"Either the Catholic religion is verily the coming of the unseen world into this, or there is nothing positive, nothing dogmatic, nothing real in any of our notions as to whence we come and whither we go." -- Newman.
THE Oxford Movement and the vigorous Catholic revival that surrounded it produced many strong, interesting men who challenged the attention of England with a success that often made the stolid, conservative citizen gasp. Most of them had groped their way to Rome from the outposts of Anglicanism, and bore not a few scars as memorials to that difficult pilgrimage. Some were bluff and hale; as intellectual leaders they lived in the din of controversy, and their writings do not as a rule possess the spirit of reflectiveness, the poise of imagination, which alone make art. Certain of their books are good literature, but most of them are simply good theology. In considering their lives from the literary point of view, as we must here, it should be remembered that they wrote from the battle-ground where their achievements were stirring and fruitful; that another kind of history chronicles the nobility of their sacrifices and the worth of their campaigning. Anyhow, they were soldiers for a Cause, with a brusque distrust for laudation that concerned them personally.
In the university circle that was drawn round Newman there moved a number of gifted men who either influenced him or were developed by his teaching. Some of these felt to the fullest extent the beauty of Catholic tradition, which divides the world like a sword but heals the wound with the loving touch of Christ; others were hard, thoughtful, farsighted men who saw, as their great leader did, the intellectual difficulties with which men around them were beset, and who humbly gave their lives to the solution of a great mystery. But the Church was larger than Oxford; and when the rift in English public opinion had grown wide enough to permit the action of a Catholic hierarchy, it must have been providential that so many enthusiastic, powerful leaders were ready to move towards a position where the Church could breathe the air of freedom, and direct the manifold enterprises of her apostolic mission. That such men were concerned with literature is a fact; it remains to view the result and to see what part they contributed to the enormous Summa in which are written all the fancies, aspirations, moods, and vistas of man.
With the exception of Hurrell Froude, that zealous though hesitant student of the Christian past, whose "Remains" represent him inadequately in literature, no one influenced so strongly the development of Newman and his friends as John Keble. Born four years before Napoleon the First, and dying four years previous to the fall of Napoleon the last, Keble's private life seemed to possess all the serenity which his environment lacked. Although a fellow of Oriel College, and at one time professor of poetry at Oxford, he was consistently the country vicar of mid-Victorian times. A book of poems entitled "The Christian Year," which he published in 1827, made Keble as famous as he remained humble. These simple songs, half-ballad, half-hymn, delighted a large English public with their sincere, fresh, religious mood, the intensity of their attachment to the quiet country home, and their rich, fervent meditativeness. Keble felt Christianity as life, when so many about him thought it merely convention; and the delicate reserve with which he read the divine symbolism of nature was at once simple and intangible. He would have been the last to claim for his verses classic form or romantic passion; he wrote always with a kindly friend in mind:
"No fading frail memorial give
To soothe his soul when thou art gone,
But wreaths of hope for aye to live
And thoughts of good together done."
Despite the blemishes in the book -- false analogies, commonplaceness of thought and expression -- the poetry was genuine and made of its author a spiritual leader whose power and sincerity were recognized by Newman. Gifted with a beauty of character that made unforgettable friendships, he lacked the stern spirit of the truth-seeker; and with the possible exception of a few lectures on poetry, nothing he wrote after "The Christian Year" has made a lasting impression. Keble began the Oxford Movement by preaching the sermon on "National Apostasy," but he was too conservative to follow in the steps of Newman. Though religion meant everything to him, he was quite content with its sentiment and could never grasp the vital significance of dogma. To the end he remained steadfast in his allegiance to those beliefs which had cast about his youth the radiance of joy, and which may have breathed into his poetic spirit something of immortality.
