Francis William Newman (27 June 1805 – 4 October 1897) was an English classical scholar and moral philosopher, prolific miscellaneous writer and activist for
vegetarianism and other causes.
He was the younger brother of
John Henry Newman.
Thomas Carlyle in his life of
John Sterling called him a "man of fine attainments, of the sharpest-cutting and most restlessly advancing intellect and of the mildest pious enthusiasm."[1]George Eliot called him "our blessed St. Francis" and his soul "a blessed yea".[2]
Early life
Newman was born in London, the third son of John Newman, a banker, and his wife Jemima Fourdrinier, sister of
Henry Fourdrinier. With his brother John Henry, he was educated at
Ealing School. He matriculated at
Worcester College, Oxford in 1822, where he obtained a double first class and graduated B.A. in 1826. He was elected fellow of
Balliol College in the same year.[3][4][5]
During his undergraduate days, his father's bank having failed, he was able to complete his degree by relying on financial support from his older brother John Henry.[4] Early in his student period, however, lodging as he did with his brother, he disagreed enough on established religion to feel, at least as he expressed it in a late autobiographical work, that there was a breach in their relationship.[6] He never graduated M.A., normally at Oxford a pure formality, since he shortly acquired religious scruples about signing as required the
39 Articles.[7]
In 1827, Newman went to
Delgany,
County Wicklow, where for a year he tutored the sons of
Edward Pennefather, There he fell under the influence of Pennefather's brother-in-law, the Rev
John Nelson Darby, one of the nascent group of
Plymouth Brethren, who he describes in Phases of Faith as "the Irish Clergyman".[4]
Conscientious scruples respecting the ceremony of
infant baptism then led him to resign his fellowship in 1830.[3][8]
Missionary
Newman then took another position, in the family of
Henry Parnell, 4th Baronet Parnell. An obituary of
Edward Cronin, a Catholic convert widowed in 1829, suggests a Bible study group as origin of the sequel.[9] Newman had recently been rejected by Maria Rosina Giberne, whom he had been courting for seven years, and had been helping his brother with parish work at
Littlemore.[4]
Shortly, in September 1830, Newman left Ireland with a party bound for
Baghdad. They intended to join the independent
faith mission of
Anthony Norris Groves, who was working there with
John Kitto and
Karl Gottlieb Pfander. The party included
John Vesey Parnell, who was its financial backer with
John Gifford Bellett, Edward Cronin, and others. The journey, guided by the early views of Darby, ended badly.[10][11][12] Newman's letters written home during the period of his mission were collected and published in 1856.[3] There are other accounts, by the Brethren historian William Blair Neatby, and by Henry Groves, son of Anthony Norris Groves.
In 1833, Newman returned to England, via
Tehran, with Kitto, arriving in June.[4] He intended to find additional support for the mission: but rumours of unsoundness in his views on the doctrine of
eternal punishment had preceded him.[3]
Academic
Finding himself looked upon with suspicion by erstwhile evangelical colleagues, including Darby, Newman gave up on his vocation of missionary. He became classical tutor at the non-sectarian Bristol College, which existed 1831–1841 at Park Row,
Bristol.[3]
During his tenure there, Newman produced a translation of the Iliad in 1856 that was notable for having come under heavy criticism from English poet and literary critic
Matthew Arnold,[13] which infamously led to a bitter quarrel between the two in 1860 and resulted in Arnold's famous series of essays on translation, On Translating Homer.[14]
Views
Newman once described himself as "anti-everything".[15]Wilfrid Meynell commented that Newman was as a "deist, vegetarian, anti-vaccinationist, to whom a monastery is even as a madhouse."[16] Literary critic
Lionel Trilling described Newman as a "militant vegetarian, an intransigent anti-vivisectionist, an enthusiastic anti-vaccinationist."[17]
"The perfection of the soul, he said, lay in its becoming woman. He believed in woman's right to vote, to educate herself and to ride astride". He sought to make life rational in all things, including clothing. He wore an alpaca tailcoat in summer, three coats in winter (the outer one green), and in bad weather, he wore a rug with a hole cut for his head. When it was muddy, he wore trousers edged with six inches of leather.[15]
Christian and secularist belief
