CHAPTER XI
THE VISIT TO THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
1908
Mrs. Ward had often been assured by her friends and admirers in the United States that if she would but visit them she would find such a welcome as would stagger all her previous ideas of hospitality. She could not doubt it; it was, in fact, this thought, combined with the frailness of her health, that had deterred her during the twenty years that followed the publication of _Robert Elsmere_ from going to claim the honours that awaited her. Her husband and daughter had already paid two visits to the States, and had experienced in the kindness and warmth of their reception an earnest of what would fall to Mrs. Ward's lot should she venture across the Atlantic; nor had they merely whirled with the passing show, but had made many lifelong friends. Mrs. Ward had, however, resisted the pressure of these friends for many years, until at length, in the spring of 1908, so strong a combination of circumstances arose to tempt her that her resolution gave way. Her own health, which had suffered a grievous and prolonged breakdown in 1906, had gradually re-established itself, so that by the time of which we are speaking she was perhaps in better case for such an adventure than she had been for some years. Mr. and Mrs. Whitridge would hear of nothing but that she should make their house her home during her stay in New York; Mr. Bryce made the same demand for Washington; Earl Grey for Ottawa (where he was at that time Governor-General), while Mr. Ward's acquaintance with Sir William van Horne, Chairman of the Canadian Pacific Railway--based on a common enthusiasm for Old Masters--led to the irresistible offer of a private car on the Line for Mrs. Ward and her party, at the Company's expense, from Montreal to Vancouver and back. Such lures were hardly to be withstood, but I doubt whether Mrs. Ward would have succumbed even to them had it not been for her growing desire to see, with her own eyes, the work which was being done in New York for the play-time of the children. She knew that New York was far in advance of London in the provision of Vacation Schools for the long summer holiday, and of evening Recreation Centres for the children who had left school; but Play Centres for the school-children themselves were as yet unknown there, so that she felt much might be gained by an exchange of experiences between herself and the "Playground Association of America."
And so, on March 11, 1908, they sailed in the _Adriatic_--she and Mr. Ward, and her daughter Dorothy, with the faithful Lizzie in attendance. The great ship set her thinking of the only other long voyage that she had ever made, over far other seas. "When I look at this ship," she wrote, "and think of the cockleshell we came home in round the Horn in '56, and the discomforts my mother must have suffered with three children, one a young baby! Happiness, as we all know, and as the copy-books tell us, does not depend on luxuries--but how she would have responded to a little comfort, a little petting, if she had ever had it! My heart often aches when I think of it." The comforts of the _Adriatic_ were indeed colossal, and since the ocean was kindness itself, Mrs. Ward took no ill from the voyage, but arrived in good spirits, and ready to face the New World with that zest which was her cradle-gift.
Mr. Whitridge's pleasant house in East Eleventh Street received Mr. and Mrs. Ward, while Dorothy stayed with equally hospitable friends--Mrs. Cadwalader Jones and her daughter--over the way. Avalanches of reporters had to be faced and dealt with, all craving for five minutes' talk with Mrs. Ward, but they were usually intercepted in the hall by Mr. Whitridge, whose method of dealing with his country's newspapers was somewhat drastic. If they passed this outer line of defence they were received by Mr. or Miss Ward, who found them persistent indeed, but always marvellously civil; and on the very few occasions when Mrs. Ward did consent to be interviewed, she insisted on seeing the proof and entirely re-writing what had been put into her mouth. The newspapers, indeed, had reckoned without a mentality which intensely disliked this kind of thing; it was unfortunate, perhaps, but inevitable!
In all other respects, however, it was impossible for Mrs. Ward not to be deeply moved by the kindness that was heaped upon her. "Life has been a tremendous rush," wrote D. M. W. from New York, "but really a very delightful one, and we are accumulating many happy and amusing memories. The chief thing that stands out, of course, is the love and admiration for M. and her books. When all's said and done, it really is pretty stirring, the way they feel about her. And the things the quiet, unknown people say to one about her books go to one's heart." ("We dined at a house last night," wrote Mrs. Ward herself, "where everybody had a card containing a quotation from my wretched works. Humphry bears up as well as can be expected!") But on one occasion, at least, she came in for a puff of unearned incense. At an afternoon tea, given in her honour by Mrs. Whitridge, an elderly lady was overheard saying in awe-struck tones to her neighbour, "To think that I should have lived to shake hands with the authoress of _Little Lord Fauntleroy_!"