Of Keble's lifelong associate in religious endeavor, Edward Pusey (1800-1882), it must be predicted that little will eventually remain of all his learned preaching and exhaustive polemics excepting the name which a wittier person gave to his system of theology -- Puseyism. A sincerely spiritual man, no one ever felt more strongly the pressure of English tradition: it seemed to him most deplorable that the Anglican communion should not be considered a perfectly respectable descendant of the Apostolic Church. As a protest against the secularizing of the Establishment, he joined the Oxford Movement at the hour when his aid was most needed, and had a share in the writing of the "Tracts for the Times." Later, when Newman had gone over to Rome, Pusey spent his efforts trying to effect a compromise with the Holy See. The first "Eirenicon" was written to emphasize certain matters of dogma which its author did not see his way clear to accept; this was followed by others when he began to despair of success in his dealings with Rome, and Newman finally replied in the tender though firm "Letter to Pusey." The liberal elements in Anglicanism also regarded Pusey with disfavor, and his whole life may be construed as a fruitless attempt to fortify a religious position that was untenable. Nevertheless, he was a man whose religious enthusiasms never waned, and whose extravagant conservatism was saved from folly by its boundless charity.
Although Keble and Pusey stood fast in their resistance to Rome, other notable Oxford men went with Newman along the stony road of conversion. One of the most interesting of these is the ebullient William George Ward. Born in 1812, he remained mentally belligerent to the day of his death in 1882. At Oxford Ward came under the spell of Newman, but, being somewhat hastier in drawing conclusions than was his illustrious master, succeeded in being publicly condemned by the University Convocation, and in joining the Church on August 13, 1845. Later he taught theology at St. Edmund's with great success, although the fact that he was a layman proved an eyesore to many older churchmen. Cardinal Wiseman, always his benefactor, finally induced him to assume the editorship of the Dublin Review.
Ward had in him many great qualities both of heart and mind: the master of an almost grotesque sense of humour, he lived in the realm of metaphysical and theological speculation with a totality and partisanship rarely matched. While wielding a strong personal influence that relied for effectiveness on candour and depth of thought, an influence felt and acknowledged by Mill and Newman alike, the written word seemed to rob him of his individuality. "The Ideal of a Christian Church," "The Philosophy of Theism," and his other books have little in them that is attractive for us now. But the man who shook Newman before his break with the Anglicans, who directed the Dublin Review so ably and so long, who undertook a rigorous defense of the Papacy in the face of English thought, and who brought the masters of the "Experience" philosophy to recede from more than one position, is a memorable and picturesque figure. Essentially he was a man of warm character and powerful logic, who was entirely redeemed from commonplaceness by the exuberance of his interest in religion and the heartiness of his laughter. In a good many ways he was the Doctor Johnson of the Catholic revival -- a man of burly form, brusque language, fixity of conviction, and fundamental melancholy. To his last day he was a fighter, though he loved best the charity of peace; and from the first he was a friend, no matter how strenuous the controversy or how definite the disagreement.
As Ward threw all his fervent energy into the examination of the metaphysical aspects of religion, so a beloved priest and friend of Newman, Father Frederick William Faber, gave his strength to the creation of devotional literature. The beauty of Catholic practice had led him to scrutinize his early religious beliefs, and of that beauty he never grew tired of writing. Born in 1814, Faber entered Balliol College in due time, and having taken orders became rector at Elton. The spell of Newman drew him irresistibly to the Church, however, and his conversion took place in 1845. After a short stay in Birmingham he established the Brompton Oratory in London, proved indefatigable in the performance of his religious duties, and gained great fame as a devotional writer. He died in 1863. Father Faber's temperament was naturally ardent, but his lovable disposition is best testified to, perhaps, by the response of his Anglican congregation at Elton to his announcement of dissatisfaction with the doctrine he was preaching. They begged him to preach any doctrine he pleased, but to remain with them.
Faber has scarce an equal in English as a writer of devotional books. Such volumes as "At the Foot of the Cross" combine some of the fervour of St. Teresa with the sweetness of St. Francis. Veuillot described their power by saying, "He has strange tweezers for getting at the finest and most hidden fibers under the skin which he removes so dexterously." Of his poetical writings, influenced so deeply by an intimate understanding of the beautiful natural surroundings in which he had been reared, it is enough to say that some are like Wordsworth at his best, others like Wordsworth at his worst, but all of them like Wordsworth. How well the following stanza presents the enchantment of a winter night at Oxford:
"The winter night, when, as a welcome boon,
Down the giant stems the stealthy beams may glide,
And stray sheep lie sleeping in the moon
With their own fairy shadows at their side;
While through the frosty night air every tower
In Abingdon and Oxford tolls the hour."
