read and write all sorts of things; for now that one is a Radical, there is no use in being nice![122] I wish you had sent a longer postscript to [Newman] about the position of things; all I have heard, directly or indirectly, has made me long to be home again. You don’t say whether you have done anything for the L[yra] A[postolica]?[123]…. Tell [Isaac Williams] that I think he has used me basely to send me a mere scribble of a few lines, prosing about some theory of poetry, when there were such a lot of atrocities going on on all sides, of which one can get no tolerable account through the papers.
‘Genoa, April 15.—Here we are, as at Leghorn, detained a day beyond our time, though there is a perfect calm, because these absurd fellows are afraid of a swell which was got up by last night’s wind. The more I have to do with these wretched Neapolitans, the more my first impressions about them are confirmed. I wonder how anyone can tolerate either them or their town, which is as nasty and uninteresting a place as I ever set foot in. As to this Genoa, I should not grumble at being detained here, if I were in plight for sight-seeing, for it is truly magnificent, both in itself and in its situation; but, unfortunately, I was taken with a very severe feverish cold the morning we landed, i.e., the day before yesterday; and that day and yesterday was confined to my bed, where I should probably be now but that I had to get up early, in hopes the vessel would keep its appointment…. Never advise a friend of yours to come abroad for his health! It would be very well if one could have Fortunatus’ cap, and wish one’s self at Rome; but travelling does more harm than change of climate does good.
‘While we were at Rome [Newman] and I tried hard to get up the march-of-mind phraseology about pictures and statues, and we hoped we were making some little progress under the
auspices of a clever English artist, to whom we had an introduction: but, unfortunately for our peace of mind, just before our departure we became acquainted with τόπος, that “we don’t enter into [those] technicalities.” Certainly those C[ambridge] men are wonderful fellows; I know no one but [Head][124] that could compete with them at all. They know everything, examine everything, and dogmatise about everything; they have paid particular attention to the geological structure of this place, and the botany of that, and the agriculture of another, and they are antiquaries, and artists, and scholars, and, above all, puff off one another with the assiduity of our friends the [W.]s. W[hewell’s][125] book, and S[edgwick’s][126] Lectures, and T[hirlwall’s][127] research, and H[are’s][128] taste, pop upon one at every turn…. We mean to make as much as we can out of our acquaintance with Monsignor [Wiseman], who (by the by), is really too nice a person to talk nonsense about. He desired me to apply to him, if on any future occasion I had to consult the Vatican Library: and a transaction of that sort would sound well….’
The ‘transaction would sound well’: this, as if the writer’s study were only to heighten others’ opinion of him! Newman was surely right in calling attention, years after, to this habit
of Froude’s of depreciating, nay, belying, his own motives. It was not an affectation, but it was a little piece of sheer cruelty.
The friends had parted at Rome, the Froudes very loath to leave Newman behind; and he, on his part, roaming about the Janiculum after they had gone, in a silent passion of grief, reproaching himself for his wilful fancy to return, under a sort of romantic obsession, to Sicily alone. There he was all but destined to meet an untimely death. Hurrell finished his long letter to Mr. Christie as he moved homeward.
‘Marseilles, April 22.—This France is certainly a most delicious place: we landed in Hyères Bay, owing to a storm from the north-west, and found everything so warm and green that I could quite enter into John of Salisbury’s[129] feelings. The people, too, [are] so extremely civil that I cannot help hoping there may yet be the seven thousand in Israel, and that sometime or other we may be able to talk of la belle France with some kind of pleasure. I feel like a great fool here, from not being able to talk French. In Italy half the population kept me in countenance, but here it is a constant humiliation. And what is worst, I can’t hope to make progress; for having learned the little I know by writing and not [by] speaking, I annex wrong-shaped words to all the sounds. It is like talking Latin[130] to a foreigner.’
Again, on May 23, to William Froude, is expressed further commendation of the French people, founded on the keenest instinctive understanding of them: an understanding even more unusual then than now. Newman, until later, was certainly far from sharing it, or wishing to learn to share it. The ordinary attitude of the contemporary Oxford mind was frankly, though playfully expressed, by the young W. R. Churton, some years before. He gallantly addresses France: ‘What have I seen in thee that should make me long to see thee again? Have I seen a gentleman from Calais to Beauvoisin?
Have I seen one gleam of poetry in the country or its inhabitants?’[131] Hurrell Froude was ‘un-English’ enough to be arrested, but not repelled, while on the Continent, by the spectacle of extra-English human nature. We have heard him longing, at Zante, to ‘live among them a bit, and get into their notions.’ This beautiful and uncommon openness of mind stamps him an ideal traveller, despite his lack of opportunity; at no single point of a hurried route, beset with difficulties, could he look far below the surface of things. But it is strikingly inaccurate to say of him, as Mr. Mozley does, that he lacked not only opportunity, but curiosity, ‘to see the interior of either the political or the religious systems they came upon.’[132]