Francis William Newman (27 June 1805 – 4 October 1897) was an English classical scholar and moral philosopher, prolific miscellaneous writer and activist forvegetarianism and other causes.
He was the younger brother ofJohn Henry Newman.Thomas Carlyle in his life ofJohn 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 blessedyea".[2]
Newman was born in London, the third son of John Newman, a banker, and his wife Jemima Fourdrinier, sister ofHenry Fourdrinier. With his brother John Henry, he was educated atEaling School. He matriculated atWorcester College, Oxford in 1822, where he obtained a double first class and graduated B.A. in 1826. He was elected fellow ofBalliol 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 the39 Articles.[7]
In 1827, Newman went toDelgany,County Wicklow, where for a year he tutored the sons ofEdward Pennefather, There he fell under the influence of Pennefather's brother-in-law, the RevJohn Nelson Darby, one of the nascent group ofPlymouth Brethren, who he describes inPhases of Faith as "the Irish Clergyman".[4]
Conscientious scruples respecting the ceremony ofinfant baptism then led him to resign his fellowship in 1830.[3][8]
Newman then took another position, in the family ofHenry Parnell, 4th Baronet Parnell. An obituary ofEdward 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 atLittlemore.[4]
Shortly, in September 1830, Newman left Ireland with a party bound forBaghdad. They intended to join the independentfaith mission ofAnthony Norris Groves, who was working there withJohn Kitto andKarl Gottlieb Pfander. The party includedJohn Vesey Parnell, who was its financial backer withJohn 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, viaTehran, 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 ofeternal punishment had preceded him.[3]
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]
In 1856 Newman produced a translation of theIliad which was heavily criticised by the poet and literary criticMatthew Arnold,[13] which led to a bitter quarrel between the two in 1860 and resulted in Arnold's series of essays on translation,On Translating Homer.[14]
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 criticLionel 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 becomingwoman. 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]
As a young man, Newman was a ferventevangelical, associating with Walter Mayers andThomas Byrth.[4] At Oxford he was acquainted with radical Calvinist evangelicals, such as the circle aroundJohn Hill (1786–1855) ofSt Edmund Hall. In 1827 he encounteredBenjamin 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 byGeorge Jacob Holyoake, founder of Britishsecularism. It equally received heavy criticism. The AnglicanClerical Journal, edited byHenry Burgess, wrote in 1854 of the "openly destructive volumes" of Newman andTheodore Parker.[26] In that year, Newman publishedCatholic Union: Essays Towards a Church of the Future, as the Organization of Philanthropy.[27]
With Martineau and others such asJames Anthony Froude andEdward Lombe, he was one of the unorthodox but "respectable" backers whenJohn Chapman took over the radicalWestminster Review in 1851.[30] The embattled Newman was a figure of controversy, particularly withHenry Rogers and hisThe Eclipse of Faith, or, A Visit to a Religious Sceptic of 1852, to which Newman replied.[31] He was supported in theWestminster Review by a sympathetic article of 1858, "F. W. Newman and his Evangelical Critics", byWathen 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 theWestminster Review the provocative "Religious Weaknesses of Protestantism" in 1859. Circulation dropped, butEdward Henry Stanley stepped up with financial support.[34] One of those offended wasHenry Bristow Wilson, who thought itanti-Christian.[35] He was one of the seven authors ofEssays 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 thatMark Pattison tookPhases of Faith to heart.[36][37]
Returning to the topic at book length, Newman publishedThe Religious Weakness of Protestantism in 1866.[38] He was slow to drop thesola scriptura doctrine of Darby.[39] Over time he developed arguments against it, under the headings ofBibliolatry andbigotry.[40]
He went on to contribute 11 articles in the early 1870s toFraser's Magazine, edited by Froude.[41]
In his lectures of the 1850s onpolitical economy, Newman had commented on the "population doctrine" ofThomas 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]
Newman joined theVegetarian Society in 1868,[50] and was President of the Society from 1873 to 1884.[51] He was opposed to the dogmatic ideas ofraw 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 ofGustav Schlickeysen.[50]
He made an associate membership possible for people who were not completely vegetarian, such as those who atechicken orfish. 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 consumeddairy andeggs. In 1884, a hostile review of his bookEssays 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 apescetarian diet, and consumed white fish.[56]
Newman was ananti-vaccinationist and supported theAnti-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 inThe 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 wasHenry Alleyne Nicholson (Harry), whom he had tutored, and the son of his good friendJohn Nicholson. He declined to answer Henry's pamphlet.[59]
Newman was married twice, firstly on 23 December 1835 to Maria Kennaway (died 1876).[63] She was the second daughter ofSir John Kennaway, 1st Baronet, and a Plymouth Sister.[21][64] They had met atEscot 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 ofJohn 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 uncleAnthony Coningham Sterling.[71] Edward Sterling was an artist, and married in 1868 Bertha Stone, a suffragist, daughter ofFrank 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, byAlfred Waterhouse.[75]
Secondly, Newman married Eleanor Williams on 3 December 1878.[4]
After his retirement from University College, Newman continued to live for some years in London, subsequently moving toClifton, and eventually toWeston-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.
