A dying friend's face lit up in the dark

DARTINGTON, Devon, October 11, 1835 AD — Saint John Henry Newman spent almost a month in the autumn of 1835 AD at the rectory in Dartington, in south Devon. He was there with his closest friend, Hurrell Froude. Froude had been born in that house, because his father was the rector there. Froude was dying of consumption, and he had been ill for four years. The two men had met in 1826 AD at Oriel College, Oxford.

A night on deck

The illness started in July 1831 AD, on St. John Henry Newman’s first visit to Dartington. On the way there by sea, Froude slept on deck and caught influenza. St. John Henry Newman wrote later that it “led him by slow steps to the grave.”

In December 1832 AD the two friends sailed round the Mediterranean with Froude’s father, for Froude’s health. In September 1833 AD St. John Henry Newman began the Tracts for the Times. Froude later went to Barbados, in the West Indies. By June 1835 AD he was home at Dartington.

That summer St. John Henry Newman was deep in his reading at Oxford, and he didn’t want to leave it. In August he told his sister Jemima that he was “very unwilling” to go, “but it is so uncertain whether he will be able to come to Oxford at all, that I think I ought to secure seeing him before he goes abroad.”

On September 12 Froude wrote to him, “We shall be ready for you whenever you come.” Two doctors had checked Froude’s chest. Both told his father they had never found a chest with less sign of disease. “Yet they say the disorder in my throat is dangerous unless stopped,” Froude wrote. A doctor had also ruled that he must not go abroad that winter.

Almost a month together

St. John Henry Newman arrived on September 15. He had written ahead that he would bring a pile of his sermons. He wanted Froude to help him put together a third book of them.

He found Froude “pretty well,” but “languishing” without his friends from Oxford. St. John Henry Newman trusted that his visit had “been of use in this way in stimulating his spirits.” By then Froude was allowed to read again. St. John Henry Newman called that “a great comfort,” and he planned to send Froude a lot of books.

On Sunday evening, October 11, it was time for St. John Henry Newman to leave for Oxford. In the dark, he went to Froude to say goodbye. He wrote afterwards: “When I took leave of him, his face lighted up and almost shone in the darkness, as if to say that in this world we were parting for ever.” That night he slept at Exeter. The two friends never saw each other again.

Froude died at Dartington on February 28, 1836 AD. On the morning of March 1, St. John Henry Newman was in a friend’s room at Oriel. There he opened the letter from Froude’s father. He couldn’t say a word, and he simply handed the letter to his friend. The next day he wrote to another friend: “I can never have a greater loss.”

Froude’s father asked his son’s friends to choose books from Froude’s small collection to keep. St. John Henry Newman stood looking along the shelves until a friend beside him said, “Take that.” It was Froude’s Breviary. Froude had carried it with him in Barbados. Nearly thirty years later St. John Henry Newman wrote of it: “Accordingly I took it, studied it, wrote my Tract from it, and have it on my table in constant use till this day.”