LIKE, I am sure, many others who have set out to write about
Newman in a spirit of high interest and eager admiration I
have discovered that the forest is deeper and the paths more
puzzling than I had anticipated when I began. My original
conception was a sort of Conversation Piece, or family por-
trait. It had not been done before; it would, I hoped, help
to humanize the whole Newman legend. Before long I
found that J. H. N. was dominating the picture so much that
the title that began to form in my mind was "A Genius in
the Family," to which, on occasion, I irreverently added, as
a sub-title, "Or, a Blessed Nuisance." Soon the book be-
came a technical struggle to prevent him from so outshadow-
ing the rest of the family that further mention of their
fortunes would be felt as an intrusion, and I now greatly
doubt if I have succeeded in solving this problem smoothly.
It was almost a relief when his family dropped away from
him one by one, or he, in the proper egotism of a genius who
may have been a saint, gently pushed them from him, and
the end of the story, and the title, justifiably became his
alone. So, the book and the title were not so much planned
as grew. Still, if I were doing it all over again I do not think
I could, or would, plan it to go otherwise or end otherwise.

After all, Newman had very little intimate life apart from
his family, very little at all, indeed, of what the world calls
"life." For though his later path crossed and recrossed mo-
mentous events and the careers of many important people,
no lives were so closely woven with his as the small events
of the private lives of his father, mother and aunt, his
brothers and sisters. Any writer would gladly devote the
labor of five, ten, or twenty years to Newman's forty-five in
the Catholic Church, to their hopes and heartbreaks, their

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