Chapter VII: Preface (7)

‘… We have just left St. Christopher’s; it is the most beautiful of any of the islands I have yet seen. Mount Miserere is quite fine; a precipitous granite crag, quite bare, and of a very great height, rising out of the rich woods with which the mountain is clothed up to the top, and stooping over a very deep hollow, which has once been the crater of a volcano. I should have liked much to get up there, but had not time, and besides, they say it is very difficult. The people here seem to have very little curiosity: in fact, few tastes except acquisitiveness…. I see the papers have begun to talk; addresses to the Archbishop are said to be pouring in. I wish I could get my lungs right again to make preachments, and give the Yanks a talking over. We shall be back at Barbados the second week in March, and about then the weather in New York brightens up. I think I have made up my mind not to be in England till the latter end of May, whatever news we have, so I shall certainly have time on my hands, and if I can’t preach I can prose; so I may as well go at any rate. Do ply the people with Tracts on the “safest course” principle: the more I think of it, the more important it seems as the intellectual basis of Church authority…. We have now got a north-west wind, which a few years since would have been almost a miracle in these latitudes. It is generally said that the trade-winds are becoming yearly more irregular, and have been for this last fifty years. It will make a curious change if they cease altogether; certainly nothing can be more irregular than we have had them, both in quantity and direction; it goes from a storm to a calm in no time, and the other night went all round the compass. This puts me in mind of an adventure we had the other evening at Nevis. There is no harbour there, but only a beach to land on, and sometimes a heavy surf. We landed in the morning, in still weather. In the course of the day it came to blow on shore, and we had to embark in the dark, in a very heavy sea breaking on the sands most furiously. The Bishop slept on shore, but the Commodore, the Captain, the Chaplain, and myself were carried on men’s shoulders to the boat, which was lying as near the shore as it could, in the midst of the breakers. I was put in second, and was only wetted by the water in the bottom of the boat, but the two last were fairly soused…. I am sure this stuff is not worth sending across the Atlantic.’

To WILLIAM FROUDE, Feb. 12, 1834.

‘… I will try to scrape together stuff for a letter to you. We are becalmed with Saba off our starboard quarter, in the _Forte_ frigate, forty-six guns, Commodore P…. Somehow, this frigate is beyond my comprehension. I am not up to taking an interest in its movements; it is 1150 tons and the sails are so large, and the masts so high, and such an immense lot of ropes, that I see no hope of learning anything about it. When they get up the anchor they have 100 men at the capstan, and if they want to tack quickly they put 300 men to work at once. They do their work to the sound of two fiddles and a fife, instead of the gibber that one is accustomed to in the _Ranger_ and elsewhere; so, as the [Provost?] would say, “I don’t comprehend the style of things.” The day before yesterday we had two adventures. (1) A man was to be flogged, and as I knew that he would be let off out of compliment to the Bishop, I went on deck to see the preliminary ceremony. The whole ship’s crew were mustered, while the fellow stood under guard; then a grating was lashed to the gangway, and his wrists and ankles made fast to it, his jacket having been stripped off in readiness; the officers stood in full dress on one side of him, and the boatswain’s mates on the other; and the Commodore read over the articles of war. I watched the fellow’s countenance closely. At first he seemed very unconcerned, but the ceremony seemed by degrees to work on his imagination, and just before his pardon was announced he seemed in considerable dismay. The thing has stuck in my mind deeper than I expected, and I feel rather sick at thinking of it. The officers say that letting him off did a great deal of harm. Last night ever such a lot were drunk, and I suppose they will catch it in a day or two! Twenty-four hours must elapse between the offence and the punishment. (2) The other adventure was falling in with a man-of-war by night, so that we could not distinguish each other’s colours. On nearing them we heard them pipe to quarters, and on coming up we found them, contrary to etiquette, with their main-deck lighted up, their guns and rigging manned, and with every demonstration of readiness for action; so we had to make similar preparations with all speed: powder was got up, and both sides loaded and shotted, exactly as if we intended to fight. On passing them the Commodore asked what they were, and they would not tell, and nothing more came of it: a beautiful mare’s nest. The officers say it was a Dutch frigate, and that since our ill behaviour to them they have made a point of showing our ships disrespect; however, if a gun had gone off by accident, which might easily have been, as they all have flint and steel locks, it would have ended in a fight, most likely…. From St. Thomas’s we go to Santa Cruz, and from thence to La Guayra, so I shall have a fine cruise altogether; yet somehow I take no interest in the places I see: there is something so unromantic among the English, and so unpleasing about the niggers, that they spoil the scenery altogether. The thing that strikes me as most remarkable in the cut of these niggers is excessive immodesty; a forward, stupid familiarity, intended for civility, which prejudices me against them worse even than Buxton’s[170] cant did…. I want much to hear about your steam-engine…. I begin to think that the Nonjurors were the last of English divines, and that those since are twaddlers. The more I read, the more I am reconciled to the present state of things in England, and prospects of the Church. It seems to be only the fermentation of filth which has long been in existence, and could not be got rid of otherwise…. And now my ideas run slow, and take more trouble writing than they are worth reading; so, with best love to J[ack].’[171]

To the Ven. Archdeacon FROUDE, April 2, 1834.

