CHAPTER IX
MRS. WARD AS CRITIC AND PLAYWRIGHT--FRENCH AND ITALIAN FRIENDS--THE SETTLEMENT VACATION SCHOOL
1899-1904
In spite of the close and continuous toil that she put into the writing of _Eleanor_ during the year 1899, Mrs. Ward found time, in the course of that year, for an effort of literary criticism to which she devoted the best powers of her mind, but which has never, perhaps, received the recognition it deserves. I refer to the Prefaces that she wrote to Messrs. Smith & Elder's "Haworth Edition" of the Brontë novels.
Mrs. Ward had always had a peculiarly vivid feeling for the genius and tragedy of the Brontë sisters, so that when Mr. George Smith asked her in 1898 to undertake these Prefaces she felt it impossible to resist a task not only attractive in itself, but presented to her in persuasive phrase by "Dr. John." For it is by this time a commonplace of Brontë lore that Lucy Snowe's first friend in the wilderness of Villette is no other than the young publisher who had first recognized Charlotte's greatness, though the situation between Lucy and Dr. John bears no resemblance to the actual friendship that arose between Mr. George Smith and his client. Still, the letters which Mr. Smith placed at Mrs. Ward's disposal for this task were sufficiently interesting to arouse her curiosity (one of them even described how Charlotte and he had gone together to the celebrated phrenologist, Dr. Brown, to have their heads examined!), and, taking her courage in both hands, she boldly asked him whether he had ever been in love with Charlotte Brontë? His reply is delightful as ever:
_August 18, 1898._
MY DEAR MRS. HUMPHRY WARD,--
...I was amused at your questions. No, I never was in the least bit in love with Charlotte Brontë. I am afraid that the confession will not raise me in your opinion, but the truth is, I never could have loved any woman who had not some charm or grace of person, and Charlotte Brontë had none. I liked her and was interested by her, and I admired her--especially when she was in Yorkshire and I was in London. I never was coxcomb enough to suppose that she was in love with me. But I believe that my mother was at one time rather alarmed.
So with much toil and in the intervals of her other work, Mrs. Ward accomplished the four admirable Prefaces to Charlotte's novels, enjoying this return to her old critical work of the eighties and becoming more and more deeply possessed by the strange power of the Haworth sisters. Then in the winter she took up _Wuthering Heights_ and _Wildfell Hall_, writing her introduction to the former under a stress of feeling so profound as to produce in her, for the first and last time since childhood, the desire to express herself in verse. Early one January morning she reached out for pencil and paper and wrote down this sonnet, sending it afterwards to George Smith to deal with as he would. He printed it in the _Cornhill Magazine_ of February, 1900.
CHARLOTTE AND EMILY BRONTË.
Pale sisters! reared amid the purple sea Of windy moorland, where, remote, ye plied All household arts, meek, passion-taught, and free, Kinship your joy, and Fantasy your guide!-- Ah! who again 'mid English heaths shall see Such strength in frailest weakness, or so fierce Behest on tender women laid, to pierce The world's dull ear with burning poetry?-- Whence was your spell?--and at what magic spring, Under what guardian Muse, drank ye so deep That still ye call, and we are listening; That still ye plain to us, and we must weep?-- Ask of the winds that haunt the moors, what breath Blows in their storms, outlasting life and death!
Her introductions duly appeared in the bulky volumes of the Haworth Edition, and there, unfortunately, they lie buried. The edition was doomed by its unwieldy _format_, and since the copyright had already disappeared, these "library volumes" were soon displaced by the lighter and handier productions of less stately publishing firms. But the Prefaces had made their mark. The literary world was delighted to welcome Mrs. Ward again among the critics, with whom she had earned her earliest successes, and passages such as the following, which gives her view of the ultimate position of women novelists and women poets, were much quoted and discussed:
"What may be said to be the main secret, the central cause, not only of Charlotte's success, but, generally, of the success of women in fiction, during the present century? In other fields of art they are still either relatively amateurs, or their performance, however good, awakens a kindly surprise. Their position is hardly assured; they are still on sufferance. Whereas in fiction the great names of the past, within their own sphere, are the equals of all the world, accepted, discussed, analysed, by the masculine critic, with precisely the same keenness and under the same canons as he applies to Thackeray or Stevenson, to Balzac or Loti.