Dinners, lunches, receptions, operas and theatres succeeded one another in a dazzling rush, but New York knew quite well what was the main purpose of Mrs. Ward's visit, and it was fitting that the principal function arranged in her honour should have been a dinner given her at the Waldorf-Astoria by the Playground Association of America. There were 900 persons present, and when Mrs. Ward stood up to address them every man and woman in the room spontaneously rose to their feet to greet her. It was a moment that would have touched a far harder heart than hers.
"It was very moving--it really was," she wrote to J. P. T.--"because of the evident kindness and sincerity of it. I got through fairly well, though I don't feel that I have yet arrived at the right speech for a public dinner.... I was most interested by the speech of the City Superintendent of Education, Dr. Maxwell, an _admirable_ man, who declared hotly in my favour as to Play Centres, and has, since the dinner, given directions for the first _afternoon_ Play Centre for school children in New York. Isn't that jolly!
"Well, and since, we have been lunching, dining and seeing sights with the same vigour. I have been to schools and manual training centres with Dr. Maxwell, and we went through the Natural History Museum with its Director,[28] who gave us a _thrilling_ time.... One afternoon I went down to a College Settlement and spoke to a large gathering of workers about English ways. The day before yesterday I spoke to about 900 boys and girls and their teachers, in one of their _magnificent_ public schools. Dr. Maxwell took me, and asked me to speak of Grandpapa. A great many of the elder boys had read _Tom Brown_ and knew all about the 'Doctor'! I enjoyed it greatly, and as to their saluting of the flag--these masses of alien children--one may say what one will, but it is one of the most thrilling things in the world, and we, as a nation, are the poorer for not having it."
Mrs. Ward had accepted four or five engagements to lecture while she was in America, in aid of her London Play Centres, and accumulated, to her intense satisfaction, the handsome sum of £250 from this source during her tour. She gave her audiences of her best--the paper already mentioned, on "The Peasant in Literature," which revealed her literary craft in its most finished form, and although she was so much the rage at the time that her admirers were not disposed to be critical, she was yet genuinely gratified by the pleasure which this paper gave, especially in so cultivated a centre as Philadelphia. Here Mrs. Ward and her daughter were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Earle Coates, and then of the Bertram Lippincotts, in their charming house outside the town. Independence Hall gave them the proper thrill of sympathy with a "nation struggling to be free," while Mrs. Ward was delighted by the general old-world look of many of the streets, no less than by the stately river, on which, as she found to her astonishment, "the boat-crews practise for Henley." During their short stay with Mrs. Coates, Mrs. Ward made friends with Dr. Weir Mitchell, novelist and physician, and with Miss Agnes Repplier, for whom she felt an instant attraction, while Dorothy sat next to a Mr. Walter Smith, and talked to him innocently about certain Modernist lectures that had been given at the Settlement in London, discovering afterwards, to her dismay, that he was a strong Catholic, and freely called in Philadelphia "Helbeck of Bannisdale." "I noticed it fell a little flat!"
From Philadelphia they moved on to Washington, to stay with their old friends the Bryces, at the hospitable British Embassy. An invitation from the President (Mr. Roosevelt) to dine with him at the White House, had already reached them. Mrs. Ward described her impressions in a long letter to her son:
"WASHINGTON, "_April 13, 1908_.
