Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman Part 18

The first of these alphabets is Persian; the second the Median; the third the Babylonian.

Deutsch tells us that, originally, the cuneiform signs were pictures of objects drawn in outline on a vegetable substance, known by the native name of _likhusi_. He thinks it probable that the supply of this was not equal to the demand, for early in the Babylonish history clay was used instead of _likhusi_.

(This letter is undated.)

"My dear Nicholson,

"I cannot remember the longitude or lat.i.tude of my hearing from you or writing to you, and do not know whether I have to apologize for neglecting you, so absorbed (it seems) have I been. I cannot even tell whether I told you of my two months' devotion to Cuneiformism, and my study of the Medo- Persian and Scythian inscriptions as _promeletemata_ of an article in the November _Fraser's Magazine_.

"I found the a.s.syrian useless to dabble in: it is so vast, so fragmentary, so embarra.s.sed by dogmatic hypotheses and a.s.sertions, and deterring complications, that one must give oneself _wholly_ to it for any chance of getting to its foundations. But I feel on perfectly solid ground in Medo- Persian or Scythian. Difficulties in them are like difficulties in Greek or Sanscrit: that is all. In the a.s.syrian, I do not yet know whether to believe at least half of the characters, and many fundamental alleged principles; and I get no satisfaction in what I read....

"The eight millions in the U.S. who are to be educated, stimulate me. I am dying to get into relations with some who will be practically engaged in it.... I was very gloomy about American affairs four or six weeks ago. The President seemed running fast to ruin. But his plans have happily broken down so early and so decidedly, that he is probably himself ashamed of them, and the people have rallied to oppose them. I now trust that all will come right."

"Benner, Dolgelley, "_20th Aug._, 1864.

"My dear Nicholson,

"I dare say you duly received a copy of my Iguvine Inscriptions [Footnote: There is a town in Central Italy, Gubbio, which was anciently known as Iguvium or Eugubium, which possessed many medieval palaces (the Brancaleoni), and well-known Eugubine Tables.] which I directed to be sent to you. For the first time in my life I have published with the secret hope of what some call 'fame,' i.e. with the desire of gaining 'credit,'

because such 'credit' is of first importance to aid me in pus.h.i.+ng on my schemes in regard to modern Arabic literature in European type.... To put forward an Easy Instructor in modern Arabic and an Anglo-Arabic Dictionary, in European type, _with advantage_, I should greatly wish another journey to Turkey, but as I have no children to leave with my wife, and she would be killed with ennui if I took her, and would more than double the expense, I have not seen how to do it. Besides, I want money to publish my books.... General Grant's position between Petersburg and Richmond is become terribly anxious (my last news was his loss of six thousand men in attacking the fortresses behind the one which he blew up), and unless ultimately successful, the longer he tarries, the more complete will be his disaster.... I have always been despondent as to the Northern scheme for forcing its way through Eastern Virginia; and am not the better reconciled to it by Grant's campaign. There is no sound success for the North now, unless they put the 'coloured' race politically on equal terms with the 'whites,' and not to do so when 'colour' is legally undefinable, and when the only loyal citizens in loyal provinces are 'coloured,' is an alarming infatuation. I suppose they must suffer more and more, until they resolve that the slave owners of Kentucky, and the colour bigots of Illinois and Pennsylvania, shall be forced to yield to patriotic necessities. Perhaps until they put down Slavery and serfdom within their own limits, they are not to be allowed success against the rebels. Mr.

Lincoln's gratuitous establishment of serfdom in Louisiana, and recognition of the pardoned rebels, as the only citizens worthy to hold power, has filled me with despair of him. It is now clear from his own avowals, that he will do no more justice to the coloured race than he is _forced_ to do."

In a letter dated 24th November, 1864, he says:--

"I much rejoice that the Americans have made the Presidential election a trial of principles, not of persons. Such a victory as 213 to 21 seems to imply that the old 'democratic' party is henceforth killed, while the Abolitionists, who have voted for Lincoln and Johnson, are left quite free not to attack the Government as severely as they pleased for any shortcomings. I hope you have seen, or will see, the speech of Andrew Johnson at Nashville, proclaiming liberty 'full, broad, and unconditional'

to every person in Tennessee. It is in so hearty and outspoken a tone as to double its value. '_Loyal_ men alone, _whether white or black_, shall rule the destiny of Tennessee.' 'All men who are _for equal rights_ are his friends.' Now that he is Vice-President-elect I cannot but hope a great change for the better in Mr. Lincoln's policy towards the free and freed negroes, for Johnson and Lincoln have been in intimate relations from the beginning.... Have you read details about the U.S. Sanitary Commission? It is a magnificent development of high historical importance to the future of wars, carrying out Florence Nightingale's ideas and wishes on to the vastest scale, and adding to it the tending of sick and wounded enemies."

