonized, the British royal family would have its first saint, since Spencer is related to Princes William and Harry through their mother, Princess Diana of Wales. In the “hardships, mortifications, slights, insults, [and] disappointments” that Spencer endured to convert his countrymen, Newman saw a model of “persevering prayer.”

  Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn (1815–1881). Biographer of Dr. Arnold of Rugby.

  Strauss, David Friedrich (1808–1874). German theologian, whose Leben Jesu (1835–1836), translated in England by George Eliot, saw the life of Christ in terms of unintended myth.

  Talbot, George (1818–1886). Educated at Eton and St. Mary’s Hall, Oxford, Talbot converted in 1843 and was ordained in 1846. He applied to Newman’s Oratory in 1847 and was cordially rejected. Later, Wiseman appointed him Papal Chamberlain. An ecclesiastical trouble-maker par excellence, Talbot made much mischief for Newman. After he invited Newman to come to Rome to preach, Newman replied: “I have received your letter, inviting me to preach next Lent in your Church at Rome, to ‘an audience of Protestants more educated than could ever be the case in England.’ However, Birmingham people have souls; and I have neither taste nor talent for the sort of work you cut out for me; and I beg to decline your offer.” In 1868 Talbot was put away in an asylum in Passy, France.

  Tennyson, Alfred (1809–1892). Poet. For years, he tried to coax Newman to join him and Gladstone for breakfast, unsuccessfully. Tennyson was also friendly with Newman’s dear friend Emily Bowles, who admired his poetry. Tennyson’s son, Hallam, supported Miss Bowles’s application to the Royal Literary Fund in her penurious old age.

  Thackeray, William Makepeace (1811–1863). Novelist and essayist. His masterpiece, Vanity Fair (1848), was published the same year as Newman founded the Birmingham Oratory. Max Beerbohm rightly considered the novel the greatest that England ever produced. Newman was an avid reader of Thackeray’s things, although, like the literary critic John Carey, he detected a pattern of decline in his later work.

  Tocqueville, Alexis Charles Henri Clerci de (1809–1859). French politician, historian and author of two of the most brilliant books of the nineteenth century: De la Démocartie en Amerique (1835) and L’Ancien Regime et la Révolution (1856). Tocqueville’s insights into the emerging nature of religion in nineteenth-century America often tallied with those that Newman shared with readers in his long essay, “The Anglo-American Church” (1839).

  Ullathorne, William Bernard (1806–1889). Heroic convert who, after organizing the Church in Australia, became Bishop of Birmingham. The correspondence between Ullathorne and Newman is revelatory of the great strengths of both men, though they were quite different in many ways. No two men ever had more mutual respect for one another. Ullathorne’s autobiography, The Devil is a Jackass, is a good read.

  Walsh, Walter (1847–1912), religious polemicist and author of several anti-Catholic books, including The Secret History of the Oxford Movement (1897), The History of the Romeward Movement in the Church of England, 1833–1864 (1900) and The Jesuits in Great Britain: an Historical Inquiry into their Political Influence (1903). In the last he blamed the Society of Jesus for nearly everything that was wrong with nineteenth-century Britain. The political agent of the rabidly Protestant Charles Newdegate (1836–1887), Conservative MP for Nuneaton, Walsh also edited an anti-Catholic paper called the Protestant Observer. According to the ODNB, “Walsh was an example of a distinctive type of Victorian protestant: from humble origins [he was the son of a hotel porter] he undertook protestant apologetics in a professional capacity, and success in his work enabled him to enjoy a certain measure of upward social mobility.”

  Ward, William George (1842–82). Fellow of Balliol and ebullient controversialist, whose Ideal of Christian Church caused him to be degraded by Convocation in 1845, Ward married and converted in the same year and later became editor of the ultramontane Dublin Review. For years, he was also one of the founding members and chief attractions of the Metaphysical Society, which Newman declined to join. Despite their differences, Newman had great regard for Ward, which Ward entirely reciprocated.

