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PART I PAGE PREFACE xi SOME MEMORANDA OF HIS LIFE AND OF HIS IDEALS 1

PART II

SOME REPRINTED COMMENTS ON HIM AND ON HIS RELATION TO THE OXFORD MOVEMENT 231

INDEX 411

PAGE

FAC-SIMILE SIGNATURE FROM A LETTER OF HURRELL FROUDE TO HIS FRIEND GEORGE DUDLEY RYDER, ESQ. , 1832 xxii

DARTINGTON PARSONAGE 5

COMMON-ROOM GROUP 75

FAC-SIMILE LETTER 160

DARTINGTON OLD CHURCH, AND HURRELL FROUDE'S BURIAL-PLACE 202

'The art of biography has accustomed those who read to expect ... as the word implies, the portrayal of a life, of a process: the record of the growth and unfolding of a soul and character. This it is which interests the subjective temper of our days.... Our mind has learnt that its choicest food need not be sought from afar, but lies scattered with the wild flowers by the wayside, and that nothing is so extraordinary as the ordinary. Thus we have come to care less for a full inventory of the events which make up a man's life, or for the striking nature of those events in themselves, than for such a judicious selection and setting of them as shall best bring out and explain that individuality which is our main interest. We care less for what a man does and more for what he is; and it is mainly as a key to what he is that we study the circumstances which act upon him, and the conduct by which he reacts upon them.' A selection and setting to explain individuality: such is the aim, such is only very partially the achievement, of this book.

'Even as a broken mirror, which the glass In every fragment multiplies, and makes A thousand images of one that was, The same; and still the more, the more it breaks.'

The apprehension of all he was, if not the whole truth about him, should be, in this synod of philosophical friends and deeply interested foes, no difficult thing to win and hold.

The sole purpose of this unconventional yet homogeneous volume is to show Froude, the mind and the man, in his inferential completeness, and without primary reference to that application of his best-cherished principles which meant so much then, and which means so much now. Without primary reference, we say: yet to part him by one hair's breadth from the Oxford Movement, who would, and who could? A book which aims at being not a disquisition, not even a biography, but simply a convenient rearrangement of obvious data for the study of a temperament, may plead its own voluntary poverty as a general extenuation. In the matter not of exegesis but of mere quantity, no reader will complain of too little!

' was always a most excellent talker and narrator, but her great power lay in the portraits she did in chalks. At a very short sitting, and even from memory, she would draw a portrait which was at least perfectly and undeniably true. I have heard her drawings criticised, and her drapery called conventional, but her faces, to my apprehension, were proof against all criticism. Perhaps they are better in outline than when filled up and tinted.... Her interest in the whole circle was insatiable, and there was hardly anything she would not do and dare for a sight of one she had not yet seen.'

Given, therefore, Miss Giberne's ardour in the matter, and her frequently-recurring opportunities as a visitor, it would seem almost certain that she would not have let slip any chance of portraying so noticeable a luminary as Hurrell Froude, often absent, like herself, from Oxford, during 1831-1833, and away from it almost altogether afterwards. Her discovered sketch-books, preserved in the hands of relatives and friends, yield, so far, but a single page in which Froude appears. She groups and labels him with other conspirators' at a historic moment, in the one Oxford Common Room which 'stank of logic.' Something in the too quiescent gesture of the graceful person 'on the box,' as well as in the nature of the circumstance, make one suspect that the whole was drawn not on the spot, nor from memory, but from hearsay at the time. Were such the case, the implication would be that Miss Giberne had a good prior knowledge of Froude's face and figure, and even that she was not committing these to paper for the first time. This little drawing is the property of her nephew, George Pearson, Esq., of Manchester; it is owing to his courtesy and kindness that it is here made public.

