5.5. Tutorship Letters
5
Tutor of Oriel College
5.1. CONCERN FOR STUDENTS’ MORAL DISPOSITIONS
Although Newman as a tutor was concerned about the spiritual well-being of Oriel students, he soon discovered that other Oxford teachers were not:
He [Newman] was especially opposed to young men being compelled, or even suffered as a matter of course, to go terminally [i.e., every term] to communion, and shocked at the reception he met with from those to whom he complained of so gross a profanation of the sacred rite. When he asked one high authority whether there was any obligation upon the undergraduates to communicate, he was cut short with the answer, “That question never, I believe, enters into their heads, and I beg you will not put it into them.” When he told another that a certain number of them, after communion, intoxicated themselves at a champagne breakfast, he was answered, “I don't believe it, and, if it is true, I don't want to know it.”
—“Autobiographical Memoir,” 133
5.2. VIEW OF THE ORIEL TUTORSHIP
During Newman's time at Oxford, the fellows of colleges were expected to be celibate Anglican clergyman. When a fellow decided to marry, he was required to resign his fellowship, thereby providing vacancies for the election of new fellows. Unlike Newman, few fellows considered either their fellowship or their tutorship permanent positions. Similarly, in contrast to many college tutors who considered their work as basically secular, but not incompatible with Anglican orders, Newman, speaking in the third person, considered his tutorship a spiritual responsibility:
He [Newman] had as deep a sense of the solemnity of the ordination vow as another could have, but he thought there were various modes of fulfilling it, and that the tutorial office was simply one of them. As to that vow he has recorded in his Private Journal what he calls his terror at the obligation it involved. He writes the hour after he had received the Diaconate, “It is over; at first, after the hands were laid on me, my heart shuddered within me; the words ‘For ever’ are so terrible.” The next day he says, “For ever! words never to be recalled. I have the responsibility of souls on me to the day of my death.” He felt he had left the secular line once for all, that he had entered upon a Divine ministry, and for the first two years of his clerical life he connected his sacred office with nothing short of the prospect of missionary work in heathen countries as the destined fulfilment of it. When then, as time went on, the direct duties of a college exerted a more urgent claim upon him, and he became Tutor, it must be understood that, in his view, the tutorial office was but another way, though not so heroic a way as a mission to idolaters, of carrying out his vow. To have considered that office to be merely secular, and yet to have engaged in it, would have been the greatest of inconsistencies. Nor is this a matter of mere inference from the sentiments and views recorded in his Journal. On occasion of his Father's death, three months after his ordination, he observes, “My Mother said the other day she hoped to live to see me married, but I think I shall either die within college walls, or as a missionary in a foreign land,” thus coupling the two lives together, dissimilar as they were in their character. A few years later we find in his verses a like reference to college engagements, not as a clergyman's accident of life, but as his divinely appointed path of duty. He says that he is “enrolled” in a sacred warfare, and that he would not exchange it for any other employment; that he is a “prisoner” in an Oxford “cell,” according to the “High dispose” of Him “who binds on each his part”—that he is like the snapdragon on the college walls, and that such a habitat was so high a lot that well might he “in college cloister live and die.” And, when it was decided that he was to be one of the Public Tutors, and he was about to enter upon the duties of his new office, he says in his Journal, “May I engage in them, remembering that I am a minister of Christ, and have a commission to preach the Gospel, remembering the worth of souls, and that I shall have to answer for the opportunities given me of benefiting those who are under my care.” It will be seen presently why it is necessary thus distinctly to bring out Mr. Newman's view of the substantially religious nature of a college tutorship.
5.3. REFORMING THE TUTORSHIP
From the beginning of his tutorship in 1826, Newman had a double goal in mind: first, like the proverbial new broom, to rid Oriel of those students who were not serious about either their studies or their behavior; second, as a tutor, he wanted to provide religious guidance to his students—a responsibility he described as follows:
It was in Easter term, 1826, that Newman entered upon duties which he felt thus sacred, and he commenced them with an energy proverbial in the instance of “new brooms.” He was one of four tutors, and the junior of them, and, though it would be very unjust to say of him that he intentionally departed from the received way of the College, it cannot be denied that there was something unusual and starthng in his treatment of the undergraduate members of it who came under his jurisdiction. He began by setting himself fiercely against the gentlemen commoners, young men of birth, wealth, or prospects, whom he considered (of course, with real exceptions) to be the scandal and the ruin of the place. Oriel he considered was losing its high repute through them, and he behaved towards them with a haughtiness which incurred their bitter resentment. He was much annoyed at the favour shown them in high quarters, and did not scruple to manifest as much annoyance with those who favoured as with those who were favoured. He had hardly got through his first month of office when he writes in his Private Journal, “There is much in the system which I think wrong; I think the tutors see too little of the men, and there is not enough of direct religious instruction. It is my wish to consider myself as the minister of Christ. Unless I find that opportunities occur of doing spiritual good to those over whom I am placed, it will become a grave question whether I ought to continue in the tuition.”
5.4. TUTORSHIP DISPUTE IN RETROSPECT
Forty years after the tutorship dispute, Newman still seems to have had both strong memories and mixed emotions about the conflict: on the one hand, he was grateful to Edward Hawkins for the assistance he had provided to Newman as a young Oriel fellow; on the other hand, Newman still had mixed emotions about the mutual “provocation” which had occasioned their alienation. As Newman reflected in his Apologia (1865):
From 1822 to 1825 I saw most of the present Provost of Oriel, Dr. Hawkins, at that time Vicar of St. Mary's; and, when I took orders in 1824 and had a curacy in Oxford, then, during the Long Vacations, I was especially thrown into his company. I can say with a full heart that I love him, and have never ceased to love him; and I thus preface what otherwise might sound rude, that in the course of the many years in which we were together afterwards, he provoked me very much from time to time, though I am perfectly certain that I have provoked him a great deal more. Moreover, in me such provocation was unbecoming, both because he was the Head of my College, and because, in the first years that I knew him, he had been in many ways of great service to my mind.
—Apologia pro Vita Sua, 8
5.5. TUTORSHIP LETTERS
In his “Autobiographical Memoir,” Newman included excerpts from three letters in regard to his accepting the Oriel tutorship. The first letter to his mother shows his understanding of teaching as a spiritual responsibility:
I have a great undertaking before me in the tutorship here. I trust God may give me grace to undertake it in a proper spirit, and to keep steadily in view that I have set myself apart for His service for ever. There is always the danger of the love of literary pursuits assuming too prominent a place in the thoughts of a college tutor, or his viewing his situation merely as a secular office—a menus of a future provision when he leaves college.
The second excerpt comes from a letter written in June 1826 by one of his new students, Thomas Mozley, who later married Newman's sister Harriet:
Newman—my new tutor—has been very attentive and obliging, and has given me abundance of good advice. He has requested me to consider carefully what information and instruction I require for my course of reading, and also to determine what books to take up, and he will have a little conversation with me before the vacation.
The third excerpt is from a letter written by Newman in November 1826 to his sister Harriet about his students:
…I have some trouble with my horses [college pupils], as you may imagine, for whenever they get a new coachman they make an effort to get the reins slack. But I shall be very obstinate, though their curvetting and shyings are very teasing.