‘… As to Froude, I know, of course, no more than the letters have told us both, and the first was so flattering that I was disappointed at the other; yet, on consideration, I see no additional reason for alarm. It seems much as it used to be, and we cannot be wrong in hoping the best. Anyone who remembers him three or four years ago must acknowledge that to have him now is much more than we could have been sure about. I wish him strong enough, please God, to take duty and wait on some flock. I think he would get more calm and less young in his notions, or rather in his way of putting them, which makes people who do not know him think him
not a practical man. What a wise old[174] letter! Well, good-bye.’
On May 2, Hurrell makes to Mr. Keble the frank confession that he is not well enough to return to England, or to travel at all. He never saw the United States. He adds, referring to clauses in the Oriel Statutes, which he seems to have known by heart, ‘Try to satisfy the College that though my ægritudo is diutina, it may not be incurabilis.’ And he goes on to say that a mathematical instructor is wanted at Codrington College,[175] ‘so I mean to offer myself, on condition of having a room given me, and being allowed to battel.[176] Mind, this is mere castle-building as yet, but it is ten to one it will be realised. In fact, unless I get suddenly and decidedly well before the end of this month, I see no chance against it; so will your worships have the goodness to get together a few sets of the [Oxford] Tracts; also three or four copies of a work[177] which I see much praised in The British Magazine, as coming from the pen of “a scholar, a man of refined taste, and above all, a Christian”; also a copy of an anonymous work called The Christian Year, which I forgot to bring with me; also the parts Autumnalis and Hyemalis of my Breviary; also any newspapers or reviews, or anything else which will throw light on your worships’ proceedings; and send the package to [my father]: let it be a good big one; and mind to send lots of Tracts, for I shall try hard to poison the minds of the natives out here…. There is a most commendable
production in the supplemental December number, signed C.[178] Whose is it? he should be cultivated. I should like to see a good one on clergy praying with their faces to the Altar and backs to the congregation. In a Protestant Church the parson seems either to be preaching the prayers or worshipping the congregation…. The climate out here is certainly delicious, though it alters one’s metaphors a little: e.g., the shady side of the hedge would be the cheerful one. The only nuisance is that everything is so inelegant: money and luxury are the people’s sole objects, and their luxuries are only of the kind that can be enjoyed on the instant: no one counts on living here, so there are no porticos, no fountains, no avenues, nothing that makes the south of Europe such a fairyland. Windmills and boiling-houses, treeless fields and gardenless houses, are the only things one sees; except at my dreamed-of residence, Codrington College, where there is a grand avenue of gigantic palms,[179] a delicious spring of the freshest (nothing is cold here) clearest water, and a very tolerably nice flower-garden with mowed turf, and roses that smell, and almost complete seclusion. If I go there I shall turn sentimental, and sit παρὰ θῖνα θαλάσσης ἀτρυγέτοιο δακρυχέων. I wish I could be in England now, and see a little of “Nature’s tenderest, freshest green,” etc. Out here it is the leafless time….’
One circumstance which would turn Hurrell’s thoughts the more readily to a tutorship was that he could no longer be domestic Chaplain. The Bishop of Barbados had gone on a long visit to England.
Beginning in June of this year, and lasting into October, appeared in The British Magazine,[180] copious excerpts from the ancient Parish Books of Dartington. There is a very high value put now upon all such publications, and a very general
interest in them; but one wonders how many readers of the time, brought up on controversy, begrudged the space given to the statistics of bygone village people. Archdeacon Froude sent up copies of his registers to London, in response to the behest of that busy antiquary in the making, his eldest son: that seems an obviously safe deduction.
Newman has something to say to the absentee on June 15.
‘Was it not a strange mishap, that much as you abused me for making you a cat’s paw, yet when the time of danger came, you should get out of the way, and leave innocent me to trouble? So it was: only think how mildly I have always spoken of Arnold, and how bitterly you! Never did I use a harsh word against him, I think, except that once, and then at Rome, and with but one or two friends.[181] Yet even from Rome those few words are dragged forth, and I have to answer for them…. In the next place, my Tracts are abused as Popish; as for other things, so especially for expressions about the Eucharist. Here, as you well know, it was you who were apt to be unguarded, not I. I could tell you much, only it is renewing sorrows, and nothing else, of the plague the Tracts have been to us, and how we have removed them to Rivington’s. That the said Tracts have been of essential benefit it is impossible to doubt. Pamphlets, sermons, etc. on the Apostolic Succession are appearing in every part of the kingdom…. H[enry] Wilberforce engaged to marry Miss S[argent] last December, was afraid to tell me, and left Oxford without; spread abroad I had cut R[yder][182] for marrying. Yet he has not ratted,[183] and will not: so be it. Marriage, when a crime, is a crime which it is criminal to repent of.’
Poor Henry Wilberforce, caught red-handed, did not repent.