"The reason, perhaps, lies first in the fact that, whereas in all other arts they are comparatively novices and strangers, having still to find out the best way in which to appropriate traditions and methods not created by women, in the art of speech, elegant, fitting, familiar speech, women are and have long been at home. They have practised it for generations, they have contributed largely to its development. The arts of society and of letter-writing pass naturally into the art of the novel. Madame de Sévigné and Madame du Deffand are the precursors of George Sand; they lay her foundations, and make her work possible. In the case of poetry, one might imagine, a similar process is going on, but it is not so far advanced. In proportion, however, as women's life and culture widen, as the points of contact between them and the manifold world multiply and develop, will Parnassus open before them. At present those delicate and noble women who have entered there look still a little strange to us. Mrs. Browning, George Eliot, Emily Brontë, Marcelline Desbordes-Valmore--it is as though they had wrested something that did not belong to them, by a kind of splendid violence. As a rule, so far, women have been poets in and through the novel--Cowper-like poets of the common life like Miss Austen, or Mrs. Gaskell, or Mrs. Oliphant; Lucretian or Virgilian observers of the many-coloured web like George Eliot, or, in some phases, George Sand; romantic or lyrical artists like George Sand again, or like Charlotte and Emily Brontë. Here no one questions their citizenship; no one is astonished by the place they hold; they are here among the recognized masters of those who know.
"Why? For, after all, women's range of material, even in the novel, is necessarily limited. There are a hundred subjects and experiences from which their mere sex debars them. Which is all very true, but not to the point. For the one subject which they have eternally at command, which is interesting to all the world, and whereof large tracts are naturally and wholly their own, is the subject of love--love of many kinds indeed, but pre-eminently the love between man and woman. And being already free of the art and tradition of words, their position in the novel is a strong one, and their future probably very great."
She sent her Prefaces to a few intimate friends, turning in this case chiefly to those French friends who represented for her the ultimate tribunal in literary matters. The older generation--Scherer, Taine, Renan--were passing away by this time, but a younger had followed them, of whom Paul Bourget, Brunetière of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, the Gaston Paris, the Ribots, the Boutmys were among those whom Mrs. Ward would always seek out during her almost annual visits to Paris in these years. But among all her French acquaintance she came about this time to regard M. André Chevrillon, nephew of Taine, traveller and generous critic of English politics and literature, as the most sympathetic, for he seemed to combine with an almost miraculous knowledge of English the very essence of that _esprit français_ which she continued to adore to the end of her life. He had first visited Mrs. Ward at Haslemere in 1891, as a "young French student lost in London," and he happened to be with us at Stocks at the time of the publication of the Haworth Edition (1900). A few days later Mrs. Ward received the following appreciation from him:
MADAME,--
Je désire tout de suite vous remercier de votre gracieux accueil et de la bonne journée que j'ai passée à Tring, mais je voudrais surtout essayer de vous dire un peu l'impression, l'émotion durable et qui me poursuit ici--que m'a donnée la lecture de vos admirables articles sur les Brontë. Je n'ai pas su le faire tandis que j'étais auprès de vous; ce n'est que ce matin que j'ai lu l'article sur Charlotte et Jane Eyre et j'en suis encore tout hanté. Jamais âmes de poètes et d'artistes n'ont été sondées d'un coup d'œil plus pénétrant, plus rapide, plus exercé et plus sûr. Vous avez su, en quelques pages, montrer l'irréductible personnalité de ces âpres et douloureuses jeunes femmes en même temps que vous expliquiez les traits qui chez elles sont ethniques et généraux, la tendre, la nostalgique âme celtique, farouchement repliée sur soi avec ses pressentiments, ses divinisations magiques, sa faculté d'apercevoir dans les couleurs du ciel, dans les formes et les lignes que présente çà et là la nature des _signes_ chargés de sens mystérieux et profond.... Enfin le dernier paragraphe où vous mettez Charlotte à sa place dans la littérature européenne nous rappelle la sûre _scholarship_, la puissance de généralisation auxquelles vous nous avez habitués, la faculté philosophique qui aperçoit _les idées_ comme des forces vivantes, dramatiques qui se croisent, se combattent, moulent et façonnent les hommes, et sont les plus vraies des réalités.
M. Chevrillon shared, I think, with M. Jusserand and with M. Elie Halévy the distinction of being the most profound and sympathetic among French students of England at that time; all three were firm friends of Mrs. Ward's, all charmed her into envious despair by their perfect command of our language. M. Jusserand--who as a young man on the staff of the French Embassy had been a constant visitor at Russell Square--would dash off such notes as this: "Dear Mrs. Ward--Are you in town, or rather what town is it you are in?" and now in this matter of the Brontë Prefaces he wrote her his terrible confession:
"I spent yesternight a most charming evening reading your essay. Shall I confess that I feel with Kingsley, having had a similar experience? I could never go beyond the terrible beginning of _Shirley_--and yet I tried and did my best, and the book remains unread, and I the more sorry as my copy does not belong to me, but to Lady Jersey, who charged me to return it when I had finished reading. I really tried earnestly: I took the volume with me on several occasions; it has seen, I am sure, as many lands as wise Ulysses, having crossed the Mediterranean more than once and visited Assuan. But there it is, and I see from my writing-table its threatening green cloth and awful back, with plenty of repulsive persons within. And yet I _can_ read. I have read with delight and unflagging interest Vol. I in-folio of the Rolls of Parliament, without missing a line. _Shirley_, I cannot. I must try again, were it only for the sake of the editor of the series!"
