Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman

Of all the influences which have most to do in the making of an individual, heredity is perhaps the greatest. It is the crucible in which the gold and dross of many generations of his ancestors are melted down and remixed in the man, who is, indeed, "a part of all" from whom he claims descent.

There is no more engrossing study than to trace back through many a century of ancestors, the various-often conflicting-elements which go to make up the character of someone whose life (without the clue given by the history of his forbears) is often a strange contradiction. Unable to understand some disability which spoils an otherwise fine personality, one looks back and there is the explanation. One's finger rests on the raison d'être of this disability. Long since it had its birth, its inauguration, in the squeeze, so to speak, into that strange crucible, of the taint, the essence, of some ancestor's moral lapses, or of the effect of his moral, mental, or physical ill-health.

Dr. Maudsley says very definitely that the faults, the disabilities, of men and women of to-day, are sometimes an undesirable inheritance. "Mental derangement in one generation is sometimes the cause of an innate deficiency, or absence of the moral sense in the succeeding generation."

I remember once hearing a London doctor strongly emphasize the need for every family to keep a careful, conscientious family record book, which from generation to generation should act as a vade mecum-showing what failings must be fought at all costs, and what connections avoided, if we would not perpetuate disease. Such a thing, if done universally, might check many national evils in our midst to-day.

But even with no definite aim of this kind, the study of a long chain of ancestors of some great man cannot fail to be of special interest. And those of the subject of this memoir contain among their number many honourable names-names of those who have done real and unforgettable service to their country.

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Francis Newman's father, John Newman, is said to have belonged to a family of small landed proprietors in Cambridgeshire, who originally came from Holland-the name having been formerly spelt "Newmann." Thus it will be seen, as I shall shortly show, that Francis Newman had Dutch blood in his veins, both on his father's and mother's side.

[Illustration: JOHN NEWMAN

FATHER OF CARDINAL NEWMAN AND FRANCIS NEWMAN

FROM AN OLD PORTRAIT. BY KIND PERMISSION OF MR. J. R. MOZLEY]

John Newman was the only son of John Newman of Lombard Street, London, and of Elizabeth Good, his wife. The arms granted the family on 15th Feb., 1663-4, were Or, fers dancettee between 3 hearts gules. John Newman, the father of Francis Newman, was partner in the banking house of Ramsbottom, Newman and Co. He married Jemima Fourdrinier, 29th Oct., 1799, at St. Mary's, Lambeth. [Footnote: She died at Littlemore, Oxon, at the age of sixty-two.] In the portrait of him, which is shown in this memoir, there is a strong resemblance to his son Francis.

By this marriage there were seven children. John Henry (the future Cardinal), was the eldest. He was born 21st Feb., 1801. Charles Robert was the second son; and Francis William, the third son, was born 27th June, 1805. Harriette Elizabeth was the eldest daughter, Jemima Charlotte the second, and Mary Sophia, who was born in 1809, only lived to the age of nineteen.

Francis Newman's ancestry, on his mother's side, is proved to have reached back as far as 1575; of this one can be reasonably certain. It was then, that Henri Fourdrinier was born at Caen, in Normandy. He was made Admiral of France in later life, and crested Viscount. ARMS: per bend argent and sable, two anchors, the upper one reversed, counterchanged. His son was also Henri Fourdrinier. Indeed, the name "Henri" seemed like some rare jewel which was bequeathed from father to son in never-failing regularity, for there was always a "Henri" among the Fourdriniers from 1575 until 1766.

It was during the lifetime of this Henri Fourdrinier, the son of Admiral Fourdrinier, that the family fled from France to Groningen, in Holland. In all probability this flitting took place during those endless civil wars which disturbed France at that time. Possibly at the time when the heavy taxes imposed on the people made it almost impossible to live. The "Fronde" was ravaging the country too, in 1648, and for four years later. Of course it is possible that he did not leave France until 1685, when the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes took place. But at whatever date he actually went, his reasons for going were certainly no small ones. For more than a hundred years the Huguenots-and the Fourdriniers were noted Huguenots-had found France more and more an impossible country to live in. Persecutions, massacres, torturings pursued them relentlessly. Thousands of French Huguenots emigrated to England, Holland, and Germany. And great was the loss which their emigration caused to France. For they were the most intelligent and hardworking part of the French population, so that when Louis XIV drove them away, he found out, only too surely, the truth of the old proverb, that "Curses come home to roost." Trade slowly but surely forsook France. The emigrants taught their arts and manufactures to the countries where they had taken refuge; and gradually trade guided its ships in their direction, and changed their course from France to Holland and Germany.

