Hurrell Froude: Memoranda and CommentsGuiney, Louise Imogen
History
Hurrell Froude: Memoranda and Comments
Guiney, Louise Imogen
Froude, Richard Hurrell, 1803-1836
shrank from saying, while waiting, I think, for a coach. At last he
said, just before parting, ‘Froude, you thought Law’s _Serious Call_
was a clever book; it seemed to me as if you had said the Day of
Judgement will be a pretty sight.’ This speech, Froude told me, had a
great effect on his after life.”[294]
‘At Easter, 1826, Froude was elected Fellow of Oriel. He came back to
Oxford, charged with Keble’s thoughts and feelings, and from his more
eager and impatient temper, more on the look-out for ways of giving
them effect. The next year he became Tutor, and he held the tutorship
till 1830. But he found at Oriel a colleague, a little his senior in
age and standing, of whom Froude and his friends as yet knew little
except that he was a man of great ability, that he had been a
favourite of Whately’s, and that in a loose and rough way he was
counted among the few Liberals and Evangelicals in Oxford. This was
Mr. Newman. Keble had been shy of him, and Froude would at first judge
him by Keble’s standard. But Newman was just at this time “moving,” as
he expresses it, “out of the shadow of Liberalism.” Living not apart
like Keble, but in the same College, and meeting every day, Froude and
Newman could not but be either strongly and permanently repelled, or
strongly attracted. They were attracted: attracted with a force which
at last united them in the deepest and most unreserved friendship. Of
the steps of this great change in the mind and fortunes of each of
them we have no record: intimacies of this kind grow in College out of
unnoticed and unremembered talks, agreeing or differing, out of
unconscious disclosures of temper and purpose, out of walks and rides
and quiet breakfasts and Common-Room arguments, out of admirations and
dislikes, out of letters and criticisms and questions; and nobody can
tell afterwards how they have come about. The change was gradual and
deliberate. Froude’s friends in Gloucestershire, the Keble family, had
their misgivings about Newman’s supposed Liberalism; they did not much
want to have to do with him. His subtle and speculative temper did not
always square with Froude’s theology. “N. is a fellow that I like
more, the more I think of him,” Froude wrote in 1828; “only I would
give a few odd pence if he were not a heretic.”[295] But Froude, who
saw him every day, and was soon associated with him in the tutorship,
found a spirit more akin to his own in depth and freedom and daring,
than he had yet encountered. And Froude found Newman just in that
maturing state of religious opinion in which a powerful mind like
Froude’s would be likely to act decisively. Each acted on the other.
Froude represented Keble’s ideas, Keble’s enthusiasm. Newman gave
shape, foundation, consistency, elevation to the Anglican theology,
when he accepted it, which Froude had learned from Keble. “I knew him
first,” we read in the _Apologia_, “in 1826, and was in the closest
and most affectionate friendship with him from about 1829 till his
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account