CHAPTER XV
LAST YEARS: 1917-1920
αὑτἁρ ἑμεὑ σχεδὁθεν μὁρος Ισταται ὡς ὁφελὁν γε χερἱ φἱλην τἡν σἡν χεἱρα λαβοὑσα θανεἱν.[35] DAMAGETUS.
Those who visited Mrs. Ward at Stocks during the later years of the War were wont to fasten upon any younger members of the family who happened to be there, to declare that Mrs. Ward was working herself to death and to plead that something must be done to stop her. And even as they said it they knew that their words were vain, for besides the perennial need to make a living, was not her country at war and were not the young men dying every day? Mrs. Ward was not of the temperament that forgot such things; hence her desire to throw her very best work into her "War books"--which owing to their low price and the special terms on which she allowed the Government to use them could never bring her anything like the same return as her novels.[36] She regarded them therefore almost as an extra on her ordinary work, so that the pressure on her time was increased rather than diminished as the War years went on and her own age advanced. And the last of the series, _Fields of Victory_, was to make on her time and strength the greatest demands of all.
But the lighter side of her War labours was the intense and meticulous interest she took in the "War economies" devised by herself and Dorothy at Stocks. How they schemed and planned about the cutting of timber, the growing of potatoes, the making of jam and the sharing of the garden fruit with the village! Labour in the garden was reduced to a minimum, so that all the family must take their turn at planting out violas and verbenas, if the poor things were to be saved for use at all, while Mr. Wilkin, the well-beloved butler who had been with us for twenty years, mowed the lawn and split wood and performed many other unorthodox tasks until he too was called up, at 47, in the summer of 1918. Mrs. Ward could not plant verbenas, but she armed herself with a spud and might often be seen of an afternoon valiantly attacking the weeds in the rose-beds and paths. The links between her and the little estate seemed to grow ever stronger as she came to depend more and more directly on the produce of the soil, and when, in 1918, she established a cow on what had once been the cricket-ground her joy and pride in the productiveness of her new creature were a delight to all beholders. Her daughter Dorothy was at this time deep in the organisation of "Women on the Land"--a movement of considerable importance in Hertfordshire--, so that Mrs. Ward could study it at first hand and had many an absorbing conversation with one of the "gang-leaders," Mrs. Bentwich, who made Stocks her headquarters for a time and delighted her hostess by her many-sided ability and by the picturesqueness of her attire. All this gave her many ideas for her four War novels--_Missing_, _The War and Elizabeth_, _Cousin Philip_ and _Harvest_, the last of which was to close the long list of her books. _Missing_ had a considerable popular success, for it sold 21,000 in America in the first two months of its appearance, but _Elizabeth_ and _Cousin Philip_ were, I think, felt to be the most interesting of this series, owing to the admirable studies they presented of the type of young woman thrown up and moulded by the War. Mrs. Ward was by no means ashamed of her hard work as a novelist in these days.
"I have just finished a book," she wrote to her nephew, Julian Huxley, in April 1918, "and am beginning another--as usual! But I should be lost without it, and it is what my betters, George Sand and Balzac--and Scott!--did before me. Literature is an honourable profession, and I am no ways ashamed of it--as a profession. And indeed I feel that novels have a special function nowadays--when one sees the great demand for them as a _délassement_ and refreshment. I wish with all my heart I could write a good detective--or mystery--novel! That is what the wounded and the tired love."
But, side by side with this immense output of writing, Mrs. Ward never allowed the springs of thought to grow dry for lack of reading. The one advantage that she gained from her short nights--for her hours of sleep were rarely more and often less than six--was that the long hours of wakefulness in the early morning gave her time for the reading of many books and of poetry. "There is nothing like it for keeping the streams of life fresh," she wrote to one of us. "At least that is my feeling now that I am beginning to grow old. All things pass, but thought and feeling! And to grow cold to poetry is to let that which is most vital in our being decay. I seem to trace in the men and women I see whether they keep their ideals and whether they still turn to imagination, whether through art or poetry. And I believe for thousands it is the difference between being happy and unhappy--between being 'dans l'ordre' or at variance with the world."
In addition to her novels and her two first War books, Mrs. Ward had been writing at intervals, ever since the summer of 1916, her _Recollections_, and brought them out at length in October 1918. They covered the period of her life down to the year 1900, giving a picture of things seen and heard, of friends loved and enjoyed and lost, of long-past Oxford days, of London, Rome, and the Alban Hills, such as only a woman of her manifold experience could offer to a tired generation. The reception given to the book touched her profoundly, for it showed her, beyond the possibility of doubt, that her long life's work had earned her not only the admiration but the love of her fellow-countrymen. As an old friend, Mrs. Halsey, wrote to Dorothy, "I remember Mlle Souvestre saying more than thirty years ago, 'Ah! the books I admire--but it's the woman Mary Ward that I love.'" "Mrs. Ward's Recollections are of priceless value," said the _Contemporary Review_; "all the famous names are here, but that is nothing; the people themselves are here moving about and veritably alive--great men and women of whom posterity will long to hear." And another reviewer dwelt on a different aspect: "She has lived to see the first social studies and efforts of her Oxford days grow into the Passmore Edwards Settlement, the Schools for the Physically Defective, the Play Centres and a great deal else in which she has reaped a harvest for the England of to-day or sown a seed for the England of to-morrow." The reviews generally ended on a note of hope for a second volume, to complete the story--, but the story remained, and will always remain, uncompleted.
Perhaps part of the affectionate admiration with which her _Recollections_ were received was due to the wider knowledge which the public at last possessed of all that she had been able to accomplish, through twenty years of toil, for the children of England. For it so happened that during the two years that preceded the appearance of her _Recollections_--years of war and difficulty of all kinds as they were--Mrs. Ward had seen her labours for the play-time of London's children crowned by that State recognition towards which she had always worked, and her hopes for the extension of Special Schools for crippled children to the provinces as well as London very largely realised. After an immensely up-hill struggle to maintain the funds for her Play Centres during the first two years of the War, it was at length the War conditions themselves that convinced the authorities that all was not well with the child-population of our big cities and that such efforts as Mrs. Ward's must be encouraged and assisted in the fullest possible way. "Juvenile crime"--that comprehensive phrase that covers everything from pilfering at street corners to the formation of "Black-Hand-Gangs" under some adventurous spirit of ten or eleven, gloriously devoted to terrorising the back streets after dark--was the portent that convinced Whitehall, that set the Home Office complaining to the Board of Education and the Board of Education consulting Mrs. Ward. The result of these consultations, carried on in the winter of 1916-17 between Mrs. Ward, Sir Amherst Selby-Bigge (the Permanent Secretary), Mr. Pease the outgoing and Mr. Fisher the incoming President of the Board, was that on Jan. 26, 1917, an official announcement appeared in _The Times_ to the effect that "Grants from the Board of Education will shortly be available in aid of the cost of carrying on Play Centres.... Hitherto Centres have been established only by voluntary bodies, mostly in London, where the Local Education Authority has granted the free use of school buildings. It is hoped that the powers which education authorities already possess of establishing and aiding such centres will be more freely exercised in future."
To which _The Times_ added the following note:--"The announcement that the Treasury has approved the principle of play centres and will signify its approval in the usual manner, forms a fitting and characteristic climax to twenty years of voluntary effort on the part of Mrs. Humphry Ward and a devoted circle of workers."
There was general rejoicing among the higher officials of the Board, who had watched Mrs. Ward's work for so long, when the Treasury at length announced its consent to the Grant. Sir Amherst Selby-Bigge wrote to her in the following terms:
"Allow me to congratulate you most heartily on having induced the State to take under its wing and aid the enterprise of which you have been the pioneer and which you have carried on unaided for so many years with such admirable results.
"I do not think you are one of those who are nervous about State intervention or share the apprehension which is sometimes expressed that a free spirit of voluntary enterprise may be hampered or circumscribed by the existence of State aid. However this may be, I think you may feel sure that our grants and regulations will be administered in a sympathetic spirit and with full recognition that it is necessary to secure and retain the willing co-operation of people of all kinds who are anxious to devote their time and energy to public service. It is a source of great pleasure to me that I have been the humble instrument of furthering the enterprise of which you have been the guiding spirit."
