LETTERS TO MRS. KINGSLEY
"Weston-super-Mare, "4th Nov., 1877.
"Dear Mrs. Kingsley,
"I hurried home from Manchester to meet an expected widow friend here, who has just left me. Somehow or other she and her little girl engrossed me much, and made me neglect my intended warm thanks for your very kind letters, and for your phrases even of affection, to which, be assured, I am not inattentive or apathetic, though I imperfectly know how to respond to that which I do not seem to have duly earned.
"Your children were as kind and attentive to me as you could have been yourself; but I much regret not to have met you and Mr. Kingsley, to whom I beg you to give my kind regards, and believe that it is always a pleasure to meet you, and that I am necessarily proud of having made so fruitful a convert … though our severe ones will remind me that you do not wholly abstain from fish!
"Believe me, yours heartily,
"Francis W. Newman.
"I am bringing out a dreadful pamphlet!"
"28 Cumberland Terrace, "Regent's Park, London, "25th May, 1878.
"Dear Mrs. Kingsley,
"Concerning the controversy about increase of population, I forgot to add what I think has moral weight, that the theory which makes men bewail every increase on the ground that at length the earth will be overfilled would be in argument just as powerful if the size of the earth were increased to that of Jupiter, or to that of the sun. It simply deduces from the axiom / fact that any finite area whatsoever will at length be overfilled by a constant unchecked increase—a reason why we should actively check the increase NOW and HERE—a deduction wholly void of good sense.
"Again, I did not mention what reduces John Mill's school to something worse than negative error, the certainty that their doctrine will not be obeyed by any but those whom we would desire to have the peopling of the earth, viz. the people of most intellect. If the highly intelligent and conscientious obey John Mill, we evidently must look forward to the peopling of every land by the most backward and least intelligent part of the nation…. Malthus was shocked by the system of encouraging very early marriage and large families for the mere sake of getting men as food for gunpowder: but if people marry (say young men at 27 or 28, not at 17 or 18) he denounces as unnatural and unimaginable that society or law should frown upon a family as being too numerous. In every moral aspect of the case, John Mill is opposed to Malthus, and his followers have no right to call themselves Malthusians. I feel confident that human population would waste if every man adopted the doctrine either of John Mill or of certain American theorists….
"With best regards to all yours,
"I am, yours most sincerely,
"F. W. Newman."
"15 Arundel Crescent, "Weston-super-Mare, "12th Feb., 1880.
"Dear Mrs. Kingsley,
"Your kind letter, yesterday received, gives me great concern. I never wept through simple grief, but once in my life through grief at ingratitude; and I think I never felt so painful a pang in my heart. I can well imagine that a sense of another's ingratitude may terribly overthrow anyone's health. I believe my dear sister, whose death you so kindly mention, suffered in part from excess of anxiety through being made executrix to her husband's will, involving great perplexity, but also from the fraud of an old and trusted clerk. Her husband had several small strokes of paralysis, and for two and a half years before his death probably had not his mind always perfect. He delegated many confidential writings and documents to the clerk, who with his wife was much respected by the whole family. After his death his accounts were inexplicable. Three of his sons worked hard at them for weeks together, and at last discovered frauds, by which the clerk had not only embezzled money-how much they know not, but counted above the thousand-and had depreciated the property in selling it by representing it as having been for years a declining business: this was to hide his pilferings. When charged with it, the man became raving mad. Lawyers knew not how to recover property from a maniac who could not defend himself: and my sister was in such grief for the man's wife, that she knew not whether to wish to recover a farthing. How the matter stood she either did not know or did not like to tell me-to the last; but the mysterious disease which ate away her strength, I in my private mind ascribe to anxiety from this affair and her sudden and strange responsibility as trustee for ladies.