The current of Catholicism at Oxford was swollen by the addition of many other men, whose learning, integrity, and piety have influenced the soul of England more than we can tell, but whose literary talents were comparatively small. The flood of writing which swirls round this fountain of vigorous spiritual energy contains much that is valuable temporarily, much that slakes the quest about it, but which dries up as the years move and soil is drenched and new genius finds new sources of inspiration. Still, it cannot be out of place to recall in passing the name of T.W. Allies, tireless journalist and controversalist, whose "Life's Decision" is still a readable book; Father Dalgairns, the intimate friend of Newman; Lady Herbert, a graceful and intimate writer; and of others not so closely associated with Oxford, though their spirits followed its message, Kegan Paul, for instance, and Father Martineau, whose sermons moved the hearts of numerous people who had grown indifferent to preaching and are, in printed form, rarely beautiful testimonials to a natural eloquence. Nor does the lover of this revival forget those toilers whose names and books are forgotten, who will soon have fallen into the general oblivion with the people they served, but who are stalwart, surely, in the sight of Him they loved.
II
Among the captains of the Church in modern England, especially among those who had gifts for letters and used them, the plain though enigmatic figure of Henry Edward, Cardinal Manning is probably the most arresting. For years he watched over the religious life of London with resolute and far-seeing eyes; his way into the Church seems somehow more acrid or worldly than Newman's; and no modern Englishman has stood so close to the Papal throne or been so intimately associated with sweeping ecclesiastical reforms. But, though he moved constantly among men, preaching, organizing, attending philosophic discussions, and even settling strikes, no one in his age lived more absolutely alone: as Francis Thompson has it:
"Anchorite, who didst dwell
With all the world for cell. . . .
You smelt the Heaven-blossoms."
The shadow cast over the memory of Manning by the malicious biography of Purcell has already been lifted somewhat, and now that the Life by Shane Leslie has appeared, it will undoubtedly be entirely dispelled. He was born in 1808, the son of an influential financier, entered Oxford in due time, and later accepted a position in the Colonial Office. The call to the sacred ministry proved insistent, however, and upon his election to a fellowship in Merton College Manning took orders, married, and accepted a curacy. When his wife died, he was appointed archdeacon of Chicester, where he remained until his conversion in 1851. Ordained almost immediately, he studied in Rome for a time, and then returned to London, where he established the Congregation of the Oblates of St. Charles. A vigorous zeal for missionary organization brought ecclesiastical recognition; and upon the death of Wiseman, Manning became the Archbishop of Westminster; later, in 1875, he was made cardinal. At his death in 1892, there was an expression of grief rarely equalled for universality; the funeral was attended by people of all classes, for, while his relations with the leaders of Britain had been close, the Cardinal's heart bled for the poor.
His was the character of the reformer, martial, dominant, at times overbearing. If Newman was too sensitive, Manning was almost brutal. There was something in him of that stern quality of Alphonsus Ligouri, which made the great Redemptorist saint command a transgressing cleric to step on a crucifix, "for he had already done so in spirit." England was a field that needed plowing badly, and Manning chafed at everything that resembled cautious restraint, was for getting to work on the hour. The saving fact is that he actually mastered the appalling: reorganization of the clergy, rescue work among the poor, revivified Catholic education, and outspoken public action were successfully undertaken. As the "Workingmen's Cardinal" he directed public attention to industrial evils, and was Leo XIII's chief adviser for the famous encyclical, "On the Condition of Labour." It must be admitted, however, that his enthusiasm was often imprudent; the attitude he took on Infallibility and on the Temporal Power, his unfriendly relations with religious orders, were assuredly not wise. Manning was no intellectual Napoleon, though he might well have congratulated himself occasionally on playing the Iron Duke.