As a matter of fact, the Board's regulations were largely drawn up by Mrs. Ward herself, and her relations with both officials and President continued close and cordial--nay, almost affectionate!--down to the last day of her life. Nor was the London County Council left long behindhand. The Treasury Grant amounted to 50 per cent. of the "approved expenditure" of any voluntary committee or Education Authority which carried on Play Centres according to the Board's regulations, so that it was not long before some fifty great towns all over England were opening Play Centres of their own, under the Act of 1907, and London was in danger of being left behind. In the summer of 1919, however, Mrs. Ward's edifice was crowned by the Council's deciding to take over another quarter of the cost of her Centres, so that she was left with only one quarter to raise in voluntary funds. The whole of the organisation, however--which had long been perfected by the contriving brain of Miss Churcher--was left in Mrs. Ward's hands, subject only to inspection by the Council, for the Education Committee knew better than to disturb the result of so many years of specialised care and study. The additional funds available made it possible for Mrs. Ward, in the last three years of her life, to add ten new Centres in London to the twenty-two that she was maintaining before the advent of the Grant. It may be imagined what joy this gave to her, and how, in the winter of 1917-18, in spite of the cruelly-darkened streets and the danger of air-raids, she managed to make her way to many of these new Centres, lingering there in complete content to watch her singing children. The last phase of the Play Centre movement, as far as Mrs. Ward was concerned, was the publication by her daughter, in February 1920, of a little book describing their origin and growth,[37] with a preface written by Mrs. Ward herself. This she sent to Mr. Fisher, and received from him, a month before her death, a letter which deserves to be quoted here as a fitting epitaph on her work. Mr. Fisher and she had recently visited Oxford together, to speak at the opening of the "Arlosh Hall" at Manchester College.
"Albert Dicey spoke to us, as you will remember," wrote Mr. Fisher, "of the abolition of religious tests in the Universities as belonging to that small category of reforms to which no discernible disadvantages attach and I am convinced that the same high and unusual compliment may be paid without a suspicion of extravagance to the Evening Play Centres. Here there are no drawbacks, nothing but positive and far-reaching good."
In the same way Mrs. Ward succeeded, in the spring of 1918, in persuading the House of Commons to add a clause to Mr. Fisher's great Education Bill, making it compulsory for Education Authorities throughout the country to "make arrangements" for the education of their physically defective children. She used for this purpose the machinery of the "Joint Parliamentary Advisory Council" which she had founded in 1913,[38] but the bulk of the work--involving as it did the sending out of circular letters to ninety-five Education Authorities, the sifting and printing of the replies and the forwarding of these to every Member of Parliament--was carried out from Stocks, causing a heavy strain--long remembered!--on the secretarial resources of the house. It may be noted too, that all this took place during those agonising weeks when the British Armies were being hurled back in France and Flanders, and when Mrs. Ward, of all people, realised only too clearly the peril we were in. But the task was accomplished and the clause added to the Bill, so that a new charter was thus provided for the 30,000 or so of crippled and invalid children who still remained throughout the country uneducated and uncared for.[39] A little later, the movement initiated by Sir Robert Jones and the Central Committee for the Care of Cripples, for converting some of the War Hospitals into Homes for the scientific treatment of crippled children received Mrs. Ward's warm support, her special contribution to the movement being a successful campaign for the provision of educational facilities for the children lying for many months within the hospital walls. The beautiful War-hospital at Calgarth on Lake Windermere (the Ethel Hedley Hospital) was converted to this use in the spring of 1920, and one of the last pleasures which Mrs. Ward enjoyed was her correspondence with the Governors of the hospital, who described to her their plan for the conversion and invoked her blessing upon it. Mrs. Ward was never able to visit Calgarth, but the love she bore to the fells and waters of the North which surrounded it have linked her memory very specially with this delightful place, where children who, even ten years before, would have been deemed hopeless cases, recover straightness and strength. Her connection with this enterprise made a gentle ending to her long labour for these waifs of our educational system.
* * * * *
Who that lived through the year 1918 will ever lose the memory of its gigantic vicissitudes? Mrs. Ward, with her actual knowledge of so much of the ground over which the battles of March and April raged, was certainly not among those who could shut their eyes to the national danger they involved. She tried to maintain her characteristic optimism throughout the blackest times, and was in the end justified. But I remember one afternoon at Grosvenor Place when a friend who thought that he was much "in the know" informed us confidentially that we were "out of Ypres--been out for the last two days, but they don't want to tell us," and hope sank very low. When the battle rolled up to the foot of her own Scherpenberg Hill she longed, I believe, to be there with a pike, but victory was ours that day and she felt a special lifting of the heart at the news. As the terrible pageant of the year unrolled itself, her heart went out to France in her losing struggle north of the Marne; to Italy in those anxious days of June, when after a first recoil she swept the Austrians permanently back over the Piave; to France again in the first great return towards Soissons and the Aisne. Was it the real turn of the tide? Hardly could we dare to believe it, but in the light of later events it became evident that the Italian stand on the Piave had indeed marked the turn for the whole Allied front. Mrs. Ward always thought of this with peculiar satisfaction, for she was kept in constant touch with the situation out there by her son-in-law, George Trevelyan, who was in command of a British Red Cross Unit on the Italian front, and the disaster of Caporetto had very sadly affected her. Now all was well once more and Mrs. Ward, who had been no fair-weather friend to Italy, rejoiced with all her heart. There was much talk during the summer of a possible visit of hers, that autumn, to the Italian front, but events were destined to move too fast, and Mrs. Ward never again beheld the Lombard Plain.
But when the incredible hope had at last become solid fact--when the British Armies had stormed the Hindenburg Line and how much else beside, when the Americans had won through the forest of the Argonne and the French had pressed on to their ancient frontier; when Stocks had been illuminated on Armistice Night and we had all settled down to speculation, more or less sober, on the remaking of the world, Mrs. Ward began to enquire from the authorities as to the possibility of a third and final journey to France. For she wished with almost passionate eagerness to write a third and final book on the last phase of "England's Effort." She was met once more with the greatest cordiality. Sir Douglas Haig expressed a desire to see her; General Horne promised to send her over the battlefield of Vimy; Lille, Lens and Cambrai were to reveal to her the tale of their four years of servitude. And, on their part, the French promised to convey her to Metz and Strasburg and to show her Verdun and Rheims on her return, while Paris was to be made easy for her by the hospitality of a delightful young couple, her cousins, Arnold Whitridge and his wife, who had the good fortune to possess a house there amid the rush and pressure of all the nations of the world.
So everything was planned and settled during the month of December 1918, but before she left England on her last mission Mrs. Ward was able to enjoy that strange Peace Christmas which, in spite of its superficial note of thanksgiving, seemed to ring for so many the final knell of joy. Just two months before, Mrs. Ward had lost, from the influenza scourge, yet another soldier-nephew, the youngest Selwyn boy, while sorrow had come to the house itself in the death at a training camp of her butler's only son--a lad of 17 who had been the playmate of her grandchildren on many a golden afternoon in the days gone by. But if the elders could not forget these things, the children at least could be made an excuse for rejoicing! And so her two grandchildren, Mary and Humphry, came once more to Stocks as they had come for every Christmas since they entered this world; they mounted the big bed as of old and played the egg-game with solemn attention to detail, and then on the last day of the year Stocks opened its doors to the children from far and near, coming in fancy dress to dance out the Year of Miracles. Mrs. Ward, who had that very morning finished the writing of a novel, moved among the groups with a face the pallor of which, though we did not know it, was already a premonition of the end. She drank in the beauty of the scene in deep draughts of refreshment. That little boy attired as feathered Mercury--that slender Rosalind with the glorious bush of hair--they caught at her heart! From certain fragments of talk that she let fall during the evening one gathered that the sight had meant more to her than a mere joyous spectacle. To these would be the new world: let the elders leave it them in faith. "Green earth forgets."
