Read Ebook: The Life of Mrs. Humphry Ward by Trevelyan Janet Penrose

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Mrs. Ward remained a member of the original Council of Somerville Hall long after her departure from Oxford, and during her last two years there continued to be largely responsible, as one of the most active members of the Association for the Education of Women, for the organization of the teaching. All the lectures were arranged by the Association--in consultation, of course, with the Principal--for it was not until 1884 that women students were admitted to the smallest of the University examinations, or to lectures at a few of the Colleges.

"No, I did not guess your secret. It was whispered to me in the street, and I fancy was no secret within the first week of publication.

"I admire your courage in attacking one of their strong places. The doctrine of disbelief in Church principles being due to a propensity to secret sins is one of the oldest tenets of the Anglican party. It is also a fundamental principle of popular Catholicism. I have heard it from the catholic pulpit so often that it must have among them the character of a commonplace.

"There is, as you admit, a certain basis of fact for it--just as 'Patriotism' is often enough the trade of the egoist. 'Licence they mean when they cry liberty.'

"More interesting even than your argument against the psychological dogma, was your constructive hint as to the 'Church of the future.' I wish I could follow you there! But that is an 'argumentum non unius horae.'

"Believe me, dear Mrs. Ward, to be

"Yr. attached friend, "MARK PATTISON."

It was indeed an argument, not of a single hour, but of many long years. But the spark had been set to a complex train of thought which was now to work itself out through toil and stress towards its appointed end.

"All will be well with us yet," wrote Mrs. Ward to her husband three months before their move, "and if God is good to us there are coming years of work indeed, but of less burden and strain. All depends on you and me, and though I know the very thought depresses us sometimes, it ought not to, for we have many good gifts within and without, and a fair field, if not the fairest possible field to use them in. It seems to me that all I want to be happy is to keep my own heart and conscience clear, and to feel my way open into the presence of God and the unseen. And surely to seek is to find."

"The wedding function yesterday was very interesting. I am glad not to have missed Gladstone's speech at the breakfast. What a wondrous man it is! The intensity, the feeling of the speech were extraordinary.... Life has been rather exciting lately in the way of new friends, the latest acquisition being Mr. Goschen, to whom I have quite lost my heart! There is a pliancy and a brilliancy about him which make him one of the most delightful companions. We dined there last Saturday and I have seldom had so much interesting talk. Lord Arthur Russell, who sat next me, told me stories of how, as a child at Geneva, he had met folk who in their youth had seen Rousseau and known Voltaire, and had been intimate friends of Mme. de Stael in middle life. And then, coming a little further down the stream of time, he could describe to me having stayed at Lamartine's ch?teau in the poet's old age, and so on. Mr. Goschen is busy on a life of his grandfather, who was the publisher of Goethe, Schiller and Wieland, and whose correspondence, which he is now going through, covers the whole almost of the German literary period,--so that after dinner the scene shifted to Germany, and we talked away with an occasional raid into politics, till, to my great regret, the evening was over."

DEAR MRS. WARD,--

I have got your letter at last, and carefully read and digested it. Need I say that its frank and direct vigour only increases my respect for the writer? To answer it, as it deserves, is hardly possible for me. It would take a day for me to set forth, with proper reference to chapter and verse, all the reasons why I could not follow Mr. Forster in his Irish administration. They were set forth from time to time with almost tiresome iteration as events moved forward.

In all that you say about Mr. Forster's unselfishness, his industry, his strenuous desire to do what was right and best, nobody agrees more cordially than I do. Personally I have always had--if it is not impertinent in me to say so--a great liking for him. He was always very kind and obliging to me, and nothing has been more painful to me than to know that I was writing what would wound a family for whom I have such sincere respect as I have for his. But the occasion was grave. I have been thinking about Ireland all my life, and that fashion of governing it is odious and intolerable. If Sir Charles Dilke or Mr. Chamberlain had been Chief Secretary, and carried out the Coercion Act as Mr. Forster carried it out, I could not have attacked either of them, but I should have resigned my editorship rather than have connived by silence or otherwise at such mischief.

I may at times have seemed bitter and personal in my language about Mr. Forster. One falls into this tone too readily, when fighting a battle day after day, and writing without time for calm revision. For that I am sorry, if it has been so, or seemed so. Mr. Forster's friends--some of them--have been extremely unscrupulous in their personalities against me, their charges of intrigue, conspiracy. All that I do not care for one jot; my real regret, and it is a very sincere one, is that I should seem unjust or vindictive to people like you, who think honestly and calmly about politics, and other things.