It remains only to thank the family of William Froude, Esq., and the Rev. Charles Martin, the present Rector of Dartington; the Rev. G. Kenworthy, Vicar of Bassenthwaite, whose generosity and knowledge have supplied the Editor with many biographical data of the Spedding family; the Rev. T. Herbert Bindley for authentic information about Codrington College; the Rev. J. Christie for much painstaking friendliness, and the use of a page of one of the Theta letters for a fac-simile; the Rev. G. A. Williams, and several other kind correspondents of Tractarian lineage, who have patiently answered inquiries. Lastly, a more intimate acknowledgment is especially due to the Rev. W. H. Carey, of SS. Michael and All Angels, Woolwich; for chiefly through the sense of his steady encouragement, based on an enthusiasm for Hurrell Froude, the Editor's task, more than once interrupted and laid by, was pushed on to its completion.

HURRELL FROUDE

SOME MEMORANDA OF HIS LIFE AND OF HIS IDEALS

HURRELL FROUDE

SOME MEMORANDA OF HIS LIFE AND HIS IDEALS

--'a fugitive and gracious light Shy to illumine,'

stands Newman's early friend, Richard Hurrell Froude, the lost Pleiad of the Oxford Movement. Akin to some others, names earlier and later, 'which carry a perfume in the mention,' he left little to prove and approve himself. Such as he, in the pageant of eternity, are not the tallest harvesters with the most recognisable sheaves. Like Crichton and Falkland and Pergolesi, like Arthur Hallam and Henri Perreyve, he is known to history as it were by a smiling semi-private hint, or a sort of May-orchard coronal which the wind has no power to scatter, rather than by virtue of any personal innings in the complex game of life. He was a mere man of genius. His inheritance was richly varied: of mental currents possible in one cross-bred island, there could hardly be a more spirited blend. 'The thinkers of the West,' as an analytic pen has lately written, 'reveal a certain practical sagacity, a determination to see things clearly, a hatred of cant and shams, a certain "positive" tendency which is one of the notes of purely English thought.' Exact in the wider application, the sentence has an almost startling appropriateness when it is narrowed down to fit the one 'thinker of the West' with whom these pages deal. Never to maunder, never to mince matters, never to pet an illusion, never to lay down arms while there are 'cant and shams' to fight,--all that is very Devonian; and Hurrell Froude, true at every point, was true Devon in this. His ancestral Speddings, on the other hand, had imagination and a love of letters, and were ironic and opinionative after another fashion. They had also, for generation after generation, as an unexpected corollary, a strong turn for science, and even for mechanical science, as the less bookish Froudes, to offset their hard common sense, were restless and romantic lovers of the open air and of the sea. The shy, critical, solitary, but ardent and adventurous character which belonged not only to our particular Fellow of Oriel, but in some measure to all his nearest kindred, seems to have been inherited equally from the contrasted streams which ran in their blood. All Hurrell's religiousness, all his poetry and fire and penetrative thought, came straight from his beautiful and highly intelligent mother, whom he lost just as he really came to know her, and whom he worshipped during the rest of his life. His stature, colour, and expression, as also his delicacy of constitution, he received through her.