Newman's next communication to his friend alludes to the Permissive Bill, and a.s.sures him that there is no fear that it can ever "hinder _legal_ methods of getting liquor (for medicine, for chemistry, for art)." He adds: "The sole question is, whether by an agent of the public authority, who makes no gain by an increased sale (which we think the sound mode), or by a trafficker who gains by pus.h.i.+ng the sale."

As regards America: "I now understand that the darkest moment for the North--the repulse of Burnside at Fredericsburgh--was the _only_ thing that at last decided Mr. Lincoln to issue his proclamation of freedom....

He has been born and bred under a slave-owner's interpretation of the Const.i.tution and of the negro-temperament, and ... seems to persist in his publicly avowed preference of _gradual_ abolition. Could he have had his way, I predicted, and would still predict, twenty years of misery, confusion, with probably new war unfavourable to the North. Garrison has done his worst to aid the President, but Sumner and Wendell Phillips have (as I now take courage to believe) checkmated him. He will NEVER get his Louisiana and Arkansas reconstruction approved by Congress, and _colour- legislation_ will be declared to be a violation of 'Republicanism.'... Yet Mr. Lincoln is a better President every half-year, and I fully count will at last give way to truth and necessity with a good grace.

"I have been actively working up my _Handbook_ of Arabic. I also design a _skeleton_ dictionary of Arabic-English. I have got a valuable book from Algiers (if it had but vowel points!). But I cannot publish until I have money to spare. Meanwhile I work hard to mature and perfect."

Late in September, 1864, he is again writing on American turmoils:--

"_Next June_, 1865, the debt of the U.S. will be about 400 million sterling, only half of what England had at the end of the great French War, when her population was not two-thirds nor her means one-fifth of the U.S., who (if once freedom and order is established over the whole Union) will be a focus of immigration three times as attractive as ever, with wealth multiplying twice as rapidly as ever.... I have no anxiety about anything _but the policy which is to prevail in victory_.... It is frightful to me to hear President Lincoln avow that (against the morality of his heart) his official duty is to do nothing for the coloured race except under compulsion and to save the whole Republic from foundering. He knows they are subjects of the Union, and _owe allegiance_ to it, to the point of laying down their lives for it; yet he does not know that those who owe allegiance have an indefeasible right to protection. He is conquering rebellious States, and does not know that the conqueror is thenceforward RESPONSIBLE for the inst.i.tutions which he permits in those States, and believes it to be his official duty to respect the old inst.i.tutions however inhuman, however against Republican Const.i.tutionalism, and even when a violation of a treaty with France....

It is too clear that Lincoln will be a great drag upon everything decisive in policy, and especially where decision is most necessary, i.e. in vesting in the coloured race _power to defend their own rights_. When the war ends, it will be very difficult to hinder the Northern enthusiasm from collapsing and foolish statesmen from doing necessary work by halves."

In May, 1865, Newman writes these strong words: "President Lincoln was dead against the confiscation of estates, and bent upon restoring a powerful landed aristocracy, with a wretched dependent peasantry free in name only.... A far sterner nature than his was wanted, which understands that Justice to the oppressed must go before Mercy to the guilty; and I believe they have got the right man in Andrew Johnson."

In February of the year 1866, a great trouble and anxiety fell upon Newman while he and his wife were staying at Hastings. For nine or ten days she seemed to be dying. "We got her through the acute crisis.... I resigned her a full month ago, and have since not dared to hope that she can do anything but linger. Nevertheless her life is less distressing and more worth having than it was. She moves from her bed into an arm-chair; sits at table for dinner.... She talks cheerfully, and can enjoy seeing her sisters. When I look at her I fancy she is pretty well;... yet I feel that she might be carried off very suddenly. Indeed, this was her mother's case, who had the very same combination of disease, and retained much muscular strength to the last. We had two physicians at Hastings, and here she is under Dr. Garth Wilkinson. I have no complaint against any of the physicians: they seem to me all to have done all they could; but nothing that anyone has done has been of any use. It was by nursing, not by medicine, that she was saved through critical days and nights. The physician said she could not live forty-eight hours, and so we believed: and at her request I sent him away.... I have written so many letters that I forget to whom I have written: and it was indeed a tumultuous existence at Hastings. I have now a good night nurse and cannot say that I want anything; but a great shadow overspreads me."

