The Life of Mrs. Humphry Ward Part 12

"Why? For, after all, women's range of material, even in the novel, is necessarily limited. There are a hundred subjects and experiences from which their mere s.e.x debars them. Which is all very true, but not to the point. For the one subject which they have eternally at command, which is interesting to all the world, and whereof large tracts are naturally and wholly their own, is the subject of love--love of many kinds indeed, but pre-eminently the love between man and woman. And being already free of the art and tradition of words, their position in the novel is a strong one, and their future probably very great."

She sent her Prefaces to a few intimate friends, turning in this case chiefly to those French friends who represented for her the ultimate tribunal in literary matters. The older generation--Scherer, Taine, Renan--were pa.s.sing away by this time, but a younger had followed them, of whom Paul Bourget, Brunetiere of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, the Gaston Paris, the Ribots, the Boutmys were among those whom Mrs. Ward would always seek out during her almost annual visits to Paris in these years. But among all her French acquaintance she came about this time to regard M. Andre Chevrillon, nephew of Taine, traveller and generous critic of English politics and literature, as the most sympathetic, for he seemed to combine with an almost miraculous knowledge of English the very essence of that _esprit francais_ which she continued to adore to the end of her life. He had first visited Mrs. Ward at Haslemere in 1891, as a "young French student lost in London," and he happened to be with us at Stocks at the time of the publication of the Haworth Edition (1900). A few days later Mrs. Ward received the following appreciation from him:

MADAME,--

Je desire tout de suite vous remercier de votre gracieux accueil et de la bonne journee que j'ai pa.s.see a Tring, mais je voudrais surtout essayer de vous dire un peu l'impression, l'emotion durable et qui me poursuit ici--que m'a donnee la lecture de vos admirables articles sur les Bronte. Je n'ai pas su le faire tandis que j'etais aupres de vous; ce n'est que ce matin que j'ai lu l'article sur Charlotte et Jane Eyre et j'en suis encore tout hante. Jamais ames de poetes et d'artistes n'ont ete sondees d'un coup d'il plus penetrant, plus rapide, plus exerce et plus sur. Vous avez su, en quelques pages, montrer l'irreductible personnalite de ces apres et douloureuses jeunes femmes en meme temps que vous expliquiez les traits qui chez elles sont ethniques et generaux, la tendre, la nostalgique ame celtique, farouchement repliee sur soi avec ses pressentiments, ses divinisations magiques, sa faculte d'apercevoir dans les couleurs du ciel, dans les formes et les lignes que presente ca et la la nature des _signes_ charges de sens mysterieux et profond.... Enfin le dernier paragraphe ou vous mettez Charlotte a sa place dans la litterature europeenne nous rappelle la sure _scholars.h.i.+p_, la puissance de generalisation auxquelles vous nous avez habitues, la faculte philosophique qui apercoit _les idees_ comme des forces vivantes, dramatiques qui se croisent, se combattent, moulent et faconnent les hommes, et sont les plus vraies des realites.

M. Chevrillon shared, I think, with M. Jusserand and with M. Elie Halevy the distinction of being the most profound and sympathetic among French students of England at that time; all three were firm friends of Mrs.

Ward's, all charmed her into envious despair by their perfect command of our language. M. Jusserand--who as a young man on the staff of the French Emba.s.sy had been a constant visitor at Russell Square--would dash off such notes as this: "Dear Mrs. Ward--Are you in town, or rather what town is it you are in?" and now in this matter of the Bronte Prefaces he wrote her his terrible confession:

"I spent yesternight a most charming evening reading your essay.

Shall I confess that I feel with Kingsley, having had a similar experience? I could never go beyond the terrible beginning of _s.h.i.+rley_--and yet I tried and did my best, and the book remains unread, and I the more sorry as my copy does not belong to me, but to Lady Jersey, who charged me to return it when I had finished reading. I really tried earnestly: I took the volume with me on several occasions; it has seen, I am sure, as many lands as wise Ulysses, having crossed the Mediterranean more than once and visited a.s.suan. But there it is, and I see from my writing-table its threatening green cloth and awful back, with plenty of repulsive persons within. And yet I _can_ read. I have read with delight and unflagging interest Vol. I in-folio of the Rolls of Parliament, without missing a line. _s.h.i.+rley_, I cannot. I must try again, were it only for the sake of the editor of the series!"

But in spite of these warm and in many cases lifelong friends.h.i.+ps, Mrs.