'SIR,--I have a son who is giving me a good deal of uneasiness at this time, from causes which I persuade myself are not altogether common; and having used my best judgment about him for seventeen years, I at last begin to think it incompetent to the case, and apply to you for advice. From his very birth his temper has been peculiar: pleasing, intelligent, and attaching, when his mind was undisturbed, and he was in the company of people who treated him reasonably and kindly; but exceedingly impatient under vexatious circumstances; very much disposed to find his own amusement in teasing and vexing others; and almost entirely incorrigible when it was necessary to reprove him. I never could find a successful mode of treating him. Harshness made him obstinate and gloomy; calm and long displeasure made him stupid and sullen; and kind patience had not sufficient power over his feelings to force him to govern himself. His disposition to worry made his appearance the perpetual signal for noise and disturbance among his brothers and sisters; and this it was impossible to stop, though a taste for quiet, and constant weak health, made it to me almost insupportable. After a statement of such great faults, it may seem an inconsistency to say that he nevertheless still bore about him strong marks of a promising character. In all points of substantial principle his feelings were just and high. He had an unusually deep feeling of admiration for everything which was good and noble; his relish was lively, and his taste good, for all the pleasures of the imagination; and he was also quite conscious of his own faults, and, untempted, had a just dislike to them. On these grounds I built my hope that his reason would gradually correct his temper, and do that for him which his friends could not accomplish. Such a hope was necessary to my peace of mind; for I will not say that he was dearer to me than my other children, but he was my first child, and certainly he could not be dearer. This expectation has been realised, gradually, though very slowly. The education his father chose for him agreed with him; his mind expanded and sweetened; and even some more material faults entirely disappeared. His promising virtues became my most delightful hopes, and his company my greatest pleasure. At this time he had a dangerous illness, which he bore most admirably. The consequences of it obliged him to leave his School, submit for many months to the most troublesome restraints, and to be debarred from all the amusements and pleasures of his age, though he felt, at the same time, quite competent to them. All this he bore not only with patience and compliance, but with a cheerful sweetness which endeared him to all around him. He returned home for the confirmation of his health, and he appeared to me all I could desire. His manners were tender and kind, his conversation highly pleasing, and his occupations manly and rational. The promising parts of his character, like Aaron's rod, appeared to have swallowed up all the rest, and to have left us nothing but his health to wish for.--After such an account, imagine the pain I must feel on being forced to acknowledge that the ease and indulgence of home is bringing on a relapse into his former habits. I view it with sincere alarm as well as grief, as he must remain here many many months, and a strong return to ill-conduct, at his age, I do not think would ever be recovered. I will mention some facts, to show that my fears are not too forward. He has a near relation, who has attended him through his illness with extraordinary tenderness, and who never made a difference between night and day, if she could give him the smallest comfort, to whom he is very troublesome, and not always respectful. He told her, in an argument, the other day, that "she lied, and knew she did," without the smallest apology. I am in a wretched state of health, and quiet is important to my recovery, and quite essential to my comfort; yet he disturbs it, for what he calls "funny tormenting," without the slightest feeling, twenty times a day. At one time he kept one of his brothers screaming, from a sort of teasing play, for near an hour under my window. At another, he acted a wolf to his baby brother, whom he had promised never to frighten again. All this worry has been kept up upon a day when I have been particularly unwell. He also knows at the same time very well, that if his head does but ache, it is not only my occupation, but that of the whole family, to put an end to everything which can annoy him.

'You will readily see, dear Sir, that our situation is very difficult and very distressing. He is too old for any correction but that of his own reason; and how to influence that, I know not! Your advice will greatly oblige

'A very anxious parent, 'M. F.

The kind relative, who was so ungraciously repaid for her goodness, was his aunt Miss Mary Spedding, the eldest of all her family, devoted to her only sister Margaret, and to that sister's memory; the baby brother, who must have conceived of the wolf as a perseveringly disagreeable animal, was James Anthony Froude, then nearly two years old. A year later, on February 16, 1821, Margaret Froude breathed her lovely soul away, and was laid to rest next the south porch of Dartington Church, where her children's feet passed in and out on Sunday mornings over the flagstones, between the first spring flowers. 'The Froudes were eight in family,' wrote Isaac Williams, on a happy visit long after. On the morrow of their bereavement, this was the junior roll-call in Robert Froude's desolate Parsonage:

Richard Hurrell, aged not quite eighteen. Robert Hurrell, aged sixteen years, ten months. John Spedding, just fourteen. Margaret, aged twelve years, nine months. Phillis Jane, nearly eleven and a half. William, aged ten years, three months. Mary Isabella, not quite seven and a half. James Anthony, under three.

