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Wilfrid Ward and his Life of Newman1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
Extract
The most subtle nineteenth century analysis of religious conviction was the work of John Henry Newman; but who would analyse Newman himself? The simplest, most brilliant and wicked interpretation was that of Henri Bremond, for whom the ‘mystery of Newman’ was an all-devouring ‘autocentrism’ and self centredness, evidenced in an impassioned sense of self-identity and intensified by a twofold conviction of the reality of God and of the unreality of the visible world. Bremond's proof text was Newman's account of his Calvinist conversion, ‘confirming me in my mistrust of material phenomena, and making me rest in die thought of two and two only supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator’. ‘Myself and my Creator’—here, thought Bremond, was an appalling glimpse of Newman's egotism, die secret of a spirit alien to other men, for whom ‘every individual soul is a closed world’. Here was the making of that touchy hypersensitive melancholic, ‘the solitary by choice’, who ‘by confining his universe to two beings, his Creator and himself, made forever that void at the very bottom of his heart’.
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References
2 In the Grammar of Assent, London 1870Google Scholar.
3 Bremond, Henri, The Mystery of Newman, London 1907, 30–2Google Scholar; cf. the wise words on this and Faber's, GeoffreyOxford Apostles, London 1933Google Scholar, of Kent, John: Danielou, J., Couratin, A. H. and Kent, John, The Pelican Guide to Modern Theology, London 1969, ii. 324–8Google Scholar.
4 Newman, J. H., Apologia pro vita sua, New York 1950, 36Google Scholar.
5 Bremond, op. cit., 29.
6 The title of Bremond's first chapter, ibid., 17–39.
7 Ibid., 47.
8 Dessain, C. S., The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, London 1961–77, xi, xviiGoogle Scholar.
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10 Bedoyere, Michael de la, The Life of Baron von Hügel, London 1951, 32, 43Google Scholar. On von Hügel and Newman more generally, Barmann, Lawrence F., Baron Friedrich von Hügel and the modernist crisis in England, Cambridge 1972, especially 5–7Google Scholar. Cf. Loome, T. M., ‘The Enigma of Baron von Hügel—as modernist’, The Downside Review, 99 (1973) especially 206, note 8Google Scholar: ‘On Fr. Barmann's reading of the Baron's formative years, the major intellectual influences would appear to be “Ideal” Ward, Newman and Charles de Smedt. This, I suggest, is less to answer a question than to pose a riddle'.
11 Bremond, op. cit., xvii. On Tyrell's relationship to Newman, see Petre, Maude, Autobiography and Life of George Tyrell, London 1912, ii. 207–23Google Scholar. More generally on Newman's relationship to modernism, see Vidler, A. R., The Modernist Movement in the Roman Church: its Origins and Outcome, Cambridge 1934, 51–9, 93, 120Google Scholar.
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13 Ward, Wilfrid, Last Lectures being the Lowell lectures, 1914 and three lectures delivered at the Royal Institution, 1915 with an introductory study by Mrs. Wilfrid Ward, London 1918Google Scholar.
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16 Cameron, J. M., ‘Newman and the empiricist tradition’, in Coulson, John and Allchin, A. M., The Rediscovery of Newman: an Oxford Symposium, London 1967, 76–97Google Scholar.
17 See especially Wilfrid Ward, Last Lectures, 10–11.
18 Cited Ward, Maisie, Unfinished Business, London 1964, 57Google Scholar.
19 Wilfrid Ward, life of Newman, i. 119–654; ii. 1–432.
20 Ward, Maisie, The Wilfrid Wards and the Transition, II: Insurrection versus Resurrection (henceforth cited as Insurrection), London 1937, 352Google Scholar.
21 For Tyrell, The Times, 30 September, 1 October 1907; cf. Petre, op. cit., 335–45; for Williams, The Times, 2 November 1907, for both his letter and the leading article.
22 Insurrection, 270–2. Ward thought admirable but tactless Williams's Newman, Pascal, Loisy and the Catholic Church, London 1906Google Scholar. It was ‘the deepest book on Newman's thought that has ever appeared; a book, however, full of literary defects and which Newman himself would never have sanctioned’: Ward to A. L. Lilly, 5 November 1907. Cf. the review of Williams's Newman, in The Dublin Review, cxl (1907), 171–83.
23 Draft, Ward to John Norris, November 1907. On the context of the passage see below.
24 Ward to Norfolk, 10 October 1907; cf. Ward to Norfolk, 2 November 1907.
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27 Ibid., 254–357; Maisie Ward, Unfinished Business, 4.9–63. The matter is also briefly surveyed by Dessain, xi, xix–xx from the Oratorian point of view. No one knew this controversy better than Fr. Dessain; he would forgive my disagreeing with him.
28 ‘MEMORDANDUM ON FUTURE BIOGRAPHY’, 15 November 1872; ‘MEMORANDUM AS TO A BIOGRAPHY’, 24 July 1876; Dessain, op. tit., xxvi. 200–1; xxviii. 92–3.
29 Ward to Norfolk, 11 September 1890.
30 Norfolk to Ward, 19 September 1890.
31 Ward to Norfolk, 20 September 1890. On why Newman excluded Ryder from the executorship, see Dessain, op. cit., xxviii, 93 note 2: ‘his mind is so differently constructed from mine. I don't recollect him ever showing sympathy with anything I have said or done…'.
