Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman Part 3

had been given no definite religious training in his youth, though his mother taught him to say daily prayers. Then, when a young man, he felt a deep dissatisfaction with this vague religious teaching he had received, and he began to read more and more in the New Testament, until at length he became a Christian by sheer conviction. He felt his conversion as a revelation.

Mr. Groves, who was a well-known dentist in Devons.h.i.+re, felt about the same time a great stirring towards missionary work. He offered his services to the Church Missionary Society. He often stayed in Dublin with Lord Congleton. In 1828, when they were walking together, one of those strange mystical approaches of soul to kindred soul took place.

"This, I doubt not, is the mind of G.o.d concerning us, that we should come together not waiting on any pulpit or minister, but trusting that the Lord would edify us together by ministering as He pleased." Lord Congleton adds: "At the moment he spoke these words I was a.s.sured my soul had got the right idea, and that moment (I remember it as if it were but yesterday) was the birth-place of my mind as a 'brother.'"

He mentions here Edward Cronin (who in 1830 formed one of the missionary party with which Frank Newman was a.s.sociated), at that time an Independent, "but his mind was at the same time under a like influence, as I may say of us all."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PHOTO OF LORD CONGLETON (LEADER OF SYRIAN MISSIONARY JOURNEY) FROM HIS "LIFE" BY GROVES]

I should perhaps say here (I have the information from the _Memoir of Lord Congleton_ before mentioned), that the special truths by which Lord Congleton, Mr. Groves, and Dr. Cronin were led then, were: "The oneness of the Church of G.o.d, involving a fellows.h.i.+p large enough to embrace all saints, and narrow enough to exclude the world. The completeness and sufficiency of the written Word in all matters of faith, and preeminently in things affecting our Church life and walk--the speedy pre-millennial advent of the Lord Jesus."

All three of the men just named had made surrender of all that the world had to offer them, Lord Congleton giving the whole of his fortune to missionary work. It was he who provided most of the things needed for the journey.

In 1830 (September) the following party left Dublin:--Lord Congleton (whom in future it will be simpler to call by his family name of Mr. Parnell, as Newman thus mentions him in his diary, the _Personal Narrative_, which he kept throughout this journey to the East); Mr. Cronin; his mother Mrs.

Cronin, and her daughter Nancy Cronin (to whom Lord Congleton was engaged); and Francis Newman. There was also a Mr. Hamilton, but later on he found the work not suited to him, and returned to England. [Footnote: Mr. Groves had already gone as a missionary to Bagdad in 1829, and they were to join him later.]

Mr. Henry Groves says in the _Memoir_ that the travellers started with an enormous quant.i.ty of luggage. They had practically a small library of books, a lithographic press in two heavy boxes (for printing tracts, etc.), and a large medicine chest, which was Mr. Cronin's property (he was a doctor). When one thinks how the more one travels, even in these travelling-made-easy days, the more one wishes to abridge one's requirements and whittle down one's wants, it is not difficult to understand that in 1830 the difficulties of the rough travelling were largely increased by these foods for the mind and for the stomach which travelled in the wake of the little party, nor how they were hampered by these conditions.

I now quote from Francis Newman's _Personal Narrative_ (published 1856), which is one of the most interesting of travel books, and very graphically written in the form of letters to his friends at home. [Footnote: Newman and Lord Congleton were both at this time about twenty-three years of age.]

"River Garonne, At Anchor in Steamboat, _23rd Sept._, 1830.

"We sailed finely on Sat.u.r.day from Dublin, while sheltered by the Irish coast; but in the evening we tasted the Atlantic with a south-wester, which proved a bitter dose. For nearly fifty hours we tossed, with very slow progress, until all our bones were bruised, etc., etc.... I have never seen anything like the sea on the French coast.

