As the young host at Dartington had always loved the younger guest, it is natural to find the praises of the latter in Froude’s notes to Newman. Thus on Jan. 12: ‘Rogers leaves us on Thursday, having been the greatest of acquisitions, in the eyes of everyone.’ ‘The greatest of acquisitions’ of course meant an acquisition to the Cause: Mr. Rogers’ own worth being properly valued, and that valuation added as so much credit to local impressions of the
Movement. Hurrell had no merely social triumphs in mind. He had paid Newman, as guest and passive proselytiser, the same compliment.
Again: ‘R[ogers] left us on [Thursday]. We had many arguments and proses,[258] in the former of which he was generally victorious, but in the latter I think I may boast of having succeeded. I do believe he hates the meagreness of Protestantism as much as either of us.’
One who had never spared himself scrutiny and blame could, without affectation, arraign his dying languor as ‘selfishness’ and ‘idleness.’ Poor Hurrell’s capacity for work and perseverance had always been on the heroic scale. ‘These are not times,’ he had written in 1831, ‘in which people who think their own principles right have any business to be shilly-shally … [but] times when it seems almost a sin to be jolly.’ Newman knew how to cheer on that astounding energy, though with an aching heart.
To the Rev. John Keble, Jan. 7, 1836.
‘I am quite ashamed to think how long it is since I got your last letter; but illness makes one selfish, at least mine does, and dislike of writing, or in fact of doing anything, except trying to keep myself as comfortable as possible, has become a ruling passion. Since autumn set in I have done actually nothing except that review of B. White, which N[ewman] committed me about in such a way that I could not back out, and so was forced to go forward whether I would or not. However, I hope to turn over a new leaf as the weather mends, and indeed I begin to feel its reviving influence already. It is now more than two months since I have been out of doors, except in a close carriage, and for the last three weeks I have not been out at all, but have lived in an artificial summer at about the temperature of sixty-five degrees…. I am also prohibited altogether from eating meat, poultry, etc., or any animal food except fish, which, considering that milk does not agree with me, makes my case rather a hard one.
On the whole, however, I am very comfortable, if it was not for an occasional twinge of conscience at my total idleness, for which I fear I really have no excuse, as I did not find myself a bit worse when obliged for a week to work as hard as I could for The British Critic. N[ewman] is now trying to hook me in for something else in the same line, and though I doubt not I shall be provoked with myself for having agreed to it, when the time for delivering the MS. draws near, yet I really think that the stimulus is a good thing for me. I am really very much obliged to you for your compliments about Becket,[259] for they really are the only ones I get in any quarter.’
There was no longer the least hope for a patient who had inherited consumption; who had never taken care of himself; whom no change of climate had ever benefited; whose long austerities had done, no doubt, their share of the work. As it was, he had entered his thirty-third year, outliving several of his family. But the treatment to which he was subjected seems radically wrong to those who glory in hygienic science revolutionised since his day. The hot climate, the low diet, the extra clothing while in England, the atrocious dumb-bell exercise, instead of a gentle and uniform strengthening of every muscle in the body, and last of all, the deprivation of fresh air, his one possible alleviation, were so many superfluous death-wounds in the fight. Mr. Keble, like Mr. Rogers and Newman, deplored the shut windows at Dartington, remembering their friend’s lifelong predilection for the open. ‘I am sorry to find they think it necessary to confine him so,’ he sighs to Newman. And then he adds, with a whipped-up miscellaneous optimism: ‘His being able to write is an excellent sign. What have you set him on now?… Thank you for sending me Wilson’s letter: it shows him in a most amiable light. You have all of you made much more than I meant out of that little word of mine of his being “softish.” I only meant that he was not as disposed to hang all Whigs, Puritans,
etc., as some might be; but this we charitably attribute to the bad company he has kept in London.’
From Oriel Hurrell had, every few days, a full journal of the party’s doings, interspersed with all manner of private and autobiographical references. Newman, dining with a celebrated Evangelical (Mr., afterwards Sir James Stephen), sketches in the latter’s instructive conversation. ‘It is so hard to [repeat] without seeming to bepraise myself; but since I am conscious I have got all my best things from Keble and you, I feel, ever, something of an awkward guilt when I am lauded for my discoveries. He did not like my Arians, which, if I understood him, jumped about from one subject to another, and was hastily written, though thought out carefully…. He seemed to treat with utter scorn the notion that we were favouring Popery: this age of Mammon and this shrewd-minded nation were in no danger of it…. Further, the most subtle enemy which Christianity has ever had was Benthamism. Now he thought our views had in them that which could grapple with it…. He wanted from me a new philosophy…. Indeed, go where I will, “the fields are ready for harvest,” and none to reap them. If I might choose my place in the Church, I would, as far as I can see, be Master of the Temple. I am sure, from what little I have seen of the young lawyers, I could do something with them. You and Keble are the philosophers, and I the rhetorician’ … the fascinating miscellany of a letter goes on. And another quickly follows, when the writer (who had been named to Lord Melbourne as well as Keble) fears that Keble will refuse the Divinity Professorship at Oxford if it be proffered him, and flies to Froude as to one who can help to prevent that calamity. ‘I dread lest he should decline it. I write to you, that if you agree with me, you may write to him at once. For myself, I should go by your judgement, if such a thing occurred to me…. Carissime, I think I may say with a clear conscience I have no desire for it, and, had I my choice, would decide that the offer should not be made to me. I am too indolent, and like my own way too well, to wish it. I should be entangled in routine business, which I abhor. I should be obliged to economise,[260] and play the humbug, in a way