* * * * *
Mrs. Ward's third journey to France was of longer duration (it lasted over three weeks, Jan. 7-30) than either of the others, and save that the conditions of danger created by the actual fighting were eliminated it was of a still more arduous nature, while it afforded her even greater opportunities than the others had done of realising and summing up the proportionate achievements of the three great armies--French, American and British. For the object of this final pilgrimage was no less than to bring out, by a careful analysis of all the available facts, the overwhelming part played by the British Armies in France in the last year of the War, and so to do her part in silencing the extraordinary misconceptions that were still current, especially in America, as to the share that the British Armies had had in the final breaking of the German resistance. A Canadian girl working at an American Y.M.C.A. in France had written to her in the previous August, imploring her to bring _England's Effort_ up to date and to distribute it by the thousand among the American troops.
"I see hundreds of the finest remaining white men on earth every week," continued this witness. "They are wonderful military material and _very_ attractive and lovable boys, but it discourages all one's hopes for future unity and friendship between us all to realize, as I have done the last few months, that the majority of these men are entering the fight firmly believing that 'England has not done her share,' 'the colonials have done all the hard fighting'--'France has borne all,' etc. This from not one or two, but _hundreds_. The men I speak of come principally from Kansas, Illinois, Iowa--that wonderful Valley of Democracy that I sometimes compare in my mind (with its safety and isolation from the outside world) to those words of Kipling--'Ringed by your careful seas, long have you waked in quiet and long lain down at ease'--To these boys away from the sheltered country for the first time in _generations_, England is a foreign and a somewhat mistrusted country, and four or five days rush through it gives them neither opportunity nor a fair chance of judging the people--beyond the fact that war-time restrictions annoy them. It is a crying shame that the _only_ knowledge these splendid men have of England's share in the war is drawn from the belittling reports of pro-German papers. This attitude will mar all attempts at friendship between the troops, and, I believe, seriously jeopardise future friendship between the countries."
This first-hand evidence has recently received a very striking corroboration in Mr. Walter Page's Letters, and was amply borne out at the time by our Ministry of Information at home. Moreover, since August, Great Britain had indeed added another chapter to her previous record! So Mrs. Ward was received by Sir Douglas Haig, at his little château near Montreuil, on January 8, 1919, and there had a most illuminating talk with him, illustrated by his wonderful series of charts and maps; she went through the desolation of Ypres, and Lens, and Arras; she visited General Birdwood at Lille and General Horne at Valenciennes, renewing her friendship with the latter and making the aquaintance of his Chief of Staff, General Hastings Anderson, "a delightful, witty person, full of fun," who told her many things. She climbed the Vimy Ridge, "scrambling up over trenches and barbed wire and other _débris_ to the top," assisted by Dorothy and Lieut. Farrer, their guide; she crossed the Hindenburg Line in both directions, the second time at the Canal du Nord, where she got out in the January twilight to study the marvellous German trench system and the tracks of two tanks that had led the attack of the First Army on September 27; she saw the area of open fighting beyond Cambrai, and, returning by the Cambrai-Bapaume road to Amiens, passed through a heap of shapeless ruins "where only a signboard told us that this had once been Bapaume." From Amiens she passed on to Paris, and thence to Metz and Strasburg, realising something, at Metz, of the difficulty confronting the French Government in the large German population, and at Strasburg passing a wholly delightful evening with General Gouraud--hero both of Gallipoli and of Champagne. Armed with General Gouraud's maps and passes she then returned via Nancy to Verdun and spent an unforgettable afternoon, first in inspecting the subterranean labyrinth under the old fortress which had given sleep to so many weary soldiers during the siege, and then in motoring slowly through the battlefield itself. It may be imagined how such names as Vaux, Douaumont, the Mort Homme, the Mont des Corbeils and the rest made her heart leap, how they stirred the vivid historic imagination in her which always enabled her to visualise, beyond her fellows, the actual movement of events and of the men who played their part in them. The sight of Verdun certainly affected her more deeply than anything, I think, save the Salient with its hundred thousand British graves. Then, sleeping at Châlons, she moved on to Rheims, arriving in the _Place_ before what had once been the Cathedral in time to see the Prime Minister of England--a Sunday visitor from the Conference--standing before the battered façade in animated talk with Cardinal Luçon. Mrs. Ward stood aside to let them pass, watching the retreating figure of Mr. Lloyd George "with what thoughts." _This_ was Rheims; what remedy for it would the Conference find?
Nor did Mrs. Ward neglect the American battle-fields, for on her way to Verdun she had passed through the St. Mihiel salient and studied the ground there; she had seen the Forêt de l'Argonne in the winter dusk after leaving Verdun, and now on her way to Paris she spent a cheerful hour at Château Thierry, mingling with the American boys on the scene of their first and perhaps most memorable triumph. For actually to have helped by hard fighting, man to man, to keep the Boche from Paris, that was something for which to have crossed the Atlantic! St. Mihiel and the Argonne were all part of the great plan, but this, this was history! So at least Mrs. Ward felt as she crossed the sacred ground from Dormans to Château Thierry where the Germans had made their formidable push for Montmirail and Paris, and where an American regiment of marines had said them nay.
After her long pilgrimage Mrs. Ward spent a week in Paris, much absorbed in the pursuit of accurate information for the book that she had still to write. But there was also time for the seeing of many of those famous figures who, with the best intentions, filled the French stage for half a year and, at the end, gave us the world in which, _tant bien que mal_, we live. She went to consult with our ambassador, Lord Derby, on certain aspects of her work; she revived her old friendship with M. Jusserand; she saw General Pershing and Mr. Hoover, and, on the very day when the League of Nations resolution had been passed, President Wilson himself. Of this she has left a lively account in the first chapter of _Fields of Victory_.
Mrs. Ward should, by all the rules, have returned straight home from Paris, for she had already begun to suffer from bronchial catarrh and the weather had turned colder. But she was bent on seeing certain British officers at Amiens who had prepared some special information for her and therefore broke her journey there and also at the little "Visitors' Château" at Agincourt. Here, struggling against the intense cold and her own increasing illness, she exhausted herself in long conversations, though all that she heard was of deep interest to her task. But she was obliged to give up a visit to the battle-field of August 8 which her hosts had planned for her, and to return instead, while she still might, to England. When at last she reached home she was pronounced to have tonsilitis and to be within an inch of bronchitis too, and was kept in bed for many days. But it was many weeks before the bronchial catarrh left her, nor did she ever, during this last year of her life, regain the level of health at which she had started for France in the first week of the year. Yet none the less must her articles be written, for time pressed if she was to catch the right moment for the book's appearance. She was ably and generously helped by various officers, especially by General Sir John Davidson, who brought with him to Grosvenor Place one day a reduced-scale version of the great chart at which she had gazed fascinated at Montreuil, and which she afterwards obtained leave to reproduce in her book. "It was amusing," wrote Dorothy that night, "to see Mother and Lady Selborne and Sir John Davidson all on the floor, poring over his wonderful chart of the War."
But in spite of the willingness to help of the authorities, the labour of studying and digesting the mass of material placed at her disposal--stiff and intractable stuff as it was--and of forming from it a harmonious and artistic whole was something far harder than she had expected. It required real historical method, and carried her back in memory to the days of the West Goths and the _Dictionary of Christian Biography_. But she would not be beaten, either by the difficulty of the task or by the necessity of getting it done within a certain time. One day in April, just after she had returned from Grosvenor Place to Stocks, it became necessary to send one of her articles, type-written, up to London in time to catch the Foreign Office bag for New York; the necessary train left Tring Station at 12.37. Mrs. Ward finished writing the article at 12.22; Miss Churcher, who had followed page by page with the type-writer, finished the last page at 12.30; Dorothy flew to the station with it and caught the train.
Besides the initial difficulty of the work, however, the necessity of submitting what she had written to two or three different authorities caused inevitable delays, while a printers' strike in Glasgow at the critical moment again deferred the book's publication. When, therefore, _Fields of Victory_ at length appeared, the psychological moment had passed by, the world was far more concerned with the future than with the past, and only a moderate number of the book were sold. Mrs. Ward was of course somewhat disappointed, but there was much consolation to be had in the note of astonishment, combined with admiration, which the book called forth among those for whose opinion she really cared, whether in England, France or America. This feeling was summed up in a letter written by General Hastings Anderson--then holding a high appointment on the Staff of the Army--to Miss Ward, after her mother's death.
