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
"My own chief recollection of him," she writes, "is of a day when he and
the second Mrs. Newman came into Penrith with me, where I had some
shopping to do. On the way into the town Professor Newman said, 'You do
not seem to be very clear as to the history of John Brown and the battle
of Bull's Run.' I said I was not very clear about it, so he began from the
beginning, so to speak, and the story of John Brown lasted till we reached
home again. I went into shops to make my purchases, and on each occasion
as I came out Professor Newman took up his tale just where he had left
off. He showed no annoyance at the frequent interruptions or at my
inevitable lapses of attention. His wonderfully clear, distinct
enunciation, and his marvellous memory for facts, never faltered."
There was an extraordinary absence of humour about Professor Newman that
made him at times unconsciously very humorous. I wish I could remember the
quaint wording of an advertisement of his for a cook in a vegetarian
paper. There was a long and precise account of the services required for
"the smallest possible family," and application was to be made by letter
to "Emer. Prof. F. W. Newman," etc. We thought some of the cooks might be
puzzled to know what Emer. Prof. meant. I remember also an artless post
card he wrote after one visit explaining that he had forgotten his
_teeth_, and asking to have them sent after him.
He had a very odd theory about baldness in men. It sounds a little like a
joke, but I believe it was meant in all seriousness. He had observed that
men with a very strong growth of beard were more liable to go bald early
than those who had the hair on the face thin and scanty. He described this
as a kind of _landslip_, I remember, and his idea was that human beings
could only have a small crop of hair, and that a good crop on the chin
meant a failure higher up. And that, he thought, accounted for the fact
that women rarely go bald.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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