"This dear sister was the fondest object of my boyish affections; and through life she was the self-sacrificing, devoted character which from earliest years she displayed. Five sons, one daughter, and two daughters- in-law were present at her death, all fervent in love and duty. Her husband was one of ten children, and all that family were singularly united. Her only daughter will now live with two of her aunts, who have been almost at her side since birth. My sister was so long in a very precarious state that I did not expect her to survive the winter of 1878- 9, and at last death came as a relief and release.
"It has always troubled me that I have so little power to promote the industrial interests of friends. When I was a professor in London I used to be entreated to find pupils for tutors (when I had not half as many pupils as I desired for myself) and to recommend others to publishers and editors, when I could neither get a publisher to risk a shilling on what I wrote, nor more than one editor to accept an article from me. Now, I would most gladly recommend —— ——; but it is well to say frankly that no one ever asks me, nor do I at all know who wants anything, nor can I guess in what direction to inquire. But be sure I shall not forget, if the occasion opens.
"I yesterday heard awful tidings of widespread murrain in the sheep of these parts (Somerset and Monmouth and all between) ascribed to last summer's wet. One farmer (as a specimen) has lost 1000 sheep; the hotel- keepers are bidden to beware of mutton. This I have from an associate of our society.
"Indoors I am happy; but I am so gloomy for the prospects of the country that I do not like to talk about them. Kind regards to Mr. Kingsley.
"I am, most truly yours,
"F. W. Newman."
"Weston-s.-M., 19th Oct., 1880.
"Dear Mrs. Kingsley,
"Behold me (in imagination, as I really am) still at home on our great vegetarian day.
"I warmly thank you for your kind letter, and was purposing to write, but in heaps of letters could not find yours with the new address, which I have now entered in my book.
"I have finally resolved not to bustle about so late in the year, and have resigned my place as President in consequence. But it is reported to me that the Executive will prefer to exempt me from attendance in this month….
"Public affairs make me very melancholy. Mr. Gladstone is not to blame for the state of Ireland; but both in Afghanistan with India and in South Africa, I think he has allowed his colleagues to neutralize his public professions, and has made compromises most calamitous.
"The ministry seems to me not worthy of the Parliament. I do not doubt that the plutocracy in the next ten or even five years will have a heavy and deserved fall, but with how much convulsion and suffering in Ireland, in India, and in South Africa, all inflicting miseries on us—you will live to see: I fear it cannot be small, and that our institutions, called Fundamental, will be very gravely shaken.
"I honour your Piscarian position, and with our society would recognize it; but the discovery that you all eat fish forbids me to glory that I have converted a family to our Rules! With kind regards to Mr. Kingsley and the rest, I am,
"Your sincere friend,
"F. W. Newman."
"Weston, "26th April, 1883.
"Dear Mrs. Kingsley,
"… I am apparently assuming the position of one who (like the Pope) makes an ALLOCUTION to all who will listen. Each of us may imitate him. I have given away eighty copies to make my allocution known. I suppose I ought to have sent one to you, but circulation is hard work. Alas, it costs a shilling! Can you get it put into any Manchester Library? (Trübner my publisher.) It is called A Christian Commonwealth and is as much against our unjust wars as a Quaker could desire.
"In haste, ever yours,
"F. W. Newman."
"Kind regards to all yours."
"Weston-super-Mare, 9th April, 1884.
"My dear Friend,
"… My dismay and disgust at the proceedings of a ministry, of which Mr. Gladstone must bear the full responsibility—which indeed he accepts by defending all its atrocious proceedings—have disinclined me to write, more than I must, on any but private or literary topics….
"A new struggle is made by this unscrupulous ministry to retain the execrable C.D. Acts.
"I am sorry that the Bishops have again turned the scale in the unrighteous retention of the law against a man's marriage to his deceased wife's sister. When do the Bishops rally against sanguinary injustice and dire oppression? "I have just had two hundred and fifty copies struck off of the enclosed leaflet, which aims to suggest to the haters of unjust war, especially Quakers, in what direction they ought to work, viz. to lay the foundation of an entirely new political party. No candidate for a vote could complain that he was humiliated by being required to profess himself a VOTARY OF JUSTICE.
