The next reminiscence belongs to a much later date in the Professor's life. In 1863 he was no longer teaching at University College. Mrs. Kingsley Tarpey says she remembers him first in the summer of 1874 or 1875. Her descriptions of him, his opinions, and his life as she knew it are full of keen interest.
[Illustration: FRANCIS NEWMAN
IN MIDDLE AGE
FROM PHOTO BY JOHN DAVIES, WESTON-SUPER-MARE]
In the quotation from a letter which follows, Professor Newman's own views on teaching at the college are given:—
"You say there is a complaint that 'as the students cannot be got to prepare their work the lessons have come to be mere prelections from the professors.' I am not aware of any change in the pupils since I have been here, except that my classes are smaller, in part owing to the removal of Coward College and the rivalry of the new institution in which it is now comprised; in part (I happen to know) from dread of my personal … influence; in part, I suspect, from the working of London University, which I think bad; and others must add, whether worst of all is, my own want of judgment in selecting subjects, and the mode of the treatment. Undeniable it is that my classes are smaller, that my half-dozen best scholars are decidedly below the half-dozen best I had in the first year or two. But if I am myself to blame, it is, I think, from the very reverse process of that implied in the words above quoted, viz. I often question whether it would not be at once wiser and more right to raise my teaching to the small minority of my best pupils, and ignore the many who come in on my classes unprepared. I have of late suspected that I allow the University so to drag me down into school teaching that the abler and advanced students are driven away from me. Moreover, I am getting quite sick of going again and again over elementary books in mere school fashion.
"To vary this, I have this term given one day a week in my senior class to lecture on books, viz. 1st, on Horace's Odes, which nine out of ten have already read, and which I myself read with the junior class last session (having engaged to do this before I guessed that the University would select the same year for B.A.), and many of the junior class being this year in my senior class. 2nd, on the Epistles of Cicero, which are enormously too long and too difficult for pupils to read, and in which, nevertheless, candidates for honours at B.A. are liable to be examined. I conjecture that somebody has seen this announcement of mine in our prospectus, and imputes it to a relaxation of discipline in my pupils (indeed there is little enough, and always was, in the majority of mine; they only want to scrape through their degree, and the University kindly keeps its real demands at a minimum). On the contrary, it is an effort of mine to make the lectures less unworthy of my more advanced pupils. I may add that I have always lectured more or less in this way on Cicero's Letters…. At the same time I avow my entire dissatisfaction with things as I have them. In June I have to print and publish the books in which I will lecture from October to June next, while I have not the slightest idea who will be in the classes. In August, out comes the statement of University books for the following year, which often increases my confusion. It is easier to complain of this than to remedy it."
It is not difficult to understand Newman's point of view as regards the almost impossibility of keeping in hand in one class a team of students— some eagerly desirous of going forward into the real study of literature, and others only anxious to "scrape through" for the purpose of obtaining their degree.
Mrs. Kingsley Tarpey's reminiscences begin thus:—
I think it was in the summer of 1874 or 1875 that Professor Newman first came to visit us. My mother had been much interested in some articles of his on vegetarianism, and had corresponded with him on the subject, and when the Annual Conference of the Vegetarian Society was held in Manchester later on, he stayed with us. This visit was the beginning of a very warm friendship with our family, which lasted close on twenty years. During that time my mother corresponded regularly with Professor Newman, but unfortunately only some eighteen or twenty of his letters have been preserved. There is scarcely one of these, however, that does not contain something of permanent interest and value.
I remember very well, in the days when we used to have visits from him, that Professor Newman was looked upon by very many as a mere faddist. His extreme views on several subjects no doubt took him out of range of the sympathies of the "man in the street." But it is strange to find, on looking through these letters, how advanced opinion is coming into line with his so-called outrageous ideas of a generation ago. It would have given him keen pleasure, if he could have lived till now, to see the strides that have been made of late years in the Women's Suffrage movement, and the admission of women to public bodies. In social and moral reform, and in the Temperance movement also, the progress has been very marked, and we may soon have an Act prohibiting the smoking of tobacco by young boys—a matter on which Professor Newman had very strong views. Last, but not least, the Vegetarian movement, in which he took so keen an interest, has gained new vigour from the advocates of the simple life.
I remember that on the occasion of his first visit we children regarded him with mingled awe and curiosity. His quaint appearance and his formal, deliberate manner of speech made him seem to us like a being from another world. We were at once fascinated and repelled, and I think he became at first the object of our constant, though furtive, observation. But his unvarying gentle kindness and extreme simplicity very soon won our confidence, and later on an accident made us his fast friends and admirers.