This to Newman, on Aug. 1, 1830, in a letter filled with political comment admiring the spirit of King Charles X. and Polignac in their disasters, and growling over Whig successes in England, is too amusing to be omitted. ‘… I set out in the rain to Exeter. I was not very well; and had made up my mind, as a matter of conscience, to have a tooth out when I got there; because, though it had not yet ached, I thought it probable it might before I had another opportunity. I got to Exeter, went to the dentist, had the forceps applied: the top of the tooth broke; they were applied again: a splinter came out of the side; and so on, till it was down fair with the jaw, and part of the nerve had come away in the fragments. Nothing remained to be done except to punch, etc.; and here I thought: “Satis jam pridem sanguine fuso”: I had satisfied my debt to my future self; and the present self might be excused from further suffering, till the toothache actually came.’
Froude’s lecturing at Oxford was now quite done; Newman’s and Robert Wilberforce’s likewise; they resigned their Tutorships as gracefully as they might, being joyful over the turn things had taken. The long opposition maintained against their desire to arrange the terminal table in accordance with their own best judgment, ended in total defeat for ‘the erect fighting figures’ of the three friends. The Provost himself, Hampden, Denison, and the junior Copleston rushed into the breach with Lectures many and purposeful; but Oriel felt the change, whether for good or ill, to be a real crisis. According to one distinguished commentator, her regeneration dates from that day; according to another, she never recovered the loss, and could but suffer her scholarly pre-eminence to pass, gradually but surely, to Balliol, which has ever since held it. Two at least of the dispossessed Tutors had conceived already a wider field of action for their energies. They had leisure now to think and to write; and leisure bred consequences. ‘Humanly speaking,’ Newman assures us, in his fragment of autobiography,
written throughout in the third person, ‘the Movement never would have been, had they not been deprived of the Tutorship, or had Keble, not Hawkins, been Provost.’
Newman made a proposal that Robert Wilberforce or Froude should join him in the care of S. Mary’s parish, or rather, in building up at Littlemore what the Vicar ultimately intended even then should become a separate parish: but neither saw his way to accept the work. From letters of this time we gather knowledge of their ever-increasing attention to the Fathers; to the ethical aspects of many great political questions; and to the country walks and rides, apart or together, which did so much to strengthen that pure passion for Nature, ‘subdued and cherished long,’ which in Newman, as in Froude, lent sweetness and balance to character. Froude’s heartfelt love of Devon is conspicuous, whether he be in it or away from it. During the Long Vacation of 1831, he succeeded in carrying Newman off from his books and the stuffy summer air of low-lying Oxford, to the delights of Dartington. As a glowing corroboration of what Hurrell himself was always writing, it is worth while to quote his friend’s description of the district, sent to his interested mother at Iffley.
‘Dartington, July 7, 1831.
‘I despatched a hasty letter yesterday from Torquay which must have disappointed you from its emptiness; but I wished you to know my progress. As we lost sight of the Needles, twilight came on, and we saw nothing of the coast. The night was beautiful, and on my expressing an aversion to the cabin, Froude and I agreed to sleep on deck…. When I awoke, a little before four, we were passing the Devonshire coast, about fifteen miles off it. By six we were entering Torbay…. Limestone and sandstone rocks of Torbay are very brilliant in their colours and sharp in their forms; strange to say, I believe I never saw real rocks before, in my life! This consciousness keeps me very silent, for I feel I am admiring what everyone knows, and it is foolish to observe upon. You see a house said to have belonged to Sir Walter Ralegh;[73]
what possessed him to prefer the court at Greenwich to a spot like this?… I know I am writing in a very dull way, but can only say that the extreme deliciousness of the air, and the fragrance of everything makes me languid, indisposed to speak or write, and pensive. My journey did not fatigue me, to speak of, and I have no headache, deafness, or whizzing in my ears; but, really, I think I should dissolve into essence of roses, or be attenuated into an echo, if I lived here!… What strikes me most is the strange richness of everything. The rocks blush into every variety of colour, the trees and fields are emeralds, and the cottages are rubies. A beetle I picked up at Torquay was as green-and-gold as the stone it lay upon, and a squirrel which ran up a tree here just now was not the pale reddish-brown to which I am accustomed, but a bright brown-red. Nay, my very hands and fingers look rosy, like Homer’s Aurora, and I have been gazing on them with astonishment. All this wonder I know is simple; and therefore, of course, do not you repeat it. The exuberance of the grass and the foliage is oppressive, as if one had not room to breathe, though this is a fancy. The depth of the valleys and the steepness of the slopes increase the illusion, and the Duke of Wellington would be in a fidget to get some commanding point to see the country from. The scents are extremely fine, so very delicate yet so powerful; and the colours of the flowers as if they were all shot with white. The sweet peas especially have the complexion of a beautiful face: they trail up the wall, mixed with myrtles, as creepers. As to the sunset, the Dartmoor heights look purple, and the sky close upon them a clear orange. When I turn back and think of Southampton Water and the Isle of Wight, they seem, by contrast, to be drawn in Indian ink, or pencil. Now I cannot make out that this is fancy, for why should I fancy? I am not especially in a poetic mood. I have heard of the brilliancy of Cintra and still more of the East, and I suppose that this region would pale beside them; yet I am content to marvel at what I see, and think of Virgil’s description of the purple meads of Elysium. Let me enjoy what I feel, even though I may unconsciously exaggerate.’
Newman’s senses were extraordinarily delicate: he writes as if at thirty he was half unaware of some of his most special faculties.
A week later, a postscript follows, addressed to Harriett Newman, telling of ‘a sermon to write for to-morrow, which I do believe to be as bad a one as I have ever written, for I was not in the humour; but I do not tell people so. It may do good, in spite of me!’ and this confidence: ‘The other day the following lines came into my head. They are not worth much; but I transcribe them:
‘There strayed awhile, amid the woods of Dart,