Hurrell Froude was admitted Commoner by the University of Oxford and matriculated at Oriel College, within a few weeks of his mother's death, on April 13, 1821. His delicate health had kept him back: his father and his brothers all matriculated at seventeen. Robert Froude, 'Bob,' was then entering upon his Sixth Form at Eton. Little Margaret began at once, under guidance, her tender and long continued task of comforting her father and mothering the motherless. She found no time to seek her own happiness, till her marriage in 1844, when only her father and herself, William and Anthony, survived. John Spedding Froude died in 1841, thirty-four years old, and, like his two elder brothers, unmarried. Of Phillis, William, Mary, and Anthony, Hurrell's own annals will have more to say. Beside one of the leafy winding roads of Dartington rose afterwards a little grey almshouse, and over the doorway a stone tablet with this inscription:

'IMPENSIS MARIAE SPEDDING PIA RECORDATIONE SORORIS SUAE MARGARETAE FROUDE HAEC DOMUS IN PERPETUAM ELEEMOSYNAM EXTRUCTA EST. AGELLUM CIRCUMJACENTEM IN EOSDEM USUS EROGAVIT HENRICUS CHAMPERNOWNE.

It must have been building during the last year of Hurrell's life, and no doubt with his 'very managing sort of mind' he worked into it some of his rather primitive Gothic theories. There still is the home which Mary Spedding's love built, where age and poverty have privacy and peace, and roses at every window, and thankful sweet remembrance of human kindness, as in the ancient time.

--'Yesterday I was very indolent, but ... my energies were rather restored by reading some of my mother's journal at Vineyard. I did not recollect that I had been so unfeeling to her during her last year. I thank God some of her writings have been kept: that may be my salvation; but I have spent the evening just as idly as if I had not seen it. I don't know how it is, but it seems to me that the consciousness of having capacities for happiness, with no objects to gratify them, seems to grow upon me, and puts me in a dreary way. Lord, have mercy upon me.'

--'Spent the morning tolerably well; read my mother's journal and prayers, two hours: I admire her more and more. I pray God the prayers she made for me may be effectual, and that her labours may not be in vain, but that God in His mercy may have chosen this way of accomplishing them; and that my reading them so long after they were made, and without any intention of hers, may be the means by which the Holy Spirit will awaken my spirit to those good feelings which she asked for in my behalf. I hope, by degrees, I may get to consider her relics in the light of a friend, derive from them advice and consolation, and rest my troubled spirit under their shadow. She seems to have had the same annoyances as myself, without the same advantages, and to have written her thoughts down, instead of conversation. As yet they have only excited my feelings, and not produced any practical result.'

--'Read my mother's journal till half-past twelve: here and there I think I remember allusions. Everything I see in it sends me back to her in my childhood: it gets such hold of me that I can hardly think of anything else. It is a bad way to give a general account of oneself at the end of a day: people at that time are not competent judges of their actions; besides, everyone ought to be dissatisfied with himself always: it is better to give a detailed account like my mother's by means of which I may hereafter have some idea of what was my standard of virtue, rather than my opinion of myself.'

--'O Lord, consider it not as a mockery in me, that day after day I present myself before Thee, professing penitence for sins which I still continue to commit, and asking Thy grace to assist me in subduing them, while my negligence renders it ineffectual. O Lord, if I must judge of the future from the past, and if the prayers which I am now about to offer up to Thee will prove equally ineffectual with those which have preceded them, then indeed it is a fearful thing to come before Thee with professions whose fruitlessness seems a proof of their insincerity! But Thine eye trieth my inward parts, and knoweth my thoughts, independently of the actions which proceed from them. "O that my ways were made so direct that I might keep Thy statutes! I will walk in Thy commandments when Thou hast set my heart at liberty."'

--'Read my mother's journal. I hope it is beginning to do me some serious good, without exciting such wild feelings as it did at first.'

--'I must fight against myself with all my might, and watch my mind at every turning. It will be a good thing for me to keep an exact account of my receipts and spendings: it will be a check on silly prodigality. I mean to save what I can by denying myself indulgences, in order to have wherewith I may honour God and relieve the poor.'