"The Bay of Biscay fulfilled all its proverbial roughness: the whole sea was dells and knolls. It was terrible to see the pilot jump aboard while his boat was alternately tossed above our deck; he was caught by the sailors in their arms.... The custom-house officers have detained the s.h.i.+p so long that we are left here by the tide.... The officers were very civil. They were all amazed at the number of our packages" (as well they might be!)... "The prospect of our porterages is frightful. Think of us at the top of a hotel and an army of porters carrying up the height of three stories many hundredweights of trunks, chests, hampers, bags, baskets, to stow into our bedrooms _for the night!_ And this misery is to be repeated everywhere....

"I talk French clumsily, yet get on somehow.... My French having been chiefly mathematical, I do not know the names of many common things...."

At Toulouse in October:--"I am already a Frenchman. If you doubt it, learn that I take wine or raisins for breakfast, and never speak to a peasant without raising my hat.... This _vin ordinaire_ is not 'bad,' in the sense of intoxicating, but in another way. However, if it supplies the place of tea, it is vain to rail at it."

The next entry is while they were staying at Ma.r.s.eilles on 13th October, and concerns the cheapness of the provisions.

"All provisions appear within reach of the poorest. I have been in some very low eating-houses here, and perceive apparently poor people breakfast on meat. Nothing seems dear but milk and b.u.t.ter; we get none but goats'

milk here.... The finest purple grapes are here 1d. or 3/4d. a pound, and as much bread as I can eat for 1-1/2d.... I had a provoking accident at Beziers. On our leaving the barge, the carman drove off without securing our boxes--he was in a violent pa.s.sion against some girl porters (a domestic inst.i.tution of Beziers).... I roared out, 'Arretez! Arriere! Vous n'avez pas attache la corde!' But in vain; and in an instant down came from the very top the little medicine chest given me by M----. It fell on its corner, which saved the gla.s.s bottles; but every dovetailing is broken, the hinges wrenched off, the panels split."

Of course the travelling is chiefly by diligence and ca.n.a.l boat, and for English ladies very often terribly rough and trying. But Mrs. and Miss Cronin had resolved to face discomforts, etc., equally with their companions, and would have no little ameliorations in the way of comforts for themselves.

One great danger, too, occurred, from which they were only rescued by the prompt.i.tude of Newman and Mr. Parnell (as throughout the diary Newman alludes to Lord Congleton). Once, in travelling by ca.n.a.l near Ma.r.s.eilles, Newman found the level of the ca.n.a.l-boat was "dangerously high, from the arches. Once we had a narrow escape. There was a sudden cry of '_A bas_!'

We turned and saw we were rapidly nearing an arch which would knock off our heads. The horses kept at a short canter. Old Mrs. C. was sitting quietly on deck, wholly absorbed, and never dreaming that the sailors could be calling to her. Miss C. was sitting on a box, fast asleep.

Several of us rushed at once towards them, and pulled them off their seats on to the deck. Literally they fell upon me in a heap, and we just pa.s.sed safe under the arch. Mrs. C.'s bonnet and my hat got smashed."

Here comes a touch of what later on in life was to be the subject of his keenest thought--the subject of statesmans.h.i.+p, the chief aim of which should be _the people:_ how to make the land sufficient for the people, how to make the people sufficient for the land--a counsel of perfection far removed from the party spirit of politicians, who then, as now, did not recognize that principles and a sacred sense of responsibility for their country should be their motive power.

"We are delayed here" (Ma.r.s.eilles) "for a s.h.i.+p. We are likely to go to Cyprus. The vintage was going while we were _en route_ hither. I was interested to see men walking bare-legged, stained purple nearly to the knee, _with treading the wine vat_. I then understood the Scripture metaphor.... The men seemed to have been wading in blood.... I should deprecate a whole district being dependent for its livelihood on the sale of wine.... for as _some_ seasons are sure to be fatal to the crop, the failure, when it comes, is universal.... To make each component part--I mean each _local_ part--of society self-supporting, and self-relieving even in times of calamity, ought, I think, to be the aim of every statesman."