But in spite of these warm and in many cases lifelong friendships, Mrs. Ward did not find the French atmosphere an easy one in such a year as 1900. The South African War had followed on the Dreyfus Case, the Dreyfus Case on Fashoda, and the ties of friendship suffered an unkindly strain. Mrs. Ward spent a few spring weeks in Rome, where all was golden and delightful--forming new friendships every day, and passing into that second stage of intimacy where first impressions are tested and were not, for her, found wanting; then on the way home she lingered a little in Paris, plunging into the gay confusions of the Great Exhibition. Her literary friends offered her attentions and hospitalities as of old, but she felt at once the difference of atmosphere, describing it vividly in a letter to her brother Willie:
"PARIS, "_May 16, 1900_.
"We have had a delicious time in Rome, Dorothy and I, and now Paris and the Exhibition are interesting and stimulating, but are not Rome! I have come back more Italy-bewitched than ever. Rome was bathed in the most glorious sunshine. Every breath was life-giving--everything one saw was beauty. And the people are so kind, so clever, so friendly--so different from this _France malveillante_, between whom and us as it seems to me, Fashoda, Dreyfus and the Transvaal have opened a gulf that it will take a generation to fill. In Rome we saw many people and I had much conversation that will be of use for the revision of _Eleanor_. The country is progressing enormously, the _Anno Santo_ is a comparative failure, and the Jesuit hatred of England flourishes and abounds. The Harcourts were there and I had much talk with Sir William about politics and much else. He is very broken in health, but as amusing as ever. With him and Father Ehrle we went one morning through the show treasures of the Vatican, turned over and handled the Codex Vaticanus, the Michael Angelo letters, the wonderful illuminated Dante and much else. One day with two friends D. and I went to Viterbo, slept, and next day saw the two Cinquecento villas, the Villa Lante and Caprarola. Caprarola was a wonderful experience. Ten miles' drive into the mountains along a ridge 3,000 feet high, commanding on one side the Lake of Vico, on the other the whole valley of the Tiber from Assisi to Palestrina, with Soracte in the middle distance, and the great rampart of the Sabines half in snow and girdled with cloud. Between us and the plain, slopes of chestnut and vine, and on either side of the road delicious inlets of grass, starred thick with narcissus, running up into continents of broom that by now must be all gold. Then the great pentagonal palace of Caprarola, gloomy, magnificent, in an incomparable position, frescoed inside from top to toe by the Zuccheri, and containing in its great sala a series of portrait groups of Charles V, Francis I, Henry II, Philip II, of the greatest possible animation and brilliancy, and in almost perfect preservation."
After such delights the atmosphere of Paris must indeed have seemed cold, but Mrs. Ward could always see the other side of such a controversy, and took pleasure in reporting to her father a conversation she had had, while in Paris, with "a charming old man, formerly secretary of the Duc D'Aumale, and now curator of the Chantilly Museum."
"We had," she wrote, "a very interesting talk about the War and Dreyfus. 'Oh! I am all with the English,' he said--'they could not let that state of things in the Transvaal continue--the struggle was inevitable. But then I have lived in England. I love England, and English people, and can look at matters calmly. As to the treatment of English people in Paris, remember, Madame, that we are just now a restless and discontented people. We are a disappointed people--we have lost our great position in the world, and we don't see how to get it back. That makes us rude and bitter. And then our griefs against England go back to the Crimea. The English officers then made themselves disliked--and in the great war of 1870, you were not sympathetic--we thought you might have done something for us, and you did nothing. Then you were much too violent about the _Affaire_. The first trial was abominable, but by the second trial we stand, we the _modérés_ who think ourselves honest fellows. But you made no difference. The Press of both countries has done great harm. All that explains the present state of things. It is not the Boers--that is mainly a pretext, an opportunity."
It is perhaps a curious fact that while German learning and German methods of historical criticism had compelled Mrs. Ward's admiration from her earliest years, no crop of personal friendships with Germans had sprung from these sowings, as in the case of her French studies and her Italian sojournings. Dear, homely German governesses were almost the only children of the Fatherland with whom she had personal contact, her relations with certain Biblical scholars and with the translators and publishers of her books being confined to pen and ink. But there was one German scholar with whom she had at any rate a lengthy correspondence--Dr. Adolf Jülicher, of Marburg, whose monumental work on the New Testament she presented one day, in a moment of enthusiasm, to her younger daughter (aged seventeen), suggesting that she should translate it into English. The daughter dutifully obeyed, devoting the best part of the next three years to the task--only to find, when the work was all but finished, that the German professor had in the meantime brought out a new edition of his book, running to some 100 pages of additional matter. Dismay reigned at Stocks, but there was no help for it: the additional 100 pages had to be tackled. In the end Mrs. Ward herself seized on the proofs and went all through them, pen in hand; little indeed was left of the daughter's unlucky sentences by the time the process was complete. In vain we would point out to her that this was the "Lower Criticism" and therefore unworthy of her serious attention; she would merely make a face at us and plunge with ardour--perhaps after a heavy day of writing--into the delightful task of defacing poor Mr. Reginald Smith's clean page-proofs. For these were the days when Mr. Reginald had practically taken over the business of Smith & Elder's from his father-in-law, George Smith, and one of the diversions that he allowed himself was to print Mrs. Ward's daughter's translation free of all profit to the firm. The profits, indeed, if any, were to go in full to the translator, but naturally the expenses of proof-correction stood on the debit side of the account. Hence the anxiety of the person who had once been seventeen whenever Mrs. Ward had had a particularly energetic day with the proofs of Jülicher!
