"By God's help I mean to be cheerful and active….
"I am, your affectionate friend,
"F. W. Newman."
This is the epitaph Newman had placed over his wife's grave:—
"With no superiority of intellect, yet by the force of love, by sweet piety, by tender compassion, by coming down to the lowly, by unselfishness and simplicity of life, by a constant sense of God's Presence, by devout exercises, private and social, she achieved much of Christian saintliness and much of human happiness.
"She has left a large void in her husband's heart.
"Obiit, 16th July, 1876."
Newman always spoke of his wife as "the most affectionate and tender- hearted of mortals." There was always a very great affection between them. His letters all show this. Their married life was a long intercourse of happiness, un-"chequered by disputes." [Footnote: "Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes."—R. L. Stevenson.] Still, there was not (as is shown, I think, in many ways) strong community of interests. For in all Newman's laborious philological studies—his learned lectures, articles, and researches, scriptural and literary, his speculations in the realms of deep thought—she was to all intents and purposes practically outside his mental door. She was never greatly inclined to join in the society of his learned friends; but this was more from a sense of modesty, because she was afraid of not being in sympathy with them; because she thought that she was not clever enough.
She had the greatest admiration for her husband. It is easy, of course, to understand that when Frank Newman came back from his missionary journey he was just the sort of young man who would take a girl's fancy. It was a thing not to be surprised at that she fell in love with him. She was keenly interested in home missionary work among the poor villagers of her own home. She knew that he had come through great dangers in his journey to the Holy Land as a missionary. He had not then definitely cast aside his old beliefs—that was to come later; now he was on the brink of it, and he was alone on this inward, personal brink. She would not yet be aware of it. Very probably he seemed a hero in her eyes, because of all the dangers he had braved to preach the Gospel, and because he was one of the most intellectual men of his day: had taken high honours at Oxford, and had given them up for the sake of what he believed to be right.
In the beautiful little Devonshire town of Ottery St. Mary, very possibly he was the greatest man who had come across her life's path. He very evidently cared for her; the inevitable next thing seemed to be to care for him. At that time his name was in everybody's mouth. Miss Frere wrote, in 1833, that "the brother of Mr. Newman (John Henry Newman) is a young man of great promise, who has left the fairest prospect of advancement in England to go as a missionary to Persia."