I hope that it is over, and that I shall never have to say a word about Mr. Forster's Irish policy again.

Yours very sincerely, JOHN MORLEY.

DEAR MRS. WARD,--

I don't see why a "causerie" from you once a month should not become as marked a feature in our world, as Ste Beuve was to France. In time, the articles would make matter for a volume, and so you would strike the stars with your sublime head.

I hope my suggestion will commend itself to you. I have been counting upon you, and shall be horribly discouraged if you say No.

Yours sincerely, JOHN MORLEY.

But these articles were all written under the heaviest physical disabilities. Early in 1883 she began to suffer from a violent form of writer's cramp, which made her right hand almost useless at times, and recurred at intervals all through her life, so that writing was usually a far more arduous and painful process to her than it is to most of us. Through the years 1883 and 1884 she was frequently reduced to writing with her left hand, but she also dictated much to her young sister-in-law, Gertrude Ward, who came to live with us at this time, and became for the next eight years the prop and support of our household. Many remedies were tried for the ailment, but nothing was really effective until after two years a German "writing-master" came on the scene, one Dr. Julius Wolff, who completely transformed her method of writing by making her sit much higher than before, rest the whole fore-arm on the table, and use an altogether different set of muscles. Many curious exercises he gave her also, which she practised at intervals for years afterwards, and by these means he succeeded in giving her comparative immunity, though whenever she was specially pressed with work the pain and weakness would recur. During the year 1884, however, before Dr. Wolff had appeared, her arm was practically disabled, and she wore it much in a sling.

"The book was written in about six weeks. She used to lie or sit out of doors at Borough Farm, with a notebook and pencil, and scrawl down what she could with her left hand; then she would come in about twelve and dictate to me at a great rate for an hour or more. In the afternoon and evening she would look over and correct what was done, and I copied out the whole. The scene of Marie and Kendal in his rooms was dictated in her bedroom; she lay on her bed, and I sat by the window behind a screen."

The book was published by Messrs. Macmillan and appeared in December, 1884. It attracted a good deal of attention. The general verdict was that it was a fine and delicate piece of work, but on too limited, too intellectual a scale. This view was admirably put by her old friend, Mr. Creighton :

MY DEAR MRS. WARD,--

Your most affectionate, M. CREIGHTON.

No doubt Mrs. Ward stored up this criticism for future use, for when she next embarked upon a novel the canvas was indeed broad enough.

They had not been settled in London for much more than a year before Mrs. Ward began to feel the need for some quiet and remote country place to which she might fly for peace and work when the strain of London became too great. Fortune favoured the quest, for in the summer of 1882 they took the rectory at Peper Harow, near Godalming , for a few weeks, and during that time were taken by Lord Midleton, the owner of Peper Harow, to see a delightful old farm in the heart of the lonely stretch of country that lies between the Portsmouth Road and Elstead. They fell in love with it at once, and during the following winter made an arrangement to take its six or seven front rooms by the year. So from the summer of 1883 onwards they possessed Borough Farm as a refuge and solace in the wilds, a paradise for elders and children alike, where London and its turmoil could be cast off and forgotten. It lay in a country of heather commons, woods, rough meadows, streams and lakes--those "Hammer Ponds" which remain as a relic of the iron-smelting days of Surrey, and in which we children amused ourselves by the hour in fishing for perch with a bent pin and a worm. Here Mrs. Ward would lie out whenever the sun shone in the old sand-pit up the lane, where we had constructed a sort of terrace for her long chair, or else under the ash-tree on the little hill, writing or reading, while no sound came save the murmur of wind in the gorse, or in the dry bells of the heather. If her physique had been stronger she would, perhaps, have been too much tempted by the beauty of the country ever to have lain still and worked for so many hours as she did in that long chair; but she was never robust, she was extremely susceptible to bad weather, cold winds and every form of chill, and her longest expeditions were those which she took in a little pony-carriage over Ryal or Bagmoor Commons to Peper Harow, or up the Portsmouth Road to Thursley and Hindhead.