"I throw these leaflets in this and that direction as feelers. Of course more can be printed when wanted….
"With best regards,
"I am, yours,
"F. W. Newman."
"15 Arundel Crescent, Weston-super-Mare, "3rd Jan. , 1887.
"Dear Friend,
"You need not think me dead yet; but you easily might, so estranged am I to Manchester.
"Yet I at least have life enough to be able to wish all welfare and blessing to you and yours in this New Year. The accumulation of letters has always thwarted me when I have tried to find your last letter…. I seem to remember that you then told me of the marriage of your eldest daughter and of the literary efforts of another. Since then we have had the overthrow in the W.K. of the Safe-Harlot-Providing Law, and indeed it must have been as early as 1885; and the episode of Mr. Stead and his prosecution was later! A great moral change has been wrought (for the better, I say) in our ladies by that wickedness of our ruling classes with the aid of wicked medical theories provoking indignant protest. To drag printed matter into daylight is no doubt very offensive; but without sweeping it away no sound health is to be expected. The ladies, I fancy, will now, more perseveringly than men, keep in activity the Purity Society. And if some of them seem a little too active—I ask, how can this odious system of sin, crime, and cruelty be crushed without hot enthusiasm? And where was enthusiasm hot without partial error? Fire burns!
"This reminds me of my sending you (at your request) a load of anti- vaccination literature, and I am wondering whether you were able to turn it to service. THAT monstrous iniquity must come down; but the medical schools and your Irishmen block out our movement.
"I wonder how you and Mr. Kingsley look on Mr. Gladstone. I never condemned his measure, though I have always (for years back) declined to aid a Parliament for all Ireland and still more the expulsion of Irish deputies from the English Parliament…. But I did not intend here to enter Irish politics further than to indicate that while I am anti- Gladstonian, I cry 'Ireland for the Irish,' 'India for the Indians,' 'Egypt for the Egyptians,"—come what may to the English 'Empire'! [But I have never read in history of any empire being ruined or harmed by Justice, Mercy, or Purity.]
"I suppose I must say, 'Alas!' that the older I become [81 last June] the more painfully my creed outgrows the limits of that which the mass of my nation, and those whose co-operation I most covet, account sacred. I dare not (unasked) send to friends what I print, yet I uphold the sacred moralities of Jew and Christian [Hindoo and Moslem] with all my heart. Two mottos, or say three, suffice me:—
"The Lord reigneth.
"The righteous Lord loveth righteousness.
"The Lord requireth Justice, Mercy, and Sobriety of thought, not
ceremony or creed.
"Accept for all of you my warm wishes.
"Your Vegetarian friend of old,
"F. W. Newman."
[No date. Probably 1st March, 1888.]
"My dear Friend,
"What a violent winter it has been in very many places! Nor is it all over. After the awful 'blizzard' in New York, and its minor horrors elsewhere, and the many fatal avalanches, I see this morning fresh inundations in Hungary from sudden melting of snow. The sudden chill which smote your husband was but a mild type, it seems, of the death fatal to so many. Other deaths from cold, reported to us, have reminded us of your great and sudden loss; yet what had I to say to you? I have thought that the echo from your son in Calcutta may have made your grief break out afresh…. I trust that time, which has not yet at all had softening powers, has not added any fresh bitterness on a fuller realization….
"Affectionately yours,
"F. W. Newman."
"Alas! my dear friend, that your generous son Leonard had not more experience how vain is a man's swimming power against the current of an ordinary river. I have known this in the Tigris, in the Nile, and even in the Thames, though the bathing men in several places called me a first- rate swimmer. Longfellow in 'Hiawatha' has touching and powerful lines on disasters never coming singly, but as vultures accumulating round a huge carcass.
"Wisdom comes too late for the individual; yet it is not useless for others to inquire after causes. Did your husband pride himself on not wearing a specially thick coat in winter and roughing it as do some vegetarians?… I rather believe that man is a tropical animal, hairless, made for a climate warmer than ours, and needing much aid from clothing.