Some of this rigorous quality of efficiency, this reformer's mood, is always to be found in his writing and despoils it of that candour of thought and expression, that chaste whiteness of style, which great books must have. Certain of his treatises, "The Eternal Priesthood," and "The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost," for instance, may continue to interest theologians, but the aridity of their inspiration will grow more apparent as time advances. If Manning is known to the future as a writer, it will surely be for his private journals. They are the records of a searching and powerful self-analysis, and the following extract may serve to indicate their character and, also, to give some insight into the soul of Manning:
"When I look down upon London from this garden and know that there are before me nearly 3,000,000 of men of whom 200,000 are nominally in the Faith and Grace of the Church, that 1,500,000 never set foot in any place of even fragmentary Christian worship, that hundreds of thousands are living and dying without baptism, in all the sins of the flesh and spirit, in all that Nineveh and the Cities of the Plain and Imperial Rome ever committed, that it is the Capital of the most anti-Christian Power of the nominally Christian world, and the head of its anti-Christian spirit ... I confess I feel that we are walking on the waters and that nothing but the word and presence of Jesus makes this great calm. I feel sure that the mission for London is to preach the Love of God and the Love of Jesus, and that in the spirit and the voice of love. They will listen to no denunciations and no controversy. They will only stone us before they understand us."{1}
The lovable, influential Cardinal who preceded Manning is still remembered and revered for the fine humanness of his character. In thinking of Wiseman one feels the keen truth of Chesterton's epigram: "The two persons that a healthy man hates most between heaven and hell are a man who is dignified and a woman who is not." The secret of his amazing success in the rebuilding of the Catholic Church in England, was perhaps, his ability to show that a bishop might be a man. The time was crowded with stirring religious events: the conversion of the Oxford leaders, the restoration of Catholic hierarchy, the appearance, after many years of repression, of the Catholic man in public life. Wiseman, going everywhere, discussing the most diverse questions, gained the ears of a public which had hitherto regarded "Papists" as preposterous wretches ostracizing themselves for an absurd delusion. The many-sidedness and the cosmopolitan background of his personality were exactly what was needed for the work in hand. Born in 1802 of an English family residing in Seville, and having spent his early years in Ireland, Wiseman was educated in England and in Rome, became rector of the English College in the Papal city, acquired fame for linguistic ability, and made friends of Popes and all the noteworthy personages of Europe. His tact was as astonishing as his energy, and his Cardinalate was something like a reign. Though infirm in his old age and accordingly unable to cope with the nuances of ecclesiastical policy, he was universally venerated until his death in 1865.
Wiseman's eloquence, though it served the cause well on numerous occasions, lacked the searching analysis of eternal truths and the delicately attuned expression that made of Newman the immortal preacher. Nor do the treatises he wrote on important questions seem vital enough to hold their own in the maze of books. "Recollections of the Last Four Popes," however, is charmingly written reminiscence, and supplies an English view of the Vatican during some historic and stormy years. Still, it is as the author of "Fabiola" that Wiseman will live, if at all, in letters. Catholics generally have loved the exquisite piety and charming characterization of this tale of the catacombs, and may be pardoned for having overlooked its somewhat slipshod construction and the tinge of sentimentalism that spoils its art. After all, no one has done a better book on the earlier Christian story, and probably no one ever will.
Though there are other Cardinals who, like Herbert Vaughan, did good work for English letters, we shall pass them by and make a brief mention of a most interesting man, Archbishop Ullathorne (1806-1889). This sturdy assistant of Wiseman and defender of Newman has told the story of his life better than any one else could. In addition to being a member of the hierarchy, he was a Benedictine and championed his order bravely. As the author of "The Endowments of Man" Ullathorne deserves some attention as a writer in philosophy, and his letters reveal a mastery of that difficult form of composition. His "Autobiography," however, is his masterpiece and a genuinely original and fascinating book. It is one of the delightful few among life-stories whick are personal without being egotistical; it has also the advantage of incident. The Archbishop had led a roaming, lusty life, that took him first to sea and later to the saving of souls. One doubts that Defoe could have told the story of Ullathorne's missionary experiences among the convicts in Australia with more gusto or better disposition of detail. Shane Leslie declares that he has always preferred the Autobiography to "Robinson Crusoe," and the comparison is not at all bold. Whereas it is the glory of Defoe to have given fiction the appearance of sober fact, the Archbishop may be said to have clothed reality with the graces of entrancing narrative. He was very decidedly English, loving the sea, his plain fellowmen, and a round tale as every good man ought to love such things. The religious background of his life is, of course, duly stressed, but the apostolic character of the writer involved none of the contemplativeness, the inner intellectual struggle, of such a genius as Newman. Instead, the saving of souls is attempted with ardour on board French whalers, in Chili, New South Wales, England, Ireland, and France, in prison and on the episcopal throne. Quite evidently, the noble Archbishop, who was as kind-hearted as he was zealous, took great pleasure in the writing, although the book was not intended for publication, but merely for the satisfaction of a few friends. What frank courage, what keen relish for a spiritualized democracy it reveals! Here is a tonic for tired souls.