As regards sight-seeing for sight-seeing's sake, it was _nil_. And for a reason which seemed not to allow for any of the travellers having discretion, "We make it a tacit rule never to go ten yards to see anything; for if once we became sight-seers it is impossible to draw the line. So in fact I see nothing but what I cannot help seeing."

The next diary-tic letter is not until 14th January of the next year (1831), when the party had arrived at Aleppo.

Frank Newman had been studying Greek and talking it with a master, and during the voyage from Ma.r.s.eilles landed for three days at Larnica. On the s.h.i.+p was an old Greek, and he used to go and talk with him to practise his Greek.

"You may be amused to hear his judgment of my Greek dialect; he called it 'very beautiful and very funny'; that is, no doubt, because I am apt to mix up too much of the old Greek, which seems grandiloquent on trifling subjects....

"Walking in the street at Larnica, I met a person whom I did not know, who, to my extreme surprise, fell on my neck and kissed both cheeks quite affectionately, I had not recognized my dirty acquaintance in this clean, well-dressed gentleman, probably fresh from the bath."

Many were the difficulties Newman and his friends had to encounter in hiring a vessel to sail to Ladakia [Footnote: Laodicea of Syria.] on the opposite coast. At last a bargain was struck with a Turkish s.h.i.+p for five pounds. But the s.h.i.+p had battled already against the contretemps of too many voyages. She could no longer beat against the wind as once she used to do. Four times they set sail, and four times had to put back again into port. The captain had only an old French map "marked with crosses at certain places, the cross meaning _porto_, as the captain explained." He needed help, however, from his pa.s.sengers to be quite sure which was which! In this s.h.i.+p they lived with discomfort for a whole month. Still, all of the friends kept well. The distance from Ladakia to Aleppo is about 120 English miles. And this journey added to discomfort, hards.h.i.+p, and to hards.h.i.+p--lack of food for the mission party. It necessitated travelling three miles into the hills, and when a lofty bleak plain was reached, the muleteers made it clear that they were to spend the night there.

"We heaped our rudest boxes to make a wall, and on the lee side prepared a sleeping-place, stretching over it some oilskins.... We had a small supply of food in baskets.... All night the rain fell in torrents.... Our whole floor was swamped; we had to sit on carpet bags and let them get wet.

Clothes, bedding, bags, baskets, were drenched, and we had to mount in the morning in the midst of rain.... The roads were river-beds.... After riding eleven hours without dismounting (the beasts never leave their walking pace).... We had fasted the whole day, yet none of us suffered; not even old Mrs. Cronin, for whom I greatly feared."

I should add here that Francis Newman was strongly in favour of women riding astride instead of on the Early-Victorian side-saddle, which necessitates a woman riding in an artificial, twisted position. Still, at the period at which he is writing, Early-Victorian ideas about the fitness of things were so much _de rigueur_ that Mrs. Cronin, when forced to ride astride, was terribly disturbed.

"'Ach, Edward,' said she to her son, 'I expected they would persecute and murdher us, but I never thought to ride across a mule!'... Three times did her mule come down with her, poor lady, and all three in dangerous places.

"None of the rest suffered so many falls, nor, I think, any of the laden beasts. Her son was in terrible distress at every fall, for he was carrying his infant in his arms ... and he could not put the child down in the mud without danger to it."

Indeed, it must have been a very distressful journey for all, and not least for the poor little infant missionary! People may wonder what was the necessity of taking this last at all. [Footnote: Dr. Cronin and his wife were both engaged to come out to Mr. Groves. Then she died, and as he felt bound to fulfil his promise and did not like to leave the baby, he brought it too.] An old clergyman, however, once said to me, "I would rather take an infant in arms with me, than go all by myself on a journey abroad."

At last Aleppo was reached. In his letter, on 10th February to his mother, Newman says how long their stay there would be is quite uncertain. He "is taking daily lessons in Arabic, and speaking French."

