Besides all this work, however, he was for ever interesting himself in any cause or society which applied to him for help, or seemed in any way to need a champion. Indeed, as Mr. Hornblower Gill says of him, "Scholar, translator, mathematician, historian, political economist, political philosopher, moralist, theologian, philanthropist, he was the most copious and various writer of his time."
For a great many years before he died Newman lived at Weston-super-Mare. But two years before his death, in October, 1897, when he was ninety-two years of age, he found himself, partly owing to senile decay and partly owing to a bad fall he had had in the spring of the year, and also to loss of eyesight, unable to take part in public affairs any longer, nor yet to write as he had been used to do.
The unpublished article on "Land Nationalization" (which is printed in
this volume) came into the hands of Mr. William Jameson (to whose kindness
I am indebted for it) in 1886, at which time he was Hon. Secretary of the
Land Nationalization Society, and Francis Newman, Vice-President.
Mr. Jameson, at the time of sending me the article, wrote me a letter from which I shall here quote those parts relating to his friendship with Newman. He says, speaking of their first meeting: "There was an instant fellowship that endears his memory to me. I was then about thirty-five, and he past eighty. There was a quiet dignity in his manner, but no suggestion of old age."
One little anecdote may be of interest.
"We left a rather stormy committee meeting together, over which Professor Newman had presided. The storm was due to one member who had a grievance against some others. Speaking of the pity of this, Professor Newman said to me, 'You know how very strongly my brother and myself differ in opinion; yet this has never created the slightest personal discord….'"
Several years later. Professor Newman wrote Mr. Jameson a letter (on finding out that he was suffering from overwork and the fear of subsequent breakdown), saying these strong words of sympathy: "I charge you to give it up. Save yourself for the years to come." He went on to say that a friend of his own had kept working on for some cherished cause at the cost of much mental pressure, and had ended his days in a lunatic asylum. Mr. Jameson adds that Newman's words of counsel have often and often rung in his ears since they were first said to him, and he attributes to the fact that he obeyed them, his having been saved from a physical breakdown.
"Save yourself for the years to come" is a counsel which we, who are workers, are so often in danger of forgetting. Except in extreme youth, most men and women live far more in the present and in the past than they do in the future which lies before them, so largely to be carved into shape by their Present.
In April, 1887, Sir Samuel Walker Griffith, G.C.M.G., Chief Justice of Queensland since 1893, Secretary for Public Instruction, Attorney-General from 1874-8, 1890-3, Premier of Queensland from 1883-8, and 1890-3, was over in England, and Francis Newman was to have been introduced by Mrs. Bucknall (mother of Mrs. Bainsmith, the distinguished sculptor [Footnote: Mrs. Georgina Bainsmith, F.N.B.A., member of the Royal Society of Arts, and of the Honorary Council of the North British Academy.] to whom I am indebted for the photo in this book of her bust of Francis Newman, which now stands in University College, London) to Sir Samuel, at the latter's own special desire. Unfortunately, Newman was unable to go with Mrs. Bucknall to Sir Samuel Griffith's house, and this is his letter (kindly lent me, with Sir Samuel Griffith's reply, by Mrs. Bucknall).
"Dear Mrs. Bucknall,