It happened that the second or third time that he came to Manchester for the annual meeting of the Vegetarian Society, my father and mother were away, and it fell to the younger members of the household to entertain our distinguished visitor. It was an occasion looked forward to with trepidation and misgiving, but we need not have felt alarmed. No one could have been more genial in his attitude to the youthful housekeepers. He would chat easily and pleasantly with even the youngest of us, and he always managed to find some interesting topic. Sometimes he would give us an account of the doings at the Conference during the day. I remember some curious facts about some of the members. One man ate nothing but apples, and considered them a complete and ideal food for man. Another varied his diet between roots and nuts. He carried assorted strange nuts with him in his pocket, and after his speech he presented some to the President. Our Professor brought them home with him and wished us to try them, but I am afraid that, with the conservative instinct of young animals, we distrusted the unknown, and we did not venture. The Professor considered that our molar teeth clearly indicated grain, roots, and nuts as our food, and the incisors as clearly suggested fruit, but at that time he was in some doubt about the canine teeth. At his request some of us gravely cracked nuts with him, and after the experiment we agreed that human beings more naturally crack nuts with the back teeth, where leverage is most powerful. A suspicion remained that our pointed fangs might have been used to tear flesh!
During this same visit it was suggested that the Society should change its name to one that would describe it more accurately, "Vegetarian," strictly, implying that the members would eat only vegetables. There was much difficulty in finding a portmanteau word that would convey vegetables, eggs, and milk. Professor Newman much disliked the idea of calling it the VEM Society (the name that was afterwards adopted, I think); his proposal was "Anti-creophagite," or "Anti-creophagist." But he could get no support for this name; members objected that no one would know what it meant or how to spell it. Professor Newman had been pained to learn that only two or three people in the hall knew the Greek word.
He was very much interested in language, and it was characteristic of him never to pass a word that he did not know. He had a great dislike and contempt for slang, and he deplored the growing use of it, and the impoverishment of the language that resulted. But dialect words, or old words that lingered in some parts of the country, while they had dropped out of common speech, interested him greatly. One day a younger sister of mine brought him a footstool as he sat reading, and in offering it to him called it a "buffet." It is not a word in common use, but I think we had adopted it from the nursery rhyme about "Miss Muffett, who sat on a buffet." The Professor was on the alert at once.
"That word is quite new to me," he said. "Did you say 'bussock'? I wonder is that a Lancashire word, or does it come from Ireland? 'Bussock'! Will you spell it for me, please?"
My sister was far too young and too shy to correct him, and after faintly murmuring "buffet" again, she ran away in extreme confusion. I am afraid "bussock" went down in the Professor's notebook as an interesting variant of "hassock."
In this connection some delightful stories were told by Dr. Nicholson, of Penrith, an old friend of Professor Newman's and of my father's. The Professor was staying at Penrith, and the two friends had been walking up a steep path. When they stopped to rest, the doctor was regretting that his climbing days were virtually over.
"The truth is," he said humorously, "we are neither of us as steady on our pins as we once were."
"Pins, Nicholson, pins! What are pins?" asked Professor Newman gravely.
On another occasion they were out walking together and the first Lord Brougham passed them in an open carriage. Dr. Nicholson remarked upon Lord Brougham wearing "goggles," and Professor Newman said, in his gentle deliberate way, "Now, Nicholson, may I ask what you exactly mean by 'goggles'?"
The Professor wore hats that in those days were considered amazing: large white or light grey hats made of soft felt. On one of his visits to Penrith he had walked up from the station to the house, and he was followed by a crowd of little boys shouting "Who's your hatter?" which was a catch-phrase of the time. The Professor described to Dr. Nicholson what an extraordinary interest the boys had shown. "They repeatedly asked me," he said, "to tell them who was my hatter, and really, Nicholson, at the time I could not remember the man's name."