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In 1879 he was made cardinal by Pope Leo XIII. The grace and dignity of his life, quite as much as the sincerity of his Apologia, had long since disarmed criticism, and at his death, in 1890, the thought of all England might well be expressed by his own lines in "The Dream of Gerontius": I had a dream.
There were quantities of white carnations in vases on the mantel-piece, on the writing-table, and on the top of the rosewood piano. The piano was shut, and no "Gerontius" was visible. Meyer Isaacson stood for a moment looking round, feeling the atmosphere of this room, or at least trying to feel it.
Or would it crush us into the very earth with utter shame and humiliation, full and awful knowledge of how weak and foolish, sinful and unworthy we were? as it does to Gerontius in the poem, when he dreams that, after death, he demanded, rashly and ambitiously, to see our Lord, and had his wish.
What if He took them at their word? What if He gave them their wish? What if they departed and entered the presence of Christ, only to meet with a worse fate than that of Gerontius?
He could not tell her. And he got up to go away. As he passed the piano, he looked again at the score of "The Dream of Gerontius." "Are you fond of that?" he asked her. "What? Oh 'Gerontius'" She let her eyes rest for a brief instant on his face. "I love it. It carries me away as the soul is carried away by the angel. 'This child of clay to me was given' do you remember?" "Yes."
'The Dream of Gerontius, with all its tender grace, is far less virile than 'Lead, kindly Light, and other short poems of his youth. Moreover, his record as a Roman ecclesiastic is one of almost unrelieved failure.
There was a writing-table on one side of the room with an ebony-and-gold crucifix standing upon it. Opposite to it, on the other side of the room near the fireplace, was a bookcase. On the shelves were volumes of Shakespeare, Dante, Emerson, Wordsworth, Browning, Christina Rossetti, Newman's "Dream of Gerontius" and "Apologia," Thomas a Kempis, several works on mystics and mysticism, a life of St.
But this transient prosperity was soon interrupted and destroyed by the revolt of Count Gerontius, the bravest of his generals; who, during the absence of his son Constants, a prince already invested with the Imperial purple, had been left to command in the provinces of Spain.
And as this Constantine the father was slaine by Constantius, so was Constans the sonne killed at Vienna by one of his owne capteines named Gerontius.
We are instruments only. John Newman did not invent The Dream of Gerontius; he remembered it. There is a strain in the music of Samson et Dalila which was sung in the temples of Nineveh, where it must have been heard by Saint Saëns. The wooing of Tarone in your Francesca of the Lilies is a faithful account of a scene enacted in Florence during the feuds between the Amidei and Buondelmonti."
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