"I am afraid you will not think the better of me when I tell you that I am become a smoker; and this though I had so great a dislike to it in England. I do not mean that I am always smoking--certainly not; but I have bought two pipes and amber mouthpieces, and all the apparatus; which shows that I am in earnest. When a man in college smoked cigars in his room, and we (the Balliol fellows) generally condemned it, I remember, in reply to my remark that a man who smoked made himself a nuisance, one of them said, 'It would not do to generalize; for in Germany the man who _objects_ to smoking is the nuisance.' ... If anyone calls on me I must offer him a pipe and smoke one myself; and, conversely, when I call on anyone, I must not refuse the pipe.... The pipe fills up gaps of time, and 'breaks the ice' like an Englishman's remarks on the weather....

"Now I am in for it, I will make you perfect in the theory of smoking. We have here three sorts of pipes, of which I use but one, viz. the long straight pipe. It is generally a cherry stick, and reaches from the mouth to the ground as you sit on a low sofa. The bowl is supported in a tin frame on the ground to catch the ashes; and you smoke in it _tootoon_, which means common dry tobacco.... Ladies, as far as I know, do not smoke the straight pipe, though I have seen Mussulman females, evidently of humble rank, with the long pipe and its smoking bowl protruding from under their long veil as they walked. The second sort is called _Nargili_ ...

some p.r.o.nounce it Narjili.... Nargili means a cocoa-nut, which is used in this apparatus to hold the water through which the smoke pa.s.ses.

Vertically out of the cocoa-nut rises a pipe which ends in a long bowl holding the _Tambac_, which is a second species of tobacco having broadish yellow leaves worked up with wet. It needs a piece of red-hot coal laid upon it, and left there, to kindle it. Slanting out of the cocoa-nut proceeds upwards a second tube, a mere cane, which ends in the smoker's mouth. He grasps the vertical tube in his left fist, and, if sitting, rests the cocoa-nut on his knee. This is the way my hostess smokes--an elegant Levantine lady.... I cannot smoke through water; I find it demands too much work for my lungs. The third sort is the _Hooka_, a word which, I believe, means the very long flexible tube which is here subst.i.tuted for the cane, while a gla.s.s vessel, standing on the ground, does duty for the cocoa-nut. The principle of the smoking ... are the same as in the Nargili.... Unless it be overdone, I think the exercise from early youth must enlarge the capacity and power of the lungs.... When people have not a second pipe to offer you, they hand the pipe from their own mouth, and to wipe the mouthpiece before you suck it would be an insult."

Newman says that the Turks are supposed to have a great tenderness for animals. There is a popular saying, which he quotes, "A Turk cares more for the life of a cat than of a man." The following curious scene was witnessed by him in a town on his way to Aleppo:--

"A goat was to be killed, and we had some chance of a bit if one of us would seize a part of the animal before it was dead. _There_ stood the victim and its priest.

"In front was a row of cats, sitting up with all the gravity of Egyptian G.o.ds, or like the regiment of cats which were the van of Cambyses against Egypt. On the other side a regiment of dogs. When the scarlet flood spouted on to the ground the dogs took their portion of it. I know not what etiquette or what hint from the sacrificer suddenly dispersed them: then the cats came in due order and took _their_ portion.... Peace was wonderfully kept between dogs and cats; but when it came to dividing the offal, the cats had plenty of screaming, and, I rather think, some fighting. The number of these wild cats here is a real nuisance."

In May we get another insight into the carrying out of Newman's precept to himself, always to "live in Rome as the Romans."

"I believe you know it was always our idea that we must put on native habits wherever we went, so far at least as to encounter no needless friction. I had not then considered how seriously such change may after a time affect one's own character, and the thought sometimes crosses the mind anxiously.