The next entry [Footnote: I quote from a copy I had made from Miscellanea

Genealogica et Heraldica, N.S. III, 385.-Pedigree of Fourdrinier and

Grolleau, by Rev. Dr. Lee, Vicar of All Saints, Lambeth.] is dated from

Groningen, and concerns the birth of Paul Fourdrinier, 20th Dec., 1698.

Now in the Dict. Nat. Biography there occurs the name of Peter

Fourdrinier, of whom no mention at all is made in the Miscellanea

Genealogica et Heraldica, amongst the record of the other Fourdriniers.

It is therefore not very clear to what branch of the family he belonged.

But as far as I can make out, he and Paul Fourdrinier seem to have come to

England about 1720. Certainly, in October, 1721, the latter's marriage

with Susanna Grolleau took place, as far as one can discover, in or near

Wandsworth. Susanna Grolleau died in 1766, and was buried at Wandsworth.

Here, I think, a few words with regard to the Grolleau family seem to be

called for.

Louis Grolleau, early in the seventeenth century, lived at Caen; and later emigrated to Groningen. To me, everything seems to point to the fact that the Fourdriniers and Grolleaus were in some way connected, either in friendship or relationship. First, we find them resident at Caen: later, at Groningen; and then again, later on still, members of both families marry at Wandsworth, and there both Paul Fourdrinier's wife and her sister, who married the son of a Captain Lloyd, are buried.

This Peter Fourdrinier mentioned by the Dict. Nat. Biography seems to have been pupil to Bernard Picart, at Amsterdam, for six years. By profession he was an engraver of portraits and book illustrations. I believe there are portraits extant engraved by him of Cardinal Wolsey and Bishop Tonstall, amongst others. There is certainly an engraving of his called The Four Ages of Man, after Laucret.

Some authorities believe him to have been identical with the Pierre Fourdrinier who married, in 1689, Marthe Theroude. But if this was the case, then he was not the Peter Fourdrinier who accompanied Paul to England in 1720. Other authorities, again, attribute the engravings I have just mentioned as having been the work of Paul Fourdrinier. At any rate, it is certain that Paul Fourdrinier belonged to the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. He died in February, 1758, and was buried at Wandsworth.

His son Henry-by now the English spelling of the name is adopted-was born February, 1730. He married Jemima White, and died in 1799. Apparently now for the first time the interest in the town of Wandsworth ceased, for the records show that both Henry and his wife were buried in St. Mary Woolnoth. And now we come to the direct ancestors of Francis Newman, for Henry Fourdrinier and Jemima White, his wife, were the parents of Jemima, who married at St. Mary's, Lambeth, in 1799, John Newman of the firm of Ramsbottom, Newman & Co., and gave birth in 1801 to John Henry, the future Cardinal, and in 1805 to the subject of this memoir, Francis William.

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In Civil Architecture, by Chambers, it is mentioned that the plates were engraved by "old Rooker, old Fourdrinier, and others," thus seeming to imply that there was more than one Fourdrinier then in England.

Perhaps the most interesting of all the Fourdrinier family was the Henry Fourdrinier, the eldest brother to the mother of Francis Newman. He was born in 1766 at Burston Hall, Staffordshire, and lived until 1854. His father was a paper-maker, and both he and his brother Sealey (born 1747, and married Harriett, daughter of James Pownall, of Wilmslow) gave up their time almost entirely to the invention of paper machinery. This invention was finished in 18O7, [Footnote: Dict. Nat. Biog. Vol. XX.] and then misfortune fell upon them: the misfortune that so often descends like the "black bat night" upon those who have spent all their money, thought, and labour on the effort to launch their self-designed ship upon the uncertain sea of trade.

The Fourdrinier brothers had spent ￡60,000 upon this venture, and the immediate result of the finished invention was bankruptcy to the unfortunate inventors. Then, in 1814, the Emperor Alexander of Russia promised to pay them ￡700 per annum during the space of ten years if he could use two of their paper-making machines. Of this sum they saw not a penny.

In 1840, Parliament voted the sum of ￡7000 to the Fourdriniers as a tardy recognition of the great service they had rendered their adopted country by their invention. The descendant of these gifted men showed no special taste for invention along the lines taken by his ancestors, it is true; but his brilliant intellect, no doubt, owed many of its qualities to their inventive force and power. Where they made paper and spent their whole energies in inventing machines for making it quicker, Francis Newman wrote on it-used it as a medium for spreading far and wide his own splendid aims and purposes for the betterment of existing social conditions. Before all things, Newman was a Social Reformer. There was no possible doubt that, as far as that question went, he left his country further forward on the road to real progress as regarded conditions of life for her citizens, and higher, broader ideas of her duty to other nations. As far as all these questions went he did not live in vain, for to-day we are learning the wisdom of his views for justice for the oppressed and for "the cause that needs assistance."

He was essentially one of those rare men who prefer to be on the weaker side, and whose sword is ever ready for its defence and championship.