"Everybody here has been kindness itself, and we feel that we ought to spend the rest of our days in trying to be nice to Americans in London! First, as you know, we went to the Bryces. They asked a great many people to meet us, but what I remember best is a quiet hour with Mr. and Mrs. Root, who were smuggled into an inner drawing-room away from the crowd, where one could listen to him in peace, and above all, look at him! He is, I think, the most attractive of all the Americans we have seen. He has been Secretary of State now for some years, and is evidently, like Edward Grey, absorbed in his own special work and not much concerned with current politics. His subordinates speak of him with enthusiasm, and he has a detached, humane, meditative face, with a slight flicker of humour perpetually playing over it--as different as possible from the hawk-like concentration of the New Yorkers. We have seen most of the Cabinet and high officials, and I have particularly liked Mr. Garfield, Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Metcalf, Secretary for the Navy, and Mr. Bacon, Assistant Secretary of State. Saturday's dinner at the White House was delightful, only surpassed by the little round-table dinner of eight last night at Mr. Henry Adams's, where the President took me in and talk was fast and free--altogether a memorable evening. At the White House I did not sit near the President, everything being regulated by a comparatively strict etiquette and precedence--but after dinner he sent word that I was to sit by him in the ballroom, at the little concert which followed, and when the music was over, he and I plunged into all sorts of things, ending up with religion and theology! Last night he talked politics, socialism, divorce, large and small families, the Kaiser, Randolph Churchill, the future of wealth in this country (he wants to _lop_ all the biggest fortunes by some form of taxation--pollard them like trees)--the future of marriage and a few other trifles of the same kind. He is, of course, an egotist, but an extraordinarily well-meaning and able one, with all the virtues and failings of his natural character and original bringing-up, exaggerated now and produced on what one might almost call a colossal scale, which strikes the American imagination. He honestly doesn't want a third term, and has set his mind on Taft for his successor, but it must be hard for such a man to step down from such a post into the ordinary opportunities of life. However, as he says, and apparently sincerely, 'we mustn't break the Washington tradition.'
"To-day we are going out to Mount Vernon, and to-night there is another dinner-party. Washington is a most beautiful place--the Capitol a really glorious building that any nation might be proud of, and the shining White House, with its graceful pillared front, among its flowering trees and shrubs, makes me think with shame of that black abortion, Buckingham Palace!"
It was a special pleasure to them also to see something of M. Jusserand, the French Ambassador, and his charming wife, and to renew a friendship which had endured since their early days in London. But above all it was the leaders of American politics that impressed Mrs. Ward.
"Root, Garfield, Taft," she wrote to Miss Arnold, of Fox How, "these and several others of the leading men attracted and impressed me greatly--beyond what I had expected. Indeed, I think one of the main impressions of this visit has been the inaccuracy of our common idea in England that American women of the upper class are as a rule superior to the men. It may be true among a certain section of the rich business class, but amongst the professional, educated and political people it is not true at all."
Boston, of course, claimed Mrs. Ward on her way to Canada, and adopted her in whole-hearted fashion. She was by this time a little tired of "receptions" of five and six hundred persons, all passing before her as in a dream and shaking a hand which was never free from writer's cramp. "But the touching thing is the distance people come--one lame lady came 300 miles!--it made me feel badly--and all the Unitarian ministers for thirty miles round have been asked and are said to be coming on Tuesday next!" When they came, Mrs. Ward enjoyed the occasion particularly, and wrote home that she had "had to make a speech, but got through better than usual by dint of talking of T. H. Green." An elderly bookseller among them, who had written to her regularly about each of her books for the last twenty years, now met her and spoke with her at last; he went away contented. But the real delights of her stay at Boston were her visits to Harvard and Radcliffe, and her intercourse with the Nortons at Shady Hill, and with Mrs. Fields and Miss Jewett at the former's house. Here she met the fine old veteran, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, author of the "Battle-Hymn of the Republic," who had lately brought out her memoirs. Mrs. Ward had been somewhat wickedly amused by certain passages in the latter: "Imagine Mrs. Ward Howe declaring in public that a poem of hers, which a critic had declared to be 'in pitiable hexameters' (English, of course), was not 'in hexameters at all--it was in pentameters of my own make--I never followed any special school or rule!' I have been gurgling over that in bed this morning." But when they met, Mrs. Ward capitulated. "By the way, I retract about Mrs. Howe. Her book is rather foolish, but she herself is an old dear--full of fun at ninety, and adored here. She lunched with Mrs. Fields to-day _en petit comité_, and was most amusing."
The New England country, which she saw on a motor-trip to Concord and Lexington, and again on a visit which she paid to Mr. and Mrs. Henry Holt at their beautiful house overlooking Lake Champlain, fascinated her, "with its miles and miles of young woods sprung up on the soil of the slain forests of the past--its pools and lakes, its hills and dales, its glorious Connecticut river, and its myriads of white, small wooden houses, all on a nice Georgian pattern, with shady verandahs, scattered fenceless over the open fields. There were no flowers to be seen--only the scarlet blossom of the maples in the woods."
Nor could she get away, in such an atmosphere, from the old, old problem of the separation.