The Doctor had evidently miscalculated Mrs. Newman's strength and recuperative power, however, for in June of the same year:--

"I am happy to say that she" (Mrs. Newman) "now looks very like herself, though feebler and liable (I fear) to relapse. But she is not only in comparative health, but gives a hope of acquiring more soundness in the next three months. I give up this house" (10 Circus Road, N.W.) "in a very few days, and have taken a house in Clifton--1 Dover Place--but it will not be ready for us until 1st August."

Nearly three months later, he writes:--

"I am at last in my new home, which is very pretty, very pleasant, with delightful prospect, and _perhaps_ may suit me well; but I have sad trouble with a drunken house owner, who kept me twenty-three days out later than his contract,... and has given me roof and pipes either out of repair or insufficient, rat holes very troublesome,... cisterns and taps all in unsatisfactory state. Last night, for the third time in ten days, I have been inundated through two floors." But he adds more hopefully than the case seems to warrant," If I can get these matters right my house is very promising. ... After a few weeks here my wife's strength has increased notably, by no other doctor than a donkey chaise, and she now seems just what she was last summer....

"I have had a letter from Pulszky (to whom I had not written on this subject) telling me he is convinced that Bismarck put on a mask of fanatical reactionarism in order to win the confidence of the _King of Prussia!_ ... It seemed to me certain, that when new States had to be incorporated with Prussia, despotic reaction would be _impossible_, much more if a German Parliament were summoned. And now the King himself proposes Universal Suffrage for all men above twenty-five and of unblemished character! This seems to make any English Reform Bill impossible, which is not far more democratic than any practical statesman here has yet imagined. Nevertheless, I am increasingly gloomy as to the near future of the English Empire. The Radicals seem perfectly blind as to its centres of danger, and the amount of foreign sympathy which insurrection in India or Ireland will now have. Andrew Johnson seems destined to involve the U.S. in new civil war. I grieve deeply for it."

The next letter shows Newman settled in at "1 Dover Place, Clifton." His Anglo-Arabic dictionary is finished, though revisions are to be added later. At the end of the letter he gives the names of those who, he hopes, may some day form a Ministry under Gladstone.

"_12th March_, 1867.

"My dear Nicholson,

"Our correspondence is so slack that I cannot tell what or on what I last wrote, nor where to lay hands on your last.... We have had severe weather all this month, and the snow continues all day since last night; but I am happy to say my dear wife is not the worse.... I remember vividly the spring of 1836, the first year of our marriage: the season from December to May was the severest that I take note of since the great historical winter of 1813 (1812?). This begins to remind me of 1836.... I had hoped that continued work at Arabic would explain to me certain fixed difficulties in the doc.u.ments which I have studied; but a number of them, even where the printed text is quite clear, remain unsolved. I venture to trouble you with the only words which embarra.s.s me in a rather long and complete narrative of the burial of Abd el Mejied and the ceremonial of installing his brother as his successor. If you can translate the line or half-line I shall be benefited.

"I finished my Anglo-Arabic dictionary three or four weeks ago, but I hope to enrich and revise it. Perhaps the course of public events surprises you as much as me. As the Whigs cannot afford to be outrun by the Tories, it appeared to me at first that I had been wrong in expecting a tough and lingering struggle. Yet it seems to me, in revising details, morally impossible for either Tories or a _Russell_ Ministry to do enough to stop and satisfy the outdoors Reform movement. If _Russell_ would retire, or were forced to retire, and Gladstone had courage and resolution to make a Radical Ministry, including Bright and Mill, Stansfeld, Forster, Milnes, Gibson, etc. (to which the Duke of Argyle would adhere), and were to dissolve Parliament if necessary--even so it would be hard to pa.s.s through the Lords a measure adequate to stop the clamour for more, and active agitation. I begin to relapse into my belief that there _must_ be long conflict. Nothing seems to me worth a national Convulsion which does not give us new principles and new persons in the Executive Government. I incline to believe that we shall live to see Radicalism (of a grade far beyond what is popularly so named) in high office and carrying out its principles with energy."