  Whately, Richard (1787–1863). Fellow of Oriel and Leader of the Noetics, Whately had a keen influence on Newman, though they never reconciled after parting ways. Whately was installed as Archbishop of Dublin in 1831. Newman often noted the fact that they crossed paths in Dublin in the 1850s without ever meeting. A droll man, Whately was fond of riddles. “What is the best female companion to the fish John Dory,” he would ask his Dublin parishioners. “Ann Chovy!” In the Apologia, Newman paid his old colleague a handsome compliment, confirming how he “taught me to think and use my reason …” Whately’s anti-Erastian views particularly influenced Newman, who confessed of the logician whose liberalism he could not embrace, “I loved him too much to bid him farewell without pain.”

  White, Joseph Blanco (1775–1841) Apostate Catholic priest of Irish descent born in Seville. Settling in England in 1810,
where he enjoyed the patronage of Lord Holland, he became an Anglican clergyman in 1825, and thereafter a member of the Oriel Common Room where he became good friends with Newman and the Noetics. “Blanco White has resided with us since October,” Newman wrote a friend in 1827, “he is a man of considerable talent—well read, well informed, quick, lively, ingenious, sensible, modest, and of a most ardent and affectionate mind—there is a character! I wish you knew him—and the circumstances of his life invest him both with mystery and deep interest. I like him so …” In 1832, White left Oxford to become Archbishop Whately’s secretary in Dublin. In 1835, he moved yet again to Liverpool and adopted Unitarian views. He died, as Newman lamented, “almost a pantheist.” When Whately learned of his Socinian views, he wrote his old friend, “Could you know the daily and nightly anguish we have suffered, or the half of it, and how much it has risen from sympathy with what you have suffered, and dread of the far greater evils anticipated to you, I am sure you would have no doubts of our affection.” A crack violinist, White often played Beethoven with Newman, who praised his “exquisite ear.”

  Wilberforce, Henry (1807–1873). The Emancipator’s youngest son and one of Newman’s closest friends and favourite correspondents. Educated at Oriel College, he was Newman’s pupil. Graduating with a First in Classics and a Second in Mathematics, he was ordained in 1834 and in the same year he married a daughter of Rev. John Sargent. In 1850 he and his wife converted with their children. After two years as secretary of the Catholic Defence Association in Dublin he became proprietor and editor of the Catholic Standard, which evolved into the Weekly Register. Newman preached at his funeral and wrote a short memoir of him. In a letter to Newman, written in 1835, Henry wrote: “I think the natural fault of my mind is that of thinking less than I ought of my absent friends; but I can truly say that you are an exception, for there has been, I think, hardly a day (indeed I think I might say not a day) since I saw you, in which I have not thought with grateful affection of your kindness to me, and the benefits which I hope I have received from it.”

  Wilberforce, Robert Isaac (1802–1857). Second son of the philanthropist, Wilberforce obtained a double-First at Oriel College in 1823, was elected a Fellow in 1826, and from 1828 was a tutor there with R. H. Froude and Newman. He moved to Burton Agnes in 1840, and in the following year was made Archdeacon of the West Riding. His The Doctrine of the Incarnation (1848) is one of the major works of Tractarian divinity. He became a Catholic in 1854 and travelled to Italy in the next year to study for the priesthood. A few weeks after being ordained, he died.

  Williams, Isaac (1802–1865). Educated at Trinity College, Oxford, where he went on to become a Fellow, Williams was a poet and Tractarian, whose Tract 80, “On Reserve in communicating Religious Knowledge,” caused much controversy. His being passed over for the Poetry Professorship after Keble’s resignation in 1842 was a serious reversal for the Tractarians. He was Newman’s curate at St Mary’s and Littlemore. In his memoirs, Williams put about false reports concerning Newman’s influence on Keble. After Newman converted, the two men corresponded rarely, though Newman paid Williams a farewell visit when he was dying. In 1840 he dedicated his Church of the Fathers to Williams thus: “To My Dear and Much Admired Isaac Williams … The Sight of Whom Carries Back His Friends to Ancient, Holy, and Happy Times.”