"The book will be a very prized memento, not only of a gifted writer who did so much to bring home to the ignorant the whole significance of our effort in the war; but also of a great Englishwoman, and of the happy breaks in our work marked by her visits to the First Army in France.
"What strikes me most in your mother's book is her marvellous insight into the way of thinking of the soldiers--I mean those who knew most of what was really happening--who were actually engaged in the great struggle. One would say the book was written by one who had played a prominent part in the War in France, and with knowledge of the thoughts of the high directing staffs. This is no compliment; it can only come from the trained expression of a very deep sympathy, and complete understanding of the thoughts and views which were expressed to her by those high in command.
"I can well understand what a strain such intense concentration of thought must have meant, when combined with the fatigues of travel over great distances on the French roads, and the regrets and delays in publication. But the completed book and its predecessors are a very precious legacy, especially to those of us who saw the whole long struggle in France."
Mrs. Ward's health improved to a certain extent during the summer of this year (1919), so that she was able to enjoy on Peace Day (July 19) the great procession of Victory, watching it from the enclosure outside Buckingham Palace. "Foch saluting was a sight not to be forgotten," she wrote. "A paladin on horseback, saluting with a certain melancholy dignity--a figure of romance." But she was mainly at Stocks during all this summer, basking in the golden weather of that year, delighting in a few Sunday gatherings of friends and in the weekly visits of her grandchildren, who were now domiciled at Berkhamsted, five miles away, and whom nothing could keep away, on Sundays, from Stocks, with its tennis-court, its strawberries--and "Gunny"!
..."I shall always think of her particularly," wrote Mrs. Robert Crawshay afterwards, "sitting in her garden that last beautiful summer at Stocks, with her wonderful expression of wisdom and the kindness that prevented anyone feeling rebuked by her being on a much higher level than themselves--her interest so generously given, her pain never mentioned, her eyes lighting up with love as the children came across the lawn, an atmosphere of beauty and peace all around her."
Much talk was heard on the lawn, as the summer passed on, about the peace terms and the prospects of any recovery in Europe, and it is recorded that although Mrs. Ward approved on the whole of the terms she thought it the height of unwisdom to have allowed the Germans no voice in discussing them before the signature. In Russia her heart was passionately with the various rebels who arose to dispute the tyranny of the Soviets, and as each hope faded she felt the horrors of that tragic land more acutely. But most of all did she feel the tragedy of the children of Austria and Central Europe, so that one of her last speeches was devoted to pleading, at Berkhamsted, the cause of the Save the Children Fund.[40] It was noticed that day how white and frail was her look, but all the more for that did her appeal find its way to the hearts of her audience. The children of Germany must be fed as well as the rest, she said; "we have no war with children," and she recalled the lovely lines of Blake which describe the angels moving through the night:
"If they see any weeping That should have been sleeping They pour sleep on their head And sit down by their bed."
"There are hundreds of thousands of children at this moment who on these beautiful October nights 'are weeping that should have been sleeping'--It is for this country, it is for you and me, to play the part of angels of succour to these poor little ones wherever they may be, to feed and clothe and cherish them in the name of our common humanity and our common faith."
In the meantime the unrelenting pressure of war taxation on her own income had made it imperative, at last, to give up the house in Grosvenor Place which had been her London home for nearly thirty years. Mrs. Ward slept there for the last time on August 29, 1919, and wrote of her parting from it the next day to J. P. T.
"The poor old house begins to look dismantled. I had many thoughts about it that last night there--of the people who had dined and talked in it--Henry James, and Burne-Jones, Stopford Brooke, Martineau, Watts, Tadema, Lowell, Roosevelt, Page, Northbrook, Goschen and so many more--of one's own good times, and follies and mistakes--everything passing at last into the words, 'He knoweth whereof we are made, He remembereth that we are but dust.'"
Then, in September, Mrs. Ward went for the last time to the Lake District, motoring there via Stratford-on-Avon in her "little car"--a cheap post-war purchase which spent most of its time in the repairing shop, but which, for this occasion, put forth a supreme effort and actually brought Mrs. Ward safely home through the midst of the railway strike. She made her headquarters at Grasmere, for which she had developed a special affection during two recent summers when she had taken "Kelbarrow" and had watched from its lawn every passing mood of the little lake. She visited Fox How and "Aunt Fan" almost every day; she renewed her friendship with Canon and Mrs. Rawnsley and her life-long intimacy with Gordon Wordsworth. And, on the Langdale side of the fell, she visited a little grave to which her heart always yearned afresh.
* * * * *
Mrs. Ward was deeply interested, during these last months of her life, in the attempts made by the Liberal element in the Church to modify or retard the "Enabling Bill," or as it is now known, the Church Assembly Act. All her fighting spirit was aroused by the claim made by the Bill to lay down tests and distinctions between member and member of the National Church, especially by the imposition of the test of Holy Communion on all candidates for the new Church bodies. She feared, in the words of the Bishop of Carlisle (who saw eye to eye with her in this matter) "that the declaration required as a condition of membership of the Church of England will go a long way towards de-nationalising the Church and reducing it to the status of a sect." She organised, early in December, a letter to _The Times_ which was signed by all the most prominent names in Liberal Churchmanship, protesting against the scanty opportunities for debate which, owing to a ruling of the Speaker's, the measure was to have in the House of Commons. But, when it became law _quand même_, she turned her thoughts and her remaining energies to a constructive movement which might rally the scattered Liberal forces of the Church and assert for them the right, after due notice given of their opinions, to participate without dishonesty in the rite of Holy Communion. In a leaflet issued from Stocks to various private sympathisers in January 1920, Mrs. Ward pointed out that the difficulty which had confronted the Church sixty years before with regard to the Thirty-nine Articles had now passed on to the Creeds, and that to many who were convinced believers in the God within us, the following of Christ and the practical realisation of the Kingdom, the Nicene Creed was yet, "to quote a recent phrase, 'no more than the majority opinion of a Committee held 1,600 years ago.'" She therefore appealed for the formation of a "Faith and Freedom Association," the members of which might claim to take their part in the new Councils and Assemblies while openly stating their dissent from, or their right to re-interpret the Creeds; only so could the Church continue to include that Modernist element which was essential to its healthy development.
Mrs. Ward received a good deal of sympathy and encouragement from those to whom she sent her leaflet, and dreamt, in her indomitable way, of summoning a meeting later on if the response were sufficient. But she knew in her heart that her own strength would no longer suffice to lead such a crusade, and she appealed with a certain wistfulness to the young "to pour into it their life, their courage and their love." It troubled her that no young person or group arose to take the burden from her shoulders. But in truth she was still the youngest in heart of all her generation, or the next, and if it were not that the poor body was outworn she might yet have exerted the influence she longed for on the religious life of her country.
But it was too late. Mrs. Ward's health definitely gave way about Christmas-time, 1919, the breakdown taking the form of a violent attack of neuritis in the shoulders and arms. Although she would not yet acknowledge it, but tried to continue the old round of work, increasing weakness made it plain to her, at length, that she must not, for the present at least, go crusading. But how she hoped and strove for better times! Her devoted doctor-brother, Frank Arnold, to whom she turned again and again with pathetic trust, knowing his ingenuity in the devising of remedies, tended her with a skill born of a life-long knowledge of her; but the malady was too deep-seated. At the end of January she moved to London in order to try a certain course of treatment, taking up her abode in a little house in Connaught Square which her husband and Dorothy had found for her. She liked the little place, especially on the days when flowers from Stocks arrived to make a bower of it, and there, in the midst of a fruitless round of "treatments" which did nothing but sap her remaining strength, she passed the last weeks of her life. Old friends came once more to visit her; her son and her daughters took turns in reading to her the poets that she loved; Miss Churcher brought for her delight the latest stories from the Play Centres. She still went downstairs and even, sometimes, out of doors, but those who came to the house to sit with her left it, usually, with aching hearts. Then, on March 11, another blow fell. Mr. Ward became dangerously ill, and an immediate operation was found to be necessary. The doctors carried him off to a nursing home not far away and performed it, successfully, that night, while Mrs. Ward sat below in the waiting-room in an agony of anxiety. The next day, and the next, she was still able to go to him, the porters carrying her upstairs to his room, but on Sunday, March 14, signs of bronchitis showed themselves, together with a grave condition of the heart. The doctors would not hear, after this, of her leaving the house.
