Its tone was not liked at Rome; it had contained an article criticising St. Pius V, and, most serious of all, the orthodoxy of one of Newman's own essays had appeared to be doubtful. He resigned, and in the anguish of his heart, determined never to write again. One of his friends asked him why he was publishing nothing. 'Hannibal's elephants,' he replied, 'never could learn the goose-step.'
Newman was now an old man--he was sixty-three years of age. What had he to look forward to? A few last years of insignificance and silence. What had he to look back upon? A long chronicle of wasted efforts, disappointed hopes, neglected possibilities, unappreciated powers. And now all his labours had ended by his being accused at Rome of lack of orthodoxy. He could no longer restrain his indignation, and in a letter to one of his lady penitents, he gave vent to the bitterness of his soul. When his Rambler article had been complained of, he said, there had been some talk of calling him to Rome. 'Call me to Rome,' he burst out--'what does that mean? It means to sever an old man from his home, to subject him to intercourse with persons whose languages are strange to him-- to food and to fashions which are almost starvation on the one hand, and involve restless days and nights on the other--it means to oblige him to dance attendance on Propaganda week after week and month after month--it means his death. (It was the punishment on Dr. Baines, 1840-1, to keep him at the door of Propaganda for a year.)
'This is the prospect which I cannot but feel probable, did I say anything which one Bishop in England chose to speak against and report. Others have been killed before me. Lucas went of his own accord indeed--but when he got there, oh!' How much did he, as loyal a son of the Church and the Holy See as ever was, what did he suffer because Dr. Cullen was against him? He wandered (as Dr.
Cullen said in a letter he published in a sort of triumph), he wandered from Church to Church without a friend, and hardly got an audience from the Pope. 'And I too should go from St. Philip to Our Lady, and to St. Peter and St. Paul, and to St. Laurence and to St. Cecilia, and, if it happened to me as to Lucas, should come back to die.'
Yet, in spite of all, in spite of these exasperations of the flesh, these agitations of the spirit, what was there to regret?
Had he not a mysterious consolation which outweighed every grief?
Surely, surely, he had.
'Unveil, 0 Lord, and on us shine, In glory and in grace,' he exclaims in a poem written at this time, called 'The Two Worlds':
'This gaudy world grows pale before The beauty of Thy face.
'Till Thou art seen it seems to he A sort of fairy ground, Where suns unsetting light the sky, And flowers and fruit abound.
'But when Thy keener, purer beam Is poured upon our sight, It loses all its power to charm, And what was day is night...
'And thus, when we renounce for Thee Its restless aims and fears, The tender memories of the past, The hopes of coming years, 'Poor is our sacrifice, whose eyes Are lighted from above; We offer what we cannot keep, What we have ceased to love.'
Such were Newman's thoughts when an unexpected event occurred which produced a profound effect upon his life: Charles Kingsley attacked his good faith, and the good faith of Catholics in general, in a magazine article. Newman protested, and Kingsley rejoined in an irate pamphlet. Newman's reply was the Apologia pro Vita Sua, which he wrote in seven weeks, sometimes working twenty-two hours at a stretch, 'constantly in tears, and constantly crying out with distress'. The success of the book, with its transparent candour, its controversial brilliance, the sweep and passion of its rhetoric, the depth of its personal feeling, was immediate and overwhelming; it was recognised at once as a classic, not only by Catholics, but by the whole English world. From every side expressions of admiration, gratitude, and devotion poured in. It was impossible for one so sensitive as Newman to the opinions of other people to resist the happy influence of such an unlooked-for, such an enormous triumph. The cloud of his dejection began to lift; et l'espoir malgre lui s'est glisse dans son coeur.
It was only natural that at such a moment his thoughts should return to Oxford. For some years past proposals had been on foot for establishing there a Hall, under Newman's leadership, for Catholic undergraduates. The scheme had been looked upon with disfavour in Rome, and it had been abandoned; but now a new opportunity presented itself-- some land in a suitable position came into the market. Newman, with his reviving spirits, felt that he could not let this chance go by, and bought the land. It was his intention to build there not a Hall, but a Church, and to set on foot a 'House of the Oratory'. What possible objection could there be to such a scheme? He approached the Bishop of Birmingham, who gave his approval; in Rome itself there was no hostile sign. The laity were enthusiastic and subscriptions began to flow in. Was it possible that all was well at last? Was it conceivable that the strange and weary pilgrimage of so many years should end at length in quietude, if not in happiness, where it had begun?