  Wiseman, Nicholas (1802–1865). Rector of the English College in Rome (1828–1840), Wiseman was also coadjutor to Bishop Walsh in the Midland district and President of Oscott College (1840–1847). Newman met with Wiseman in Rome in 1833, and in July 1841 Wiseman visited Newman at Oriel. Wiseman’s article in the Dublin Review on the Monophysites set Newman on the road to Rome. Wiseman followed the Oxford Movement closely, and welcomed the converts warmly, though Sibthorpe’s defection was an embarrassment. In 1849 he succeeded Bishop Walsh, and was thus the last Vicar Apostolic of the London district. In the following year he was made the first Archbishop of Westminster and a Cardinal. Although frequently mocked by the Protestant English, Wiseman was a capable, astute, learned, good man.

  Wood, Charlotte (1789–1873). The widow of William Wood (1768/9?–1841) —a student at Christ Church, Vicar of Fulham, and then a Canon of Canterbury—she was a catechumen of Newman. When she was about to become a Catholic in 1845, Archbishop Howley sent his chaplain to try to dissuade her, without success. She and her daughter were received together and settled in the Isle of Wight, where they remained close friends of Newman. Her son, Granville, a naval captain, became a Catholic in 1849 and a Jesuit. Miss Wood died in 1883.

  Wood, Samuel Francis (1810–1843). Wood entered Oriel College in 1827 aged 17, taking a B.A. in 1831 and an M.A. in 1834. He was made a barrister-at-law, Inner Temple, in 1835, but died in 1843. Wood was one of Newman’s closest Oxford friends.

  Yates, Edmund (1831–1894). Born in Edinburgh of stage parents, he became a journalist and instigated the Garrick Club affair by libeling Thackeray. He was cremated at Woking.

  1 For information contained in this index, I am heavily indebted to the Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman (London and Oxford, 1961–), the DNB, and the ODNB.

  Notes

  References to Newman’s works are usually to the uniform edition of 1868–81 (36 volumes), which was published by Longmans Green, and Co. of London until the stock was destroyed during the Second World War. Editions of posthumous works, (e.g. Autobiographical Writings) are noted in the references. Readers who do not have access to the physical uniform edition can find an electronic version of the same on newmanreader.org.

  Preface

  1 William Makepeace Thackeray, Roundabout Papers: Little Travels and Roadside Sketches (New York, 1904), p. 318.

  2 John Hungerford Pollen, “Newman in Dublin,” from The Month (September, 1906), pp. 318–20.

  Introduction

  1 See Johnson: Prose and Poetry, ed. Mona Wilson (London, 1950), p. 9.

  2 Apologia, p. 4.

  3 Frederick Meyrick, Memories of Life at Oxford and Experiences in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Germany, Spain and Elsewhere (London, 1905), p. 11.

  4 J. C. Shairp, Studies in Poetry and Philosophy (Edinburgh, 1886), p. 247.

  5 The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman (London and Oxford, 1961–), 10:303, JHN to Aunt Elizabeth Newman (25 July 1844). Hereinafter, I shall refer to the Letters and Diaries as LD.

  6 Lectures on Justification, p. 337.

  7 See Positio for the Cause of the Canonization of John Henry Cardinal Newman (Rome, 1989). The Reverend R. H. P. Lynch was the Superior of the Birmingham Oratory when the Cause for Newman’s Canonization was first broached by Monsignor Davis in 1952, and when asked whether “canonizing someone was … alien to the British Catholic mentality,” he responded, “Yes. As a matter of fact, I have heard it said that there are fifty or sixty persons in the diocese of Naples whose Causes are on the books! We have not the same idea of a Saint.” See Positio, Vol. II, p. 67.

