[Extract of a Letter of Francis William Newman to (Rev.) J. K. Tucker.]

September 1890

.  .  .  .  .

        I hold firmly in memory, that in Easter of 1836 I wished to conduct my bride to Oxford, and introduce her there to my mother and two sisters—in those Coaching days we came from Bristol and Cheltenham en route to Oxford. I did not plan the thought of staying a night at your father's house, in which I suppose you and your wife were living. No doubt the scheme was planned by my wife to meet her friend. The winter of our marriage had been one of wild snow; and the following Easter was alike untimely. I just remember the fact of your kind hospitality fifty-four and a half years ago, and the snow around us. In that visit to my mother (the last time I saw her), my young wife caught inflammation of the lungs, which I did not perceive or understand—she was so cruelly bled and cupped, that I think she never recovered it.

        It is very kind of you to keep alive in your heart the friendship of the two ladies. I perhaps ought to state that about two and a half years after the death of that wife in 1876 I married her . . . friend. . . . Else I must have given up housekeeping, and know not into what family I could have gone. My second wife is nineteen years my junior, yet in walking, not at all my equal, but in affectionate care of me inestimable.