"Ever yours,
"F. W. Newman. "Herewith I return your interesting scraps. "21st March, 1888."
Extract from a letter, 7th Jan., 1889.
"More and more I believe, that as our clearest DUTY is in this world, it is wholesome that our most eager interest (if unselfish) should be in this world and not (with Count Tolstoi) so full of eagerness for immortality, that it is an effort with him to refrain from suicide! I accept with grateful submission whatever of after-life the Supreme Lord gives—or does not give. My desire cannot affect His actions, and in fact I never have been able to work myself into any desire for a future so undefined and unimaginable. This will show how ill I deserve a little of (shall I say) praise or compliment in your last.
"With kind salutes to your daughters,
"I am, your sincere friend,
"F. W. Newman."
"The Firs, West Cliff Gardens, "Bournemouth, "17th Aug., 1889.
"My dear Friend,
"How extraordinary you must have thought my silence, after your kind letter from this place. Perhaps you imputed it to illness. That is not true. Yet it may be called half true: for illness of my wife is one topic, and increased weakness makes me slower in the smallest matters—such as handling a book, or duly buttoning a shirt or coat: while I have been dealing with proof-sheets from always two printers, sometimes four. My day is cut short at each end—for in the colder months I cannot sit at my desk until my fire is lighted, and my eyes are wearied before evening candlelight. Meanwhile my unwilling correspondence has rather increased than lessened….
"I am achieving a long hoped for work, in which of course I have to pay the printers—i.e. to leave in some connective available form whatever miscellaneous important printing I have ever published, ethico-political, theological, economical, historical, aesthetic, critical, mathematical: indeed, the mathematical is all new, not reprint.
"I take as vivid an interest in all that concerns public welfare, of England, Ireland, and foreign countries, and hope I ever shall. More than ever I see that our best work for God is to work for God's creatures, not excluding gentle brutes.
"Is it possible that you are even now here? That would be very good news.
"Your lazy friend, with much apology,
"F. W. Newman."
"Northam, near Bideford, "19th May, 1890.
"My dear Friend,
"Your two letters were indeed doubly welcome, and brought me virtual pardon for two neglects, of which the worst was, the keeping locked up (and still in prison!) the letters which you bade me to return…
"The chief want of Cornwall, I was told by an old resident, is soil; the rock is too near the surface. Herein art will do much in a few generations. Attica and Palestine—stony soils—bore plentiful pine fruit. Our Channel Islands utter the same thing. In England the landlord is the effectual starver of the soil. Bishop Stubbs, a first-rate authority on agriculture, explains the immense excess of crops raised acre by acre under peasant culture, 'because the farmers' land is labour-starved.'"
* * * * *
"15th July, 1891.
"… The state of Ireland under existing factions would much have discomposed your patriotic husband. As for me, who cannot pretend Irish patriotism, things now look better…. But the aspect on the whole is to me far more encouraging than alarming. The reign of false aristocracy is fast declining; the rising powers everywhere ask for justice between orders and (as never before) between the two sexes, and the power of women is about to signalize itself in most valuable directions—for the benefit of both sexes, and for the first time to claim nationally that moral and Christian Right shall be the aim of Law.
"But I confess if we wish to attract ancient nations to Christianity, we have first to reconsider our creed fundamentally, a terrible summons to Protestants as well as Catholics….
"I have not with me your last, and I hope I do not evade any question.
"With best wishes to you and all yours,
"I am, your earnest friend,
"F. W. Newman."
"27th Nov., 1891.
"My dear Mrs. Kingsley,
"So many of my juniors die, that my friends when they do not hear of me may well fancy that I am decrepit and declining. That is not true; only my muscular strength is less. I cannot walk so far nor work so much, but no vital organ seems to fail; nor can I write so much or so long….
