Shortly after this letter was sent to post, Hurrell left Barbados for good. No personal records of him exist there, and all memories of him have faded away. His face was set at last towards another island where his few remaining days could be crammed full of intelligent toil, and played at their full value. From Bristol, on May 17, he was able to announce: ‘_Fratres desideratissimi_! here I am, _benedictum sit nomen Dei_, and as well as could be expected. I will not boast, and indeed, have nothing[231] to boast of, as my pulse is still far from satisfactory….
‘When we asked our pilot “Who was Speaker?” he did not know; but after much cross-examining he recollected that he had heard it cried about the street that the old one was turned out; who “the other gentleman” was, he could not tell. Our next informant was the Custom House officer, who boarded over night, when we anchored, to see that nothing was taken out of the ship. All he knew was that “there had been a jabbering” about a change of Ministers.[232] The day is as dull and gloomy as possible; but after the torrid zone, any English May day is “a sight for sair e’en.” … I hope to get a sight of you soon. And now goodbye both! also I[saac] and R[ogers], and all that are within reach.’
This is Newman’s narrative note, drawn, thirty years after, from his own retentive memory:
‘R. H. F. made his appearance in Oxford on Tuesday, May 18. On the morrow occurred the Convocation in the Theatre, when the proposed innovation of a Declaration of Conformity to the Church of England, instead of Subscription to the Articles, was rejected by 459 to 57. It was the last vote he gave…. He left Oxford, never to return, on June 4. During this time Bowden was in Oxford; and for the first and last time saw R. H. F.’
Miss Anne Mozley, too, remembered in old age her only sight of Hurrell Froude.
‘It happened to [me], passing the coach office, in company with Mrs. Newman, to see Froude as he alighted from the coach which brought him to Oxford, and was being greeted by his friends. He was terribly thin, his countenance dark and wasted, but with a brilliancy of expression and grace of outline which justified all that his friends had said of him. He was in the Theatre next day, entering into all the enthusiasm of the scene, and shouting _Non placet_ with all his friends about him. While he lived at all, he must live his life.’