Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman | Page 9

at Worton, in Oxfordshire, and that he received pupils into his house. Later, their brother, Charles Giberne, was sent for a year to him. This led to Mr. Mayers being invited to dinner at our house. There he formed an attachment to Sarah, to whom he was married the following year, 1824.
"In the midsummer holidays, 1825, I went to pay a visit to Walter and Sarah, and it was then I first made acquaintance with John and Frank Newman. The latter was spending the Long Vacation with Mr. Mayers to assist him in teaching the young men, though he was only nineteen. Among these pupils was Charles Baring, seventeen years old, afterwards Bishop of (the Palatinate see) Durham.
"John Newman walked over from Oxford to breakfast one morning: he was then twenty-four, and a most interesting young man; but him I only saw then once, whereas his brother (Frank) was our daily companion, and took great pains in instructing Sarah (Mrs. Walter Mayers) and myself in Political Economy. His talents and piety attracted my admiration, for I had never seen such young men before. They had both been pupils of Mr. Mayers at a large school at Ealing (in which he was a master), and were considered to be converted in very early life."
Later on is another entry:--
"In the midsummer holidays of 1825" (John Henry Newman was ordained priest on 29th May, 1825), "I went to stay with Walter and Sarah Mayers, and then began my first acquaintance with John Henry Newman and his brother Frank. The former having walked over from Oxford, seventeen miles, to breakfast, and repeating Milman's beautiful hymn from the _Martyr of Antioch_, 'Brother, thou art gone before us.'
"He was just twenty-four, and his brother Frank, who came soon after to assist Walter Mayers with his pupils ... was only twenty, but as bright a specimen of a young Oxford student as I had ever met with. They had both been considered converted in early youth, and so uncommon an event was it to me to meet with Christian young men" (men, that is, whose religion was their motive power, and not only used in the conventional and cold formality then usual in the case of so many families in England), "that my admiration knew no bounds. Of course, I told my sister Maria ... all this, and she was quite prepared to appreciate in like manner, when she went to stay at Worton the following summer."
We come now to the time which, whether for happiness or regret, inevitably enters into the lives of most men on this earth--the time when they first meet "the Woman they Never Forget." It does not follow that they are able to marry her, but it does follow that, meet whom they may later, no one will ever oust from her place that first woman in their memories.
Francis Newman was only twenty-one when he first met her.
Maria Rosina Giberne was a beautiful girl, possessing special charm of manner. It was not long after his first meeting with her that Frank Newman fell passionately in love with her. Long talks on scientific and religious subjects passed between them. But though he cared for her, evidently her feeling for him was only that of friendship and interest, for when, later, he asked her to marry him, she refused. He did not, however, take this for an absolutely final decision (as in effect it was), for five or six years later, when he was on his missionary journey to Syria, and he wrote and begged her to give him a different answer, she refused him again.
[Illustration: OVER WORTON RECTORY, OXFORDSHIRE BY KIND PERMISSION OF REV. W. H. LANGHORNE, PRESENT RECTOR OF WORTON]
The extracts that follow are from her diary of the summer at Worton in 1826--the year she first met the Newman brothers. The extracts are taken from an autobiography of hers, which was originally written in French for the nuns of the "Order of the Visitation" convent at Autun, Sa?ne et Loire, to which she went, as professed nun, after her conversion to the Roman Church.
This is Maria Rosina Giberne's description of Worton (to which I have access by the kindness of my cousin):--
"It was a delightful place; far from towns and quite country. There I spent my days as much as possible under the trees, or in the fields sketching the lovely views. My sister had told me that Mr. Francis Newman and a friend were coming to the village to spend the vacation. I did not pay much attention, being preoccupied with this delicious solitude. In a while the two friends appeared, and I enjoyed hearing them talk, having a great respect for learned men, although far from being learned myself. I asked them questions and propounded religious difficulties which troubled