"I have been reading Bancroft this morning, and shall read G. O. T. to-night. We _were_ fools!--but really, I rather agree with H. G. Wells that they make too much fuss about it! and with Mr. Bryce that it was a great pity, for _them_ and us, that the link was broken. So they needn't be so tremendously dithyrambic!"
It was, however, with a heart full of gratitude for the unnumbered kindnesses of her hosts that Mrs. Ward quitted American soil at the end of April and crossed over into Canada. Here her peregrinations were to be mainly under the auspices of Lord Grey, then Governor-General, and of Sir William van Horne, lord of the Canadian Pacific Railway, at whose house in Montreal she planned the details of her great journey to the West. These two revealed themselves to Mrs. Ward in characteristic fashion while she was still the guest of Sir William, at Montreal, for the Governor-General, coming over from Ottawa for the great Horse Show, stopped during his progress round the arena at the Van Horne's box, spoke to Mrs. Ward with the greatest cordiality, and there and then insisted that she must go to see the great new Agricultural College at St. Anne's, near Montreal, on their way to Ottawa the next day.
"He declared that M. could not possibly leave Canada without having seen it," wrote D. M. W., "and then said, with a laugh and a wave of his hand to Sir William, 'Ask him--_he'll_ arrange it all for you!'--and passed on, leaving M. and me somewhat scared, for we had not wanted to bother Sir William about _this_ journey at any rate! I could see that even he, who is never perturbed, was a little taken aback, but he said, in his quiet way, 'It can certainly be arranged,' and it _has_ been!" Then, _en revanche_, the Governor-General, "being on the loose, so to speak, in Montreal, with only one and the least vigilant of his A.D.C.'s," came unexpectedly to the big evening party that the Van Hornes were giving that night--"because, as he said, 'I like Van Horne, and I wanted to see Mrs. Ward!'" But, once back in Ottawa, "his family and all his other A.D.C.'s, are scolding him and wringing their hands, because he never ought to have done it! It creates a precedent and offends 500 people, while it pleases one. Such are the joys of his position."
When the "command" journey to the Agricultural College had been safely preformed, the students duly presented Mrs. Ward with a bouquet and sang "For _she's_ a jolly good fellow." "The G.G. was delighted," wrote Dorothy, "and led her out to smile her thanks, but there was fortunately no time for her to be called upon for five minutes of uplift, as His Excellency was, the last time he went there! That has now become a household word in Government House." Mrs. Ward must, I think, almost have been in at the birth of that hard-worked phrase.
Mr. Ward had been obliged to return to England for his work on _The Times_, so that his wife's Canadian experiences are recorded in letters to him:
"GOVERNMENT HOUSE, OTTAWA, "_May 14, 1908_.
..."Well, we have had a _very_ pleasant time. Lord Grey is never tired of doing kind things, and she also is charming. He has asked everybody to meet us who he thought would be interesting--Government and Opposition--Civil servants, journalists, clergy--but no priests! The fact is that there is a certain amount of anxiety about these plotting Catholics, and always will be. They accept the _status quo_ because they must, and because it would not help them as Catholics to fall into the hands of either the United States or of France. But there is plenty of almost seditious feeling about. And the ingratitude of it! I sat last night at the Lauriers' between Sir Wilfrid and M. Lemieux, Minister of Labour--both Catholics. Sir Wilfrid said to me, 'I am a Roman Catholic, but all my life I have fought the priests--_le cléricalisme, voilà l'ennemi_. Their power in Quebec is unbounded, but Modernism will come some day--with a rush--in a violent reaction.' On my left M. Lemieux described his meeting last week in Quebec with fourteen bishops, one of whom said to him--'_Le Canada, c'est le Paradis terrestre du Catholicisme!_' But as for the educated Catholics, M. Lemieux went on, 'We are all Modernists!' Both of them denounced the Pope and spoke with longing of Leo XIII."
* * * * *
"TORONTO, "_May 18_.