It will be remembered that Lord John Russell had long tried to reform Parliament. In 1866 he had brought a bill for the purpose before the House of Commons. It was rejected, and with it the Ministry went out. Then, when Lord Derby became Prime Minister, with Disraeli as leader of the House, he found he could do nothing but introduce in 1867 a Reform Bill of a far more marked and definite character than the one which had "gone under"

during the last year. This bill, however, pa.s.sed in August, 1867, showing how the country in the meantime had become more and more ready for such a measure. Its conditions were that borough franchise was given to all rate- payers, and lodgers who used rooms of the annual value of ten pounds. But perhaps a great deal of the driving power came from the large numbers of the working-cla.s.ses which were now added to the const.i.tuencies. In 1868 Disraeli, who had now become Prime Minister, retired when he found that the Liberal majority reached to over a hundred through the new elections.

Then came the man of the hour, whom Newman had longed to see in that place--Gladstone, who took the office vacated by Disraeli. At once it was seen how far stronger was this new Ministry than the last, or, indeed, one might perhaps say than many "lasts." One of its first measures was the always-to-be-regretted one of the disendowment of the Irish Church.

Disestablishment, which of course preceded disendowment, was in many respects a gain. The Land Bill followed in 1870, and the next year abolition of religious tests for admission to degrees and offices in the Universities.

"_15th April_, 1867.

"My dear Nicholson,

"I would not have you take any particular trouble about it, but if in your Turkish Dictionary you find (this) to mean _tax_, at your entire leisure (no hurry at all) I should be glad to learn how to p.r.o.nounce the word.

"I received on Sat.u.r.day from Was.h.i.+ngton a newspaper which contains very interesting news from North Carolina and Alabama. N. C. comes out 'square'

for the Republican party, and Alabama avows Republican sentiments. Both accept negro suffrage and absolute equality of the races. _Coloured orators are prominent and acceptable_.

"I also have a very interesting letter from a coloured gentleman from New Orleans, saying that the last acts of Congress have quite quelled the reign of terror, and brought out the White Unionists, who did not dare to speak before; and they are much more numerous than he had believed.

Although Congress has been pusillanimous in the extreme, and always deficient, both as to time and substance, and although the danger of reaction is not past, still everything is turning for the better since the last act of the thirty-ninth Congress and first of the fortieth, and I think we may now hope that the Unionists of the South, white and black, will be able to fight their own battles. In England I do not think _our_ agitation can be appeased by the Reform Bill of this Parliament....

"Ever yours cordially,

"F. W. Newman."

The following letter concerns Vaccination almost entirely. Newman's views with respect to vaccination were very clearly set forth in Vol. III of his _Miscellanies_. They come under the heading of an article called "Barbarisms of Civilisation." [Footnote: Published in the _Contemporary Review_ of June, 1879.] Newman owns to having no medical knowledge of the risks or non-risks of vaccination, but from what he considers to be the rational point of view he objects to it most strongly. He protests that Government Vaccinators have "for many years obtained a large part of what they called _lymph_ ... (_pus_, or matter, is the only right word) by inoculating calves or bullocks with small-pox. The result in the animals they are pleased to call _cow-pox_, and when the poisonous matter is transferred back to human infants they a.s.sume that it will not produce small-pox! But while the doctrine is orthodox in London, the Local Government in Dublin allows no such dealing."

He adds: "Unless the _causes_ of small-pox be removed (generally some impurity in the air or in the food), those causes will work mischief somehow. throw an eruptive disease back into the system is proverbially dangerous.... Moreover, what right has any physician to neglect the cures of small-pox, by which herbalists, hydropaths, and Turkish-bath keepers find it a most tractable disease?"

In a letter called "Compulsory Vaccination," published in 1884, he says: "To obviate it" (small-pox) "by extirpating its causes is good sense; to infuse a new disease without caring to extirpate the causes of the existing disease is a want of common sense." In the letter following, the "Harry" (Dr. Henry) is the boy who boarded with the Newmans, and left snail-sh.e.l.ls stuck on a board when he left! He was well known in the world of science as Professor H. Alleyne Nicholson, of Aberdeen.

There is no date or address on this letter.