Memoir and Letters of Francis W. NewmanSieveking, I. Giberne (Isabel Giberne)
Religion
Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman
Sieveking, I. Giberne (Isabel Giberne)
Newman, Francis William, 1805-1897
"... I look forward with hope that after my whole life has been a constant
preparation for doing--as yet very little--for the good of those who have
had fewer advantages than myself, I may perhaps be able in my very ripe
years to contribute something more; especially by aid of the noble women
who from all quarters spring up to the succour of their own sex and of the
public welfare: I trust I shall not permit _any_ literary tastes or
fancies to withdraw my energies from this and similar causes.... But every
one of us who is to do anything worthy must forget self, and, above all,
must not cast self-complacent glances on what he is, or does, or has done;
and, in truth, I have so deep a dissatisfaction with what I am and have
been, that my poor consolation is to think how much worse I might have
been.... I must add you evidently do not know that I have _two_ brothers.
The eldest, Dr. J. H. N.; the second, Charles Robert N., three years older
than myself, of whom we do not speak, because he is as unfit for society
as if insane. He is a Cynic Philosopher in modern dress, having many
virtues, but one ruinous vice, that of perpetual censoriousness, by which
he alienates every friend as soon as made, or in the making, by which he
ejected himself from all posts of usefulness. ... He has lived now more
than thirty years in retirement and idleness. His moral ruin was from
Robert Owen's _Socialism and Atheistic Philosophy_; but he presently began
his rebukes on Robert Owen himself. His sole pleasure in company seems to
be in noting down material for ingenious, impertinent, and insolent fault-
finding; hence no one can safely admit him. He formally renounced his
mother, brothers, and sisters about forty years ago, and wrote to other
persons requesting them not to count him a Newman ... because we were
religious and he was an Atheist. He had _all the same dear sweet
influences of home as all of us_; yet how unamiable and useless has he
become! still loving to snarl most at the hands that feed him. Is not this
an admonition not to attribute too much to the single cause of home
Influences, however precious? I shall be happy to attend to your
_Aeschylus_. Lovingly yours,
"F. W. Newman."
"Weston-super-Mare,
"_30th July_, 1880.
"My dear Anna,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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