Understanding the Heart of Newman: Meriol Trevor

Abstract

Understanding the Heart of Newman:Meriol Trevor Leonie Caldecott (bio) The modern world has something of a problem with hagiography. We are all devil's advocates now, relishing the "warts and all" approach to human portraiture. Raising someone to the altars is one thing: making a fully rounded, credible portrait of an individual—particularly when that individual lived a long and complicated life—is another thing altogether. This has been something of a problem where John Henry Newman is concerned. The strength of Ian Ker's magisterial account of Newman's life and development, published in the centenary year after his death, lies in its focus on Newman's intellectual development, as well as his religious and cultural importance. The double biography by the historian Meriol Trevor, published nearly thirty years earlier, is essential for its insights into the complexity of his character. This is mostly because Trevor relies so heavily on his letters, to which the Fathers of the Birmingham Oratory gave her full access during the 1950s. These provide the primary evidence of Newman's personality, precisely because they convey his relationships with others. More than anything, they reveal his pastoral side. No biographer is going to be free of agendas (and Newman is infamous for attracting agendas). But digging deep into the documentation in order to bring out complexities and contradictions is an essential component if you are going to hold your subject up as a credible example of sanctity. Newman loved long-lived saints, seeing in them that important quality of endurance which is so central to the Christian life: he [End Page 193] himself became one of these. In short, he had plenty of time to develop warts alongside that highly tempered soul. In order to demonstrate this, I will home in on a fascinating chapter in volume two of Trevor's biography, Light in Winter, entitled "Frustration and Contentment." This section of Trevor's book relates the phase of Newman's life, between 1868 and 1869, just after the failure of the plan to form an Oratory in Oxford. It tells the story of his visit to Littlemore in 1868, twenty-two years after he left it for what was to prove a distinctly bumpy ride in the Roman Catholic Church. He was observed by a groom who interpreted his melancholy stance and relayed it to his employer, who relayed it to others, creating a portrait of a supposedly broken man weeping over a lych-gate. Trevor, however, deflates the gossipy caricature by staying resolutely with her subject: Newman was fascinated all his life by the strangeness of time, the mystery of change and identity, of memory, of the real and the unreal. In 1866 he said to Copeland "the very seeing of Oxford again, since I am not one with it, would be a cruel thing—it is like the dead coming to the dead…."1 Trevor then contextualizes this in light of Newman's focus on the Resurrection. "This is how he imagined Purgatory—he soul faced with its past. How much had happened since he had left Littlemore, kissing the doorposts of the stable-monastery! And more still since the day in 1835 when his mother, a year before…[she died]. Her death, had laid the foundation stone of the little church. In 1877, answering a query of Bloxham's, New-man said simply: 'When I saw my mother's monument, I could but cry.'"2 Trevor's focus in on Newman as a man of faith whose emotions were kept in balance with his wider Christian mission. He did indeed feel things keenly—this is the foundation of his ability to accompany others in their struggles—but he also had his eyes fixed on more than passing goals. Indeed "goals" had a notorious habit of passing Newman by. The tragic failure of the plan to have him oversee a new translation of Scripture is just one pertinent example. John Henry Newman is arguably the patron saint of frustrated dreams and projects. There are other examples in this chapter of Trevor's sensitive handling of her subject. Newman's difficulty in dealing with committees and hierarchies of power is one of...