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 think I told you that Symons was the _second_ secretary; but I now
doubt whether the second was not Rev.---- Bulteel, of Exeter College, then
an evangelical preacher of St. Ebb's Church in Oxford, much attended by
Edmund Hall men. The after vote rescinding my brother's secretaryship was
proposed by Benjamin Newton, a young Fellow of Exeter College, if this is
of any importance.... The affair of the three tutors against Dr. Hawkins
was told me exactly as I had it from my brother's lips; but the whole must
have been strictly public. The other tutors were Robert Isaac Wilberforce
(since Archdeacon and Roman Catholic), Richard Hurrell Froude, known by
his _Remains_; and a much older man, Dornford, now a rector in Devonshire,
who adhered to Hawkins. This took place in 1830, when my brother was only
twenty-nine, Wilberforce his junior, and Hurrell Froude _my_ junior in the
University; probably my equal in age, i.e. then twenty-five; so it was
_young_ Oxford versus old. When the three tutors resigned (whose youth was
a result of the Oriel Fellows going off so quick), Hawkins brought into
the tutorship young Coplestone, as he was called--a nephew of the
Bishop;... I almost think that for a time he resumed lecturing himself:
but it will not do to say so.... I have here found out (after more than
ten years' cessation) that I can swim as well as ever, and without
discomfort to my heart. I am becoming quite zealous for my daily swim,
even when (as to-day) the south-west gives us rather too much sea, to the
chagrin of the bathing men. Perhaps you have seen various letters in _The
Times_, etc., on the indecency of promiscuous bathing, etc. I cannot
understand why they all direct their attack to the wrong point, and insist
on driving people into solitudes and separations very inconvenient,
instead of demanding that, as on the Continent, both sexes be clad in the
water. Last year I saw an article that expressed disgust at ladies bathing
within reach of _telescopes_! There is here such a colony of foreigners,
that I hope they may teach this lesson. Besides the Pulszkys, who are a
family of twelve persons, there are seven of Kossuth's household, a large
family of Marras (Italian), three of Janza (Viennese), two or more
Piatti's (Italian), who keep company together, and very many of whom bathe
statedly. Mrs. Pulszky is not well this year for swimming; but last year
she swam daily, with her husband and an intimate male friend at her side.
He will not let her swim in the sea without him, and is amazed at English
husbands consenting to abandon their wives as they do. Mrs. Walter, her
mother, is a devoted bather, and whenever the breakers are formidable has
the aid of one or other male friend. It is a new fact to me, that the
Viennese ladies, as a thing of course, are taught to swim in the Danube.
There are regular teachers of swimming for both sexes, and a sort of
diploma is granted to those who swim well enough to be at home in the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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