_Eleanor_ had had a triumphal progress in the monthly numbers of _Harper's Magazine_ throughout this year (1900), and appeared at length in book-form on November 1. Mrs. Ward's pleasure in its reception was much enhanced by the warm appreciation given to Mr. Albert Sterner's illustrations--clever and charming drawings, which had wonderfully caught the spirit of her characters and of the Italian scene, for Mr. Sterner had spent two or three weeks with us at the Villa Barberini. He and Mrs. Ward were fast friends, and it was always a matter of real delight to her whenever he could be secured to illustrate one of her subsequent novels. This was to be the case with _William Ashe_, _Fenwick's Career_ and _The Case of Richard Meynell_. The publication of _Eleanor_ coincided, however, with news of Mr. Arnold's serious illness in Dublin, so that the chorus of delight in her "Italian novel" reached Mrs. Ward's ears muffled by the presence of death.
Thomas Arnold died on November 12, 1900, tended to the last by his surviving children, and by the devoted second wife (Miss Josephine Benison), whom he had married in 1889. Mrs. Ward's affection for him had never wavered throughout these many years, as the letters which she wrote him about all her doings, once or even twice in every week, attest to this day; his mystical, child-like spirit attracted her invincibly. Three days after his death she wrote to Bishop Creighton, over whom the same summons was already hovering:
_November 15, 1900._
MY DEAR BISHOP,--
Many, many thanks. It was very dear of you to write to me, especially at this time of illness, and I prize much all that you say. My father's was a rare and _hidden_ nature. Among his papers that have now come to me I have come across the most touching and remarkable things--things that are a revelation even to his children. The service yesterday in Newman's beautiful little University Church, the early mass, the bright morning light on the procession of friends and clergy through the cypress-lined paths of Glasnevin, the last 'requiescat in pace,' answered by the Amen of the little crowd--all made a fitting close to his gentle and laborious life. He did not suffer much, I am thankful to say, and he knew that we were all round him and smiled upon us to the last.
And he on his side regarded her with an adoring affection that sometimes found touching expression in his letters, as when, a few months after the publication of _David Grieve_, he broke out in these words:
"My own dearest Polly (let me call you for once what I often called you when a child), God made you what you are, and those who love you will be content to leave you to Him. He gave you that wide-flashing, swiftly-combining wit, 'glancing from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven'; He gave you also the power of turning your thoughts, with deft and felicitous hand, into forms of beauty. No one can divine what new problems will occupy you in time to come, nor how you will solve them; but one may feel sure that with you, as Emerson says, 'the future will be worthy of the past.'"
Yet there was hardly a public question, especially in his later years, on which Mrs. Ward and her father did not differ profoundly; for Tom Arnold hated "Imperialism" and the modern world, especially such manifestations of it as the Omdurman campaign and the South African War. Mrs. Ward, on the other hand, watched the former with all the pride and dread that comes from a personal stake in the adventure; for was not Colonel Neville Lyttelton in command of a brigade, and had he not left his wife and children under our care at Stocks Cottage? She had found a task for Mrs. Lyttelton's quick mind, to while away the too-long hours of that summer, in a translation into English of the "Pensées" of Joubert; their consultations over the fine shades of his meaning, while the bees hummed in the lime-tree on the lawn, became the light and relaxation of her days, while, later on, the Introduction she contributed to the book helped its appearance with the public. And when Colonel Lyttelton came home, a happy soldier, and pegged out the Omdurman campaign for us on the drawing-room floor with matches, how was it possible not to rejoice with him in the overthrow of so dark a tyranny as the Khalifa's?