32 Ward to Neville, 26 October 1890.
33 Neville to Wand, 10 October 1891; cf, Ward, , ‘Philalethes: some words on a misconception of cardinal Newman’, The Contemporary Review, ix (1891), 48Google Scholar: ‘Cardinal Newman's memoranda on religious philosophy, which were by his desire placed in my hands after his death…'.
34 Ward to Norfolk, 14 October 1891.
35 Norfolk to Ward, 2 8 June 1891.
36 Neville to Ward, 8 May 1898.
37 Insurrection, 336.
38 Neville to Ward, 6 April 1899.
39 Ryder and Tyrell cited Insurrection, 334 a n d 336.
40 Neville to Ward, 5 January 1902.
41 Neville to Ward, 8 October 1904.
42 Dessain, op. cit., xxii. 369–70.
45 Ibid., xxvi. 422.
44 On Edward and Richard, ibid., xxiii. 421–2.
45 Norfolk to Ward, 20 April 1905.
46 Ward to Norfolk, 25 April 1905.
47 Ward to Norfolk, 27 April 1905.
48 Norfolk to Ward, 19 June 1905; Ward to Norfolk 21 June 1905.
49 Ward to Norfolk, 25 April 1905.
50 Insurrection, 279: ‘on these occasions’, Maisie Ward adds, ‘my father had the air of a naughty schoolboy!’
51 Ward to Norris, 2–3 November 1907. The letter enclosed to Norfolk was that of a November (see above, n. 24).
52 Wilfrid Ward, Life of Newman, i. 479. Cf. Altholz, Joseph L., The Liberal-Catholic Movement in England: The ‘Rambler’ and its Contributors 1848–1864, London 1962, 78–9Google Scholar.
53 Norris to Ward, 6 November 1907.
54 Richard Bellasis to Ward, 10 November 1907. Ward's reply (12 November 1907) is printed in Insurrection, 338–9, in which Bellasis's anonymity is preserved.
55 Richard Bellasis to Ward, 13 November 1907.
56 Norris to Ward, 21 November 1907.
57 Ward, Wilfrid, ‘Father Ignatius Ryder A Reminiscence’, Dublin Review, cxlii (1908), 64–79Google Scholar; Norris to Ward, 7 January 1908.
58 Norris to Ward, 27 February 1908.
59 Talbot to Ward, 7 August 1908.
60 Norris to Ward, 25 September 1908.
61 Norris to Ward, 5 November 1908.
62 Draft not sent, Ward to Louis Bellasis, March 1911. This was die letter which Talbot advised against sending: see below, n. 71.
63 Norris to Ward, 29 June 1909.
64 Norris to Ward, 5 November 1908.
65 Richard Bellasis to Ward, 28 February 1911.
66 ‘Father Bacchus’ criticisms'; probably sent with a missing letter from Bacchus, noted in Miss Weaver's catalogue, of 2 March 1911. The ‘introductory chapter’ referred to is the second chapter in the completed work, following the eventual introduction sent in August, for which see below.
67 ‘Memorandum’ March 1911, in answer to Bacchus.
68 Norris to Longman, 14 March 1911.
69 See The Catholic Who's Who and Year-Book 751/5, London 1911, 281Google Scholar.
70 ‘Mclntyre's alarm at the passages marked was greater than mine': Bacchus to Ward, 25 March 1911.
71 Talbot to Ward, 29 March 1911.
72 Talbot to Ward, 3 April 1911.
73 ‘Father Richard's criticisms' enclosed with Bellasis to Ward, 31 March 1911. The ‘criticisms’ are the source for Bellasis's remarks in the following paragraphs.
74 See Wilfrid Ward, Life of Newman, i. 178.
75 Draft of Ward's reply to Richard Bellasis's criticisms: the source of Ward's remarks in the following paragraphs. The fifteenth chapter referred to is the sixteenth in the published text.
76 Ward to Norfolk, 12 October 1902, rejecting Norfolk's pressure to write Acton's life.
77 Longman to Ward, 26 April 1911.
78 Bacchus to Longman, 5 August 1911; Longman to Ward, 8 August 1911, encloses the letter.
79 von Hügel to Ward, 2 October 1911.
80 Ward to von Hügel, 3 October 1911, von Hügel papers, MS.3153, St. Andrews university library.
81 von Hügel to Ward, 2 October 1911; the passage is cited more fully in Barmann, op. cit., 5.
82 Richard Bellasis to Talbot, 1 July 1912.
83 Talbot to Richard Bellasis, 3 August 1912. Ward and Talbot also believed that the Oratorians now wanted to edit Newman's correspondence, and a volume edited by Joseph Bacchus did later appear: Correspondence of John Henry Newman with John Keble and others, 1839–1845, London 1917. Its theme is the process by which Newman passed from the Church of England to the Church of Rome.
84 Richard Bellasis to Norfolk, 15 August 1912.
85 Insurrection, 318–27.
86 Ibid. 347.
87 Ibid.
88 See above, n. 13.
89 According to Fr. Dessain, Ward's Last Lectures ‘contained his best work on Newman': Dessain, op. cit., xxxi. 328.
90 A gauge of this is A. O. J. Cockshut's otherwise perceptive essay on Ward's Newman, which makes no reference to modernism or to Ward's problem with the executors or to Ward's own intellectual dilemma, as the Life of Newman reflects it: Truth to Life the Art of Biography in the Nineteenth Century, London 1974, 193–207Google Scholar;.