A Biographical Study of Thomas Arnold the Younger
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A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY OF THOMAS ARNOLD THE YOUNGER. J.E^AJtON YTÏ232YIS1U Y flA flS U . j : J A thesis presented for the degree of Ph.D in the School of English, University of Leeds, April 1975. A SHORT ABSTRACT Thomas Arnold was Dr.Arnold's second and favourite son. Born in Laleham, Middlesex, in 1823, he spent all his formative years under his father's influence except for one year he and Matthew spent at Winchester before being brought back to Rugby. Dr.Arnold died in 1842 and in that year Thomas began his undergraduate life in Tractarian Oxford as a scholar at University College. He soon developed a social conscience and suffered a collapse of faith, so that despite taking a First he rejected the chance of a Fellowship and in a mood of idealism emigrated to New Zealand in 1847. Two years as a colonial settler were enough to temper his idealism and in 1850 he gladly accepted the post of Inspector of Schools in Tasmania, offered by the Governor Sir William Denison. Within months he had married Julia Sorell, had begun to organise the re-structuring of the island's school system, and regain his Rugby faiths. By 1855 he had decided to become a Roman Catholic and this almost destroyed his marriage since his wife was, and remained, fiercely opposed to Catholicism. He was received in 1856; his marriage survived but he lost his post as Inspector of Schools. Through contact with J.H.Newman he was appointed Professor of English Literature in the Catholic University in Dublin in 1856, but after six years in the strife-torn University he joined Newman in the Oratory School in Birmingham. As friend of Newman and Sir John Acton he was at the centre of Catholic politics during the difficult mid century period; disillusionment set in and in 1865 he left the faith to return to Oxford. The next eleven years established his academic reputation as the editor of the Works of John Wyclif and numerous works for the Rolls series; it was only his return to the Catholic Church in 1876 that prevented his election to the Chair of Anglo-Saxon in Oxford. It ruined his career and his marriage. He spent the last years of his life as Professor and Fellow of the declining University College in Dublin, continuing with academic work until his death in 1900. CONTENTS Page Preface i Introduction ii Chapter 1 Laleham and Rugby 1 Chapter 2 "0 where is the battle!" 28 Chapter 3 New Zealand 1. 60 Chapter 4 New Zealand 2. 71 Chapter 5 Tasmania and Julia Sorell 92 Chapter 6 Inspector of Schools 115 Chapter 7 Home Life in Van Pieman's Land 140 Chapter 8 The True Catholic Spirit 165 Chapter 9 The Catholic University 197 Chapter 10 The Oratory 260 Chapter 11 The Return to Oxford 299 Chapter 12 The Final Years 335 Bibliography Manuscript Sources 348 Printed Sources 350 The Works of Thomas Arnold 551 General Bibliography 353 PREFACE. The materials for this biography have been made available to me through the kindness of four scholars who either now have custody of the manuscripts or who owned them at the time. My thanks are therefore due to Dr. K. lioakes for permission to refer to the Pusey House collection of the letters of Mrs. Humphry Ward, to Professor James Bertram for reporting the existence of Thomas Arnold's letters among the Correspondence of Lord Acton in the Cambridge University Library, and to Father Stephen Dessain of the Birmingham Oratory for permission to use and copy the letters in the Newman archives. Thanks are also due to my supervisor, Dr. G. Parry, of the University of Leeds, for his advice and help during the writing of the study. Above all, however, my thanks are due to Dr. Mary Moorman, of Bishop Mount, Ripon, great grand-daughter of Thomas Arnold, for without her help this study could and would never have been written. She not only made available to me most of the manuscripts on which the biography is based but allowed me the privilege of using the originals at leisure, and was always willing to give me the benefit of her own scholarship and her personal knowledge of the Arnold family. My debt to her is beyond measure. The faults which remain are entirely my own. i INTRODUCTION Thomas Arnold's life almost exactly spanned the Victorian period and its course contained so many characteristic dilemmas that it could almost serve as an exemplar of middle-class intellectual life of the period. He was brought up in a strongly religious home where conscience, not theology, was the moving force, he was taught a strict moral discipline, his intellectual education in Greek, Latin, Mathematics, Scripture, History and English composition began almost as soon as he could