"The longer I live, the more hopeful and more interesting I find the whole world. In spite of crime, folly, and misery, the massive nations seem to improve. The good—i.e. our sounder party—become wiser and stronger, as well as in proportion more numerous. Our worst misrule has been in Ireland and in India. The crisis in Ireland seems to me turned for the better. Misrule in India is met not by insurrection, but by constitutional and loyal, widely demanded Reform, such as, I feel convinced, the enlarged franchise in England will support too warmly for the old routine to resist. All the churches are seeking moral reform…. Reforms lately too great to think of, we now calmly contemplate as certainties of a near future. Lord Herschell, an ex-Chancellor, pronounces that the legislative power of the House of Lords is an evil unbearable. Scotland and Wales are ready to demand abolition of the State Church. The English party called Liberal (I think miscalled) desire the same, and within the last ten years I come to think, rightly. Other reforms, too numerous to detail, cannot be trifled with or the nation be blinded. While I wonder at all this, I see that Scandinavia and Germany, even Belgium and France, are moving for moral objects, and also against war.
"Is there not plenty in all this to draw forth hope, joy, and thankfulness, and in every conviction, that amidst all our tumult the Lord reigneth? I rejoice that I have lived to see this day, and expect to rejoice more while I live.
"How you have fared this year I seem not to know, but believe that you have my earnest good wishes for you and yours.
"I am, yours most truly,
"F. W. Newman."
"Bournemouth (undated).
"My dear Friend,
"Your letter of July 12th from Margate has reached me here, to which place I came because my wife five years ago gained such health here, and all the year and past autumn she has never felt sure of health at home. I cannot think she manages herself rightly, yet she believes, with no small reason, that I am not a safe traveller without her; yet of the two I seem the stronger. She is better here, perhaps, because she is more in the outer air. I must add, I too have recovered from my fall, and am fairly well, though I do not pretend to be strong yet (as the French would say), Que voulez vous? when I am past 88…. I am glad to learn about your children. I have good hope concerning the coming future, though the foes of progress call us faddists because we think national morality paramount to vicious routine. May but the Good prevail!
"… I now argue for Fish-food as not to be forbidden or frowned on, but do not lessen my esteem of our Manchester V. E. M. Society, nor lessen my contribution to it, though they can only receive me as an outsider.
"I turn a vegetarian argument against them on the Fish question, but I have no time now for it.
"I am bringing out another volume on Paul of Tarsus, which, when complete,
I hope to send you.
"With warm salutes, I am yours,
"Francis Wm. Newman.
"My wife desires her kind thought to be named."
"1st Nov., 1892.
"My dear Madam,
"I have not time nor strength to search out your last kind letter, which perhaps informed me when your two sons from India were expected and when they were to leave you….
"I do fairly well, if I potter on in my old solid routine. My 88th year makes pretension to strength; but when so many moans are heard about neuralgia, not to say influenza, I feel myself much favoured by the total absence of pain, except merely what is incidental to a thin body with some sharp bones. In rising from bed I am aware of small discomforts, which I shake off on standing upright, and similarly after sitting in one posture. I have not enough suffering to claim pity. I can wish the same to all my friends, especially to my wife.
"To my judgment the world … is in an entirely novel state, which forebodes a wholly new future, and requires new thoughts, new policy in our rulers, with much higher MORALITY if grave overthrow is to be averted.
"The United States of America ought to be our leader in chief, but mainly through … the dreadful colour war that is year by year waxing worse. The only thing clear to me is, that their home calamity must for a long while hinder their giving aid to the world. The policy in Russia is so fatal, and its result presages an overturn of the scale of the France of 1793. This makes all foresight impossible, except that every State is safest which least violates the laws of universal morality. That England can avoid great retribution seems to me scarcely probable. But as soon as morality is allowed to speak loud in high places, I believe our main dangers will quickly disappear. The prospect cannot be defined, but is to me of intense interest. Britain seems to me immensely superior to its own ruling classes in goodness, and the good is sure at length to prevail, to the benefit also of your Ireland.
"With kindest best wishes, I am,
"Most truly yours,
"F. W. Newman."