So for ten days she lay in the little London bedroom, looking out over London trees, her heart pining for the day--the spring day which would surely come--when she and he would return to Stocks together and their ills would be forgotten. "Ah," she wrote to him in his nursing home on March 18, "it is too trying this imprisonment--but it ought only to be a few days more!"
And indeed, her release was nearer than she knew. Did she not know it? In mortal illness there are secrets of the inner consciousness which those who tend, however lovingly, can never wholly penetrate, but as her mind advanced ever nearer to the verge, one felt that it was swept, ever and anon, by far-off gusts of poetry, finding expression in words and fragments long possessed and intimately loved. Such were the "Last Lines" of Emily Brontë, of which, two days before the end, she repeated the great second verse to Dorothy, saying with the old passionate gesture of the hands, "_That's_ what I am thinking of!"
O God within my breast, Almighty, ever-present Deity! Life--that in me has rest, As I--undying Life--have power in thee!
Then, early on the morning of the 24th, there came an hour of crisis, when life fought with death for victory; but, before the end, "she opened her dear eyes wide, her dear brown eyes, like the eyes of a young woman, and looked out into the unknown with a most wonderful look on her face. I think that at that moment her soul crossed the bar." So wrote Dorothy, the only witness of that look; she will carry the memory of it in her heart to the end.
* * * * *
We buried her in the quiet churchyard at Aldbury, within sight of the long sweep of hill and the beechwoods that she had loved so well. Her old friend the Rector, Canon Wood, laid her to rest, while another friend for whom she had had a deep regard, Dean Inge, spoke of her in simple and moving words, naming her before us all as "perhaps the greatest Englishwoman of our time."
There were not wanting, indeed, signs that many in England so regarded her. It was as though she had lived through the period, some ten years before, when the public had tired somewhat of her books and younger writers had to a large extent supplanted her, until, towards the end, she found herself taken to the heart of her countrymen in a manner that had hardly been her lot in the years of her greatest literary fame. They loved her not only for all that she had done, but for what she was, divining in her, besides her intellectual gifts, besides even the tenderness and sympathy of her character, that indomitable courage that carried her through to the end, over difficulties and obstacles at which they only dimly guessed. They loved her for wearing herself out, at sixty-seven, in visits to the battle-fields of France, that she might bear her witness to her country's deeds; they loved her for all the joy that she had given to little children. Two months before her death the Lord Chancellor, making himself the mouthpiece of this feeling, had asked her to act as one of the first seven women magistrates of England, and later still, when she was already nearing the end, the University of Edinburgh invited her to receive the Honorary Degree of LL.D. These acts of recognition gave her a passing pleasure, and when she herself was beyond the reach of pleasure, or of pain, it stirred the hearts of those who went with her, for the last time, to the little village graveyard to see awaiting her, at the drive gate, a file of stalwart police, claiming their right to escort the coffin of a Justice of the Peace.
Many indeed were the tributes paid to her memory, whether in the letters received after her death or in the words uttered by Lord Milner and other old friends at the unveiling of her medallion in the Hall of the Passmore Edwards Settlement[41] (July 1922). Of these one only shall be quoted here, from a letter written to Mr. Ward by her dear and intimate friend of so many years' standing, André Chevrillon:
..."I had no friend in England whom I loved and respected more, none to whom I owed so much. I have often thought that if I love your country as I do--and indeed I have sometimes been accused of being biassed in my views of England--it was partly due to the personal gratitude which I always felt for the kindness of her greeting and hospitality when I came to England as a young man. The same generous welcome was extended to other young Frenchmen who have since written on England, and there is no doubt that it has helped to create long before the War a bond between our two countries.
"We all felt the spell of her noble and generous spirit. She struck one as the most perfect example of the English lady of the old admirable governing class, with her ever-active and efficient public spirit--of the highest English moral and intellectual culture. Though I had come to England several times before I met her--some thirty years ago--I had not yet formed a true idea of what that culture would be--though I had read of it in my uncle Taine's _Notes on England_. It was a revelation, though I must say I have never met one since with quite so complete a mental equipment, and that showed quite to the same degree those wonderful and, to others, beneficent qualities of radiant vitality, spirit and generosity. (It seems that these words must recur again and again when one speaks of her). She was one of those of whom a nation may well be proud.
"I remember our impression when her first great book came to us in Paris. Here was the true successor of George Eliot; she continued the great English tradition of insight into the spiritual world. The events in her novels were those of the soul--how remote from those which can be adapted from other writers' novels for the cinema!--The main forces that drove the characters like Fate were Ideas. She could _dramatise_ ideas. I do not know of any novelist that gives one to the same degree the feeling that Ideas are living forces, more enduring than men, and in a sense more real than men--forces that move through them, taking hold of them and driving them like an unseen, higher Power."
On her tombstone we inscribed the lines of Clough, which she herself had written on the last page of _Robert Elsmere_:
Others, I doubt not, if not we, The issue of our toils shall see, And, they forgotten and unknown, Young children gather as their own The harvest that the dead had sown.
THE PUBLISHED WORKS OF MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
_Title._ _Date of Publication._
Milly and Olly, or A Holiday among the Mountains May, 1881
Miss Bretherton November, 1884
Amiel's Journal December, 1885
Robert Elsmere February, 1888
The History of David Grieve January, 1892
Marcella April, 1894
The Story of Bessie Costrell July, 1895
Sir George Tressady September, 1896
Helbeck of Bannisdale June, 1898
Eleanor November, 1900
