There is a central question to be discussed as part of clarifying the context of The
Dream of Gerontius. Who was Gerontius? Does the dreamer refer to a historical
figure or is it a figment of the poet's imagination? In one sense, Gerontius is
Everyman as we shall see. But, was there a model for Gerontius? Or, was someone
more than a model?
The Presbyterian Doctor of Divinity, Alexander Whyte, wrote of The Dream that
it was "...a poem that every man should have by heart who has it before him to
die." Indeed, Wilfrid Ward, Newman's early biographer, wrote that the
poem "had a strong attraction for uneducated as well as educated persons." He
went on to testify that he knew of a poor weaver who had his wife read it to
him frequently while he was on his death bed.
The educated were edified by the poem in their dying as well. The sometime Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, also found comfort in the poem in his last hours. So did the Reverend H. N. Oxenham who, as the end hove into view, had The Dream read to him. General Gordon, who died defending Khartoum from the Mahdi, had underlined his copy of a standalone version of the poem throughout the text. He gave the book to his friend, Frank Power, for his comfort. Before he died, Power had sent the book to his sister in Ireland. As an admirer of Gordon, whose campaigns he had followed, Newman was deeply touched to know that Gordon had prized the volume.
The the final stanza underlined by Gordon were the last words of the poem. They are
words that have always touched me and are spoken by the guardian angel:
Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear,
Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
And I will come and wake thee on the morrow.
Yes, Everyman. But, was there any man who was Gerontius? There are several
reasons to believe that Newman was the geron, the old man. Tidy provides us
with several contemporaneous instances of Newman refering to himself in this
manner in his correspondence with Sir Frederick Rogers, Dean Church and Father
Ambrose St. John, Newman's dear friend. In April 1865, Newman declined to take on proposed literary engagements because "It is killing work for an old man." This was the same
month that the first installment of The Dream was published in The Month.
This poem would be Newman's last. However, he did accede to the poem being
published on its own as a small book in 1866.
Newman's biographer, Wilfrid Ward, provides us with more specific evidence. In
the midst of his controversy with Charles Kingsley, Newman had a "very vivid
apprehension of immediately impending death, apparently derived from a medical
opinion." Ward states that the event was so portentious that Newman wrote out a
memorandum headed with the words 'written in prospect of death.' It
was dated Passion Sunday, 1864, 7 o'clock a.m..
Newman had been fearful of the effects of stroke, particularly paralysis. He
had mentioned this fear to Ward's father seven years previously. It was brought to
the fore again when Newman heard that his dear friend, John Keble, had suffered a
stroke. Newman wrote to Father Coleridge on 30 December 1864 indicating that he
was still dwelling on the possibility of his own death. He noted that many
literary men, including Sir Walter Scott, had died of paralysis.
Many were curious about The Dream and wanted to know more about this vision of purgatory.
You can almost hear the exasperation of Newman when he responds to the Reverend John
Telford, the priest at Ryde. But, Newman lets slip a clue about who the dreamer
was.
You do me too much honour if you think I am to see in a dream everything that
is to be seen in the subject dreamed about. I have said what I saw. Various
spiritual writers see various aspects of it; and under their protection and
pattern I have set down the dream as it came before the sleeper. It is not my
fault if the sleeper did not dream more. Perhaps something woke him. Dreams
are generally fragmentary. I have nothing more to tell.
I would hold that the dreamer was Newman who set down what he saw in poetic
verse. Communicating the dream in this form came to him as a sudden inspiration
in January 1865. It took two weeks to produce the fair copy. Frederic
Chapman opined that Newman "shows us, in a sudden blaze of almost intolerable
light, the high and awful thoughts that devout meditation and self-suppression
have stored up in a mind compounded of reverence and imagination, for which poetic
expression is the only outlet."
I'll close with one final observation. I have already mentioned that Newman's
apprehension occurred during the conflict with Charles Kingsley. That controversy obviously
caused Newman profound anguish. However, the fruit of that agony was
prodigious. On 2 May 1868, Newman's nemesis wrote the following to the Reverend Sir W.E. Cope:
I have read Newman's 'Dream of Gerontius' with awe and admiration...I am
thankful to any man, who under any parabolic, or even questionably true forms,
will teach that to a generation which is losing more and more the sense of
reverence, and beginning confessedly to hate excellence for its own sake, as
the Greek ostracized Aristides, because he was tired of hearing him called
the Just.