"You remember," he wrote to Mrs. Kingsley, in 1849, "I warned you that I intended to take my own way in life, doing (as I always have done) in all important matters just what I should think good, at whatever risk of consequences, and taking no other person's opinion when it crossed with my own. Now in this matter I feel certain that the way to save Charlotte most pain is to shorten the struggle, and that will be best done by being short, peremptory, and decided in allowing no dictation and no interference …. Charlotte herself is really magnificent. Every letter shows me larger nobleness of heart. You cannot go back now, Mrs. Kingsley."
Mrs. Kingsley did not go back, and Froude had his way. Before the wedding, however, another and a novel experience awaited him. His misfortunes aroused the interest of a rich manufacturer at Manchester, Mr. Darbishire, who offered him a resident tutorship, and would have taken him into his own firm, even, as it would seem, into his own family, if he had desired to become a man of business, and to live in a smoky town. But Froude was engaged to be married, and had a passionate love of the country. His keen, clear, rapid intelligence would probably have served him well in commercial affairs when once he had learnt to understand them. He was reserved for a very different destiny, and he gratefully declined Mr. Darbishire's offer. Nevertheless, his stay at Manchester as private tutor had some share in his mental development. He made acquaintance with interesting persons, such as Harriet Martineau, Geraldine Jewsbury, Mrs. Gaskell, and William Edward Forster, then known as a young Quaker who had devoted himself, in the true Quaker spirit of self-sacrifice, to relieving the sufferers from the Irish famine. Besides Manchester friends, Froude imbibed Manchester principles. He had been half inclined to sympathise with the socialism of Louis Blanc and other French revolutionists. Manchester cured him. He adopted the creed of individualism, private enterprise, no interference by Government, and free trade. In these matters he did not, at that time, go with Carlyle, as in ecclesiastical matters he had not gone with Newman. His mind was intensely practical, though in personal questions of self-interest he was careless, and even indifferent. Henceforth he abandoned speculation, as well philosophical as theological, and reverted to the historical studies of his youth. Philosophy at Oxford in those days meant Plato, Aristotle, and Bishop Butler. Froude was a good Greek scholar, and he had the true Oxford reverence for Butler. But he had not gone deeper into philosophy than his examinations and his pupils required. He liked positive results, and metaphysicians always suggested to him the movements of a squirrel in a cage.
The alternative to business was literature. Biographies of literary men, said Carlyle, are the most wretched documents in human history, except the Newgate Calendar. But Carlyle said many things he did not believe, and this was probably one of them. The truth is, that the literary profession, like the commercial, requires some little capital with which to set out, and Froude received this with his wife. Besides it he had brilliant talents, unflagging industry, and powers of writing such as have seldom been given to any of the sons of men. While at Manchester he composed The Cat's Pilgrimage, the earliest of his Short Studies in date. The moral of this fanciful fable is very like the moral of Candide.
The discontented cat, tired of her monotonously comfortable place on the hearthrug, goes out into the world, and gets nothing more than experience for her pains. She finds the other animals occupied with their own concerns, and enjoying life because they do not go beyond them. Not a very elevating paper, perhaps, but better than The Nemesis of Faith, and Froude's last word on the subjects that had tormented his youth.
He recoiled from materialism, finding that it offered no explanation of the universe. Faith in God he had never entirely lost, and on that he founded his henceforth unshaken belief in the providential government of the world. Whatever might be the origin of the Christian religion, it furnished the best guide of life; and spiritual truth, as Bunsen said, was independent of history. He had no sort of sympathy with those who rejected belief in Christianity altogether, still less with those who abandoned Theism. Although he could not be a minister of the Church, he was content to be a member, understanding the Church to be what he was brought up to think it, the national organ of religion, a Protestant, evangelical establishment under the authority of the law and the supremacy of the Crown.
Froude returned to Manchester immediately after his marriage, but his wife did not like the place nor the people. They looked about for a country home, and were fortunate enough to find the most enchanting spot in North Wales. Plas Gwynant, the shining place, stands on a rising ground surrounded by woods, at the foot of Snowdon, between Capel Curig and Beddgelert. Beyond the lawn and meadow is Dinas Lake. A cherry orchard stood close to the house door, and a torrent poured through a rocky ravine in the grounds, falling into a pool below. A mile up the valley was the glittering lake, Lyn Gwynant, with a boat and plenty of fishing. Good shooting was also within reach.
To this ideal home Froude came with his wife in the summer of 1850. Here began a new life of cloudless happiness and perfect peace. His spiritual difficulties fell away from him, and he found that the Church in which he had been born was comprehensive enough for him, as for others. He was not called upon to solve problems which had baffled the subtlest intellects, and would baffle them till the end of time. Religion could be made practical, and not until its practical lessons had been exhausted was it necessary to go farther afield. "Do the duty that lies nearest you," said Goethe, who knew art and science, literature and life, as few men have known them. Froude was never idle, and never at a loss for amusement. Although he wrote regularly, and his love of reading was a passion, he had the keenest enjoyment of sport and expeditions, of country air and sights and sounds, of natural beauty and physical exercise. It was impossible to be dull in his company, for he was the prince of conversers, drawing out as much as he gave. No wonder that there were numerous visitors at Plas Gwynant. He was the best and warmest of friends. In London he would always lay aside his work for the day to entertain one of his contemporaries at Oxford, and at Plas Gwynant they found a hospitable welcome. He would fish with them, or shoot with them, or boat with them, or walk with them, discussing every subject under heaven. Perhaps the most valued of his guests was Clough, who had then written most of his poetry, and projected new enterprises, not knowing how short his life would be.
Besides Clough, Matthew Arnold came to Plas Gwynant, and Charles
Kingsley, and John Conington, the Oxford Professor of Latin, and Max
Muller, the great philologist. A letter to Max Muller, dated the
25th of June, 1851, gives a pleasant picture of existence there.
"I shall be so glad to see you in July. Come and stay as long as work will let you, and you can endure our hospitality. We are poor, and so are not living at a high rate. I can't give you any wine, because I haven't a drop in the house, and you must bring your own cigars, as I am come down to pipes. But to set against that, you shall have the best dinner in Wales every day—fresh trout, Welsh mutton, as much bitter ale as you can drink; a bedroom and a little sitting-room joining it all for your own self, and the most beautiful look-out from the window that I have ever seen. You may vary your retirement. You may change your rooms for the flower- garden, which is an island in the river, or for the edge of the waterfall, the music of which will every night lull you to sleep. Last of all, you will have the society of myself, and of my wife, and, what ought to weigh with you too, you will give us the great pleasure of yours."
Clough neither fished, nor shot, nor boated, but as a walking companion there was no one, in Froude's opinion, to be put above him. For fishing he gave pre-eminence to Kingsley, and together they carried up their coracles to waters higher than ordinary boats could reach. Kingsley was ardent in all forms of sport, and an enthusiast for Maurician theology, holding, as he said, that it had pleased God to show him and Maurice things which He had concealed from Carlyle. He had concealed them also from Froude, who regarded Carlyle as his teacher, feeling that he owed him his emancipation from clerical bonds.