In general, when one thinks of the genius, the energy, and the fervour which the leaders of England's newborn Catholicism brought to the performance of their extremely difficult tasks, when one remembers the temper of that Britain whose deep-rooted contempt for Rome was suddenly confronted with Rome's accredited representatives, one cannot help believing humbly that the Spirit of God was active in them as it was in the first Apostles. It is not strange that so much of their writing was mediocre; the wonder is that they found time to write at all. Art is necessarily self-centered, comparatively uninterested in the struggle of surrounding souls. And yet the journals of the ubiquitous Manning, the life-story of Ullathorne, who was as active in missionary labours as a Jesuit martyr, and the "Fabiola" of Wiseman, written almost while waiting for trains, are books that have given to English literature new points of view, and to Catholics a record of glory which they can never cherish too deeply. While these great men laid safe and solid foundations of ecclesiastical polity, they did not forget one of the oldest and loveliest concerns of the Church, devotion to art.
The most noteworthy effect produced by the movements which we have tried to chronicle as succinctly as possible was to bring the Catholic Spirit forward into the English world. That light which had taken refuge in chapels, in the houses of brave men who suffered bitterly for their fidelity, and in a few stray, poverty-stricken religious houses, stood over the market place again in the sign of a flaming cross. Peter was no longer rockbound, and the men who had thought him imprisoned discovered his officers on inexplicable parole, gaining victories where defeat seemed foredoomed, smiling where tears were in the nature of things. The literary achievements of the Church's representatives conformed with the total unexpectedness of their careers. Who would have thought it possible that an Archbishop could write like a gifted journalist, or that a learned Hebrew scholar should take time to compose the moving story of the catacombs? Or, to return for a moment to the converts of Oxford, would any prophet, taking his stand at the opening of the nineteenth century, have been rash enough to predict that within seventy-five years the placid Horatian University should have come earnestly to stand for its ancient motto, and to send forth its most gifted scholars to preach the buried beliefs of Catholicism to a listening world?
Catholics do not always realize the splendour of the revolution. We find it easier to understand the elusive soul of Newman, writing itself down in matchless prose, and gazing enraptured into star-dim distances, the rhythm of whose shadowy going he seems to have heard. It is simpler to follow the backward gaze of Kenelm Digby, lost on the routes of Christian chivalry, forgetful of everything but the silent spires of a broken cathedral. After all these men seem more Catholic, as they assuredly are more literary; but the men who ventured into the streets wore manly armour, and their song was a valiant marching hymn.
BOOK NOTE
Those who wish to study the men treated of in this chapter should begin with the works mentioned, although certain others like Manning's "Religio Viatoris" and Pusey's translation of St. Augustine's "Confessions" may in the end prove more interesting. Consult the following biographies: of Manning, those by Shane Leslie, E.S. Purcell, Dom Gasquet, Wilfrid Meynell, and John Oldcastle; of Wiseman, those by Wilfrid Ward and Lord Houghton ("Monographs"); of William G. Ward, that by Wilfrid Ward; of Faber, that by J.E. Bowden; of Keble, that by Mr. Justice Coleridge; of Pusey, that by Liddon; of Father Martineau, that by Maisie Ward. Valuable works that treat of the entire period are "La Renaissance Catholique en Angleterre," by Paul Thureau-Dangin; "Fifty Years," by Percy Fitzgerald; and "The Oxford Movement," by Dean Church. See also, "Letters of Archbishop Ullathorne," edited by A.T. Drane; "Mid-Victorians," by Lytton Strachey; "Pusey," by G.W. E. Russell; "Father Faber," by W. Hall-Patch; "Gladstone," by John Morley; "Studies in Contemporary Biography," by James Bryce; "Memories," by Kegan Paul; "Studies in Poetry and Philosophy," by Shairp. Of interest are the various articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Catholic Encyclopedia, and the "Cambridge History of English Literature."
{1} Dublin Review, Jan., 1920. Vol. 166.