--'Perhaps you may think it very odd, but this summer has been the first time I have had resolution to ask for the papers which they found of my mother's after her death. The most interesting to me are some prayers, and two fragments of journal, one for the year 1809, I think, and the other in 1815. The prayers seem to have been a good deal later.'

--'All this summer I have been trying a sort of experiment with myself, which, as I have had no one to talk to about it, has brought on great fits of enthusiasm and despondency, and being conscious at the time of most contemptible inconsistencies, both in my high and dejected feelings, I set to work to keep a journal of them, to answer the purpose of a sort of conversation between my present and my future self: an idea which I got from reading an old journal of my mother's, which they found after her death, and which I never could make up my mind to look at till this summer.'

--'I felt as if I have got rid of a great weight from my mind, in having given up the notion of regulating my particular actions, by the sensible tendency I could perceive in them to bring me towards my ?? ?????. I had always a mistrust in this motive; and it seems quite a happiness to yield the direction of myself to a Higher Power Who has said: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."'

--'It seems to me a great help towards making myself indifferent to present things, to conjure up past events, and distant places and people before me: things that happened at Eton, or Ottery, or in the very early times of childhood. I felt again to-day as if ... the secret world of new pleasures and wishes to which I am trying to gain admittance, is a mere fancy. I must be careful to check high feelings, they are certain to become offences in a day or two, and must regulate my practice by faith, and a steady imitation of great examples: in hopes that, by degrees, what I now have only faint and occasional glimpses of may be the settled objects on which my imagination reposes, and that I may be literally hid in the presence of the Lord.'

--'I might not indeed be too penitent, but penitent in a wrong way. Abstinences and self-mortifications may themselves be a sort of intemperance: a food to my craving after some sign that I am altering. They ought not to be persevered in, farther than as they are instrumental to a change of character in things of real importance: ... how hard it is to keep a pure motive for anything!... I will refrain, rather, by forcing myself to talk, and attend to the wants of others than by constantly thinking of myself.'

--'Made good resolutions about behaviour when I go home. Never to argue with my father, or remonstrate with him, or offer my advice, unless in cases where I feel I should do so to the . For even if it subjects me to unnecessary inconvenience, it would do so equally in both cases; and, if I would submit to it in one case through pusillanimity, I ought in the other for a punishment. It would be a good way to make opposite vices punish each other so, and be likely to cure both in time. In the same way to behave to Bob and my sisters as I would to : to comply with their wishes, and not interfere with their opinions, except where I would with the latter. I must try at home to be as humble, and submissive, and complying, as I can; and here as resolute and vigorous, till I get to be the same in all places and all company. I do not preclude myself from making amendments in this resolution, till I have left Oxford.'

--'I have just been reading over my account of the time I spent at home last summer.... The great root of all my complicated misdeeds seems to have been A want of proper notions respecting my relations to my father. A notion that I was a competent judge how to make other people happy, by giving a tone to their pursuits. A craving after the pleasures which I admire. Arrogant pretensions to superiority. A wish to make my conduct seem consistent to myself and others. The first is the main point, and when I have carried that, the rest will all go easily. The only way we can ever be comfortable is by our all uniting to make his will our law, and what little I can do towards this will be better accomplished by example than by presumptuous advice.... Nor do I see how I can so well repress my arrogance as by always keeping in mind that I am in the presence of one who is to me the type of the Most High.'

--'Among the other lights which have been gradually dawning on me, one from following the guidance of which I hope I may derive great comfort, has made me conscious of the debt of reverence that I owe my father: not only in that, bearing his sacred name, he is proposed to me as a type of the Almighty upon earth, but that he has, in his high character, so demeaned himself as to become a fortress and rock of defence to all those who are blessed with his protection. Under his shadow I will, by God's blessing, rest in peace, and will endeavour for the future to esteem his approbation as the highest earthly honour and his love as the highest reward. I feel in this resolution real peace; and while I am conscious of endeavouring to act up to it, will try, as you advise me, to quiet my gloomy apprehensions.'