Lady Rose's Daughter March, 1903
The Marriage of William Ashe February, 1905
Fenwick's Career May, 1906
The Testing of Diana Mallory September, 1908
Daphne, or Marriage à la Mode May, 1909
Canadian Born April, 1910
The Case of Richard Meynell October, 1911
The Mating of Lydia March, 1913
The Coryston Family October, 1913
Delia Blanchflower January, 1915
Eltham House October, 1915
A Great Success March, 1916
England's Effort June, 1916
Lady Connie November, 1916
Towards the Goal June, 1917
Missing October, 1917
A Writer's Recollections October, 1918
The War and Elizabeth November, 1918
Fields of Victory July, 1919
Cousin Philip November, 1919
Harvest April, 1920
INDEX
Acton, Lord, 56, 98, 113
Adams, Henry, 211
Addis, W. E., 146
Amiel's _Journal Intime_, 42, 43, 46, 48-49
Anderson, General Sir Hastings, 298, 302
Anderson, Mary, 43
Arbuthnot, Sir Robert, 273-275
Arnold, Eleanor (Viscountess Sandhurst), 247
Arnold, Miss Ethel, 38, 39, 229, 251
Arnold family, the, 6
Arnold, Frances (Fan), 6, 7, 10, 12, 212, 218, 223, 274, 304
Arnold, Dr. Francis Sorell, 287, 306
Arnold, Jane (Mrs. W. E. Forster), 4, 7, 9, 228
Arnold, Julia (Mrs. Leonard Huxley), 38, 77, 98, 229, 253
Arnold, Lucy (Mrs. E. C. Selwyn), 252
Arnold, Lucy (Mrs. F. W. Whitridge), 191, 209, 247
Arnold, Mary (Mrs. Hiley), 8
Arnold, Matthew, 3, 15, 28, 33, 38, 55, 57, 63, 151, 191
Arnold, Theodore, 6, 13
Arnold, Thomas, Headmaster of Rugby, 1, 3, 18, 210
Arnold, Thomas, the younger, 3-7, 13, 14, 15, 19, 26, 27, 47, 95, 146, 173-174, 219
Arnold, Lieut. Thomas Sorell, 287
Arnold, William T., 6, 13, 38, 48, 53, 99, 170, 179-181
Arnold-Forster, Oakeley, 252
Arran, Earl of, 256
Arthur, Colonel, Governor of Tasmania, 2
Asquith, Rt. Hon. H. H., 113, 230, 233, 235
Asser, General, 275
Bagot, Capt. Josceline, 144
Balfour, Rt. Hon. Arthur James (Earl), 72
Balfour, Rt. Hon. Gerald, 115
Balfour of Burleigh, Lord, 243
Balzani, Count Ugo, 161, 252
Barberini, the Villa, 156-158, 161-162, 173
Barlow, Sir Thomas, 135
Barnes, Colonel, 276
Barnett, Canon Samuel, 85, 194
Bathurst, Lord, 2
Bayard, American Ambassador, 191
Bedford, Duke of, 120, 131, 183, 268
Bell, Capt., 284
Bell, Sir Hugh, 72, 188 _note_, 252
Bellasis, Sophie, 9
Benison, Miss Josephine, 173
Bentwich, Mrs., 289
_Bessie Costrell_, _the Story of_, 112, 114, 118
Birdwood, General, 298
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine, 195-196
Boase, C. W., 32
Boissier, Lieut., R.N., 273-274
Bonaventura, the Villa, 181, 192, 262
Borough Farm, 45-47, 51, 52, 93, 132
Bourget, Paul, 168
Boutmy, Emile, 168
Bowie, Rev. W. Copeland, 81, 82, 88
Braithwaite, Miss Lilian, 178
Brewer, Cecil, 120-121
Bright, Mrs., 107
Brodie, Sir Benjamin, 15
Brontë, Charlotte, 165-168
Brontë, Emily, 166-168, 307
_Brontë Prefaces_, the, 165-169
Brooke, Stopford A., 80, 81, 83, 87, 153, 304
Browning, Pen, 262
Brunetière, F., 168
Bryce, Rt. Hon. James (Viscount), 207, 211, 214, 243
Buchan, Lt.-Col. John, 288
Burgwin, Mrs., 135, 141
Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 100, 102, 189, 304
Butcher, S. H., 30 _footnote_, 148
Buxton, Sydney (Earl), 115, 196
Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, 229, 230
_Canadian Born_, 222, 255
Carlisle, Earl of, 80, 81, 83
Carpenter, J. Estlin, D.D., 81, 87, 154
Cavan, General the Earl of, 280
Cavendish, Lady Frederick, 228
Cecil, Lord Edward, 267
Cecil, Lord Robert, 270-271
Chapman, Audrey, 127
Charteris, General, 282
Chavannes, Dr., 87
Chevrillon, André, 168-169, 252, 260, 266, 280, 282, 308
Children's Happy Evenings Association, 193, 196-197
Childs, W. D., 77
Chinda, Viscount, 281
Chirol, Sir Valentine, 252
Choate, Joseph, American Ambassador, 191, 280
Churcher, Miss Bessie, 118, 123, 135, 192, 195, 249, 272, 293, 306
Churchill, Lord Randolph, 212
Clarke, Father, 149-150
Clough, Miss Anne, 8
Clough, Arthur Hugh, 3, 10, 309
Coates, Mrs. Earle, 210
Cobb, Sir Cyril, 200
Cobbe, Frances Power, 81
Collard, Miss M.L., 141
Conybeare, Mrs. Edward, 66
_Coryston Family_, _The_, 263
_Cousin Philip_, 289-290
Crawshay, Mrs. Robert, 303
Creighton, Mandell, Bishop of London, 28, 44, 65, 79, 99, 148, 151, 174, 176
Creighton, Mrs., 29, 195, 225, 228, 240, 244, 248, 249, 252, 257, 259
Crewe, Marquess of, 143
Cromer, Earl of, 230, 234
Cropper, James, 51, 144, 176
Cropper, Miss Mary, 144, 145, 252
Cunliffe, Mrs., 12, 15
Cunliffe, Sir Robert, 71
Cunningham, Sir Henry, 111
Curtis, Henry, 183
Curzon of Kedleston, Marquess, 235, 243-244
_Daphne, or Marriage à la Mode_, 222-223
_David Grieve_, _The History of_, 71, 79, 92, 95, 97-99, 255, 256
Davidson, Sir John, 301
Davies, Colonel, 276
Davies, Miss, 10-14
Davies, Miss Emily, 224
_Delia Blanchflower_, 239
Dell, Mrs., 108, 251, 254, 261
Denison, Col. George, 216
Denison, Sir William, Governor of Tasmania, 3
Dicey, Albert, 294
_Dictionary of Christian Biography_, _The_, 21, 31, 37, 49
_Diana Mallory_, _The Testing of_, 248
Dilke, Mrs. Ashton, 228
Drummond, James, D.D., 81
Dufferin and Ava, Marquis of, 160
Dugdale, Mrs. Alice, 70
Dunn, Miss Maud (Mrs. E. C. Selwyn), 253
Ehrle, Father, 171
_Eleanor_, 158-164, 173; dramatisation of, 176-179
_England's Effort_, 265, 280-282, 297
Evans, Sanford, 218
Fawcett, Mrs., 228, 233-235, 238, 244, 251
_Fenwick's Career_, 173, 204-205
Field, Capt., R.N., 273
Fields, Mrs. Annie, 105 _note_, 192, 213
_Fields of Victory_, 289, 300-301
Finlay, Lord, 243
Fisher, Rt. Hon. H. A. L., 197, 292-294
Foch, Marshal, 302
Forster, W. E., 4, 25, 40-41
Fowler, Capt., 284
Fox How, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 26, 247, 304
Francis Ferdinand, Archduke, 263
Freeman, Edward, 21, 28
Frere, Miss Margaret, 237
Garrett, Miss, 224
Gerecke, Fräulein, 11
Gilder, R.W., 191
Gladstone, William Ewart, 39, 48, 55-64, 71, 73, 110
Godkin, E. L., 191
Gordon, James Adam, 102
Goschen, George (Lord), 40, 304
Goschen, Mrs., 228
Gouraud, General, 299
Grayswood Hill, Mrs. Ward's house on, 78, 92-94, 103
Green, John Richard, 21, 25, 28
Green, Mrs. J. R., 87, 228
Green, Thomas Hill, 27, 28, 33, 51, 62, 63, 213
Green, Mrs. T. H., 30, 228, 252
Greene, General, 216
Grey, Earl, 207, 214-215, 219, 221-222
Grey, Sir Edward (Viscount), 102, 211, 270-271, 282
Grosvenor Place, No. 25, 113, 190-192, 304
Haldane, R. B. (Lord), 99, 115, 200, 227, 252
Halévy, Elie, 169
Halsbury, Lord, 243
Halsey, Mrs., 291
Hampden House, 78-79
Harcourt, Mrs. Augustus Vernon, 30
Harcourt, Sir William, 171
Hargrove, Charles, 87
Harnack, Adolf, 265
Harrison, Frederic, 46, 225, 228-229, 260
_Harvest_, 289
Hay, American Ambassador, 191
Heberden, Principal, 281
_Helbeck of Bannisdale_, 143-151
Herbert, Bron (Lord Lucas), 148
Hobhouse, Charles, 234
Holland, E. G., 183, 185
Holmes, Edmond, 260
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 77
Holt, Henry, 213
Horne, General Lord, 284, 287, 296, 298
Horne, Sir William van, 207, 214, 216-217
Howe, Mrs. Julia Ward, 213
Hughes, Rev. Hugh Price, 123