‘… We left the island [Santa Cruz] at four o’clock on Thursday, the Bishop having been conveyed to Fredericstadt in the Governor’s carriage and four, escorted by an aide-de-camp, and embarking under a salute. We were under weigh in about an hour, with a breeze east-north-east. On Saturday evening we saw, like a pale blue mist rising above the clouds, the outline of the South American mountains. The next morning, when I came on deck, we were within nine miles of the coast, and the gigantic features of the scenery produced the same effect that we observed between Salerno and Amalfi, viz., of making distant objects seem so near each other. The mountains rose boldly out of the sea, as far as the eye could reach before us and behind us, as we sailed along the coast. Their height varies from 5000 to 9000 feet. One of them (the highest) is a perpendicular precipice for 8000 feet: Humboldt describes it as the most remarkable precipice in the world. However, the effect, as a whole, cannot be compared to that of the Italian or Sicilian coast. The mountains are richly covered with wood from the very bottom to the top, except the peaks of the very highest, which are naked granite, but so high that the rocky features, when diminished by the great distance and rendered indistinct by the haze of the hot air, lose all their raciness; so that there is no variety of colour, but a mass of uniform green, or rather gray, more or less pale according to the distance. We coasted along about twelve miles almost under the shadow of the rocks, yet near nine miles from them. Early in the morning they were visible from top to bottom, but indistinct from the dazzle of the sun, which was behind them. About ten o’clock a line of little misty dots formed at a uniform height above the sea, perhaps 3000 feet. This became denser and denser, till it became one impenetrable cloud, above which we could see nothing. About twelve we anchored at La Guayra, which Humboldt says is the hottest place in the world. The thermometer in the cabin window was ninety degrees. The Bishop and Commodore disembarked that evening and rode over the mountains to Caraccas; I and some of the officers were to follow before daylight. Accordingly, having ordered mules over-night, we got up at half-past three, breakfasted on board, and set out for the shore, two boat-loads. There was a very heavy rolling swell, and the landing-place is a wooden stage upon piles, which does not keep off the sea at all. We lay by anxiously waiting for a lull, and all of us in the first boat succeeded in landing dry on the stage, and running off before a wave had time to reach us; but when the second boat was lying on its oars, in hopes of a lull like ours, a wave far above the size of the rest broke just ahead of them; and really, I never saw such a nervous sight! The boat, in which were ten rowers and several officers, seemed to stand quite upright on its stern, so as to leave us doubtful which way it would fall. The whole was hid for a moment in a mass of spray, except that we could see the blades of the oars sticking out, all in confusion, as the water took them. When the wave passed and the boat righted, they say it was full up to the thwarts. On seeing this Captain H. ordered them to pull off, and sent a shore boat for them, i.e., two niggers in a canoe, which took them out one or two at a time. The last load consisted of the Commodore’s steward, an old Italian for whom I have an affection, and a midshipman. As they were alongside the stage a wave broke outside them; the mid was lucky enough to catch hold in time, but the poor Italian, canoe, niggers, and all, totally disappeared, and were seen again about thirty yards off progressing with the crest of the wave towards the beach, on which all were deposited safe, after a dive of near 600 yards. _N.B._――The niggers and Spaniards, when landing themselves, never think of going to the stage, but sitting very steadily in their canoes, wait where the waves begin to break, and only taking care to keep the boat straight, and paddling a little to assist it in getting way at first, they are shot in without any effort, on the crest of the wave, with wonderful velocity, keeping on the downhill side of it all the time, and at last are deposited high and dry. When I saw this first, I could hardly believe my eyes.

‘I shall stay here a fortnight longer at least, and then set off for New York. I am very grateful for your long letters, which come by every packet.’

There follows a letter on April 8, 1834, conjointly addressed:

‘Joannibus Keble et Newman: _fratres ignavissimi, ut quid fecisti nobis sic_? as St. Thomas says to the Bishop of Poictiers…. The Bishop [of Barbados] is a thorough Z;[172] and I can make no impression on him, though I think I have frightened him. If he had not been as kind to me as one man can be to another, I should be terribly provoked with him sometimes…. You may like to know of my health: I really think I am getting well. I left England in the impression that I was μινυνθάδιος, as you may see in a scratched-out passage in one of my letters; since I have conceived hopes, I have become much more careful. I should not wonder, if I stayed here, till[173] I get quite rid of my cough. The Bishop’s library is a great piece of luck. I don’t think I am wasting my time here, independent of my health. I don’t ask how anyone is, for I shall certainly be gone before I can have an answer; and when I shall go to Yankland I do not know…. _Valete, et confortamini in Domino._’

The Rev. J. KEBLE to the Rev. J. H. NEWMAN, April, 1834.

‘… As to Froude, I know, of course, no more than the letters have told us both, and the first was so flattering that I was disappointed at the other; yet, on consideration, I see no additional reason for alarm. It seems much as it used to be, and we cannot be wrong in hoping the best. Anyone who remembers him three or four years ago must acknowledge that to have him now is much more than we could have been sure about. I wish him strong enough, please God, to take duty and wait on some flock. I think he would get more calm and less young in his notions, or rather in his way of putting them, which makes people who do not know him think him not a practical man. What a wise old[174] letter! Well, good-bye.’

On May 2, Hurrell makes to Mr. Keble the frank confession that he is not well enough to return to England, or to travel at all. He never saw the United States. He adds, referring to clauses in the Oriel Statutes, which he seems to have known by heart, ‘Try to satisfy the College that though my _ægritudo_ is _diutina_, it may not be _incurabilis_.’ And he goes on to say that a mathematical instructor is wanted at Codrington College,[175] ‘so I mean to offer myself, on condition of having a room given me, and being allowed to battel.[176] Mind, this is mere castle-building as yet, but it is ten to one it will be realised. In fact, unless I get suddenly and decidedly well before the end of this month, I see no chance against it; so will your worships have the goodness to get together a few sets of the [Oxford] Tracts; also three or four copies of a work[177] which I see much praised in _The British Magazine_, as coming from the pen of “a scholar, a man of refined taste, and above all, a Christian”; also a copy of an anonymous work called _The Christian Year_, which I forgot to bring with me; also the parts _Autumnalis_ and _Hyemalis_ of my Breviary; also any newspapers or reviews, or anything else which will throw light on your worships’ proceedings; and send the package to [my father]: let it be a good big one; and mind to send lots of Tracts, for I shall try hard to poison the minds of the natives out here…. There is a most commendable production in the supplemental December number, signed C.[178] Whose is it? he should be cultivated. I should like to see a good one on clergy praying with their faces to the Altar and backs to the congregation. In a Protestant Church the parson seems either to be preaching the prayers or worshipping the congregation…. The climate out here is certainly delicious, though it alters one’s metaphors a little: _e.g._, the shady side of the hedge would be the cheerful one. The only nuisance is that everything is so inelegant: money and luxury are the people’s sole objects, and their luxuries are only of the kind that can be enjoyed on the instant: no one counts on living here, so there are no porticos, no fountains, no avenues, nothing that makes the south of Europe such a fairyland. Windmills and boiling-houses, treeless fields and gardenless houses, are the only things one sees; except at my dreamed-of residence, Codrington College, where there is a grand avenue of gigantic palms,[179] a delicious spring of the freshest (nothing is cold here) clearest water, and a very tolerably nice flower-garden with mowed turf, and roses that smell, and almost complete seclusion. If I go there I shall turn sentimental, and sit παρὰ θῖνα θαλάσσης ἀτρυγέτοιο δακρυχέων. I wish I could be in England now, and see a little of “Nature’s tenderest, freshest green,” etc. Out here it is the leafless time….’

One circumstance which would turn Hurrell’s thoughts the more readily to a tutorship was that he could no longer be domestic Chaplain. The Bishop of Barbados had gone on a long visit to England.

Beginning in June of this year, and lasting into October, appeared in _The British Magazine_,[180] copious excerpts from the ancient Parish Books of Dartington. There is a very high value put now upon all such publications, and a very general interest in them; but one wonders how many readers of the time, brought up on controversy, begrudged the space given to the statistics of bygone village people. Archdeacon Froude sent up copies of his registers to London, in response to the behest of that busy antiquary in the making, his eldest son: that seems an obviously safe deduction.

Newman has something to say to the absentee on June 15.

‘Was it not a strange mishap, that much as you abused me for making you a cat’s paw, yet when the time of danger came, you should get out of the way, and leave innocent me to trouble? So it was: only think how mildly I have always spoken of Arnold, and how bitterly you! Never did I use a harsh word against him, I think, except that once, and then at Rome, and with but one or two friends.[181] Yet even from Rome those few words are dragged forth, and I have to answer for them…. In the next place, my _Tracts_ are abused as Popish; as for other things, so especially for expressions about the Eucharist. Here, as you well know, it was you who were apt to be unguarded, not I. I could tell you much, only it is renewing sorrows, and nothing else, of the plague the _Tracts_ have been to us, and how we have removed them to Rivington’s. That the said _Tracts_ have been of essential benefit it is impossible to doubt. Pamphlets, sermons, etc. on the Apostolic Succession are appearing in every part of the kingdom…. H[enry] Wilberforce engaged to marry Miss S[argent] last December, was afraid to tell me, and left Oxford without; spread abroad I had cut R[yder][182] for marrying. Yet he has not ratted,[183] and will not: so be it. Marriage, when a crime, is a crime which it is criminal to repent of.’

Poor Henry Wilberforce, caught red-handed, did not repent. He had poured forth various misgivings in the ear of the ever sympathetic Rogers. ‘Indeed, though I did not tell Neander (as who would?) yet I did tell his sister, and gave her leave to tell him…. I suppose, however, he will cut me. I cannot help it. At any rate, you must not…. Nor again, am I without a feeling of the danger, as you know, of married priests in these days of trouble and rebuke; but I have taken my line.’

‘It is needless to say,’ adds Miss Mozley in her narrative notes, ‘that “Neander” did not “cut” the writer of this letter, whose firstborn was subsequently his godson.’

But to return to Newman’s letter to Froude, which goes on:

‘I have long come to the conclusion that our time is not come, _i.e._, that other persons can do the day’s work as well as, or better than we can, our business being only to give them a shove now and then. You send home flaming papers, but, after all, I fall back to what I said last year on your articles about the Præmunire. Not that it is not right, very right, to accustom men’s imaginations to the prospect of changes; but they cannot realise the arguments: they are quite beyond them…. This is our gain, and I intend to make use of it…. Meanwhile let us read, and prepare ourselves for better things…. As to Rose, he is a fine fellow, certainly he is, and complains that he has no one, all through London, in whom he can confide. O that you were well enough to assist him in London! You are not fit to move of yourself, but you would act through Rose as spirit acts on external matter through a body. He has everything which you are without, and is so inflammable that not even muscles are more sensitive of volition than he would be of you.’

The ‘flaming papers,’ as Newman calls them, were the disconnected, wide-branching chapters dealing with various aspects of Rationalism in relation to doctrine, composed entirely at Barbados during 1834, and pieced together and published in 1839 from four incomplete manuscripts. Fragmentary as they are, they would, under careful editing, and coupled with the _State Interference_ and _Church Discipline_, display Froude’s tangential and remorseless intelligence at its very best.

The proposed conjunction of Froude with Rose was less than a dream: a flat impossibility. It is wonderful that Newman, who loved Rose truly in a measure, should never have quite sounded the reasons why he and Froude were not in closer accord and amity. When they were both in their untimely graves, Newman associated their memories as fellow-workers of the Will of God, in his comforting letter to Mr. Rose’s widow. But the two, clearly, were temperamental antipodes, partners in nothing but their stainless zeal, and their uncomplaining battle with long disease.

Once settled as instructor of mathematics to his young theologians, Hurrell pays epistolary dues to his father, and offers some ghostly counsel of a then drastic kind.

To the Ven. Archdeacon FROUDE, August 22, 1834.

‘… I am now at Codrington College, where Mr. P[inder][184] the Principal, and his wife, have made me very comfortable indeed. I am quite ashamed to think how much trouble they have taken. I have two rooms about thirteen by fourteen each, twelve high; the sitting room looks out on the Atlantic, which is about half a mile off at the bottom of a very steep hill to which the Babbacombe[185] one is nothing. The view is very pretty: the foreground is the Principal’s garden, which is the most English thing in the West Indies, they say: then comes some very rough uncultivated ground, some part of which is quite parkish; and at the bottom a beautiful little bay which just now, while the wind is south, is as still as a millpond.

‘I give two Lectures a day, which is an amusement, and helps me to avoid thinking, which is ruination, I am sure. Some of the youngsters are very stupid, some passable, and one rather clever; so that the work is not monotonous. I have commons from the College kitchen very comfortably, and since I have had the ordering of my own dinner, I have entirely left off animal food. My dinner is a sort of slimy vegetable, the name of which I forget, but which tastes something like an oyster; and custard pudding, and a tumbler of water. At breakfast I eat two eggs, and put lots of butter to my bread; it is only lately that I have got over my dislike to Barbados butter. The first hour after daylight, I work myself with dumb-bells, which is very dull, but they say a good thing; and washing afterwards is a great treat. Also I sometimes undress in the middle of the day, and have a bout at the same dull occupation to get an appetite for dinner; and about half-past five in the evening I get an hour’s walk: so I am doing all I can for myself if nature will but help me, and if my patience will hold out. The disheartening thing is, that if I ate a beefsteak and drank a bottle of porter and six glasses of wine a day, I don’t believe my pulse would rise or my cough increase an atom. However, I hope to give this abstemious plan a fair trial; for unless it weakens me, which I have not yet found, it can do no harm.

‘I wish you did not set your face so pertinaciously against any alteration in the mode of appointing Bishops; that is the real seat of the disorder of the Church: the more I think of it, the more sure I am that unless something is done about it, there must be a separation in the Church before long, and that I shall be one of the separatists. It will not do to say that you see great evils in any proposed new plan: that is a very good argument when the present state of things is good; but when a man is dying, it is poor wisdom in him to object that the plans the surgeons propose for his relief are painful and dangerous. There is another reform, which I have been thinking of lately more than I did before, though I have long thought something should be done about it; and it is one which every clergyman can make for himself without difficulty. I believe it to be the most indispensable of all the duties of external religion, that every one should receive the Communion as often as he has opportunity; and that if he has such opportunity every day of the week, it is his duty to take advantage of it every day of the week. And further, as an immediate corollary from this, I think it the duty of every clergyman to give the serious members of his congregation this opportunity as often as he can without neglecting other parts of his duty. Now at [Dartington] if you had the Communion every Sunday you might make sure of a sufficient number of communicants: and I don’t know of any other duty that you would have to neglect in consequence. Or, at any rate, you might have it every month without the slightest difficulty, and need assign no reason for the change; indeed, people would not find out at first that there was any change. I wish you would turn this over in your mind. I dare say you will think my view overstrained, and very likely it may be a little. Yet the more I think of it, the less doubtful it seems to me. I know that neither N[ewman][186] nor K[eble], when I left England, saw the thing in the light in which it now strikes me; they thought that it was desirable to have the Communion as often as possible, but still that the customs of particular places ought not to be changed without particular reason. But it really does seem to me that the Church of England has gone so very wrong in this matter, that it is not right to keep things smooth any longer. The administration of the Communion is one of the very few religious duties now performed by the clergy for which Ordination has ever been considered necessary. Preaching, and reading the Scriptures, is what a layman can do as well as a clergyman. And it is no wonder the people should forget the difference between ordained and unordained persons, when those who are ordained do nothing for them but what they could have done just as well without Ordination! If you are determined to have a pulpit in your Church, which I would much rather be without, do put it at the west end of the Church, or leave it where it is: every one can hear you perfectly; and what can they want more? But whatever you do, pray don’t let it stand in the light of the Altar, which, if there is any truth in my notions of Ordination, is more sacred than the Holy of Holies was in the Jewish Temple.

‘I have just heard that the postman is going, and so must write for my life. The College is about fourteen miles from Bridge Town, and about in the same latitude on the east side of the island. It is a long handsome stone building, which has been very ill-repaired since the hurricane. It consists of a Hall and Chapel, each about fifty feet long, with a handsome porch between them, and two wings in which the rooms are. I will give you a sketch in my next. The Principal’s house, which is a separate building at the west end, is a very good specimen of a Queen Anne house, only without chimneys. The carving of the staircase and doors is very costly, in cedar. It is so well built that the hurricane hardly hurt it at all. I generally drink tea there; but breakfast and dine in my rooms. I get out of bed as soon as it is light, if they bring me my coffee so soon; else I wait for it. You can’t think how odd one feels at getting up without a cup of it. I did not feel this at first, and perhaps it is only habit now. I breakfast at half-past eight, dine at three: give Lectures from twelve to two; and the rest of the day give my body as much exercise, and my mind as little, as I can. There are about fourteen students here: very little for so expensive an establishment. If I was the Bishop, I should not make it a place for the exclusive education of gentlemen, but should let the respectable coloured people, who had time and inclination to study divinity, come here and prepare for Orders, without insisting on Latin and Greek. These colonies are not ripe for supporting a learned clergy; the wealthy are too irreligious to pay towards the maintenance of anything like a sufficient number to look after the population. The Bishop should take people of the caste in life that the Wesleyan ministers come from, and taking care to keep a tight hand over them, should ordain all who have sufficient zeal and knowledge to undertake the burden. I will not even insist on their giving up their trades; for if a parish priest can keep a school, I am sure he may make shoes without giving up more of his time: and if St. Paul could maintain himself by tent-making while he discharged the duties of an Apostle, I don’t see why other people should not be able to maintain themselves as well, while they do the duties of a parish priest. The notion that a priest must be a gentleman is a stupid exclusive Protestant fancy, and ought to be exploded. If they would educate a lower caste here, they would fill the College directly.’

It was not long after the date of this letter that a restoration, not ‘an addition,’ as Mr. Thomas Mozley says,[187] was made, from Hurrell’s designs and under his superintendence, of Codrington College. The hurricane which had wrought the original havoc spent itself in August, 1831. The great porch between Chapel and Hall, an open passage locally known as the Belfry, was rebuilt, retaining the triple arch below, but not the cupola or small dome which formerly lifted itself over the palm-trees and the bridged waters. The whole remains as our amateur architect left it. Busy as he was, he thirsted for fuller news from home.

To FREDERIC ROGERS, Esq.,[188] Sept. 25, 1834.

‘… By the time you get this, it will be near a year since I have heard a word about you…. Of N[ewman] I heard as late as December 15, 1833: I have just referred to the rascal’s letter. But as to K[eble] and C[hristie] and you and the M[ozleys], I am in utter ignorance on which side the Styx you are all residing…. I have entirely left off animal food, which has cooled me without weakening me; and I have left off writing radicalism, which did myself harm, and no one else any good: for I see neither N[ewman] nor [Rose] will take any of it. Also, above all, I have left off thinking, which, on matured reflection, I am convinced is the great evil of human life…. If the sun was not so intensely hot as to make sitting in the open air intolerable (_N.B._, there is no shade here), I should take to drawing; but, somehow, there is not much to tempt one in that department. The lights and shades are here a third proportional to the lights and shades of an English summer day, and those on a moonlight night. Everything is one mass of brightness, except for the first and last half-hours of the day. The skies, too, are entirely deficient in that glow which one’s English imagination associates with heat; pale transparency, which one can hardly look at for its brilliance, stares at one on every side, and every part of the sky reflects so much light on every part of the landscape, that you may apply to day what Virgil says of night:

‘“――――_cœlum condidit [igne]
Jupiter, et rebus [lux] abstulit [alma] colorem_.”

‘The two things which I should like to make drawings of are the bread-fruit tree, and the particular kind of palm which, in the poetical language of the country, they call the cabbage-tree; both of which are certainly very beautiful, the former most especially so; and both so unlike anything English, that I don’t yet understand how to touch the foliage…. I have two very pleasant rooms in the pleasantest spot in the whole island, and battel just as at Oxford, which serves to keep up a pleasant illusion. The College is about four hundred feet above the sea, which is about two-thirds of a mile off, and the aspect of my sitting-room is straight towards England; so that when I am sentimental and dumpish,

πόντον ἐπ’ ἀτρύγετον δερκέσκομαι ἀχνύμενος κήρ.

‘This windward coast is for ever exposed to the full roll of the Atlantic, and its monotonous perturbation wearies one’s imagination, as well as the mud and sand, neither of which does it suffer to repose for a moment. I often wish for what I used to think no very interesting object, the motionless calms of Torbay or Dartmouth.’

‘Rogers heard from Froude yesterday,’ runs a postscript of Newman to Keble on Nov. 10. ‘He says nothing about his health, but is evidently homesick and lonely.’ And two days after, Newman tenderly explains to Hurrell himself: ‘I am not surprised you should be so unjust to me, for I should be so to you under the same circumstances. You see we expected you here with the Bishop of Barbados till the middle of May, and therefore did not send letters. When we found him here without you, we instantly began to write; by accidents which we could not help (_e.g._, the box was a fortnight on the road to Dartington), it was August before it was off. However, you had news of Oxford up to the minute of its going…. Keble’s father has taken to his bed, and is so ill that Keble does not leave him.’

Meanwhile, Hurrell had pursued his grievance, attacking Mr. Keble with wistful humour, during October. ‘I wish I knew Horace’s receipt for giving the sound of a swan to mute fishes,[189] and I most certainly should administer you a dose. I know you must have a great deal on your hands, so I should be contented with extracting only two pages in as big a hand as an idle undergraduate’s theme: but I really do wish to hear something of you…. Concerning your worship’s self, I have been able to collect that you were in existence on or about the 12th of June last…. [Davison’s?] death was a great surprise to me, and I may almost say a shock, as I had always looked to him to do something great for us…. Do you know, I partly fear that you … are going to back out of the conspiracy and leave me and [Newman] to our fate? I mean to ally myself to him in a close league, and put as much mischief into his head as I can. He has sent me a great many of his pamphlets, etc., which I admire greatly for their ἦθος and execution; and I have written back to him, pointing out wherein I think him too conservative.’

The deceased colleague may well have been John Davison, who had died on the sixth day of May, 1834; but Hurrell would not have seen the announcement before July. Davison is commonly reckoned as one of the old school, the Oriel Noetics, or Liberals; but there is a contrary impression of him to be drawn from some charming pages in Mozley’s _Reminiscences_.[190] Newman twice names him with Rose as a steadfast encourager of the earliest _Tracts_.[191] There is no doubt that he sympathised with the Tractarians more than his indecisive habit would suffer him to testify by deed, and he was much beloved by them. Hurrell’s expectation of ‘something great’ from him would almost inevitably centre about the Scripture Commentary which he was known to be writing and rewriting, but his fastidious self-criticism got the better of that and him, after a most Oxonian fashion, as he directed his widow to burn all his manuscripts. Besides, he was fifty-seven, and naturally preferred an evening siesta on Troy Wall to any chances of war. Newman, looking back, wrote feelingly of him in April, 1842: ‘It is surely mysterious, considering what the world is, how it needs improvement, and, moreover, that this life is the appropriate time for action, or, what is emphatically called in Scripture, work, that they who seem gifted for the definite purpose of influencing and edifying their brethren, should be allowed to do so much less than might be expected…. Left to ourselves, we are apt to grudge that the powers of such a mind as [Mr. Davison’s] have not had full range in his age and country, and that a promise of such high benefits should, owing to circumstances beyond man’s control, have been but partially accomplished.’[192]

Hurrell’s playful use of the word ‘conspiracy’ to indicate the Movement, will be noted. It was habitual with him from the first. It irritated many excellent persons at the time; it irritated Dean Burgon fifty years later. In the chapter devoted to Mr. Rose, in _Twelve Good Men_, Dean Burgon administers to Hurrell an oblique rebuke. ‘Froude, a man of splendid abilities and real genius, but sadly wanting in judgment and of fatal indiscretion, rendered the good cause the greatest disservice in his power by speaking of the Hadleigh Conference in a letter to a friend as “the conspiracy”: which letter was soon afterward published.’ Yet the word was really employed, and it may have been even invented, a fortnight before the meeting at Hadleigh, by none other than Mr. William Palmer! ‘Now I hope you will be able to join in this little plan and conspiracy,’ he wrote to Mr. Perceval on July 10, 1833. A more recent, and an equally historic use of the word (not ironic in the least, this time), is Archbishop Tait’s, in condemning the publications of the Society of the Holy Cross:[193] ‘to counteract what I feel obliged to call a CONSPIRACY within our own body against the doctrine, the discipline and the practice of our Reformed Church.’

In this later Newman correspondence, as Miss Mozley the Editor of it remarks, ‘R. H. Froude appears more as critic than originator or author. His more intimate friends required his criticism, and rested on his judgment. In his own person, this faculty acted mainly as a check. He often speaks of trial and failure in his own attempts to bring out what was working in his mind; as, for instance: “I have tried to write a criticism on the Apollo [Belvedere], but cannot bring out my meaning, which is abstruse and metaphysico-poetical. I always get bombastic, and am forced to scratch out.” His critical faculty was too masterful to be practised upon himself, but when exercised for the benefit of friends to whom he looked up, he could give free license to a pungent pen, and yet leave the modern reader to understand how anxious those friends might well be to secure his comments, as long as they were attainable. Keble, in his own simple way, sends his papers to his old pupil to be overlooked by him; and Mr. Newman was more at ease with Froude’s _imprimatur_. Thus, he sends him draughts of papers; for example, “No. 2, Keble’s, No. 1, mine”; with the order: “criticise the whole very accurately in matter and style, and send it back by return of post.” Of course the state of Froude’s health made criticism more possible than authorship, but, also, different intellectual powers and functions are called into play.’[194]

It is certainly noticeable enough, in all the intercourse of these years, between Keble, Newman and Froude, how the ordinary business of the University is completely ignored. It is like necromancy to remember that men were really still hastily reading the _Ethics_ by the fire, and emptying bottles, and, with their pipes, racing off to Shotover, through the white salve-like mud, for a constitutional. ‘The _Tracts_,’ says Mr. Mark Pattison sadly, ‘desolated Oxford life, and suspended, for an indefinite period, all science and humane letters, and the first strivings for intellectual freedom which had moved in the bosom of Oriel.’ Such æsthetic havoc was never caused in a city, unless under Savonarola, when all the wonted social graces went to the dust-bin, and works of art made acceptable fagots, and Christ was hailed, without legal precedent, King of Florence.

On November 18, 1834, Newman resumes, in reference to complaints from Hurrell, ‘suffering under intolerable delays incident to distant correspondence in those days’:

‘I am so angry with you, I cannot say! Have we not sent you a full box? That up to Sept. 29 you had not received it, is as hard for us to bear as for you. Why will you not have a little faith?… I suppose all this is for your good. You want a taming in various ways. It is to wean you from your over-interest in politics … so you see you are being taught to unlearn the world, the ecclesiastical as well as the worldly world. A strange thought came across me about you some six weeks ago, when I saw a letter from Tucker[195] of C. C. C., giving an account of his prospects in India. He is not at all an imaginative or enthusiastic man; but really, a religious spirit has sprung up among military men at our stations, and having no angel to direct them to Joppa, they have turned Evangelicals. The various sects there have a leaning towards the Church, and the men of colour are forming centres of operation. My thought was, if your health would not let you come home, you ought to be a Bishop in India….’

What Newman did not confess to his friend was that he had dreamed of their fates as one: he, too, would be a Bishop in India. To his sister Jemima he had written from Tunbridge Wells on October 2: ‘I have been much struck with a most sensible account of the state of India just received here from Mr. Tucker, in almost every word of which (it is full of practical and doctrinal matters), I agree. Though he is a Calvinist, I do believe our differences would, in India, almost be a matter of a few words. He gives a most exciting account of his field of labour, without intending it. At this moment, could I choose, and have all circumstances and providences at my disposal, I would go as an independent Bishop to his part of India, and found a Church there. This, you will say, is an ambitious flight. I am sure some one ought to be sent as Bishop; but the State, the State! we are crippled. I can fancy the day coming when India might be a refuge, if our game was up here.’ Froude agreed. He says elsewhere: ‘The present Church system is an incubus upon the country. It spreads its arms in all directions, claiming the whole surface of the earth for its own, and refusing a place to any subsidiary system to spring upon. Would that the waters would throw up some Acheloides, where some new Bishop might erect a See beyond the blighting influence of our upas trees.[196] Yet I suppose that before he could step in, an Act of Parliament would put its paw upon the κρησφύγετον, and include it within the limits of some adjacent diocese. I admire [Mozley’s?] hit about our being united to the State as Israel was to Egypt.’

To return to the letter sent to Barbados on November 18. Around this half-quaint suggestion of young mitred revolutionaries in unhampered Sees, Newman’s love and genius break forth together.

‘It quite amused[197] me for awhile, and made me think how many posts there are in His Kingdom, how many offices, who says to one “Do this, and he doeth it,” etc. It is quite impossible that some way or other you are not destined to be the instrument of God’s purposes. Though I saw the earth cleave and you fall in, or Heaven open, and a chariot appear, I should say just the same. God has ten thousand posts of service. You might be of use in the central elemental fire; you might be of use in the depths of the sea.’

To the editor of the _Letters and Correspondence to 1845_ we owe, again, this enriching footnote:

‘In Vol. ii. of the _Parochial Sermons_ (Ascension Day, p. 214) there is a passage which throws light on this ardent confident strain, prompted as it is evidently by the failure of hope in his friend’s recovery for service in this present scene. “Moreover, this departure of Christ and coming of the Holy Ghost leads our minds with great comfort to the thought of many lower dispensations of Providence towards us…. This is a thought which is particularly soothing as regards the loss of friends, or of especially gifted men who seem, in their day, the earthly support of the Church…. Doubtless, ‘it is expedient’ they should be taken away; otherwise some great mercy will not come to us. They are taken away, perchance, to other duties in God’s service equally ministrative to the salvation of the elect as earthly service. Christ went to intercede with the Father: we do not know, we may not boldly speculate, yet it may be that Saints departed intercede, unknown to us, for the victory of the Truth upon earth … they are taken away for some purpose surely; their gifts are not lost to us; their soaring minds, the fire of their contemplations, the sanctity of their desires, the vigour of their faith, the sweetness and gentleness of their affections, were not given without an object.”’

Lastly, the long letter closes with a little budget of news welcome to the exile, and with its crowded mention of names unforgotten, familiar fifty years after as they were then.

‘The Tracts now form a thick volume. We have put a title-page and preface to them, and called them _Tracts for 1833-4_. I think you will like them, as a whole. You go too fast yourself. Williams has been so unwell, we were going to send him out to you; but he has lately mended. I have just engaged with Rivington to publish another volume of _Sermons_. The first volume was nearly sold off in the course of nine months: one thousand copies. I have not dared all along to indulge the hope that I should be favoured with having you here again; but now really the prospect seems clearing. I do not like to say so, lest I break a spell! Rogers’ eyes are little or not at all better. Gladstone is turning out a fine fellow. Harrison has made him confess that the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession is irresistible.’

A long letter to Newman, on Nov. 23, opens: ‘Do you know, I am hungry and thirsty to hear about you, and whether your health stands, in the midst of your occupations? My father tells me your _Sermons_ are talked of in all directions…. I have entirely left off meat; my dinner is toast, and a basin of very weak chicken broth. Breakfast is my chief meal, and consists of a vast joram[198] of milk and arrow-root. It is an odd thing, [as] milk never used to agree with me, but I find that by putting a good lot of cinnamon into it, I can digest any quantity. I find I must not take exercise so as to put me out of breath, as that increases my cough, yet the more I take the stronger I get; so that I am in a dilemma, which I shall cut by borrowing one of the Bishop’s horses instead of walking. I am perforce as idle as possible, my chief occupation being to keep thoughts out of my head. In this respect I find my friend Sanctus Thomas[199] of infinite use. Dawdling over translations, and picking facts out of allusions just keep one going for the time, without supplying any materials to brood over. If you see Keble, congratulate him on the Yank edition of _The Christian Year_,[200] which has gone on Oakeley’s[201] plan of putting the fine passages in italics. It is amusing to see the selection which he[202] has made…. As to sentiment, I am heartily tired of this place and climate. I am sure it has been too hot for me, particularly during August, September, and October, the hurricane months. I fancy, too, if there was something more to interest one, I should have been benefited by it. Niggerland is a poor substitute for the _limen Apostolorum_! However, I do verily believe that if I had stayed in England I should have had a confirmed disease on my lungs by this time…. I have not written a verse since I have been out here, and could not, for the life of me…. If I had the necessary books here, I should like much to get together materials for the Lives of Bishops Andrewes, Cosin, and Overall. They might be made into a nice first volume for a series of Lives of Apostolical Divines of the Church of England: a genus which seems to me to have come into existence about the beginning of James I., and to have become extinct with the Nonjurors…. I wish I could say, as John of Salisbury of Saint Thomas: “_Domino Cantuarensi, quoad literaturam et mores, plurimum profuit exilium illud._” But somehow I think I have become even more uncharitable and churlish than I was!’

Hurrell addressed both Christie and Newman on Saint Stephen’s Day. The letter to the former caused immense laughter at Oriel. ‘Even Froude is beginning to joke about matrimony!’ writes James Mozley to his sister. Never was a joke in less danger of becoming practical.

_St Stephen’s day_――
_My dear Christie_――

_When I come home I mean to rat-&-be married: i.e, if I can
hook in any one to be such a fool. The great difference
between A wife & a friend is that a wife cannot cut one, & a
friend can. It is a bad thing περισσὰ φρονεῖν so I shall
certainly rat. I see that little goose H. W. has gone the
way of all flesh. Old Ryder’s apostacy I knew of before.
Isaac cannot hold out long if he is not fall’n already. So
why should you & I be wiser than our neighbours?_