Chapter 2: John Henry’s Childhood
CHAPTER 2
JOHN HENRY’S CHILDHOOD
JOHN Henry Newman was born on February 21, 1801, in the city of London to John Newman and his wife Jemima Fourdrinier. His birth was at the family home on Old Broad Street, today the site of London Stock Exchange. John Henry was baptized into the Anglican Church on April 9, at St. Benet Fink Church. He was the first of six children. He had two brothers, Charles Robert and Francis (Frank), and three sisters, Harriet, Jemima and Mary.1 During the birth of their siblings, John Henry and his brother Charles were taken to live at the family’s retreat home in Ham. This Georgian-style home was near Richmond, a London suburb. It was a big house with a garden, located next to the Royal Oak Inn and near the Thames River. Newman was very observant and later could remember the plan of the house, which the family sold before he was five years old. In 1861, in a letter to Jemima, he recalled being at Ham when she was born and having sent his parents the present of a “broom-flower” on the day of her birth.2 He recalled with great fondness a rocking horse at Ham and a beautiful grove of trees, of which his favorite was a large chestnut.
In 1802, John Newman bought a home on Southampton Street in the residential London district of Bloomsbury, where the family would enjoy a comfortable life. John Henry had many memories from his early childhood. He remembered that, at the age of five, his mother told him that he was a big boy and must behave himself, and that, at the age of six, he recited William Cowper’s “Faithful Friend,” a tragic story of a goldfinch who, despite achieving his own freedom, returned to be with his still-captive friend. At the age of five Newman could read. His father praised him as a “clever boy” and encouraged him to learn something new every day. He also gave him the assignment to learn the multiplication table by heart, and he would test him. He promised his son that “if I find you improve, I intend after a time to buy a nice Copy Book and teach you to write.”3 This was a fitting present for someone who would spend all of his life writing.
In the first decades of the 1800s, few English children received formal education. Churches offered Sunday school for working-class children. Only in the 1870s did the government establish elementary schools and make education compulsory. Until that time, those who could afford it would pay tutors to educate their children or send them to a private boarding school for an education in the Classics. These privileged children learned to read and write Latin and Greek; later they read from important Roman and Greek authors. Some of these children went on afterward to one of the two English universities, Oxford or Cambridge. They were customarily the children of landed gentry, nobles, well-off clergymen, or businessmen.
Although his family amassed only a moderate wealth, John Henry was amongst those privileged children who, at the age of seven, were able to attend a large private boarding school in Ealing, just outside of London. Dr. George Nicholas, a graduate from Oxford, ran this boys’ school. He was a kind man and a friend of Mr. Newman. Dr. Nicholas, who perhaps noted a similar kindness in his new charge, took a special liking to young Newman. He must have delighted in John Henry’s aptitudes and soon considered him a prize pupil.
Newman soon excelled in studies, learned to play the violin and won prizes for speech competitions. From his diary, we know that at the age of nine, he began to read the Roman poets Ovid and Virgil and to study Greek,4 and the following year, began writing verses.5 At the age of eleven, he started reading Homer, whom he would quote the rest of his life, and the following year, Herodotus, the famous Greek historian.
He was a shy and stubborn boy but had a keen eye for observing and narrating events and also possessed an eagerness to learn. From an early age, he began the habit of recording daily entries into a diary,6 sometimes as short as “ill” or “flew kite.”7 Other entries were more interesting, as “did first lesson in Virgil,”8 “Began music (the violin),” “Began a tune.”9 Still others were just amusing entries, as were those concerning one of the masters at the school: “Laurie turned me last. For what? Ask him.”10 The story ends that he and Mr. Laurie became good friends. Thus, what was missing in conversation skills because of his shyness was surmounted by his writing abilities.
John Henry flew kites, rode on donkeys, and did other things that boys enjoy doing, but instead of playing sports such as cricket, he preferred reading novels. He remembered listening to his mother’s reading of Walter Scott’s long romantic poem, “The Lay of the Last Minstrel.”11 As he grew older, he relished acting and eagerly sought the opportunity to perform in plays. Every year he took part in the school Latin play. In 1813, he acted in Terence’s Phormio; in 1814, in Eunuchus; in 1815, in Adelphi, and in 1816, in Andria.12 He noted in his diary, “Rehearsal in dresses supper,”13 “Rehearsal before boys,”14 “First grand night,”15 and wrote with a friend a poem about their performances with a reference to boys who “glory in the bat and ball” and others who “choose some subject gay or grave for rhyme.” In addition to acting, John Henry delivered speeches at school.
