"It is very kind of you to keep alive in your heart the friendship of the two ladies. I perhaps ought to state that about two and a half years after the death of that wife in 1876 I married her … friend…. Else I must have given up housekeeping, and know not into what family I could have gone. My second wife is nineteen years my junior, yet in walking, not at all my equal, but in affectionate care of me inestimable."
In June, 1892, he writes to J. H. Tucker, Esq.:—"I have not heard whether your father, like me, is favoured by life continued, but I venture to send a copy of my hymns…. To-day I have received a letter and book in Bengali from a believer in Theosophy, supposing me to be one of them! Hence, I was not too early in telling my friends that since at the age of fourteen I became a Conscious Christian, no unbelief has made my hymns less precious, mutato saltem nomine…. My change more than fifty years ago was on Historical arguments mainly."
To return to the subject of Newman's last years at Weston-super-Mare. Perhaps the most graphic descriptions of him as an old man are those contributed as "Reminiscences" by Mrs. Kingsley-Tarpey and Mrs. Bainsmith. We know him there as a man who, though hardly ever free from some discomfort or pain in those days, yet never failed in that old-world courtesy of which, alas! there is so poor a supply in the world at the present day.
We know him as a man who was always eager to help those who came to him in trouble or in any difficulty; nay, perhaps almost too ready to believe a cock-and-bull story of those who did not mind, for their own ends, practising on his credulity.
A lady, a relation of the Newmans', said that once on coming to stay with him and Mrs. Newman, she found a secretary in his study smelling strongly of brandy. When the secretary went out of the room, Frank Newman drew their guest aside and said, "Ah, yes, it's a sad case, poor fellow! He's getting away from the temptation of the public-houses."
But when later the secretary's rooms were searched, there were found numbers of brandy bottles hidden away, to prove that he evidently had not "escaped from temptation"! This lady said also that when Newman was old people not infrequently deceived him thus, and traded on his temperance views, and that he had had two secretaries who obtained their post on false pretences.
To conclude this chapter I should like to give one striking instance of his tender sympathy and respect for the poor and lonely. A poor charwoman had died at Weston-super-Mare who had, I believe, often worked in Newman's house. He found that she had no friends to follow her body to the grave, and so he himself, his wife and servants, walked to the funeral as mourners to show her a last respect. It is the Idea represented by his act which makes it serve as an unforgettable and very uncommon illustration of a championship of those unlucky ones who have few or none to champion them.
Could any act speak clearer of the unfailing respect and reverence for women which distinguished Francis Newman through life? Though all others should see the lonely funeral, there should be but the one Good Samaritan who crossed over the road of ordinary, usual, Conventionalities to show by his act that he recognized that class and position count for nothing before the fact of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity and Religion.