Two letters written to her father from Borough Farm during these years, give glimpses of her browsings in many books, and of her thoughts on Shakespeare, evolution and kindred matters:

But it was, inevitably, "caviar to the general." Mrs. Ward's brother, Willie Arnold, her close comrade and friend in all things literary, wrote to her from Manchester a few months after its appearance: "I served on a jury at the Assizes last week--two murder cases and general horrors. I sat next to a Mr. Amiel--pronounced 'Aymiell'--a worthy Manchester tradesman; no doubt his ancestor was a Huguenot refugee. I had one of your vols. in my pocket, and showed him the passage about the family. He was greatly interested, and borrowed it. Returned it next day with the remark that it was 'too religious for him.' Alas, divine philosophy!"

Often, when these fits of exhaustion came on, a small person would be sent for from the schoolroom, in whose finger-tips a quaint form of magic was believed to reside, and there she would sit for an hour, stroking her mother's head, or her hands, or her feet, while the "Jabberwock" on the Chinese cabinet curled his long tail at the pair in silence. "Chatter to me," she used to say; but this was not always easy, and a golden and friendly silence, peopled by many thoughts, usually lay between the two.

At length, on March 9, 1887, the last words of the third volume were written, there in the little powder-closet behind the back drawing-room. But this did not mean the end. She was already painfully aware that the book was too long, and Mr. George Smith, best and truest of advisers, firmly indicated to her that the limits even of a three-volume novel had been overstepped. She herself had already admitted to her brother Willie that it was "not a novel at all," and she now plunged bravely into the task of cutting and revision, fondly hoping that it would take her no more than a fortnight's hard work. Instead it took her the best part of a year. Publication first in the summer season, then in the autumn, had to be given up, while her own fatigue increased so that sometimes for days together she could not touch the book. The few friends to whom she showed it were indeed encouraging, and her brother Willie was the first to prophesy that it would "make a great mark." After reading the first volume he wrote to Mrs. Arnold, "You may look forward to finding yourself the mother of a famous woman!" But the mood of this year was one of depression, while Mrs. Arnold's illness became an ever-increasing sorrow. In the Long Vacation Mrs. Ward took the empty Lady Margaret Hall, at Oxford, for a few weeks, in order to be near her mother--a step which brought her unexpectedly another pleasure. On the very day after they arrived she wrote: "I have had a great pleasure to-day, for at three o'clock arrived a note from Jowett saying that he was in Oxford for a day and would I come to tea? So I went down at five, stayed an hour, then he insisted on walking up here, and sat in the garden watching the children play tennis till about seven. Dear old man! I have the most lively and filial affection for him. We talked about all sorts of things--Cornwall, politics, St. Paul--and when I wanted to go he would not let me. I think he liked it, and certainly I did."

Six weeks later, in the little house in Bradmore Road, which had witnessed so many years of suffering indomitably borne, Julia Arnold lay dying. Through pain and exhaustion unspeakable she had yet kept her intense interest in the human scene, and now the last pleasure which she enjoyed on earth was the news that reached her of the growing success of her daughter's book. With a hand so weak that the pen kept falling from her fingers, she wrote her an account of the Oxford gossip on it; she asked her, with a flash of the old malice, to let her know at once should she hear what any of her aunts were saying. Alas, Julia knew better than anyone else on earth what the religious temperament of the Arnolds might mean; but before the answer came her poor tormented spirit was at rest for ever.

"I arrived at Keble at 7.10. Gladstone was not in the drawing-room. I waited for about three minutes when I heard his slow step coming downstairs. He came in with a candle in his hand which he put out, then he came up most cordially and quickly. 'Mrs. Ward--this is most good of you to come and see me! If you had not come, I should myself have ventured to call and ask after yourself and Mr. Arnold.'

"Then we talked again of Newman, how he had possessed the place, his influence comparable only to that of Abelard on Paris--the flatness after he left. I quoted Burne-Jones on the subject. Then I spoke of Pattison's autobiography as illustrating Newman's hold. He agreed, but said that Pattison's religious phase was so disagreeable and unattractive that it did small credit to Newman. He would much like to have seen more of the autobiography, but he understood that the personalities were too strong. I asked him if he had seen Pattison's last 'Confession of Faith,' which Mrs. Pattison decided not to print, in MS. He said no. Then he asked me whether I had pleasant remembrances of Pattison. I warmly said yes, and described how kind he had been to me as a girl. 'Ah!' he said--'Church would never cast him off; and Church is almost the only person of whom he really speaks kindly in the Memoirs.'

"I asked him whether it did not give him any confidence in 'a new system'--i.e. a new construction of Christianity--to watch its effect on such a life as T. H. Green's. He replied individuals were no test; one must take the broad mass. Some men were born 'so that sin never came near them. Such men never felt the need of Christianity. They would be better if they were worse!'