Ward did not find the French atmosphere an easy one in such a year as 1900. The South African War had followed on the Dreyfus Case, the Dreyfus Case on Fashoda, and the ties of friends.h.i.+p suffered an unkindly strain. Mrs. Ward spent a few spring weeks in Rome, where all was golden and delightful--forming new friends.h.i.+ps every day, and pa.s.sing into that second stage of intimacy where first impressions are tested and were not, for her, found wanting; then on the way home she lingered a little in Paris, plunging into the gay confusions of the Great Exhibition. Her literary friends offered her attentions and hospitalities as of old, but she felt at once the difference of atmosphere, describing it vividly in a letter to her brother Willie:

"PARIS, "_May 16, 1900_.

"We have had a delicious time in Rome, Dorothy and I, and now Paris and the Exhibition are interesting and stimulating, but are not Rome! I have come back more Italy-bewitched than ever. Rome was bathed in the most glorious suns.h.i.+ne. Every breath was life-giving--everything one saw was beauty. And the people are so kind, so clever, so friendly--so different from this _France malveillante_, between whom and us as it seems to me, Fashoda, Dreyfus and the Transvaal have opened a gulf that it will take a generation to fill. In Rome we saw many people and I had much conversation that will be of use for the revision of _Eleanor_. The country is progressing enormously, the _Anno Santo_ is a comparative failure, and the Jesuit hatred of England flourishes and abounds. The Harcourts were there and I had much talk with Sir William about politics and much else. He is very broken in health, but as amusing as ever. With him and Father Ehrle we went one morning through the show treasures of the Vatican, turned over and handled the Codex Vatica.n.u.s, the Michael Angelo letters, the wonderful illuminated Dante and much else. One day with two friends D. and I went to Viterbo, slept, and next day saw the two Cinquecento villas, the Villa Lante and Caprarola. Caprarola was a wonderful experience. Ten miles' drive into the mountains along a ridge 3,000 feet high, commanding on one side the Lake of Vico, on the other the whole valley of the Tiber from a.s.sisi to Palestrina, with Soracte in the middle distance, and the great rampart of the Sabines half in snow and girdled with cloud. Between us and the plain, slopes of chestnut and vine, and on either side of the road delicious inlets of gra.s.s, starred thick with narcissus, running up into continents of broom that by now must be all gold. Then the great pentagonal palace of Caprarola, gloomy, magnificent, in an incomparable position, frescoed inside from top to toe by the Zuccheri, and containing in its great sala a series of portrait groups of Charles V, Francis I, Henry II, Philip II, of the greatest possible animation and brilliancy, and in almost perfect preservation."

After such delights the atmosphere of Paris must indeed have seemed cold, but Mrs. Ward could always see the other side of such a controversy, and took pleasure in reporting to her father a conversation she had had, while in Paris, with "a charming old man, formerly secretary of the Duc D'Aumale, and now curator of the Chantilly Museum."

"We had," she wrote, "a very interesting talk about the War and Dreyfus. 'Oh! I am all with the English,' he said--'they could not let that state of things in the Transvaal continue--the struggle was inevitable. But then I have lived in England. I love England, and English people, and can look at matters calmly. As to the treatment of English people in Paris, remember, Madame, that we are just now a restless and discontented people. We are a disappointed people--we have lost our great position in the world, and we don't see how to get it back. That makes us rude and bitter. And then our griefs against England go back to the Crimea. The English officers then made themselves disliked--and in the great war of 1870, you were not sympathetic--we thought you might have done something for us, and you did nothing. Then you were much too violent about the _Affaire_. The first trial was abominable, but by the second trial we stand, we the _moderes_ who think ourselves honest fellows. But you made no difference. The Press of both countries has done great harm. All that explains the present state of things. It is not the Boers--that is mainly a pretext, an opportunity."

It is perhaps a curious fact that while German learning and German methods of historical criticism had compelled Mrs. Ward's admiration from her earliest years, no crop of personal friends.h.i.+ps with Germans had sprung from these sowings, as in the case of her French studies and her Italian sojournings. Dear, homely German governesses were almost the only children of the Fatherland with whom she had personal contact, her relations with certain Biblical scholars and with the translators and publishers of her books being confined to pen and ink. But there was one German scholar with whom she had at any rate a lengthy correspondence--Dr.

Adolf Julicher, of Marburg, whose monumental work on the New Testament she presented one day, in a moment of enthusiasm, to her younger daughter (aged seventeen), suggesting that she should translate it into English. The daughter dutifully obeyed, devoting the best part of the next three years to the task--only to find, when the work was all but finished, that the German professor had in the meantime brought out a new edition of his book, running to some 100 pages of additional matter.

Dismay reigned at Stocks, but there was no help for it: the additional 100 pages had to be tackled. In the end Mrs. