Life of Cardinal Newman 22

Chapter 22. A New Archbishop (1865-1866)
{79} THE unbending opposition of Manning and Ward to the Oxford scheme was marked, no doubt, by the special characteristics of these two men. But the general policy they enforced was that of Rome. The opposition to mixed education was, as we have already seen, a part of the general opposition of Rome to anything that might infect Catholics with the principles and maxims of a civilisation which threatened to become more and more hostile to the Church's claims. Pius IX. had for years been emphasising and reprobating the divorce of modern civilisation from the Catholic Church, in a series of public utterances. He was the first Pope who reigned after Gallicanism was practically defunct, and the spirit represented in De Maistre's great work 'Du Pape' had triumphed. In former Pontificates an Encyclical letter had been a rare event called for by some exceptional crisis. But under Pius IX. came a new departure, which has since been pursued by his successors, of issuing frequent Allocutions and Encyclical letters on questions of the day. Louis Veuilot and his friends had long pressed for a yet more emphatic condemnation of the offences of the modern world, and in December 1864 Pius IX. issued the famous 'Syllabus' and the Encyclical Quanta Cura. The Quanta Cura renewed the Papal protests of fifteen years. The Syllabus Errorum was a list of the propositions condemned as erroneous in earlier Encyclicals and Allocutions. The fresh emphasis given to the Papal protests by their collection and republication and the vehement tone of the Encyclical created a great sensation. There was an outcry in England, and the Holy Father was said to have declared war against modern civilization. The more {80} moderate Catholics, like Bishop Dupanloup, regretted the appearance of the Syllabus Errorum [Note 1]. They held that its general purport was sure to be interpreted by the public as being in accord with the views of the extreme party which had pressed for its issue. Dupanloup published a comment on its text, in which he contended that interpretation according to the rules of technical theology would reduce the scope of its condemnations to little or nothing more than a statement of Christian principles in the face of a non-Christian civilisation. Nevertheless it was the party of Louis Veuillot whose interpretation was, in fact—as Dupanloup had feared beforehand—regarded by the world at large as the authoritative one; and people quoted the 'Syllabus' as ruling to be unorthodox the aims and views of 'Liberal' Catholics—a term which had been applied to such devoted sons of the Church as Montalembert and Lacordaire as well as to free lances like Lord Acton and Professor Friedrich. For the Univers and the Monde all Liberal Catholics had one head, and the Encyclical cut it off. 'Every Liberal,' we read in the Monde of January 10, 1865, 'falls necessarily under the reprobation of the Encyclical. In vain is equivocation attempted by distinguishing the true Liberal and the false Liberal.' Newman had from the first, as we have seen, largely sympathised with the policy of moderate Liberal Catholics (so called) like Lacordaire and Montalembert. And he shared their anxiety as to the effect of the 'Syllabus' on the public mind, especially in England. He of course received the Encyclical with the submission due to all that came from the Holy See; but his general feeling as to its effect on the position of English Catholics is sufficiently apparent in the following letter to Father Ambrose St. John, who was staying at Oxford soon after its publication.

'I am glad you are seeing the Puseyites. I suppose they will be asking you questions about the Encyclical. There are some very curious peculiarities about it, which make it difficult to speak about it, till one hears what theologians say. Condemned propositions are (so far as I know, or as Henry or Stanislas know), propositions taken out of some book, the statements "libri cujusdam auctoris." These are not such, {81} nor do they pretend to be,—they are abstract propositions. Again, the Pope in condemning propositions condemns the books or statements of Catholics,—not of heathen or unbaptized, for what has he to do in judging "those that are without"? Now these propositions are mostly the propositions of "Acatholici." Moreover, it is rather a Syllabus of passages from his former allocutions, &c., than a Syllabus of erroneous utterances. And accordingly he does not affix the epithets, "haeresi proximae, scandalosae, &c." but merely heads the list as a "Syllabus of errors." Therefore it is difficult to know what he means by his condemnation. The words "myth," "non-interference," "progress," "toleration," "new civilisation," are undefined. If taken from a book, the book interprets them, but what interpretation is there of popular slang terms? "Progress," e.g., is a slang term. Now you must not say all this to your good friends, but I think you will like to know what seems to be the state of the case. First, so much they ought to know, that we are bound to receive what the Pope says, and not to speak about it. Secondly, there is little that he says but would have been said by all high churchmen thirty years ago, or by the Record or by Keble now. These two points your friends ought to take and digest. For the rest, all I can say (entre nous) is that the advisers of the Holy Father seem determined to make our position in England as difficult as ever they can. I see this issue of the Encyclical,—others I am not in a position to see. If, in addition to this, the matter and form of it are unprecedented, I do not know how we can rejoice in its publication.'

The extreme party took action at this time in another matter besides the 'Syllabus' and the Oxford question. The Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom had been vigorously denounced in Rome by Faber and by Manning and Ward, and was condemned by the Holy Office in a letter 'to the English Bishops' in the autumn of 1864. Catholics were forbidden to belong to the Association. Manning held that the efforts of the society discouraged conversions to the Catholic Church.

Newman had declined to join the A.P.U.C. (as it was called), but other Catholics, while making clear their rejection of the Anglican theory of 'three branches,' had given their names to it. And Newman himself deplored the spirit that pressed for extreme measures against it. {82}

'I cannot help,' he wrote to Father Coleridge, 'feeling sorrow at the blow struck by the Holy Office at the members of the A.P.U.C. ... and now if they are led to suppose that all Catholics hold with Ward and Faber, we shall be in a melancholy way to seconding that blow.'

To Mr. Ambrose Philipps de Lisle he wrote in the same strain:

'February 13th, 1865.
'I feel quite as you do on the Oxford question and the other questions you introduce, but it is one's duty to submit. For myself, I did not see my way to belong to the Union Association—but I think its members have been treated cruelly. As to the Encyclical, without looking at it doctrinally, it is but stating a fact to say that it is a heavy blow and a great discouragement to us in England. There must be a reaction sooner or later—and we must pray God to bring it about in His good time, and meanwhile to give us patience.'

Newman's calm estimate of the Encyclical and 'Syllabus' was given ten years later in his letter to the Duke of Norfolk in which he defended these documents against Mr. Gladstone's attacks. At that time they could be read in the light of their own text and of the comments of the theological school in the intervening period. But at the moment when the above letters were penned the two documents came upon the world together with the exaggerated interpretations of militant Catholic journalists. They came to the world, he complained, through newspapers which claimed them as party utterances. His devotion to Pius IX. never wavered nor his sympathy with him in the outrages of which he was the object. But, like Dupanloup and many others, Newman seems to have regretted an event which gave the opportunity to Monsieur Veulliot and his friends of urging extreme views in the Pope's name. It was hard to contradict these men publicly without seeming, to unthinking Catholics, to take up a lower level of loyalty than theirs, to show a less intense aversion to the enemies of the Church.

The uncompromising spirit which Newman deplored was nowhere more visible than in W. G. Ward's comments in the Dublin Review, on the utterances of Pius IX., his Allocutions, Briefs, and Encyclical letters. Ward remarked {83} on their unprecedented frequency, and treated them as in consequence giving to Catholics of the nineteenth century an unprecedented degree of infallible guidance. He interpreted the documents in exactly the opposite spirit to Dupanloup, insisting that they condemned the views of Montalembert and his friends. His articles had considerable influence. The fashion spread of regarding as 'disloyal' those Catholics who were alive to the practical or intellectual difficulties attaching to extreme views. The Dublin Review, coining a word, nicknamed them 'minimisers.'

The character and frequency of the utterances of Pius IX. being to some extent a new phenomenon, theologians were not at once prepared to estimate their exact authority. Even W. G. Ward, who at first took the most extreme view, eventually admitted in the course of controversy that the Pontiff spoke at times, in his official utterances on doctrine, not as Doctor Universalis or infallibly, but as Gubernator doctrinalis with no claim to infallibility. But in 1864 he was making unqualified statements which distressed Newman. Ward boldly maintained [Note 2] that Pius IX. spoke infallibly far oftener than previous Pontiffs, and he rejoiced at the fact. He pressed every doctrinal instruction, contained in a fresh Encyclical, as binding on the conscience of every Catholic under pain of mortal sin. Newman considered Ward's position to be paradoxical, and was anxious to secure careful and theological treatment of the situation.

Half a year after the publication of the 'Syllabus,' W. G. Ward wrote to the Weekly Register declaring that the Encyclical and 'Syllabus' were beyond question the Church's infallible utterances. Newman held that such a statement if it passed unchallenged would drive many of those who were living in the world and realised the difficulties of the situation, towards Liberalism and freethought. He knew that Ward's opinion was not that of the distinguished theologian Father O'Reilly, with whom he had formerly discussed the question, and he wrote to Father Bittleston, who was in Ireland, proposing to publish a letter, with the approval of Father O'Reilly, expressing the opposite opinion to Ward's: {84}

'Private. The Oratory, Birham: July 29th, '65.
'My dear Henry,—I wish you would look at Ward's letter in the Register of this day. I am much tempted, almost as a matter of duty, to write to the editor as follows:

'"Sir,—A sentence in a letter inserted in your paper of last Saturday (Saturday 29th) runs thus: 'The recent Encyclical and Syllabus are, beyond question, the Church's infallible utterance.' I beg to say that I do not subscribe to this proposition. '"JOHN H. NEWMAN."

'My reason is, charity to a number of persons, chiefly laymen, whom such doctrine will hurry in the direction of Arnold [Note 3]. There must be a stop put to such extravagances.

'My difficulty is, lest to do so, should bring some blow on the Oratory.

'I write to you, however, principally for this: viz. I must have a good theological opinion on my side, and whom am I to consult? It strikes Ambrose that Stanislas [Note 4] is the best person—but then, if he knows it is I who ask, he will not give me an unbiassed judgment.

'So I want you to write to him calling his attention to the letter—and asking him whether it would be theologically safe for you or some other priest to put the above letter into the paper. If he could be got to get Fr. O'Reilly's opinion in confidence (not on the doctrine, but on the Catholic's liberty of denying Ward's proposition as it stands) so much the better, e.g. if Fr. O'Reilly could see my letter, and were asked simply "is that letter admissible Catholically, or is it not?"

'A more dignified way would be, if some layman wrote to me, calling my attention to the proposition, and asking what I thought of it, and my writing my letter in answer, and his putting it in the Paper. But this is a matter for future consideration ... Ever yours affly,
J. H. N.'

The project fell through, as Father O'Reilly was not disposed to move in the matter or to repeat in writing at a critical juncture the opinion he had given earlier.

'The Oratory, Birmingham: Aug. 4/65.
'My dear H.,—Thank you for your and S.'s letters. Of course it puts an end to the whole scheme. {85}

'1. As to my bringing out my views, it is absurd.

'2. I fully think with S., and have ever said, that we must wait patiently for a reaction.

'3. But if there are no protests, there will be no reaction.

'4. I want simply a protest; and that, as one out of a number of accumulating pebbles which at length would fill the urna divina.

'5. I feel extremely (tho' I am only conjecturing) for a number of laymen, especially converts—and for those who are approaching the Church—who find all this a grievous scandal.

'6. But further, which is a practical point, if I am asked, did this convert, that inquirer, or some controversialist appeal to me and ask me, What am I to say?

'7. What then am I to say? This might come upon me any day suddenly.

'It is best then to wait patiently and not to forestall a crisis, but it is quite certain that any day I may be obliged to give an answer. I really do wish I had a distinct opinion given me as my safeguard,—in confidence of course.

'But after all, priests all thro' the country will follow Ward, if he is let alone—and how much more difficult will a collision be ten years hence than now!

'I may not see that time—and I should care nothing for any personal obloquy which might come on me now, so that I am sure of my ground. How very hard a man like Father O'Reilly will not at least in confidence speak out! Unless he has changed, I know he could not, simply, subscribe that sentence.
Ever yours affly,
J. H. N.'

Newman felt himself powerless to act. But he did not rest until he had pressed his question home in Rome itself; and eighteen months later he had the satisfaction of learning from Ambrose St. John that the Roman theologians whom he conversed with agreed with himself in withholding from the Encyclical the character of an infallible utterance. This fact is recorded in a letter to Mr. F. R. Ward [Note 5]. {86}

Cardinal Wiseman died in February 1865, but, as we have seen, not before he had, under Manning's influence, both put an end to the Oxford scheme and inflicted the blow already spoken of on the Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom. Newman's mind went back to memories of the Cardinal's early kindness to him, and he preached a sermon on the work he had done, which made a marked impression on the Oratorian Fathers. The great funeral followed, which brought so astonishing a demonstration of interest and respect that the Times declared that there had been nothing like it since the funeral of the Duke of Wellington. Newman was not present at the funeral.

He wrote of Wiseman to their common friend Dr. Russell on March 2:

'The Cardinal has done a great work—and I think has finished it. It is not often that this can be said of a man. Personally I have not much to thank him for, since I was a Catholic. He always meant kindly, but his impulses, kind as they were, were evanescent, and he was naturally influenced by those who got around him—and occupied his ear. In passing through London last St. Charles's day, quite providentially (for I call it so) I called on him. He was then very ill—but he saw me for ten minutes. I have not seen him alone 6 or 7 times in the last 13 years. It was considerate in the parties, whoever they were, concerned in his funeral arrangements, that I was not asked to attend. I really should not have been able without risk, yet it would have been painful to refuse. What a wonderful fact is the reception given to his funeral by the population of London! And the newspapers remark that the son of that Lord Campbell, who talked of trampling upon his Cardinal's Hat 14 years ago, was present at the Requiem Mass.'

For a moment Newman hoped that the great predominance of Manning's influence in Rome, which meant the still more intransigeant influence of his close ally W. G. Ward, might come to an end with the Cardinal's death. {87}

Dr. Ullathorne was spoken of as a possible successor to Wiseman, and had he been Archbishop, Newman's own influence in the Church would have been quite on a new footing. But it was not to be. Manning himself was appointed by the Holy See. With him as Archbishop, and Ward as his counsellor and editor of the Dublin Review, the prospect was black indeed.

Newman's language on Manning's appointment was, however, generous, though guarded.

'As to the new Archbishop,' he writes to a friend on May 15, 'the appointment at least has the effect of making Protestants see, to their surprise, that Rome is not distrustful of converts, as such. On the other hand it must be a great trial to the old Priesthood; to have a neophyte set over them all. Some will bear it very well,—I think our Bishop will—but I cannot prophesy what turn things will take on the whole. He has a great power of winning men where he chooses. Witness the fact of his appointment,—but whether he will care to win inferiors, or whether his talent extends to the case of inferiors as well as superiors, I do not know.

'One man has one talent, another another. You speak of me. I have generally got on well with juniors, but not with superiors. My going to Rome, as you wish me, would only be, as indeed it has been already, an additional instance of this.'

To Mr. Ornsby, who lamented that Manning and not Newman himself was to be placed at the head of English Catholics, he writes on May 20:

'Thank you for your notice of myself in re Archi-episcopatus, but such preferment is not in my line. Were it offered me I should unhesitatingly decline it, and my unsuitableness is felt by those who determine these things as fully as it is by myself. However, Manning's rise is marvellous. In fourteen years a Protestant Archdeacon is made Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, with the whole body of old Catholics,—Bishops and all—under him. At the moment he is very unpopular, but, I suppose, there will be a reaction. Protestants cannot but be pleased to see an Oxford man, a Fellow of Merton, a parson, make his way to the top of the tree in such a communion as the Roman,—and success is the goddess of an Englishman—"Te nos facimus, Fortuna, deam." Then, as to Catholics, a man in {88} authority has such great opportunities of recovering his ground, if he chooses to employ them. He will gradually fill the Chapter with his own men. He will make Missionary Rectors, and do private services. Then his great qualifications will overcome the laity. And he has such power of persuasion that, if he chooses it, he will be able to bring over the Bishops.'

The new Archbishop-elect began with conciliation. Indeed, the general unpopularity of his appointment made conciliation an urgent necessity. He offered to obtain for Newman a titular Bishopric, but Newman declined. 'He wants to put me in the House of Lords and muzzle me,' Newman said. Indeed, the following letters show that he made it a condition of attending the Archbishop's consecration that he should desist from any such attempt.

DR. MANNING TO DR. NEWMAN

'St. Joseph's Retreat: May 30, 1865.
'My dear Newman,—In calling to mind the old and dear Friends who would pray for me at this moment your name arose among the first; and I cannot refrain from writing to ask you to give me the happiness and consolation of your being with me on the 8th of June next at Moorfields. No one will better know than you how much I need your prayers.

'I will give directions that places shall be reserved for you, and for Father St. John and that some one should be ready to receive you if you will call at the house, 22 Finsbury Circus, if you can kindly come.

'I was in Birmingham two months ago, and was starting to see you when I found my time too short to reach you.

'I was glad to hear the other day that you are well and strong.
Believe me, always
Yours very affectionately,
H. E. MANNING.'

DR. NEWMAN TO DR. MANNING

'May 31, 1865.
'My dear Archbishop,—On hearing of your appointment I said Mass for you without delay. I will readily attend your consecration—on one condition which I will state presently. As I come as your friend, not as a Father of the Birmingham Oratory, I do not propose to bring any other Father with me. I am sure you will allow me to escape any {89} dinner or other meeting, as such public manifestations are so much out of my way. Nor do they come into the object of your asking me; which is, as you have said, to have my prayers at the function itself.

'The condition I make is this:—A year or two back I heard you were doing your best to get me made a bishop in partibus. I heard this from two or three quarters, and I don't see how I can be mistaken. If so, your feeling towards me is not unlikely to make you attempt the same thing now. I risk the chance of your telling me that you have no such intention, to entreat you not to entertain it. If such an honour were offered to me, I should persistently decline it, very positively, and I do not wish to pain the Holy Father, who has always been so kind to me, if such pain can be avoided. Your allowing me then to come to your consecration, I shall take as a pledge that you will have nothing to do with any such attempts.
J. H. N.'

DR. MANNING TO DR. NEWMAN

'June 4, 1865.
'My dear Newman,—It will be a happiness to me to know that you are with me on Thursday. And I therefore will not contest what you write. But if you have not destroyed a letter I wrote you when what you refer to was first intended many years ago, you will know my mind. I think that such an intention ought not to have been suspended. And I have for more than two years done my part to accomplish it. I do not look upon it as a mere decoration, but as having its fitness in many relations. You have known me well enough to know that decorations have no worth with either of us. But your wish must be final with me. You will be able to come and go freely by the house 22 Finsbury Circus. But I hope you will let me see you. I shall be there by a little after nine. I thank you much for your kindness in saying Mass for me. I will not fail to do so for you. And I thank you for the kind words with which I believe you have commended me to the prayers of your Flock.
'Believe me, always, my dear Newman,
Yours affectionately,
H. E. MANNING.'

Newman came to London for the Archbishop's consecration on June 7, staying for the occasion with his old {90} friend, Sir Frederick Rogers. He planned at the same time a farewell visit to Keble at Hursley—they had not met for twenty years. This was, however, postponed; but another old friend, R. W. Church, was invited to meet him at Rogers' house.

'The Oratory, Birmingham: June 4th, 1865.
'My dear Rogers,—I shall rejoice to see Church. As we have put off the Hursley expedition, I shall have Copeland alone in his nest at Farnham. I come up to town Wednesday morning, get through various jobs and see various people, and I propose to get to you by seven p.m., which, I consider, will be not later than your dinner hour. It is Ember Day, but, as I shall have had a working day, I mean to take the liberty of working men, and eat as much roast beef as you will give me.

'The consecration is fixed as early as 10 a.m. Therefore I shall have to beg a little breakfast before nine, and must allow an hour for getting to Moorfields. I meant to have asked you the name of a coach-keeper (what is the business called?) near you, from whom I could hire a brougham for half a day. The service I expect will be very long—Dr. Ullathorne's consecration in 1846, the only one I was ever at in England, was four hours. I don't wait for the déjeuner, if there be one; but, as there will be lots of people there, I shall find it difficult to get away. I want you to keep me till Friday if you can. If so, I hope to dine with you on Thursday as well as Wednesday.

'It is very pleasant the thought of seeing you in Devonshire,—but I don't see the way to it.
'Ever yours affectionately,
JOHN H. NEWMAN.'

The meeting with Rogers was probably a pleasure more free from sad associations than the ceremony at Moorfields. Newman writes of it thus to Mrs. Froude:

'Nothing could be more easy and familiar than his manners with me now. My surmise is, that he thinks me a profoundly sceptical thinker, who, determined on not building on an abyss, have, by mere strength of will, bridged it over and built upon my bridge—but that my bridge, like Mahomet's coffin, is self suspended, by the action of the will—but I may be putting it too strong. He himself is not nearly so sceptical as I had feared. I like Lady Rogers very much.' {91}

One of the first things which claimed the attention of the new Archbishop was the publication of Dr. Pusey's 'Eirenicon.' The action of Manning and of Rome in connection with the A.P.U.C. naturally angered Pusey, and in 1865 he was engaged in writing an attack on extravagances current among Catholics in belief and devotion. These extravagances were represented by him as barriers to reunion, but nevertheless he gave his book the name of 'Eirenicon.' He made considerable use, in illustration of his theme, of Faber's strong language on the Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and of Ward's articles in the Dublin Review on Papal Infallibility. To this course, which he communicated to Newman in a letter before the book appeared, Newman demurred. He did not consider that either Faber's or Ward's views were representative. 'I believe,' he wrote to Pusey in reference to Faber's writings, 'that judicious people think them crude and young, perhaps extravagant. He was a poet.'

Of Ward he spoke in a letter dated September 5. Pusey had written to his friend offering the gift of his book, and wondering whether its appearance would call forth any comment from the pen of Newman himself. Newman replied as follows:

'The Oratory, Birmingham: Sept. 5th, 1865.
'For myself, I don't think I have written anything controversial for the last 14 years. Nor have I ever, as I think, replied to any controversial notice of what I have written. Certainly, I let pass without a word the various volumes that were written in answer to my Essay on Doctrinal Development, and that on the principle that Truth defends itself, and falsehood refutes itself,—and that, having said my say, time would decide for me, without my trouble, how far it was true, and how far not true. And I have quoted Crabbe's lines as to my purpose, (though I can't quote correctly):

'Leaving the case to Time, who solves all doubt
By bringing Truth, his glorious daughter, out.

'This being so, I can't conceive I could feel it in any sense an imperative duty to remark on anything you said in your book. I daresay there is a great deal in which I should agree. Certainly I so dislike Ward's way of going on, that I can't get myself to read the Dublin. But on those points {92} I have said my say in my "Apologia"; and, though I can't see the future, am likely to leave them alone. A great attempt has been made in some quarters to find (censurable) mistakes in my book—but it has altogether failed, and I consider Ward's articles to be impotent attempts to put down by argument what is left safe in the domain of theological opinion.

'But, while I would maintain my own theological opinions, I don't dispute Ward the right of holding his, so that he does not attempt to impose them on me,—nor do I dispute the right of whoso will to use devotions to the Blessed Virgin which seem to me unnatural and forced. Did authority attempt to put them down while they do not infringe on the great Catholic verities, I think it would act as the Bishop of London is doing in putting down the devotional observances of the Tractarian party at St. Michael's and elsewhere. He is tender towards freethinkers, and stern towards Romanisers. "Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas." Now the Church of Rome is severe on freethinkers, and indulgent towards devotees.'

Some more letters were exchanged between Newman and Pusey. But the two men were to meet soon—even before the new book had reached Newman. And the meeting was unexpected, dramatic, and somewhat painful.

Newman's deferred visit to Keble at Hursley was at last arranged for September 13. Since August 4 they had been corresponding as to its date. It was a great event in prospect, and Newman's letters show how much it dwelt in his mind. And he particularly wished to avoid—what in the event happened—meeting Pusey at the same time. To see both the old friends at once after such long separation seemed to be more than he could bear.

'The Oratory, Birmingham: August 4, 1865.
'My dear Keble,—You must not fancy I am forgetting to avail myself of your welcome wish, because I have not yet made my way to you. I find it very difficult to leave home—just now, impossible. As it is vacation time, most of our party are away—working hard, this is their only chance of a holyday in the year. I am one of the few, who are here to keep on the duties of the Church etc. Moreover, the house, as empty of its natural inmates, is filled with plasterers, bricklayers, painters, carpenters, who are having their {93} innings—and it does not do to let the place be simply in the hands of Brummagem workmen.

'I don't like to promise anything—but it is my full intention, when relieved of all this superintendence, to move down to Hursley.

'So Gladstone has left you [Note 6]. He came when I had ceased to be an Oxford man—so I never had him. A very painful separation, certainly, both for him and for all of you. Yet, really, he does go great lengths—and I cannot help feeling that the anxiety to keep him, on the part of such persons as yourself, was quite as much on his own account as on account of the University. He has lost his tether, now that the Conservatives have got rid of him—and won't he go lengths? I was pained at his "keep moving" speech. In saying all this, I am putting myself in your place, (for I suppose he will do good to us) but I declare, I should have been in great perplexity, had I been an Oxford man, how to vote. I suppose I should certainly in the event have voted for him—but most grudgingly. None of his friends seem to trust his politics—indeed he seems not to know himself what are his landmarks and his necessary limits.

'Don't fancy I am saying this without the greatest respect and liking for him (though I scarcely know him personally)—all one can say is that the great deluge is pouring in—and his boat is as good as another's. Who is there to trust? ... Ever yours affectionately,
JOHN H. NEWMAN.'

I append three more letters—two of them mere notes—which bring before us Newman's sense of effort in making his arrangements for the eventful meeting with his friend after so many years of separation:

'The Oratory, Birmingham: September 1, 1865.
'My dear Keble,—I have a great shrinking from pledging myself, for sometimes I cannot fulfil, and therefore disappoint the parties to whom I have pledged myself—but, please God, if all is well, and if it suits you, I propose to be with you on Thursday morning next, and spend the day with you. I leave you for the H. Bowdens at Ryde.
'Ever yours affectionately,
JOHN H. NEWMAN.' {94}

'The Oratory, Birmingham: September 4, /65.
'My dear Keble,—I grieve to hear your anxiety about Mrs. Keble. I will delay—for what I see, I need not be fixed here till about the 20th. Before that time your anxiety may be over and you may be back home—and then I will come to you. If not, I will wait a better time. We must take it easy.
'Ever yours affectionately,
JOHN H. NEWMAN.'

'Rednal: September 7, 1865.
'My dear Keble,—I am glad Mrs. Keble is so much better. As I have no Bradshaw here (Rednal) I can't fix on a train—but, if all is well, I shall go straight to Southampton, on Monday afternoon—sleep there—and leave my baggage—and come over to you on Tuesday morning. But, it is so difficult to go into Birmingham without falling in [with] and being detained by people, especially as our school is just reassembling and a British Association is going on, (this has taken me out here) that I don't like to promise.

'There is another difficulty. I wish you would put me off, if Pusey is coming to you. I say so merely, as you must feel, because to meet two friends is not to meet one. Copeland is another matter, for I have seen him so often. Pusey has told me he is going to you next week. To put me off would only postpone me—for, please God, I will come.
'Ever yours affectionately,
J. H. N.

'P.S.—I consider this will get to you tomorrow noon—so you will have time to put me off. (Direct to the Oratory.) Or you might write to me "Railroad Hotel, Southampton." If I found Pusey was with you, I should go on to H. Bowden's for a day or two.'

In the event Pusey did send word to Keble that he was also going to Hursley on that day, and Keble wrote to put Newman off. Newman, however, thought his own hesitation cowardly and persevered in his plan of going to see Keble, postponing his visit only one day. The meeting between the three was related some years after the event in a well-known letter from Newman to Keble's biographer. More interesting and graphic is the account given at the time to Ambrose St. John: {95}

'Buckland Grange, Ryde: September 13th, 1865.
'Here I am, very comfortable, and if I had my dear fiddle with me, I might sing and play, "recubans sub tegmine fagi," in full content. Scarcely had I left Birmingham when it struck me that, since Pusey was to be at Keble's that evening, he would, no manner of doubt, get into my train at Oxford and travel down with me. But he did not. I determined to go to Keble's next morning to see him.

'So I did. I slept at the Railway Hotel at Southampton Dock, a very reasonable house, and good too, (they are building an Imperial Hotel), and yesterday morning (Tuesday) retraced my steps to Bishopstoke, left my portmanteau there, and went over to Hursley. I had forgotten the country, and was not prepared for its woodland beauty. Keble was at the door; he did not know me, nor I him. How mysterious that first sight of friends is! for, when I came to contemplate him, it was the old face and manner, but the first effect or impression was different.

'His wife had been taken ill in the night, and at the first moment he, I think, and certainly I, wished myself away. Then he said: "Have you missed my letter?" meaning, "Pusey is here, and I wrote to stop your coming." He then said: "I must go and prepare Pusey." He did so, and then took me into the room where Pusey was.

'I went in rapidly, and it is strange how action overcomes pain. Pusey, being passive, was evidently shrinking back into the corner of the room, as I should have done, had he rushed in upon me. He could not help contemplating the look of me narrowly and long. "Ah," I thought, "you are thinking how old I am grown, and I see myself in you,—though you, I do think, are more altered than I." Indeed, the alteration in him startled, I will add pained and grieved, me. I should have known him anywhere; his face is not changed, but it is as if you looked at him through a prodigious magnifier. I recollect him short and small, with a round head and smallish features, flaxen curly hair; huddled up together from his shoulders downward, and walking fast. This as a young man; but comparing him even as he was when I had last seen him in 1846, when he was slow in his motions and staid in his figure, there was a wonderful change in him. His head and features are half as large again; his chest is very broad, and he is altogether large, and (don't say all this to anyone) he has a strange condescending way when he speaks. His voice is the same; were my eyes shut, I should not be sensible of any alteration. {96}

'As we three sat together at one table, I had a painful thought, not acute pain, but heavy. There were three old men, who had worked together vigorously in their prime. This is what they have come to,—poor human nature! After twenty years they meet together round a table, but without a common cause or free outspoken thought; kind indeed, but subdued and antagonistic in their language to each other, and all of them with broken prospects, yet each viewing in his own way the world in which those prospects lay.

'Pusey is full of his book (the "Eirenicon"), which is all but published, against Manning, and full of his speech on the relations of physical science with the Bible, which he is to deliver at the Church Congress at Norwich; full of polemics and hope. Keble is quite different; he is as delightful as ever, and it seemed to me as if he felt a sympathy and intimacy with me which he did not show towards Pusey. I judge by the way and tone he spoke to me of him. I took an early dinner with them; and, when the bell chimed at 4 o'clock for service, I got into my gig, and so from Bishopstoke to Ryde, getting here between 7 and 8.'

A letter to Mrs. Froude adds some characteristic touches:

'When I got to Keble's door, he happened to be at it, but we did not know each other, and I was obliged to show him my card. Is not this strange? it is imagination mastering reason. He indeed thought, since Pusey was coming, I should not come that day—but I knew beyond doubt that I was at his house—yet I dared not presume it was he—but, after he began to talk, the old Keble, that is, the young, came out from his eyes and his features, and I daresay, if I saw him once or twice I should be unable to see much difference between his present face and his face of past days [Note 7]. As Mrs. Keble was ill, we then dined together tête-à-tête—a thing we never perhaps had done before—there was something awful in three men meeting in old age who had worked together in their best days. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, was the sad burden of the whole—once so united, now so broken up, so counter to each other—though neither of them of course would quite allow it. Keble has since written to me, "when {97} shall we three meet again? soon—when the hurly burly's done."

'Keble is deaf—but, what is worse, his speech is much impaired—and I think he thinks more slowly. Pusey was full of plans, full of meetings. He has since made an important speech at Norwich on the interpretation of Scripture, which will do good, and of this he was full. Then, he was just on publishing his book which he calls an Eirenicon, and he was full of it, though he was cautious of letting out all that was in it. Have you seen it? It is anything but an Eirenicon—it is likely to make Catholics very angry—and justly angry.'

Keble passed away in the following year. The loss of their common friend brought a kindly exchange of letters between Newman and Archbishop Manning. Manning sent affectionate Easter greetings and expressed deep sympathy with Newman in his loss.

Newman replied as follows:

'The Oratory, Birmingham: Easter Day, April 1st, 1866.
'My dear Archbishop,—I thank you for your Easter greetings and return them with all my heart.

'I don't know how far you know the particulars of Keble's death. His wife had apparently only a few hours to live—so said the doctors about a fortnight ago. He had nursed her till then; but then he was seized with fainting fits, which turned to erysipelas in the head, and he died in the early morning of Holy Thursday. His wife is still alive, but her death is constantly expected. He is to be buried at Hursley next Thursday. His brother and brother's wife are with them at Bournemouth. I heard some months ago, that his brother too was in bad health.
'Yours affectionately in Xt.,
JOHN H. NEWMAN
of the Oratory.'

Keble's death was followed within a few weeks by that of Mrs. Keble. Newman tells the story of the end in a few words to a friend in a letter of April 16, 1866:

'Keble was told that his wife could not live many hours. He had borne up in spite of his great infirmities, longer than I had supposed possible. He was seized with fainting fits. His friends took him from her room. When he got into his {98} own, he fancied it a Church. He knelt down, and said the Lord's Prayer. Then he began a Latin hymn,—they could not make out what. Those were his last words. Then he ended with the prayer which he first said on his knees as a little child.'

It pained Newman to find at such a moment that his dear friend's sincerity was called in question by some of his co-religionists—and this even by converts who had been for years themselves sincere in their rejection of Rome. 'It is grievous that people are so hard,' he wrote to Father Coleridge. 'In converts it is inexcusable. It is a miserable spirit in them.'

'How strange it is,' he writes to the same correspondent, 'Keble seems to have received all doctrine except the necessity of being in communion with the Holy See. His wife, as far as I can make out, is still alive. She kept back the funeral a day, hoping to be buried with him. Her grave is made. To continue what I said the other day, it seems to me no difficulty to suppose a person in good faith on such a point as the necessity of communion with Rome. Till he saw that, (or that he was not in the Church), he was bound to remain as he was, and it was in this way that he always put it.'

Very soon Newman had an opportunity of speaking publicly on what he considered the attitude at which Catholics should aim in their relations to those outside their own Communion. The appearance of Pusey's 'Eirenicon' brought the whole question to the front, and though Newman did not at once reply to it, he did so in the end. His pamphlet, though less considerable in scope or importance than the 'Apologia,' attracted very wide attention, and greatly strengthened his influence among Catholics in England and in Rome itself. But this episode claims a separate chapter for its treatment.

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Notes
1. See infra, p. 101.
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2. Doctrinal Authority, p. 507.
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3. Mr. Thomas Arnold left the Catholic Church for a time.
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4. Father Stanislas Flanagan, at one time an Oratorian, was staying in Ireland at this time. Father Flanagan was afterwards parish priest at Adare.
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5. 'Do I understand you to assume,' he writes to Mr. Ward on May 24, 1867, 'that the Encyclical of 1864 is Infallible? They don't say so in Rome—as Father St. John, who has returned, says distinctly.' His own final judgment is recorded in his letter to the Duke of Norfolk—that the estimate of the authority of such documents and of what, if anything, they do teach infallibly, is a matter of time and is the business of the Schola Theologorum, not a matter for the private judgment of individual Catholics. So little can this be in some cases securely determined with certainty at first, that doctrines may long be generally held to be condemned which are afterwards considered allowable. At the same time, while denying the dogmatic force of the Syllabus, Newman does not in the Letter deny that Pius IX. issued the Encyclical Quanta Cura as Universal Doctor. Of this I shall speak later on.
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6. Mr. Gladstone was defeated as candidate for Oxford University in July, 1865, being third on the poll.—Morley's Life, ii. 147.
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7. 'As hours went on,' he writes to Dean Church, 'the nota facies came out upon his countenance, as if it were the soul itself showing itself in spite of the course and change of time. He always had an expression like no one else, and that sweet pleading earnestness never showed itself to me so piercingly as then, in his eyes and in his carriage.'