"Such nice people at Ottawa, and such interesting people. Also the guiding ideas and influences are _English,_ the first time I have felt it. The position of the Parliament buildings is splendid, and some day it will be a great city. The Archives represent the birth and future of Canadian history, and a Canadian patriotism--four years' work, and already it is influencing ideas and politics, among a young people who did not know they _had_ a history.[29]
"Toronto is less exciting, though pleasant. We lunched yesterday with Colonel George Denison, a great Loyalist and Preferentialist, much in with Chamberlain. He cut Goldwin Smith twenty years ago!--so it was piquant to go on from him to the Grange. The Grange is an English eighteenth-century house, or early nineteenth--as one might find in the suburbs of Manchester in a large English garden--the remains of 1,000 acres--with beautiful trees. An old man got up to meet me, old, but unmistakably Goldwin Smith, though the black hair is grizzled--not white--and the face emaciated. But he holds himself erect, and his mind is as clear, and his eye as living, as ever--at 85. He still harps on his favourite theme--that Canada must ultimately drop into the mouth of the United States and should do so--and poured scorn on English Tariff Reformers and English Home Rulers together. Naturally he is not very popular here!"
From Toronto Mrs. Ward made a flying trip to Buffalo and Niagara, where she was shown the glories of the Falls by General Greene--a descendant of the gallant Nathaniel Greene, hero of the S. Carolina campaign of 1781. Then, returning to Toronto, she found Sir William van Horne and the promised private car awaiting her--not to mention the "Royal Suite" at the Queen's Hotel, offered her by the management "free, gratis, for nothing! Oh dear, how soon will the mighty fall!--after the 12th of June next" (the date of her departure for home). But, for the present, "The car is yours," said Sir William, "the railway is yours--do exactly as you like and give your orders."
They parted from their kind Providence on Saturday, May 23, but within forty-eight hours the railway was providing them with quite an unforeseen sensation. Six hours this side of Winnipeg (where all kinds of engagements awaited her), part of the track that ran across a marsh collapsed, with the result that Mrs. Ward's and many other trains were held up for nearly twenty hours.
"VERMILION STATION, C.P.R., "_May 25, 1908_.
"Here we are, stranded at a tiny wayside station of the C.P.R., and have been waiting _sixteen hours_, while eight miles ahead they are repairing a bridge which has collapsed in a marsh owing to heavy rain. Three trains are before us and about five behind. A complete block on the great line. We arrived here at six this morning, and here it is 9.50 p.m.
"It has been a strange day--mostly very wet, with nothing to look at but some scrubby woods and a bit of cutting. We captured a Manitoba Senator and made him come and talk to us, but it did not help us very far. Snell, our wonderful cook and factotum, being in want of milk, went out and milked a cow!--asking the irate owner, when the deed was done, how much he wanted. And various little incidents happened, but nothing very enlivening.
[_Later._]. "Here we are at the spot, a danger signal behind us, and the one in front just lowered. Another stop! our engine is detached and we see it vanishing to the rear. The track won't bear it. How are we going to get over!--Here comes the engine back, and the brakesman behind our car imagines we are to be pushed over, the engine itself not venturing.
"10.5. Safely over! The engine pushed us to the brink, and then, as it was taken off, a voice asked for Mrs. Ward. It was the Assistant Manager of the line, Mr. Jameson, who jumped on board in order to cross with us and explain to me everything that had happened. He had been working for hours and looked tired out. But we went out to the observation-platform, he and I and Dorothy, and the _trajet_ began--our train being attached to some light empty cars, and an engine in front that was pulling us over. I thought Mr. Jameson evidently nervous as we went slowly forward--we were the first train over!--but he showed us as well as the darkness allowed, the marshy place, the new bed made for the line (in the morning the rails were hanging in air and an engine and two cars went in!) and the black mud of the sink-hole pushed up into high banks--trees on the top of them--on either side by the pressure of the new filling put in--50,000 cubic yards of sand and gravel. On either side of the line were crowds of dark figures, Galician and Italian workmen, intently watching our progress. Altogether a dramatic and interesting scene! We were all glad, including, clearly, the assistant manager, when he said, 'Now we are over it'--but there was no real danger, even if the train had partially sunk, for it was only a causeway over a marsh and not a real bridge.
"Well, it is absurd to have only a day for Winnipeg, but this accident makes it inevitable. The journey has been all of it wonderful, and I am more thrilled by Canada than words can describe!"