But the South African War was a matter of far more mingled feelings, though on the whole Mrs. Ward was persuaded that we were right as against President Kruger and his methods, and upheld this view in many a letter to her father:
"I am not without sympathy for the Boers," she wrote to him in November, 1899, "and I often try to realize their case and how the invasive unwelcome English power looks to them. But it seems to me that history--which for me is God--makes very stern decisions between nations. The Boers have had their chance of an ascendancy which must have been theirs if they had known how to work for it and deserve it; they have missed it, and the chance now passes to England. If she is not worthy of it, it won't remain with her--that one may be sure. But I must say that the loyalty of the other colonies--especially of French-speaking Canada; the pacification and good government of India, the noble development of Egypt, are to me so many signs that at present we _are_ fit to rule, and are meant to rule. But we shall rule only so long as we execute righteous judgment and so long as it is for the good of the world that we should rule."
She would have liked to see peace made after Lord Roberts' early victories, and was for a time in favour of such terms as would not have involved annexation. But when this hope failed she settled down to endure the thing, and in 1901 devoted much time and labour to the improvement of the Boer women's and children's lot in the concentration camps. She joined the committee of the Victoria League formed for this purpose. And, as inevitably happens in all such controversies, the passion felt by the other side contributed to the hardening of her own opinion, so that the end of the war found her more staunch an Imperialist, more definite a Conservative, than she would have admitted herself to be before it.
It was during the war-shadowed winter of 1900-1901 that Mrs. Ward suffered a series of heavy personal losses in the death of many of her oldest friends, beginning with Mr. James Cropper, of Ellergreen, her quasi-uncle,[21] with whom she had been on the most affectionate terms ever since her childhood. This occurred a bare month before her father's death; then, two months later (January 14, 1901), came the blow that the whole country felt as a catastrophe, the death of Bishop Creighton, and, early in April, a loss that came home very sadly to Mrs. Ward, that of her well-beloved publisher and friend, George Smith. "I never had a truer friend or a wiser counsellor," she wrote of him, and indeed he combined these qualities with so shrewd a humour and so unvarying a kindness that Mrs. Ward might well count herself fortunate to have enjoyed fourteen years of familiar intercourse with him.
"His position as a publisher was very remarkable," she wrote to her son. "He was the friend of his authors, their counsellor, banker and domestic providence often--as Murray was to Byron. But nobody would ever have dared to take the liberties with him that Byron did with Murray."
When he was gone, Mrs. Ward was fortunate enough to find in his successor, Reginald Smith, an equally just and generous adviser, on whose friendship she leant more and more until death took him too, in the tragic winter of 1916.
* * * * *
The remarkable success of _Eleanor_ in the United States (where the character of Lucy Foster won all hearts) led to inquiries being made from certain theatrical quarters there as to whether Mrs. Ward would not undertake to dramatize it. The suggestion attracted her at once, for though she had never written anything for the stage she had, all her life, been a keenly interested critic of plays and actors and a devoted adherent of French methods as against the heavy English stage conventions. But when she seriously confronted the problem she felt herself too ignorant of stagecraft to undertake the task unaided, and therefore called in to her counsels that delightful writer of light comedy, Julian Sturgis, whom she persuaded to collaborate with her. Could she have foreseen the play's delays, the insolence of box offices and the manifold despairs that awaited her in this new path, probably even her high courage would have turned aside, but the co-operation it brought her with so rare a spirit as Julian Sturgis was at any rate a very living compensation. In the spring of 1901 Mr. Sturgis came out to stay with us in a villa we had taken (on the spur of the moment) on the outskirts of Rapallo (not then celebrated as the scene of international "pacts"), and together he and his hostess plunged with ardour into the business of making their puppets move. The work was extraordinarily hard, while the skies above our crimson villa behaved as though it were Westmorland and the Mediterranean thundered on the sea-wall of our garden; but Mrs. Ward enjoyed the stimulus and novelty of it immensely and always declared that she owed much even for her novelist's art to that week of "grind" with Mr. Sturgis. Nor was it quite all grind, for one day, when the sun at last shone, we took our guest and his tall Eton boy up the long pilgrimage-way to the Madonna di Montallegro, overtaking a party of laden peasant-women as we went to whom Mr. Sturgis offered some passing kindness. His advances were met by a torrent of words in some uncouth dialect which none of us could understand, but he chose to appropriate them to himself as a prayer offered to "Santo Giulio," and "Santo Giulio" he remained to Mrs. Ward and all of us for the too-short remnant of his life.[22] The play stood up and lived by the time his visit was ended; but this was only the beginning of endless heartaches and disappointments. At first there were hopes of the Duse, then of Mrs. Pat; then Mr. Benson was to produce it with a clever and charming amateur actress of our acquaintance in the role of Eleanor; then at length a real promise was secured from a well-known actor-manager, and all was fixed for May, 1902. But the promise was not an agreement, and was therefore mortal; when it died Mr. Sturgis's only comment was: "My dear Mrs. Ward, I am not a bit surprised. My deep distrust of the theatrical world, wherein pretending gets into the blood, makes me sceptical of any promises which are not stamped, signed and witnessed by a legion of angels."