Newman’s leadership and writing career began as a young boy at his boarding school with The Spy Club. Interestingly, the sons of John Quincy Adams, Ambassador to Great Britain and later President of the United States, belonged to the group.16 This confidential boys’ club had officers and badges. Newman was the Grand Master. A school classmate made a humorous drawing of Newman in command of a meeting, exaggerating his already prominent nose. The group met to read their own weekly periodical, The Portfolio, that ran for twenty numbers and included a contribution by John Adams. At the same time, Newman was writing two periodicals, called The Spy and Anti-Spy, that were pitted one against the other.17
Newman would one day become an avid and gifted letter writer. The beginning of this practice can be traced as far back as the letter that he dictated to a maid for his parents at the age of four. At the age of seven, he began writing short letters; it was the practice at English schools to dictate to students letters for their parents. At the age of fourteen, he began to write longer letters. The letters to his sisters indicate his humorous character. On his fourteenth birthday, he received a heavy birthday package with a note stating: “we all send our love with your affectionate sister.”18 He replied to Jemima that he was led to believe that his “affectionate sister” must be at the bottom of the heavy parcel.
John Henry had a happy and comfortable childhood with a lot of affection and fun at home. During the holidays, the siblings organized plays, parties, and expeditions. He wrote some plays for his siblings, including a satire on the Prince Regent.19 In 1815, he composed music for a family opera. This provides an indication of Newman’s imagination and creative genius.
The Newman home was also characterized by order, religious piety, and work. Harriet gave a glimpse into the family life in two published stories, Family Adventures and The Fairy Bower.20 The latter, which produces a picture of moderate Anglicans, was aimed at inculcating Church Principles and practices, such as attendance at church twice on Sundays, the use of the Prayer Book of the Anglican Church, daily Bible reading and recitation of the Psalms.
Maisie Ward, one of Newman’s biographers, notes that, as could well be predicted, John Henry was portrayed by characters in both stories: in the first one as Henry, “a philosophical young gentleman,”21 and in the second one as a thirteen-year-old boy named George. Ward thinks that George paints a better picture of John Henry as a boy.22 In The Fairy Bower, George is a very bright, overly confident, slightly condescending, wryly humorous yet perfectly proper boy who thought he was clever enough to persuade anyone to do what he chose. He was an insatiable tease, quizzing the young boys and girls and putting up “an odd face” at people who amused him.23 Through the protagonists in these stories we are given a privileged glimpse into Newman’s personality.
During his boyhood, John Henry maintained a special friendship with his sisters, to whom he wrote from school. Since he was with his brothers at school, the correspondence between them is from later years. In 1845, his younger brother wrote about their schooldays, telling John Henry that he did not recall any “cruelties at school” coming from him. He was sure that if there had been any, there would have been ten times more acts of protection and kindness.
Newman’s childhood was spent in this close-knit and morally upright and religious home. In this environment the affection of his parents and siblings provided him with a stable emotional background, while the private education under Dr. Nicholas served as an early stimulus for the development of his exceptional intellectual talents. This joyful and fruitful period of his life was strongly shaken in March 1816, when Mr. Newman’s bank failed.
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1Maisie Ward provides a vivid picture of the Newman’s childhood in “Childhood,” in Young Mr. Newman (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1948), 1-15.
2Newman, John Henry, Letters and Diaries, Edited by Charles Stephen Dessain, Ian Ker, Thomas Gornall, Edward E. Kelly, Gerard Tracey, and Francis J. McGrath (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978-2009), Vol. XX, JHN to Mrs. John Mozley (September 24, 1861), 46. After this it will be cited LD.
3LD, Vol. I, Mr. John Newman to JHN (November 24, 1806), 3.
4LD, Vol. I (1810), 6.
5Ibid., 7.
6Ibid., 6-8.
7Ibid., 7.
8Ibid., 7.
9See LD, Vol. I (1811), 9.
10See LD, Vol. I (1810), 7.
11See Ward, Young Mr. Newman, 7.
12Ibid.
13LD, Vol. I (1813), 14.
14Ibid.
15Ibid., 15.
16See LD, Vol. I (Memorandum 1812-1817), 10.
17Ibid.
18LD, Vol. I, JHN to Jemima Newman (April 12, 1815), 16.
19See LD, Vol. I (Memorandum 1812-1817), 10.
20See Ward, Young Mr. Newman, 12-15.
21Family Adventures, quoted in Young Mr. Newman, 12.
22Ward, Young Mr. Newman, 13.
23Ibid., 14.