  8 LD, 12:399, Appendix 5: Draft of a Preface for Faber’s Lives of the Saints, probably written in the autumn of 1848.

  9 Meditations and Devotions, p. 428.

  10 Shairp, Studies in Poetry and Philosophy, p. 248.

  11 See Eric Griffiths, “Newman: The Foolishness of Preaching,” in Newman After 100 Years, ed. Ker and Hill (Oxford, 1990), p. 64. See also John Henry Newman: Selected Sermons ed. Ian Ker (New York, 1994).

  12 LD, 3:288–89, JHN to Samuel Rickards (14 April 1833).

  13 See American Notes and Pictures from Italy in The New Oxford Illustrated Dickens ed. Sacheverell Sitwell (London, 1957), pp. 368–70

  14 LD, 3:267–68, JHN to Mrs. Jemima Newman (25 March 1833).

  15 LD, 3:213, JHN to Harriett Newman (16 February 1833).

  16 LD, 3:282, JHN to Jemima Newman (11 April 1833).

  17 T. S. Eliot, “East Coker,” from “Four Quartets”, in The Complete Poems and Plays (New York, 1952), p. 127.

  18 LD, 4:8, JHN to Henry Wilberforce (16 July 1833) and LD, 3:314, JHN to Frederic Rogers (5 June
1833).

  19 Historical Sketches, Vol. II, p. 219.

  20 D. C. Somervell, English Thought in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1929), p. 108.

  21 Froude, quoted in Meriol Trevor, Newman: The Pillar of the Cloud (London, 1962), p. 149.

  22 See Vanity Fair, “Men of the Day,” No. 145 (20 January 1877).

  23 In The Secret History of the Oxford Movement (1898), Walsh anticipated many of Turner’s own No Popery obsessions.

  24 See Frank Turner, “Introduction” to Apologia Pro Vita Sua & Six Sermons (New Haven, 2008), pp. 56–57.

  25 The Living Thoughts of Cardinal Newman, ed. Henry Tristram (London, 1848), xii.

  26 See Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York, 1933), pp. 161–62.

  27 Turner, pp. 114–15.

  28 LD, 27:161–62, JHN to Unknown Correspondent (27 November 1874).

  29 This is from the famous speech Newman gave when he received the red hat, which is known as the ‘Biglietto Speech’ (1879). See Addresses to Cardinal Newman, Vol. 2, pp. 64–67. Also, see I. T. Ker, “Introduction to Newman’s Biglietto Speech,” in Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Fall 2003), pp. 164–69.

  30 Wilfrid Ward, The Life of John Henry Newman (London, 1912), Vol. II, p. 464.

  31 LD, 19:488, JHN to Malcolm Maccoll (24 March 1864).

  32 “The Infidelity of the Future” (1873), in Faith and Prejudice and other Sermons, pp. 116–24.

  33 See Edmund Adamus, in Zenit (23 August 2010). Adamus told the online news agency: “… whether we like it or not as British citizens and residents of this country – and whether we are even prepared as Catholics to accept this reality and all it implies – the fact is that historically, and continuing right now, Britain, and in particular London, has been and is the geo-political epicenter of the culture of death. Our laws and lawmakers for over 50 years or more have been the most permissively anti-life and progressively anti-family and marriage, in essence one of the most anti-Catholic landscapes culturally speaking than even those places where Catholics suffer open persecution. England itself nevertheless has a unique Christian heritage: St. Augustine, the apostle to the English appointed by Pope Gregory, defied the temptation to despair of ever converting the pagan Britons by reminding the degenerate race of the beauty, truth and dignity of marriage. St. Bede’s chronicle of English Christianity recounts this strategy … England is also the “Dowry of Mary,” an ancient title going back to the 14th century and even further in the spiritual language of the people. This title signified the fact that from the earliest times English Catholic Christians revered the person of the Mother of Christ with such a singular and wholehearted devotion that the very nation itself was attributed with having a supernatural role … in the ‘marriage’ between the Holy Spirit and his spouse – the Virgin of Nazareth. That is to say, English Christianity, in the plan of God, has a unique role to play in being a secure foundation (like a dowry in a marriage) to the work of redemption and salvation history globally.”