Already, however, Miss Marion Terry, Miss Robins and Miss Lilian Braithwaite had promised in no spirit of "pretending" to play the three principal parts, so that with things so well advanced on that side Mrs. Ward determined to go forward. Since the managers were timid she would take a theatre and bear the risk herself. Finally all was settled with the Court Theatre, and the delightful agony of the rehearsals began (October, 1902). Miss Terry sprained a tendon in her leg, but gallantly limped through her part, while the constant changes called for in the words, the cuts and compressions, made a bewildering variety of versions that left the lay onlooker gasping. Mrs. Ward, however, was equal to all occasions--even to a last-minute change in the actor who played Manisty[23]--until not one of the cast but was moved to astonishment and admiration, not only by her versatility, but by her long-suffering. Add to this her endless consideration for themselves--for their comfort, their feelings or their clothes--and it is easy to understand the feelings of real affection which grew up between author and actors as the play went on. Yet all was of no avail, or, at least, it failed to conquer the great heart of the British public. The cast was admirable, the reviews were kind--though Mr. Walkley in _The Times_ perhaps gave the key to the situation when he ended his article with the words, "But then, who _could_ play Manisty?" Yet, somehow, the audience (after the first day) failed to fill the seats. _Eleanor_ ran for only fifteen matinées, October 30-November 15, and though much was said of a revival, she only once again saw the footlights--in a couple of special matinées given in aid of the Passmore Edwards Settlement. And yet--what fun it had been! Though the financial loss made her rueful, Mrs. Ward always looked back to those six weeks at the Court Theatre as a breathless but happy episode, during which she had looked deep into the technique of a new art and brought from it, not success indeed, but much valuable experience which she might bring to bear upon her future work. Certainly the two novels of these years, _Lady Rose's Daughter_ and the _Marriage of William Ashe_, gained much in sureness of touch, terseness and finish from Mrs. Ward's dramatic studies; _Lady Rose_ was in fact acclaimed by the critics as the book in which, at last, the writer showed "the predominance of the artistic over the ethical instinct, the subordination of the didactic to the artistic impulse."
She never dramatized it, but a dramatized version of _William Ashe_, at which Mrs. Ward toiled extremely hard, in collaboration with Miss Margaret Mayo, during 1905, was accepted by an American "stock company" and acquired a considerable reputation in the States. In London, however, where it was performed by a semi-American cast in 1908, it fell very flat, Mrs. Ward being fortunately spared the sight of it owing to the fact that she herself was across the Atlantic at the time. The actress who played Kitty, wishing to leave the author in no doubt as to the cause of its failure, cabled to her after the first night, "Press unfriendly to play--_my_ performance highly praised!" Even so, however, the Manager decided to withdraw it after a three weeks' run, and no play of Mrs. Ward's was ever afterwards performed in England.
Among the most absorbed spectators of the first performance of _Eleanor_, watching it from an arm-chair brought for his ease into the author's box, was the pathetic figure of Mrs. Ward's eldest brother, William Arnold. His health had broken down some years before, while he was still assistant editor of the _Manchester Guardian_, and he had come to live, with his wife, in a small house in Chelsea, where it was Mrs. Ward's delight to find him, on his better days, and to discuss all things in heaven and earth with him. No comradeship could ever have been closer than was theirs, though intercourse with him would always end in a strangling heartache for his state of health, for noble gifts submerged by bodily pain, despite as gallant a fight as was ever waged by suffering man. Mrs. Ward was for ever watching over him and helping him; sending him abroad in search of sun and warmth; having him to stay with her at Stocks, in London, or at some villa in Italy; encouraging him to do what work he could. But most they loved their talks together. Their tastes would usually agree on literary matters, and differ on politics, but no matter what the subject, his flashes of mischief and malice would light up the most ordinary topic, and no one loved better to draw him out, and to set him railing or praising, than his sister. How they would talk, sometimes, about the details of her craft, about Jane Austen, or Trollope, or George Meredith! For this latter they both had a feeling akin to adoration, based on a knowledge not only of his novels but of his poems (then not a common accomplishment); and I remember W. T. A. once saying to me that he thought the jolliest line in English poetry was
Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose.
Mrs. Ward's feeling for the old giant of Box Hill led her on all occasions to champion his right to be regarded as the greatest living master of English--as may be seen from the following spirited letter (January 19, 1902) addressed to the secretary of the Society of Authors, when that body had, in her view, made the wrong decision in recommending Herbert Spencer instead of Meredith for the Nobel Prize.
"However eminent Mr. Spencer may be" (she wrote), "and however important his contribution to English thought, there must be a great many of us who will feel, when it is a question of interrogating English opinion as to the most distinguished name among us in pure literature, there can be only one answer--George Meredith. It is no reply to say that the Swedish Academy will probably know something of Mr. Herbert Spencer, and may know little or nothing about Mr. Meredith. That is their affair, not ours. The meaning and purpose of this prize has been illustrated by the selection of M. Sully Prud'homme. Its recipient should be surely, first and foremost, a man of letters, and, if possible, a representative of what the Germans call 'Dichtung,' whether in prose or verse.