After a breathless day in Winnipeg, very pleasantly spent, under the care of Mr. and Mrs. Sanford Evans, in endeavouring to overtake the engagements lost in the "sink-hole," Mrs. Ward and her daughter resumed their journey across the vast prairie, over the Rockies and the Selkirks, and down into Vancouver. On her return she thus summed up her impressions of it in a letter to "Aunt Fan":
"Everybody was kindness itself, everywhere, and the wonderful journey across Canada and back was something never to forget. To see how a great railway can make and has made a country, to watch all the stages of the prairie towns, from the first wooden huts upwards to towns like Calgary and Regina, and the booming prosperity of Winnipeg--to be able to linger a little in the glorious Rockies, to rush down the Fraser Cañon, which Papa used to talk to us about and show us pictures of when we were children--I thought of him with tears and longing in the middle of it--and then to find ourselves at the end beside the 'wide glimmering sea' of the blue Pacific--all this was wonderful, a real enrichment of mind and imagination. At least it ought to be!"
In Vancouver they were under the chaperonage of Mr. F. C. Wade, now Agent-General for British Columbia, and of Mr. Mackenzie King, the future Prime Minister, whom they had already met at Ottawa, but with whom Mrs. Ward had a far more intimate link than that, since about five years before he had come to live as a Resident at the Passmore Edwards Settlement, and had made great friends with us all. He now acted as guide, not only to the marvellous beauties of Vancouver, but also to the recesses of the Chinese quarter, where he had many friends, owing to the fact that he happened to be engaged in dealing out Government compensation for the anti-Chinese riots of the year before. Mrs. Ward was immensely interested in all the problems of Vancouver--racial, financial and political--being especially impressed by the danger of its "Americanization" through the buying up of its real estate by American capital. She stayed long enough to lecture to the Canadian Club of Vancouver in aid of Lord Grey's fund for the purchase of the Quebec battlefields as a national memorial to Wolfe, and then set her face definitely homewards. But she could not allow herself to hurry too swiftly through the Rockies, where the snow was beginning to melt and expeditions were becoming possible. From Field she drove to feast her eyes on the Emerald Lake; from Laggan she pushed on to Lake Louise.
To T. H. W.
"BANFF, "_June 4, 1908_.
"Since we left Vancouver we have had a delicious time, but yesterday was the cream! We started at 8.30 from the very nice Field Hotel, on a special train, just our car and an engine, and--the car being in front--were pushed up the famous Kicking Horse Pass, on a glorious morning. The Superintendent in charge of the Laggan division of the line came up with us and explained the construction of the new section of the line, which is to take the place of the present dangerous and costly track down the pass. At present there are no tunnels, nothing but a long hill, up and down which extraordinary precautions have to be taken. Now they are to have spiral tunnels, or rather one long one, on the St. Gotthard plan. One won't see so much, but it will be safer, and far less expensive to work.
"The beauty of the snow peaks, the lateral valleys, the leaping streams, the forests!--and the friendliness of everybody adds to the charm. At Laggan we left the car and drove up--three miles--to Lake Louise--a perfectly beautiful place, which I tried to sketch--alack! It is, I think, more wonderful than any place of the kind in Switzerland, because of the colour of the rocks, which hold the gorgeous glacier and snow-peak. We spent the day there, looked after by a charming Scotchwoman--Miss Mollison--one of three sisters who run the C.P.R. hotels about here. About 6.30 we drove down again to find Snell and George delighted to welcome us back to the car. Then we came on to Banff, sitting on the platform of the car, and looking back at a beautiful sunset among the mountains. We shall part from the Rockies with a pang! Emerald Lake and Lake Louise would certainly conjure one back again, if they were any less than 6,000 miles from home! As it is, I suppose one's physical eyes will never see them again, but it is something to have beheld them once."
At Field Mrs. Ward had met the eminent explorer, Mrs. Schäffer, who was busy collecting guides and ponies for another expedition into the unknown tracts of the Rockies. She and Mrs. Ward made great friends, and some months later the latter was delighted to receive from her photographs of a wonderful lake which she had discovered, and to which she gave the name of Lake Maligne. Mrs. Ward could not resist weaving the virgin lake into the last chapter of her story, _Canadian Born_.
When at length the long journey was over and the faithful car landed her safely at Montreal, Mrs. Ward still had one pleasant duty to perform--the handing over of her earnings at Vancouver to Lord Grey, as a thank-offering for all the good things that had fallen to her lot since she had parted from him three weeks before. His reply delighted her, especially since she had just ended her Canadian experiences by an expedition up the Heights of Abraham, escorted by Col. Wood, the Canadian military historian.