--'O my God! I dare no longer offer to Thee my diseased petitions in the words by which wise and holy men have shaped their intercourse between earth and Heaven. Suffer me, with whose vileness they can have had no fellowship, to frame for myself my isolated supplication. O my Father, by Thy power I began to be, and by Thy protection Thou hast continued to me my misused existence: yet I have forsaken Thee, my only Strength, and forgotten Thee, my only Wisdom. I have neglected to obey Thy voice, and gone a-whoring after my own inventions. As soon as I was born, I went astray and spake lies. I loved the delights which Thou hast given me more than Thee who gavest them; and I dreaded the might which Thou hast delegated to man more than Thee the Almighty.... Yet, praised be Thy holy Name, Thou hast not even thus utterly left me destitute; but with hideous dreams Thou hast affrighted me; and with perpetual mortifications Thou hast disquieted me; and with the recollections of bright things fascinated me; and with a holy friend Thou hast visited me. Thou hast sought Thy servant while astray in the wilderness; Thou hast shown me the horrible pit, the mire and clay in which I am wallowing: O mayest Thou, of Thy great goodness, set my feet upon a rock, and order my goings. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Turn Thy face from my sins, and put out all my misdeeds. Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. O give me the comfort of Thy help again, and stablish me with Thy free Spirit.... Bless, O Lord, with Thy constant favour and protection that high spirit whom, as Thy type upon this earth, Thou hast interposed between me and the evils I have merited. Fill him, O Lord, with the fulness of Thy grace, that, running with patience the race which has been set before him, he may finish his course at Thy good time with joyfulness, and find a rest from his labours in the portion of the righteous.'

--'I will be cautious about talking of myself and my feelings: what I like; whom I admire; what are my notions of a high character; how few people I find to sympathise with me on any subject; and many other egotistical, mawkish, useless matters, about which I have suffered myself to prate. Also, I will avoid obtruding my advice, and taking high grounds to which I have no pretensions.'

--'Just now, at breakfast, I felt the inconvenience of not omitting an oath in a story I told of Sheridan. I felt directly that I lost ground, and should be unable to make a stand, if conversation were to take a turn I disliked. I must be watchful and strict with myself in this respect: for, if I comply with my father's wishes, and enter freely into society, I shall have much harder work to fight off my old shuffling vanity, and shall be drawn, from not feeling my own ground, into foolishness and flash, and everything that is disgusting.'

--'Just now, in riding home from Denbury, I got arguing with my father about the little chance anyone has of doing good, in a way rather inconsistent with our relative condition; yet, when I thought I was going rather too far, could hardly convince myself that, at any particular moment, it was incumbent on me to stop. It is this self-deceiving disposition that I am afraid of.'

--'I will brace myself and keep my attention on the alert on this S expedition, by a vow about my food: I will make my meals as simple as I can, without being observed upon; will take no command upon myself, but obey my father's instructions to the utmost of my power; will try to make no objections or propositions unless called upon; and that no one may be able to put me out of the way everyone shall have theirs, however disagreeable they may seem to me.'

--'We returned to-day, and on reading over these resolutions, which I called a vow, I find I have acted very poorly up to them. I believe they have operated as a sort of check upon me in some respects, that I have been less of an epicure and less of an interferer than I should have been else. But yet, quite at starting, I suggested, when my father proposed going ashore, that it would take a longer time than he calculated on: but this was merely a suggestion. And on one of the evenings when we were by ourselves, I argued about people going to Church in a way very inconsistent with our relative situations; neither was I quite cordial in my acquiescence with propositions of my father's about minor excursions at S and feel as if I had pressed unpleasantly on him some of my opinions about tides, and names of places.'

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