This all seems to point, I think, to the fact that Bristol College had certainly a distinguished roll of names in its short ten years' record.
1836 was the year of Mrs. Newman's death—Francis Newman's mother. His wife was so alarmingly ill that he was not able to be present at his mother's funeral; and so the last time he saw her alive was on the occasion when he brought his bride to introduce to her at Oxford.
Miss Mozley says of his mother: "She was a woman content to live, as it were, in the retirement of her thoughts. She had an influence, though not a conspicuous one, on all about her. The trials of life had given a weight to her judgment, and her remarkable composure and serenity of temper and manner had its peculiar power. Under this gentle manner was a strong will which could not be moved when her sense of duty dictated self-sacrifice."
A month after her death Cardinal Newman had written: [Footnote: Letters of John Henry Newman, Anne Mozley.] "Of late years my mother has much misunderstood my religious views, and considered she differed from me; [Footnote: As of course she did.] and she thought I was surrounded by admirers, and had everything my own way; and in consequence I, who am conscious to myself I never thought anything more precious than her sympathy and praise, had none of it." He goes on to say: "I think God intends me to be lonely…. I think I am very cold and reserved to people, but I cannot ever realize to myself that any one loves me."
Those who have read Miss Mozley's Life of John Henry Newman will remember how passionately devoted to her two sons Mrs. Newman was. Once or twice she said that though "Frank was adamant" when she had wished to get closer in touch with his interests and sympathies when he was quite a young man, yet she was always quite in sympathy with her eldest son.
Probably as time went on and she saw the latter drifting ever further and further into religious views with which she had never been conversant, insensibly to herself, her manner changed when he spoke to her of how gradually the whole scope of his religion was widening and developing in a direction in which she felt it impossible for herself to follow him.
One wonders if she had had any knowledge of the growing agnosticism of her other son, but probably this was unlikely.
[Illustration: DR. MARTINEAU
FROM THE PAINTING BY A. E. ELMSLIE]