As a young man, Newman was a fervent
evangelical, associating with Walter Mayers and
Thomas Byrth.[4] At Oxford he was acquainted with radical Calvinist evangelicals, such as the circle around
John Hill (1786–1855) of
St Edmund Hall. In 1827 he encountered
Benjamin Wills Newton of Exeter College, a future Plymouth Brethren founder, and Joseph Charles Philpot of his own college, who was his predecessor in the Pennefeather household in Dublin, much impressed by Darby.[18][19][20]
The liberal theological movement to which Newman belonged was hailed by
George Jacob Holyoake, founder of British
secularism. It equally received heavy criticism. The Anglican Clerical Journal, edited by
Henry Burgess, wrote in 1854 of the "openly destructive volumes" of Newman and
Theodore Parker.[26] In that year, Newman published Catholic Union: Essays Towards a Church of the Future, as the Organization of Philanthropy.[27]
With Martineau and others such as
James Anthony Froude and
Edward Lombe, he was one of the unorthodox but "respectable" backers when
John Chapman took over the radical Westminster Review in 1851.[30] The embattled Newman was a figure of controversy, particularly with
Henry Rogers and his The Eclipse of Faith, or, A Visit to a Religious Sceptic of 1852, to which Newman replied.[31] He was supported in the Westminster Review by a sympathetic article of 1858, "F. W. Newman and his Evangelical Critics", by
Wathen Mark Wilks Call, that classed him as an "honest doubter".[32] Considering the reception of ten books by Newman from the 1850s, Call (writing anonymously) concluded that many of his opponents "failed in candour, courtesy, generosity, and conscientiousness."[33]
Newman himself published in the Westminster Review the provocative "Religious Weaknesses of Protestantism" in 1859. Circulation dropped, but
Edward Henry Stanley stepped up with financial support.[34] One of those offended was
Henry Bristow Wilson, who thought it
anti-Christian.[35] He was one of the seven authors of Essays and Reviews (1860), which argued for a different version of liberal theology; among the other authors, Baden Powell was clearly influenced by Newman's views, while there is evidence that
Mark Pattison took Phases of Faith to heart.[36][37]
Returning to the topic at book length, Newman published The Religious Weakness of Protestantism in 1866.[38] He was slow to drop the sola scriptura doctrine of Darby.[39] Over time he developed arguments against it, under the headings of
Bibliolatry and
bigotry.[40]
He went on to contribute 11 articles in the early 1870s to Fraser's Magazine, edited by Froude.[41]
In his lectures of the 1850s on
political economy, Newman had commented on the "population doctrine" of
Thomas Malthus. While he did not contest it in the abstract, in his view, the practical applications of the doctrine had been "deplorably and perniciously false."[46]
An opponent of
birth control, Newman put a case that sexual excess was a danger to women's health.[47] The
Moral Reform Union, launched in 1881 and commended by The Englishwoman's Review, published Newman's book 1889 book The Corruption Now Called Neo-Malthusianism.[48][49]
Vegetarianism
Newman joined the
Vegetarian Society in 1868,[50] and was President of the Society from 1873 to 1883.[51] He was opposed to the dogmatic ideas of
raw foodism and objected to the disuse of flavourings and salt. He commented that "the number of dogmatic prohibitions against everything that makes food palatable will soon ruin our society if not firmly resisted." In 1877, Newman criticized a raw food book of
Gustav Schlickeysen.[50]
He made an associate membership possible for people who were not completely vegetarian, such as those who ate
chicken or
fish. From 1875 to 1896, membership for the Vegetarian Society was 2,159 and associate membership 1,785.[50]
Newman did not like the term "vegetarian" because it implied someone who ate only vegetables. Instead, he preferred the Greek term "anti-creophagite" or "anti-creophagist" (anti-flesh eater). This idea was not supported by other members of the Society, as few people knew what the term meant.[52] He used the phrase "V E M" diet (vegetables, eggs, milk).[53] Newman consumed
dairy and
eggs. In 1884, a hostile review of his book Essays on Diet commented that he "is no vegetarian himself in the strict acceptation of the word, for he takes milk, eggs, butter, and cheese."[54] Newman believed that abstinence from meat, fish and fowl should be the only thing the Vegetarian Society advocates. Some members believed that Newman was not strict enough.[50] However, under Newman's presidency the Society flourished as income, associates and membership numbers increased.[55]