Huxley, Aldous, 253
Huxley, Julian, 98, 99, 253, 290
Huxley, Leonard, 38
Huxley, Margaret, 253
Huxley, Prof. T. H., 38, 68, 79, 100
Huxley, Mrs. T. H., 228
Huxley, Trevenen, 253
Inge, W. R., Dean of St. Paul's, 307
James, Henry, 46, 112, 148, 161, 191, 252, 279
James, William, 192, 250, 257
James of Hereford, Lord, 230
Jellicoe, Sir John, 272
Jerram, Admiral Sir Thomas, 272-273
Jersey, Countess of, 170, 197
Jeune, Sir Francis, 109
Jewett, Miss Sarah Orne, 104-105, 192, 213
Johnson, A. H., 30, 252
Johnson, Mrs. A. H., 28, 29, 39, 70, 72, 78, 252
Jones, Mrs. Cadwalader, 208
Jones, Sir Robert, 294
Jowett, Benjamin, Master of Balliol, 18, 24, 28, 33, 48, 53, 99, 121
Jülicher, Dr. Adolf, 172
Julie, Sœur, 286
Jusserand, J. J., 169-170, 212, 300
Keble, John, 17
Keen, Daniel, 247
Kemp, Anthony Fenn, 1
Kemp, Miss, 2
Kensit, John, 148
King, Mackenzie, 219
Kipling, Rudyard, 116-117, 124
Knight, Prof., 87
Kruger, President, 175
Knowles, James, 55, 73, 150, 225, 228
_Lady Rose's Daughter_, 179, 187, 204
Lanciani, Senator Rodolfo, 161
Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 215
Lawrence, Hon. Maude, 139, 140, 193
Lemieux, M., 215
Leo XIII., Pope, 162, 216
Levens Hall, 144-148
Liddon, Canon H.P., 17, 19, 20
Lippincott, Bertram, 210
"Lizzie," Miss H. E. Smith, 190, 208, 249
Lloyd George, Rt. Hon. David, 271, 299
Loreburn, Lord, 243
Lowell, American Ambassador, 191, 304
_Lydia_, _the Mating of_, 261
Lyttelton, Hon. Alfred, 39, 252
Lyttelton, Hon. Sir Neville, 109, 148, 174-175, 247
Lyttelton, Hon. Mrs. Neville (Lady), 109, 148, 175, 274
Lytton, Victor (Earl of), 148
Maclaren, Lady, 233
McClure, S. S., 76, 191
McKee, Miss Ellen, 135, 234
McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald, 196
Macmillan, Sir Frederick, 97
Macmillan, Messrs., 43, 50, 73
_Marcella_, 79, 97, 106-111, 189
Markham, Miss Violet, 233, 235
Martineau, James, D.D., 81-87, 154, 304
Masterman, C. F. G., 270
Maurice, C. E., 149
Maxse, Admiral, 267
Maxwell, Dr., 209-210
May, Miss, 13, 14, 16
Meredith, George, 143, 180-181, 266
Michel, André, 68
Midleton, Lord, 45, 47
Mill, John Stuart, 224
Milligan, Miss, 135, 141
_Milly and Olly_, 32
Milner, Viscount, 308
Mirman, M., 285
_Miss Bretherton_, 43, 44, 48, 255
_Missing_, 289
Mitchell, Dr. Weir, 210
Mivart, St. George, 149
Mollison, Miss, 220
Morley, John (Viscount), 37, 40-42, 46, 114, 149, 228, 229
Mudie's Library, 111
Müller, Mrs. Max, 228
Neal, Mary, 123
Nettlefold, Frederick, 81
Newman, Cardinal, 13, 17, 19, 57
Nicholson, Sir Charles, 241
Nicolson, Sir Arthur, 270
Northbrook, Lord, 131, 304
Norton, Miss Sara, 192, 213
Oakeley, Miss Hilda, 268
Odgers, Dr. Blake, 81
Onslow, Earl of, 282
Osborn, Fairfield, 210 _note_
Page, Walter Hines, 298, 304
Palmer, Edwin, 20
Pankhurst, Mrs., 238
Paris, Gaston, 168
Parker, Sir Gilbert, 270
Pasolini, Contessa Maria, 188, 262
Passmore Edwards, J., 91, 120-121
Passmore Edwards Settlement, the, 90, 92, 119-122, 130-131, 182-183, 186, 189, 219, 234, 268
Pater, Walter, 27, 42, 99
Pattison, Mark, Rector of Lincoln, 17, 19-21, 24, 28, 34, 51, 57
_Peasant in Literature_, _The_, 155, 210
Pease, Rt. Hon. J. (Lord Gainford), 292
Percival, Dr., Bishop of Hereford, 31
Pilcher, G. T., 132
Pinney, General, 277
Plumer, General Lord, 280
Plymouth, Earl of, 243
Ponsot, M., 285
Potter, Beatrice (Mrs. Sidney Webb), 87, 95, 115, 116, 228
Prothero, Sir George, 252
Pusey, Edward Bouverie, D.D., 32
Putnam, George Haven, 76
Rawlinson, General Sir Henry, 284
Rawnsley, Rev. Canon H. D., 304
Renan, Ernest, 47, 168
Repplier, Miss Agnes, 210
Ribot, Alexandre, 168
_Richard Meynell_, _The Case of_, 90, 153, 173, 250, 257-261
Roberts, Earl, 175
Roberts, Capt. H. C., 277
_Robert Elsmere_, 33, 47, 49-54; publication, 54-55; Mr. Gladstone on, 55-64; circulation of, 64; _Quarterly_ article on, 72-73; in America, 73-78, 255, 309
"Robin Ghyll," 205-206
Robins, Miss Elizabeth, 178
Robinson, Alfred, 88
Rodd, Sir Rennell, 288 _note_
Roosevelt, Theodore, 191, 211-212, 269-270, 286, 304
Root, Elihu, 211-212
Rosebery, Earl of, 114, 280
Rothschild, Lord, 112, 115
Ruelli, Padre, 160
Ruskin, John, 28
Russell, Lord Arthur, 40, 48
Russell, Dowager Countess, 81
Russell, George W. E., 55
Russell Square, No. 61, 35-36, 131, 191
Salisbury, Marquis of, 225, 266
Sandwith, Humphry, 25
Sandwith, Lieut. Humphry, R.N., 273
Sandwith, Jane, wife of Henry Ward, 25
Samuel, Rt. Hon. Herbert, 199
Sandhurst, Viscount, 247
Savile, Lord, 161
Schäffer, Mrs., 220
Scherer, Edmond, 46, 48, 168
Schofield, Colonel, 276
Scott, McCallum, 235
Segrè, Carlo, 252
Selborne, Countess of, 301
Selby-Bigge, Sir Amherst, 292
Sellers, Eugénie (Mrs. Arthur Strong), 46, 70
Selwyn, Arthur, Christopher and George, 253, 287, 296
Selwyn, Rev. Dr. E. C., 252
Shakespeare, 47
Shaw, Bernard, 109
Shaw, Norman, 120
Shaw-Lefevre, Miss, 30
_Sir George Tressady_, 115-118, 127, 255
Smith, Dunbar, 120-121
Smith, George Murray, 50, 53, 96, 97, 107, 109, 112, 165-166, 176, 282
Smith, Goldwin, 216
Smith, Reginald J., 173, 176, 255, 256, 258, 262, 281-282
Smith, Walter, 211
Smith & Elder, publishers, 24, 165
Somerville Hall, foundation of, 30-31
Sorell, Julia, wife of Thomas Arnold, 1-4, 6, 8, 13, 16, 27, 53, 54, 208
Sorell, Colonel William, Governor of Tasmania, 2
Sorell, William, 2
Souvestre, Marie, 46, 291
Sparkes, Miss, 132
Spencer, Herbert, 180-181
Stanley, Arthur, Dean of Westminster, 18, 26
Stanley, Hon. Lyulph (Lord Sheffield), 72, 132, 134
Stanley of Alderley, Lady, 228
Stephen, Leslie, 189
Sterner, Albert, 173
"Stocks," 102, 103, 107-109, 113, 246-254, 297, 302-303, 306
Stubbs, William, Bp. of Oxford, 28
Sturgis, Julian, 177
Taine, H., 24, 68-69, 168
Talbot, Edward, Warden of Keble and Bp. of Winchester, 48, 56, 65
Tatton, R. G., 121, 127, 128, 189
Taylor, James, 21
Tennant, Laura, 39, 46
Terry, Miss Marion, 178
Thayer, W. R., 77
Thursfield, J. R., 38, 71, 102
Torre Alfina, Marchese di, 162
_Towards the Goal_, 285-286
Townsend, Mrs., 133
Toynbee, Mrs. Arnold, 228
Trench, Alfred Chevenix, 181
Trevelyan, George Macaulay, 151, 181-182, 296
Trevelyan, Sir George Otto, 181, 214
Trevelyan, Humphry, 253, 297
Trevelyan, Mary, 253-254, 297
Trevelyan, Theodore Macaulay, 253-255
Tyrrell, Father, 250, 257
Tyrwhitt, Commodore, 286
_Unitarians and the Future_, 155
Voysey, Charles, 33
Wace, Henry, Dean of Canterbury, 21, 31, 32
Wade, F. C., 219
Walkley, A. B., 178
Wallace, Sir Donald Mackenzie, 252
Wallas, Graham, 87, 109, 115, 132, 134, 141
Walter, John, 35
_War and Elizabeth_, _The_, 289-290
Ward, Miss Agnes (Mrs. Turner), 227
Ward, Dorothy Mary, 29, 205-206, 208-209, 211, 214-215, 249, 275-280, 283-285, 289, 299, 301, 306-307
Ward, Miss Gertrude, 43, 126, 230
Ward, Rev. Henry, 25
Ward, Thomas Humphry, 20, 25, 35, 105, 112, 207-209, 215, 247, 248, 306, 308
Warner, Charles Dudley, 191
Weardale, Lord, 243
Wells, H. G., 214
Wemyss, The Countess of, 71-72, 189
Wharton, Mrs., 192, 263
