One of Newman’s ‘down to earth‘ qualities was that he could laugh at himself.

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Writing from Dublin to Austin Mills, in 1852, he states that: “When I got here, I found that the house-keeper, who would not let any other of the servants do it, had arranged not only my clothes, but all my papers for me. I had put my letters in various compartments according to my relations towards them – and my Discourse papers, according as I had done with them or not.

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“She had mixed every thing, laying them most neatly according to their size. To this moment I have not had courage to attempt to set them right – and one bit, which was to have come in, I have from despair not even looked for. And so of my linen; I had put the linen in wear separate from the linen in reserve. All was revolutionised. I could find nothing of any kind.

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“Pencils, pens, pen knife, tooth brush, boots, ‘twas a new world – the only thing left, I suppose from a certain awe, was, (woe’s me,) my discipline. Mind, every thing was closed up, as far as they could be without lock and key, which I had not. She then came in to make an apology, but was so much amused at her own mischief, as to show she had no deep sense of its enormity.” (LDXV: p.95)

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Newman was greatly amused because, as he remarks to Lord Blatchford, three decades later, he had “the love of order, good in itself but excessive” (LDXXXI: p.167)

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Alan Hill in Newman after a Hundred Years, observes that:

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“Letter-writing always held a high place in Newman’s scale of priorities. It was not for him a marginal or leisure-time activity but an integral part of his mission, and he devoted all his powers of mind genius for an understanding and sympathy to it.” (p.129)

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Newman explains to his sister, Jemima, that:

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“It has ever been a hobby of mine (unless it be a truism, not a hobby) that a man’s life lies in his letters... Biographers vanish; they assign motive; they conjure feelings; they interpret Lord Burleigh’s nods... for myself, I sincerely wish to seem neither better nor worse than I am.” (LDXX: p.443)

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Thanks to Newman’s conscientious approach to curating his own correspondence, we can uniquely enter his mind and heart.

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