"If Mr. Meredith had written nothing but the love-scenes in _Richard Feverel_; _The Egoist_; and certain passages of description in _Vittoria_ and _Beauchamp's Career_, he would still stand at the head of English 'Dichtung.' There is no critic now who can be ranged with him in position, and no poet. As a man of letters he is easily first; to compare Mr. Spencer's power of clear statement with the play of imaginative genius in Meredith would be absurd--in the literary field. And this is or should be a literary award.
"I trust that in writing thus I shall not be misunderstood. I am not venturing to dispute Mr. Spencer's great position in the history of English thought--I have neither the wish nor the capacity for anything of the kind. But to be the philosopher of evolution is one thing; to be our first man of letters is another. I would submit that English opinion is asked to point out our most distinguished man of letters, and that if we cannot unanimously say 'George Meredith!' we are not worthy that Genius should come among us at all."
But only two years after this outburst (which I feel sure she showed him) her comradeship with "Will" ended for ever, and his sufferings ceased. He died on May 29, 1904.[24]
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About the same time as she lost her beloved brother, Mrs. Ward acquired a new member of the family in the person of her son-in-law, George Macaulay Trevelyan, son of Sir George Otto Trevelyan. He and her younger daughter became engaged at the Villa Bonaventura, Cadenabbia--which Mrs. Ward had taken from Mr. Alfred Trench--in May, 1903--and ten months later they were married at Oxford. Mrs. Ward soon became much devoted to her son-in-law, whose ardent faiths and non-faiths challenged and stimulated her, bringing her into touch with movements of thought that ran parallel to, but had not yet mingled with, her own belief in a more reasonable Christianity. The walls of her room at Stocks would re-echo, during his visits, with the most fundamental discussions! Mr. Chamberlain, too, was a disturbing element in those days, with his Tariff Reform campaign, for what was Mrs. Ward to do when her son took one side and her son-in-law the other--and when, moreover, her own well-trained mind was perfectly capable of understanding the arguments of each? But whatever the subject of these discussions, whether politics or religion, they only served to increase the affection between the two, which grew and deepened with every turn of fortune that the years might bring.
It is perhaps interesting to speculate what might have been the development of Mrs. Ward's powers if her intellect had never been captured by the dramatic spell, and if other sides of that "wide-flashing" mind had been allowed to work themselves out unchecked. For in the lull that followed the completion of _Eleanor_ she had conceived the writing of a "Life of Christ" based on such a re-interpretation of the Gospel story as she believed had been made possible by the research of the last half-century. She brooded much over this theme and even discussed it with her publishers. But whether it was that her continued ill-health made her shrink from the heavy toil involved by such a task--the re-reading and collating of all her Germans, the study of an infinite amount of fresh material, and probably a journey to Palestine--or whether the practical side of Christianity had by now absorbed too large a share of her time and her powers, the project never came to fruition, though it never ceased to attract her.
* * * * *
And indeed, Mrs. Ward's practical adventures in well-doing during these years would have been enough to fill the lives of any three ordinary individuals, without any such diversions as the writing of novels or the hammering out of plays. The affairs of the Settlement were always on her shoulders, not only as regards the financial burden of its maintenance, but in all the personal questions that inevitably arose in such a busy hive of humanity. If the nurse of the Invalid School had words with the porter, the case was sure to come up to her for judgment, while any misdemeanour among the young people themselves who frequented the building would cause her the most anxious searchings of heart. But "it does not do to start things and then let them drift," as she wrote in these days to one of us, and she continued to cherish the Settlement, to support the Warden (Mr. Tatton) in his difficulties and to beg for money, with an extraordinary vitality as well as an extraordinary patience. Yet in spite of all, the Settlement was far more of joy to her than of burden, and on its children's side it never ceased to be pure joy from the beginning. For was it not always possible to devise new ways of making the children happy, as well as to continue the old? The principal way in which Mrs. Ward's work extended itself at this time was in the opening of the "Vacation School," designed to bring in from the streets in large numbers the children left stranded during the August holiday,--and if anyone will take the trouble to wander through the back streets during that happy season, and to note what he sees, there will be little doubt in his mind that such a school must be a real deliverance. Mrs. Ward had taken the idea from an account by Mr. Henry Curtis in _Harper's Magazine_ (early in 1902) of the first schools of the kind started in New York, and her mind had at once grasped the possibilities of such a scheme. There stood the Settlement with its fine shady garden in the rear, empty and dumb through the holidays: surely it would be a sin not to use it!