"We smoke. Well. I say to myself, 'I must try not to be wedded to this practice: I hope to leave it off the moment it proves inexpedient.'.... I have taken to the Syrian gown and slippers; to walk actively in these is arduous and, I suppose, very singular. Here is a question: May not my bodily habit change with it? and may not that affect my mind?... The gown is ridiculously feminine, beyond what I had been aware; not merely in length and amplitude, but above the girdle it is puffed out into two _bosoms_, which are used as pockets" (no doubt the _sinus_ of the Romans).

"... Some things which in company we do as seldom as possible, such as to blow the nose, or (worse still) to spit, seem to be utterly forbidden here.... The natives are reserved in the use of a pocket-handkerchief as the most fastidious English lady.... I believe Xenophon praises the Persians for never spitting in company." (Would that our own working cla.s.ses could, in this respect, be more Persian in their habits!) "Are not all Eastern manners probably a plant of very ancient growth?" Then, on religion: "I did not understand till lately how unintelligible to people here is a religion which is not external and almost obtrusive. We are certainly thought much better of, because, two of our party having pretty good voices, we commonly sing praises in daily wors.h.i.+p.... To pray standing, or, as I should rather say, lying flat, at the corners of the streets is not ostentation here: for so many do it that it has no pre- eminence.... I always looked to see a missionary church formed in these countries; but I did not foresee what I now discern, that it would not be recognized as Christians at all, but be esteemed a mere Anglicism, not by papists merely, but by Moslems too. I do not know, after all, whether that could be ever a _permanent_ obstacle. I believe not; for it is not the name, but the goodness of Christianity that must prevail. However, the now current idea here is, that the English are very good men, but have _no_ religion--which means, as I said, no exterior; and in so far _our_ exterior inspires something of respect.... I had resolved to read the Koran through--not in the original, but in a translation--that I might get some insight into the Mussulman mind.... But I confess to you I have broken sheer down in the attempt, ... the book makes no impression on my mind. I cannot find where I left off when I recur to it. That so tedious and shallow a work can meet such praises gives me a lower and lower idea of the power of mind in these nations. I now think that the Arabs are captivated by the tinkle and epigrammatic point of an old and sacred dialect, while Turks and Persians take its literary beauty as a religious fact to be believed, not to be felt. How wonderful is the power of tradition!"

In July, Newman and his party were still at Aleppo. By now they had become well accustomed to the native foods, but had at last come to the conclusion that the meat (mutton) was certainly not good; unfortunately it formed a large proportion of the stews. One dish consisted of rice, dressed with b.u.t.ter and salt This is called "Pilau" (p.r.o.nounced "ow"), and apparently is the same as that common in Russia to-day, which is _delicious_.

"This pilau is, fundamentally, rice dressed with b.u.t.ter and salt: the rice is thrown into boiling water, and is boiled for twenty minutes only. This is the highest luxury of the Bedouins. We saw a company of them dine on it. They sc.r.a.ped the hot outside of the rice with the tips of their fingers, squeezed it into a ball in their hand, and shot the ball into their mouth. The dexterity of this, so as not to burn their fingers, miss their mouths, nor drop about their garments, is astonis.h.i.+ng.... Carrots with lemon or sour milk make delicious fritters...."

It was during this month that the news came to them from Bagdad that Mr.

Groves (who, it will be remembered, had been there for some time, expecting them later to join him) had just lost his wife from plague; that she had been the only one who had caught the disease. Newman himself, about this time, had a sharp attack of fever. Dr. Cronin was much alarmed about him; indeed, he believed him to be dying, and leeched his temples and bled his right arm. Then he tried calomel, and he said that he had resolved on opening his temporal artery if his pulse had kept as rapid as at first it was.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. CRONIN ONE OF THOSE WHO WENT TO SYRIA WITH FRANCIS NEWMAN IN 1830 BY KIND PERMISSION OF MRS. CRONIN PHOTO BY MESSRS. WEBSTER, CLAPHAM COMMON]

In Aleppo, he tells us in one of his letters home, "madmen are looked on as sacred characters... there are no madhouses in the land.... Certainly in England the results of turning all the mad loose would be awful.