_June 12, 1908._
MY DEAR MRS. WARD,--
You are _most_ kind! I have received no contribution to the Quebec Battlefields that has given me greater pleasure. I value it partly because it is yours and partly Vancouver's. Every cent that filters through from B.C. and the Prairie Provinces is a joy to me. The Canadian National Problem, the Imperial Problem, is how to link B.C. and the Western Provinces more closely with the Maritime Eastern Provinces--how to improve the transportation service, East and West, and cause the great highroad of human traffic from Europe to Asia to go via Montreal and Vancouver--that is the problem, and that is why I rejoice over every Western Piccanin who subscribes his few cents to Quebec. A feeling for Quebec will remain engraven on his heart for all time.
...I do not think the character of the debt owing in £ s. d. by the British race to the Wolfe family has ever been put before the public. Wolfe's father never could obtain the repayment from the British Government of £16,000 advanced by him during the Marlborough campaigns. The different Departments did the pass trick with him--the first rule of departmental administration--played battledore and shuttlecock with him until he desisted from pressing his claim for fear of being considered a Dun!
Then James Wolfe, our Quebec hero, never received the C. in C. allowance of £10 per day. His mother claimed £3,000 from the British Treasury as the amount owing to her son on September 13, 1759--but the poor hard-up departments played battledore and shuttlecock with her, and she, like her Wolfe relations, was too great a gentleman to press for payment. When, however, she found that James had left £10,000 to be distributed according to the instructions of his will, and that his assets only realized £8,000, the dear good lady did try and squeeze £2,000 out of the £19,000 owing by the Government to the family, in order that she might carry out her boy's wishes--but it was a hopeless, useless effort, and the splendid dame heaped all the coals of fire she could on the heads of the stony-hearted, perhaps because stony-broke, British People, by leaving the whole of her fortune to the widows and orphans of the officers who fell under Wolfe's command at Quebec. Now I maintain that the whole Empire has a moral responsibility in this matter, for have not the most energetic of the descendants of the British People of 1759 emigrated into Greater Britain? The story of how we recompensed Wolfe for giving us an immortal example and half a continent has not, so far as I know, been told.
Delighted to think you are going back to England a red-hot Canadian missionary. Send out all the young people whom you know and believe in, and who are receptive and sympathetic and appreciative, and have sufficient imagination not to be stupidly critical. Send them all over here. We shall be delighted to see them, although I fear they cannot all get Private Cars!
If Mrs. Ward did not, on her return to England, set up altogether as an amateur emigration agent, she yet paid her debt to Canada by the delightful enthusiasm for the young country with all its boundless possibilities, combined with a shrewd appreciation of its difficulties, which she threw into her novel, _Canadian Born_. Neither Canada nor Lord Grey had any reason to complain of the devotion, both of heart and of head, which she gave to the cause. To her American friends, on the other hand, her impassioned attack in _Daphne_, or _Marriage à la Mode_, on the divorce laws of the United States, came as something of a surprise, for they had not realized, while she was with them, how deep an impression these things had made on her, or how much her artistic imagination had been captured by their tragic or sordid possibilities. _Daphne_ is, indeed, little but a powerful tract, written under great stress of feeling, but the Americans missed in it the happy touch that had created Lucy Foster, and regretted that Mrs. Ward should have felt bound to portray for their benefit so wholly disagreeable a young person as Daphne Floyd. Time has, however, brought its revenges in the strong movement that has now arisen in the United States for the unification of the widely-differing divorce laws of the various States under one Federal Law.
Yet there were deeper forces at work in the writing of _Daphne_ than any which Mrs. Ward's brief visit to America alone could have accounted for. The growing disturbance which the Suffrage question was making in the currents of English life had thrown Mrs. Ward's thoughts into these channels for longer than her critics knew. _Daphne_ was one result of this fermentation; another was what we should now call "direct action." Within a month after her return from America Mrs. Ward wrote to Miss Arnold of Fox How (herself an undaunted Suffragist at the age of seventy-five): "You will see from the papers what it is that has been taking all my time--the foundation of an Anti-Suffrage League."