hold a pencil, and he was introduced quite early to discussions of the social and political questions of the Reform H m era.' Geology, rudimentary Natural History, and the methods of recent German biblical scholarship were also part of his training. He was taught by private tutor, by his father, and with his brother Matthew went to both Winchester and Rugby Schools. His scholarship to University College, Oxford, was taken almost as a matter of course in a family used to excellence, and in this fact lies concealed one of the major strains of his life for he was always troubled by the fear that he could never do more than equal his father and his elder brother. The restlessness that this produced was never fully resolved. Trying to live up to an unattainable perfection in all matters of conscience drove him to extremes of belief and behaviour: in Tractarian Oxford he lost his religious faith to wander miserably in the shades of agnosticism, he there learned the spirit of rebellion and demonstrated in the rain against the degradation of W.G. Ward, rejoiced in the notions of equality and fraternity emanating from France, and suffered a broken ii love-affair in the very months when Jenny Lind was capturing the hearts of young men all over England. The only solution to his problems, it seemed, was emigration. He set sail in 1847. The rest of his life was shaped by these same forces, always in conflict with each other. His wife came of Huguenot stock: he became a Roman Catholic; later, as Professor of English Literature in the Catholic University in Lublin he fought for an unrestricted education system while accepting the Index at the same time, Working with J.H. Newman in the Birmingham Oratory, one of the centres of English Catholicism, he lost his faith as the rational arguments of science impressed more and more on his mind: in the battle between Genesis and the Origin of Species Darwin triumphed. Finally, after his return to Oxford, where he built up an academic reputation which seemed set to ensure his election to the Chair of Anglo-Saxon, he sabotaged his career by returning to the Catholic faith in which he remained for the rest of his life. Others in his circle of friends passed through the same difficulties but suffered less grievously except, perhaps, for A.H. Clough who, even then, was not driven to seek the solution to his problems in emigration. By comparison with A.P. Stanley, Matthew Arnold, J.A. Froude and J.C. Shairp, Thomas achieved little, but he is interesting not for what he achieved but for what he was. His life touched upon more points of the nineteenth century compass than did the lives of many of his Oxford contemporaries. He traversed half the world in search of the good life, he wandered between the extremes of belief and unbelief in the search for true religion, and though he died almost unnoticed he might well have become as famous in Oxford as iii V. Skeat later became in Cambridge if the Anglo-Saxon election in 1876 had gone in his favour. He was driven by strong inner compulsions which he could not contain, and the consequences throw a revealing sidelight on the Victorian age. iv CHAPTER ONE. Laleham and Rugby. Thomas Arnold was born in Laleham, Middlesex, on November 30th, 1823, the second son of Thomas Arnold, late of Oriel College, Oxford, but since 1819 proprietor of a small private school. His mother was the daughter of the Rev. E. Penrose of Fledborough, in Nottinghamshire, whose family connections stretched back to Cornwall where she had been born. In August 1820 Thomas Arnold had brought her to the small Middlesex village as his bride; the second son, named Thomas after his father, was her third child. The Arnolds came from the Isle of Wight, where the family home of Slatwoods was situated, and where William Arnold worked as a customs official. Thomas, his son, had first been to school at Warminster after which, at the age of 12, in 1807, he was sent to Winchester, and thence four years later to Corpus Christ! College, Oxford. He took a First Class degree at the age of nineteen and then, apparently against the odds and the other candidates, was elected Fellow of Oriel College and settled down to the life of an Oxford don. During this time he consolidated his growing friendship with John Keble and Richard Whateley, both of whom had been Fellows at Oriel for four years previously, and found time to travel throughout Europe. He clearly enjoyed his Oxford life. It was on one of his holidays in England, when he was staying with his friends the Penroses - Trevenen was one of his friends in Oxford - that he met and fell in love with Mary, and his intention of marrying her changed his whole future for he could not marry and retain his Fellowship.