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
"His voice was particularly clear and 'carrying,' and every syllable could
be heard. I ought to have added to my description that his eyes were blue,
bright, very expressive, and his smile, not very often seen, peculiarly
sweet and engaging. He was decidedly eccentric. At one time, in dirty
winter weather, he wore trousers of which the lower six or eight inches
were of black leather; and at another time, upon what occasion I forget,
he took to walking from his house to the college and back in cap and gown.
There was a 'Cap and Gown' movement among the students, or some of them,
in the session 1847-8, but it was not upon that occasion, for I remember
seeing him in the streets in cap and gown, and during the session 1847-8,
I was at home in bad health, having overworked myself. He would now and
then, very seldom, ask some of the students to breakfast at his house. It
was an odd mixture of hospitality and formality. He never seemed quite at
his ease on such occasions, and I have a very distinct remembrance of one
of these occasions.
"It was in singularly gloomy and bitter weather in the winter or very
early spring of 1849. We were rather a large party. There was no fire
either in the room in which we assembled or in the breakfast room; and I
have not often been colder. There was only one guest who was not a
student, and he was a certain Herr Vukovich (that was how the name was
pronounced) who had been Hungarian Minister of Justice during the short
period when Kossuth was supreme in Hungary.
"When he came in, Professor Newman said: 'Gentlemen, this is Herr
Vukovich, lately Minister of Justice in Hungary,' and then turning to Herr
V., he added, 'I shall not introduce these gentlemen to you by name, as it
would be of no interest to you; and besides, you would forget their names
at once'; and then he went off at score with, 'I have never been able to
understand, Herr Vukovich, how it is that you have never introduced the
Bactrian camel into Hungary,' and then proceeded to enlarge upon the
admirable suitability of the Bactrian camel to the climate, soil, roads,
conditions of Hungary. Herr V. _looked_ very much as if he had never heard
of the Bactrian camel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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