In the 1890s, Newman converted to a
pescetarian diet, and consumed white fish.[56]
Vaccination
Newman was an
anti-vaccinationist and supported the
Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League. He carried over arguments, against following the advice of a "medical clique", that he had used against the Contagious Diseases Acts.[57] In 1869, an article in The Lancet journal criticized Newman for holding this opinion and tried to convince him to withdraw his support for the League.[58]
One of Newman's opponents in the vaccination controversy was
Henry Alleyne Nicholson (Harry), whom he had tutored, and the son of his good friend
John Nicholson. He declined to answer Henry's pamphlet.[59]
Land reform
The Land as National Property: With Special View to the Scheme of Reclaiming it for the Nation Proposed by Alfred Russel Wallace (1886)[60]
Newman was quoted by
James Platt as stating that "the ownership of land is a monstrous despotism".[61]
During the 1870s, Newman supported
Matthew Vincent's scheme for acquiring land to provide smallholdings for agricultural labourers.[62]
Family
Newman was married twice, firstly on 23 December 1835 to Maria Kennaway (died 1876).[63] She was the second daughter of
Sir John Kennaway, 1st Baronet, and a Plymouth Sister.[21][64] They had met at
Escot House in 1834.[65] Francis's mother Jemima was at the end of her life — she died in spring 1836 — but welcomed Maria to the Newman family home. John Henry Newman found that unacceptable. By 1840 the brothers were more reconciled, at least in correspondence.[66]
Maria's sister Frances married Edward Cronin in 1838.[67]
The couple had no children.[4] Under the will of
John Sterling (died 1844), Francis became guardian of his orphaned son Edward Conyngham Sterling.[68][69] Edward (Teddy) went to live with the Newmans in Manchester;[70] for a while his younger brother, John Barton Sterling was there also − their sisters went to their uncle
Anthony Coningham Sterling.[71] Edward Sterling was an artist, and married in 1868 Bertha Stone, a suffragist, daughter of
Frank Stone.[72] Born in 1831 on Munro Plantation,
St Vincent, he died in 1877.[73][74] He had a house built in Sheffield Terrace, London, in 1876, by
Alfred Waterhouse.[75]
Secondly, Newman married Eleanor Williams on 3 December 1878.[4]
Death
After his retirement from University College, Newman continued to live for some years in London, subsequently removing to
Clifton, and eventually to
Weston-super-Mare, where he died in 1897. He had been blind for five years before his death, but retained his faculties to the last.[1]
Newman's funeral address was given by John Temperley Grey.[38] It contained the comment that he was "a saint in the very thick of life's battle."[76]
^Bassnett, Susan (2011).
Reflections on Translation. Multilingual Matters. p. 53.
ISBN978-1-84769-408-9. In contrast, Matthew Arnold engaged in a bitter quarrel with Francis Newman about the correct way to translate ancient works for modern readers, which resulted in his famous essays, 'On Translating Homer', published in 1860, which established a benchmark for the ideal translation.
^
abI.G. Sieveking, "Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman", London, 1909, p.26
^
abcdeGavin Budge et al. (editors), The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Philosophers (2002), Thoemmes Press (two volumes), article Newman, Francis William, p. 858.
^Shattock, Joanne; Wolff, Michael (1982). The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings and Soundings. Leicester University Press. p. 187.
ISBN978-0-7185-1190-6.
^Newman, Francis William. (1883).
Essays On Diet. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co. p. 24
^"A Vegetarian Diet. Essays on Diet by Francis William Newman". Health: A Weekly Journal of Sanitary Science. 3: 90. 1884.
^Yeh, Hsin-Yi. (2013). "Boundaries, Entities, and Modern Vegetarianism: Examining the Emergence of the First Vegetarian Organization". Qualitative Inquiry. 19: 298–309.
doi:
10.1177/1077800412471516.
S2CID143788478.
^Newman, John Henry (1961). Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman: Fellow of Trinity. Vol. January 1876-December 1878. T. Nelson. p. 471.
^Sieveking, Isabel Giberne (1909). Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman: With Twenty-eight Illustrations and Two Articles (one Unpublished Ms.). Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner, & Company, Limited. p. 55.