And he reverts, in his animated vein, to the propaganda never out of his thoughts, saying encouragingly to Newman:
‘I have heard from my sisters and the Champernownes of the efficacy of your opuscula in leading captive silly women. One very curious instance I heard the other day of an exceedingly clever girl who for the last two or three years has been occasionally laid up with a very painful illness, and suffered severely. Nobody that she lives with can have acted as channels for infecting her,[237] as they are all either commonplace sensible people, or Evangelical, or lax. But she has got it into her head that there is a new party springing up in the Church, which she calls “the new men,” and has been pumping my sisters about you, and whether your notions are spreading, etc…. They say she has been working the Dartmouth Evangelicals with your Sermons, and made one of the parsons knock under! I have also heard of a learned lady (a very good and sensible person, by-the-bye), poking away most industriously at your Arians, and saying that her views had been much cleared by it.’
Phillis Spedding did not long survive her return to England. She died at Dartington three days after the date of Hurrell’s letter, on June 14, 1835, in her twenty-sixth year. Her one little child, Edward Spedding, then aged eighteen months, grew up only to attain his majority, and to be buried in January, 1855, at Bassenthwaite, not with his mother.
Thomas Story Spedding, living on at the manor which he had so romantically inherited, married again.
Meanwhile, in Littlemore, Mrs. Newman was about to lay the corner-stone of her son’s Early English chapel, with the plans of which the architectural zeal of Mr. Thomas Mozley, the Vicar’s future brother-in-law, had much to do. The rumour that Hurrell Froude had designed it got some currency; and there is a mirth-provoking growl on the subject in the pages of that watchful worthy, the Rev. Peter Maurice of Yarnton, Chaplain of New College.[238] Upon the return of Newman and Froude from Rome in 1833, he says, ‘we soon found that the malaria of the Pontine marshes, the nondescript fogs of the fatherland of all heresy, began to develop their miasmata in a new diagnosis…. That edifice [Littlemore Church] was constructed from outlines and plans sketched out for the architect by an amateur friend of [Newman’s] own: the Rev. R. H. Froude. It was in a particular style of Church architecture which they were plotting to introduce. It was, in fact, the very first Church in modern times[239] that was ever consecrated with a stone altar, a stone cross, and credentia.’
Hurrell, however, at this very time, 1835, was busying himself with artistic needs nearer home. After his death, Archdeacon Froude wrote to Newman in one of his letters, which affectionately begged for a visit: ‘I hear you have a splendid Altar-table at Littlemore. That which dear Hurrell designed, and had executed for my chancel, is now in its proper place.’ This was in December, 1836. Hurrell’s Altar, practically modelled on the High Altar of Cologne Cathedral, has always been preserved as his gift at Dartington, and constantly used; it has undergone no alteration except that it had to be raised for convenience, after Archdeacon Froude’s death, as he was short, and both his successors have been very tall men. It was
brought from the old Church to the new. Hurrell also changed the place of the chancel-screen in the Church now destroyed, moving it eastward, from the entrance to the choir, to enclose the rail at the Altar-foot, so that none but communicants passed beyond it: an irregular proceeding for an ecclesiologist. But it seems clear that he meant by the action to emphasise the sacredness of the Altar itself.
He was ever on the move, physically and mentally, in and about his father’s parish. Neighbours and social equals found it a bracing pleasure to see and hear him again, after absence; he had the greatest possible influence with them; those of his own age, fifty years later, and scattered all over England, were still quoting him. He dearly loved children, whom he met upon equal terms. Wherever there were children, Hurrell was always testing their metal, while romping with them. Would they run away from a comrade in danger? Would they throw blame on others? Would they break promises? He knew of what stuff every lamb of them was made, and it has been quite impossible for any of these, either, to forget him. This sweet solicitude, comeliest in one auquel une grâce particulière a révélé le prix et la beauté de la virginité sacerdotale,[240] played in and out among his graver cares. That, and the old preoccupation with architecture, stood for his best diversions, during his final year. It would appear that he also visited London. The admirable critic of the Movement just quoted lays some stress, in passing, on Hurrell’s interview with Dr. Wiseman; he even surmises that it was caused by spiritual anxieties of one sort or another.[241] But he forgets that Hurrell’s intention then was to return to Rome, and to historical work in the Vatican Library, and that, long before, Dr. Wiseman had promised his aid and interest in obtaining for him facilities for research.
The Gothic plotter (no more Gothic, Mr. T. Mozley thinks,
than he should be), was employing his July of 1835 in outdoor devices. He tried to allure Newman as far as Torbay. ‘I am sure the lark will do you good, and the money (£2, 15s.) will not be grossly misspent.’ To which his friend replies on July 20: ‘… I should like of all things to come and see you, but can say nothing to the proposal at present, being very busy here, and being, in point of finances, in a very unsatisfactory state. I am at present at Dionysius and the Abbé, whom Oh! that I could despatch this vacation!’