"Here the Talbots' supper bell rang, and the clock struck eight. He said in the most cordial way it was impossible it could be so late, that he must not put the Warden's household out, but that our conversation could not end there, and would I come again? We settled 9.30 in the morning. He thanked me, came with me to the hall and bade me a most courteous and friendly good-bye."

The next morning she duly presented herself after breakfast, and this time they got to grips far more thoroughly than before with the question of miracles and of New Testament criticism generally. In a letter to her husband she calls it "a battle royal over the book and Christian evidences," and describes how "at times he looked stern and angry and white to a degree, so that I wondered sometimes how I had the courage to go on--the drawn brows were so formidable!" But she stuck to her points and found, as she thought, that for all his versatility he was not really familiar with the literature of the subject, but took refuge instead in attacking her own Theistic position, divested as it was of supernatural Christianity. "I do not say or think you 'attack' Christianity," he wrote to her two days later, "but in proposing a substitute for it, reached by reduction and negation, I think you are dreaming the most visionary of all human dreams."

DEAR MR. GLADSTONE,--

And the letter ends with a plea that the faith which animated T. H. Green might fitly be described by the words of the Psalm, "my soul is athirst for God, for the living God."

To this Mr. Gladstone replied immediately:

MY DEAR MRS. WARD,--

And my meaning about Mr. Green was to hint at what seems to me the unutterable strangeness of his passionately beseeching philosophy to open to him the communion for which he thirsted, when he had a better source nearer hand.

It is like a farmer under the agricultural difficulty who has to migrate from England and plants himself in the middle of the Sahara.

But I must abstain from stimulating you. At Oxford I sought to avoid pricking you and rather laid myself open--because I thought it not fair to ask you for statements which might give me points for reply.

Mr. Gladstone evidently believed he had been as mild as milk--he knew not the terror of his own "drawn brows!"

I think I must write a few words in answer to your letter of yesterday, in view of your approaching article which fills me with so much interest and anxiety. If I put what I have to say badly or abruptly, please forgive me. My thoughts are so full of this terrible loss of my dear uncle Matthew Arnold, to whom I was deeply attached, that it seems difficult to turn to anything else.

And yet I feel a sort of responsibility laid upon me with regard to Mr. Green, whom you may possibly mention in your article. There are many people living who can explain his thought much better than I can. But may I say with regard to your letter of yesterday, that in turning to philosophy, that is to the labour of reason and thought, for light on the question of man's whence and whither, Mr. Green as I conceive it, only obeyed an urgent and painful necessity. "The parting with the Christian mythology is the rending asunder of bones and marrow"--words which I have put into Grey's mouth--were words of Mr. Green's to me. It was the only thing of the sort I ever heard him say--he was a man who never spoke of his feelings--but it was said with a penetrating force and sincerity which I still remember keenly. A long intellectual travail had convinced him that the miraculous Christian story was untenable; but speculatively he gave it up with grief and difficulty, and practically, to his last hour, he clung to all the forms and associations of the old belief with a wonderful affection. With regard to conformity to Church usage and repression of individual opinion he and I disagreed a good deal.

If you do speak of him, will you look at his two Lay Sermons, of which I enclose my copy?--particularly the second one, which was written eight years after the first, and to my mind expresses his thought more clearly.

Some of the letters which have reached me lately about the book have been curious and interesting. A vicar of a church in the East End, who seems to have been working among the poor for forty years, says, "I could not help writing; in your book you seemed to grasp me by the hand and follow me right on through my own life experiences." And an Owens College Professor, who appears to have thought and read much of these things, writes to a third person, ? propos of Elsmere, that the book has grasped "the real force at work in driving so many to give up the Christian creed. It is not the scientific , still less the philosophical difficulties, which influence them, but it is the education of the historic sense which is disintegrating faith."--Only the older forms of faith, as I hold, that the new may rise! But I did not mean to speak of myself.

All through the spring and summer of 1888 letters poured in upon Mrs. Ward by the score and the hundred, both from known and unknown correspondents, so that her husband and sister-in-law had almost to build a hedge around her and to insist that she should not answer them all herself. Those which the book provoked from her old friends, however, especially those of more orthodox views than her own, were often of poignant interest. The Warden of Keble wrote her six sheets of friendly argument and remonstrance. Mr. Creighton wrote her a letter full of closely reasoned criticism of Elsmere's position, to which she made the following reply:

MY DEAR MAX,--

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