Whitridge, Arnold, 296
Whitridge, Frederick W., 191, 207-208, 247, 281
Wicksteed, Philip, 85, 87, 88, 90
Wilkin, Charles, 289
_William Ashe_, _The Marriage of_, 173, 179, 187, 204
Williams, Charles, 127
Williams-Freeman, Miss, 251
Wilson, President, 281, 300
Wolfe, General James, 221
Wolff, Dr. Julius, 43, 107
Wolseley, Lord, 46
Wood, Rev. Canon H. T., 307
Wood, Col. William, 221
Wordsworth, Gordon, 304
Wordsworth, John, Bp. of Salisbury, 33
_Writer's Recollections_, _A_, 27, 31, 189, 290-291
Yonge, Miss Charlotte, 25
Zangwill, Israel, 233
_Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, Ltd., _Frome and London_
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by etext transcriber:
reliques chez son évèque=>reliques chez son évêque
The matter would be truth, names and places strictously ficticous=>The matter would be truth, names and places strictously ficticious
Yours Obiediently=>Yours Obediently
extents over 400 pages=>extends over 400 pages
présente ça et là la nature=>présente çà et là la nature
as a thankoffering=>as a thank-offering
agitatiion and violence=>agitation and violence
Opposing Woman Suffrage=>Opposing Women's Suffrage {243}
Dix-huitième Siécle=>Dix-huitième Siècle
processs of making=>process of making
War conditions themsleves that convinced=>War conditions themselves that convinced {291}
women are and and have long been at home=>women are and have long been at home
Schaffer, Mrs., 220=>Schäffer, Mrs., 220
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The following is a letter written long afterwards by Tom Arnold to his sister Fan, with reference to Clough: "I loved him, oh! so well: and also respected him more profoundly than any man, anywhere near my own age, whom I ever met. His pure soul was without stain: he seemed incapable of being inflamed by wrath, or tempted to vice, or enslaved by any unworthy passion of any sort. As to 'Philip' something that he saw in me helped to suggest the character, that was all. There is much in Philip that is Clough himself and there is a dialectic force in him that certainly was never in me."
_December 21, 1895._
[2] "School-days with Miss Clough." By T. C. Down. _Cornhill_, June, 1920.
[3] According to the universal understanding of those days, in the case of a mixed marriage the boys followed the father's faith and the girls the mother's. Tom Arnold's boys were, therefore, brought up as Catholics until their father's reversion to Anglicanism in 1864.
[4] _Passages in a Wandering Life_ (T. Arnold), p. 185.
[5] Jowett to Lewis Campbell, June, 1871.
[6] Privately printed.
[7] _Life and Letters of H. Taine._ Trans. by E. Sparrel-Bayly, Vol. III, p. 58.
[8] He called her "the greatest and best person I have ever met, or shall ever meet, in this world."--_Letters of J. R. Green._ Ed. Leslie Stephen, p. 284.
[9] After the foundation of Somerville Hall Mrs. Ward was succeeded in the Secretaryship by Mrs. T. H. Green and Mr. Henry Butcher.
[10] Now Mrs. Arthur Strong, Assistant Director of the British School at Rome.
[11] The Editor of the _Spectator_.
[12] This conversation has already appeared once in print, as an Appendix to the Westmorland Edition of _Robert Elsmere_.
[13] Mrs. T. H. Green; Mrs. Creighton; Mrs. A. H. Johnson; Miss Pater.
[14] "The New Reformation," _Nineteenth Century_, January, 1889.
[15] On February 3, 1890.
[16] Afterwards embodied in her book, _Town Life in the Fifteenth Century_.
[17] _Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett_, edited by Annie Fields, p. 95.
[18] See p. 91.
[19] Introduction to _Helbeck of Bannisdale_, Autograph Edition, Houghton Mifflin & Co.
[20] Introduction to the Autograph Edition.
[21] Mr. Cropper's brother had married Susan Arnold, sister of Tom.
[22] He died in April, 1904.
[23] _Eleanor_ was finally played with the following cast:
Edward Manisty Mr. CHARLES QUARTERMAINE Father Benecke Mr. STEPHEN POWYS Reggie Brooklyn Mr. LESLIE FABER Alfredo Mr. VICTOR BRIDGES Lucy Foster Miss LILIAN BRAITHWAITE Madame Variani Miss ROSINA FILIPPI Alice Manisty Miss ELIZABETH ROBINS Marie Miss MABEL ARCHDALL Dalgetty Miss BEATRIX DE BURGH and Eleanor Burgoyne Miss MARION TERRY
[24] See the _Memoir of W. T. Arnold_, by Mrs. Ward and C. E. Montague.
[25] From _The Associate_, the quarterly magazine of the Passmore Edwards Settlement, for October, 1902.
[26] Sir Hugh Bell at the unveiling of the memorial to Mrs. Ward at the Mary Ward Settlement, July, 1922.
[27] In 1907 the City Education Authority of New York had no less than 100 school playgrounds equipped and opened under its own supervision.
[28] Mr. Fairfield Osborn.
[29] Mrs. Ward had spent a morning in the Parliamentary Library with Mr. Martin, the librarian, delighting in his detailed knowledge of Canadian history.
[30] Mr. Woodall's.
[31] Mr. Harrison also deprecated the formation of a definite League. "It is to do the very thing that we are protesting against," he wrote, "which is to accustom women to the mechanical artifices of political agitation."
[32] Now the National Council of Women.
[33] _What Is and What Might Be._ By Edmond Holmes.
[34] Henry James had become a naturalized British subject in July, 1915.
[35]
My doom hath come upon me, and would to God that I Had felt my hand in thy dear hand on the day I had to die.
Sir Rennell Rodd's translation, in _Love, Worship and Death_.
[36] Col. John Buchan, Director of the Ministry of Information, wrote to her in December 1918, as follows:
MY DEAR MRS. WARD,
As the Ministry of Information ceases its operations on Dec. 31st, I am taking this opportunity of writing to express to you, on behalf of the Ministry, our very cordial gratitude for the help which you have given so generously. It would have been almost impossible to essay the great task of enlightening foreign countries as to the justice of the Allied cause and the magnitude of the British effort without the co-operation of our leading writers, and we have been most fortunate in receiving that co-operation in full and ungrudged measure. To you in particular we are indebted for generous concessions with regard to the use of your books and writings, and I beg that you will accept this message of gratitude from myself and from the other members of the Staff.
[37] _Evening Play Centres for Children_, by Janet Penrose Trevelyan. Methuen & Co.
[38] See p. 241.
[39] Sir Robert Jones, F.R.C.S., Chairman of the Central Committee for the care of Cripples, wrote to Miss Ward after her mother's death: "One of the last pieces of work accomplished by Mrs. Ward for cripples was the insertion of the P.D. clause in the Fisher Education Act, and the reports obtained for that purpose are largely the groundwork and origin of this Committee, in whose work she took a deep interest."
[40] On October 23, 1919.
[41] Now named, after its founder, the Mary Ward Settlement.