Finally, on the 10th, arrives Newman’s definite word: ‘I propose coming to you next week,’ coupled with anxious inquiries about his health. Hurrell replies at once:
‘We shall be ready for you whenever you come. Dr. [Yonge] and a young doctor called Hinkson, who has paid much attention to the stethoscope, examined my chest all over; and they both told my father they never examined a chest in which there was more complete freedom from bad symptoms. Yet they say the disorder in my throat is dangerous unless stopped. Dr. Yonge is decided that I am not to go abroad this winter.’
Newman reached Dartington on the 15th, and was most happy there, among scenes and faces ‘loved long since,’ for nearly a month. Every one who has ever come across it remembers the phrase in which he briefly sums up the end of the visit: ‘I left, and took my last farewell of R. H. F. on Sunday, October 11, in the evening, sleeping at Exeter. When I took leave of him his face lighted up, and almost shone in the darkness, as if to say that in this world we were parting for ever.’ The angel, the ‘beautiful young man girded,’ who knew well ‘the way to the country of the Medes,’ had turned homewards, his mission over, and was to walk with Tobit no more.
Travel was an unconscionably slow business then, especially in the south-west. On the following Thursday Newman wrote from Southampton to Mr. Rogers at Oriel:
‘I have just got here from Lyndhurst, and find the Oxford coach full. Nothing therefore is left for me but to go up to London, and try to get to Oxford in that way. Be so good as to make my excuses to College for my non-appearance: it is the first time, I believe, I ever was away any day of an Audit, (except when abroad) since I have been Fellow. I trust I shall be with you to-morrow.
‘Dear Froude is pretty well, but is languishing for want of his Oxford contubernians. I trust I have been of use, in this way, in stimulating his spirits. So strongly do I feel this, from what I see and hear of him, that I mean almost to make myself responsible for some intimate going down to him at Christmas. He is allowed to read now, which is a great comfort. I am to send him a lot of books. It is wonderful, almost mysterious, that he should remain so long just afloat, and as far as it is mysterious, it is hopeful. Really, it would seem as if he were kept alive by the uplifted hands of Moses: which is an encouragement to persevere [in prayer].’
The delayed traveller wrote to Hurrell the day after his arrival at Oxford:
‘St. Luke’s Day, 1835.
‘I have been obliged to come round by London, and having business there, I did not regret it. Rivington will publish a
third volume [of Sermons]; and please will you manage to get for me your father’s leave to dedicate it, in a few words, to him? Keble was married on the 10th, and told no one. The College has but heard from him that he resigns his Fellowship on that day, without a year of grace.[245] I engage to undertake and pledge myself to provide a visitor for you next Christmas: Rogers, or [Tom] Mozley, or Williams. But if no one comes, I shall come myself, which would be too great a pleasure: for I cannot put into words, or rather I do not realise to myself, how much the genius loci of Dartington Parsonage draws. I could be very foolish did I allow myself! All my own reminiscences of the place are sad, and I am almost debarred from them; and I seem to have no right, alienigena, to intrude elsewhere.’