She collected a special fund from a few old friends of the Settlement, appointed an admirable director in the person of Mr. E. G. Holland, an assistant master at the Highgate Secondary School, enlisted the help of all the schools around to send us such children only as had no chance of a country holiday, and then issued invitations to some 750, divided into two batches, morning and afternoon. The result was an orderly and delighted crowd which, owing to Miss Churcher's and Mr. Holland's faultless organization, moved from class to class and from garden to building without the smallest hitch, played and dug in the "waste ground" beyond the garden, specially thrown open to the school by the Duke of Bedford, and when rain came marched into the building and filled its basement rooms and the pleasant library and class-rooms without any confusion or squabbling. The occupations were much the same as those already in use for the "Recreation School," and never failed to attract and then to keep the children; while the spirit of good fellowship that the atmosphere of the school engendered had a marked effect on their manners as the four weeks of the school passed away. Here is Mrs. Ward's own account of the contrast presented by the children as they were in the Vacation School and as they could not help being in a mean street only half a mile away:[25]
"Last week a lady interested in the school was passing through one of the slum streets to the west of Tottenham Court Road. Much good work has been done there by many agencies. But in August most of the workers are away. Dirty, ragged, fighting or querulous children covered the pavement, or seemed to be bursting out of the grimy houses. The street was filthy, the clothes of the children to match. There was no occupation; the little souls were given up to 'the weight of chance desires'; and whatever happiness there was must have been of rather a perilous sort. The same spectator passed on, and half a mile eastward entered the settlement building in Tavistock Place. Here were nearly 300 children (the children of the Evening Session), divided between house and garden, many of them from quarters quite as poor as those she had just traversed. But all was order, friendliness and enjoyment. Every child was clean and neat, though the clothes might be poor; if a boy brushed past the visitor, it would be with a pleasant 'Excuse me, Miss'; in the manual training-room boys looked up from the benches with glee to show the models they had made; the drawing-room of the settlement was full of little ones busy with the unfamiliar delights of brush or pencil; in the library boys were sitting hunched up over _Masterman Ready_, or the ever-adored _Robinson Crusoe_; girls were deep in _Anderson's Fairy Tales_ or _The Cuckoo Clock_, the little ones were reading Mr. Stead's _Books for the Bairns_ or looking at pictures; outside in the garden under the trees clay modelling and kindergarten games were going on, while the sand-pit was crowded with children enjoying themselves heartily without either shouting or fighting. Meanwhile in the big hall parents were thronging in to see the musical drill, the dancing or the acting, or to listen to the singing; the fathers as proud as the mothers that Willie was 'in the Shakespeare,' or Nellie 'in the Gavotte.' The visitor had only to watch to see that the teachers were obeyed at a word, at a glance, and that the children loved to obey. Everywhere was discipline, good temper, pleasure. And next day the school broke up with the joining of 600 voices in the old hymn 'O God, our help in ages past.' Surely no contrast could be more complete."
And in conclusion Mrs. Ward made her characteristic appeal:
"Shall we not enter seriously on the movement and call on our public authorities to take it up? Who can doubt the need of it, even when all allowance is made for country holidays of all sorts? Extend and develop country holidays as you will, London in the summer vacation month will never be without its hundreds of thousands of children for whom these Vacation Schools, properly managed, would be almost a boon of fairyland."
The Vacation School had indeed been watched with much interest by the London School Board, which had also co-operated by the lending of furniture and "stock," but the transference of its powers to the London County Council made a bad atmosphere, just at this time, for the adoption of new experiments, and the new "London Education Authority" which arose in 1903 was only too glad to leave the carrying-on of the Settlement Vacation School to Mrs. Ward. Every year it seemed to increase in popularity. Mr. Holland remained director for thirteen consecutive Augusts (1902-1914); the numbers of the school rose to 1,000 per day in later years, when an additional building became available, and Mrs. Ward could have no greater pleasure, when the pressure of her literary work permitted, than to come up from Stocks for a day to watch her holiday children. But in spite of the universally recognized success of her experiment, this and the "Holiday School" organized by the Browning Settlement from 1904 onwards remained practically the only efforts of the kind carried on in London, until at length, in 1910, the L.C.C. followed suit by opening six Vacation Schools in different parts of the metropolis, housed in the ordinary school buildings and playgrounds. They were an enormous boon to the children of those districts, but the Council did not persist in its good deeds, for after two years these Holiday Schools were allowed to drop, and have never, unfortunately, been revived. Indeed, in June, 1921, a resolution was passed, prohibiting any expenditure on Holiday Schools or Organized Playgrounds. So does the London child pay its share of the War Debt.
But the Vacation School at the Settlement has never lapsed, since the first day that Mrs. Ward opened it in August, 1902, although in these times of forced economy the numbers are less than of old. But there, under the great plane-trees in the garden, the trestle-tables are still set up and the children still congregate, bearing their laughing testimony to the memory of one who knew their little hearts, and who, seeing them shepherdless in the hot streets, could not rest until they were gathered in.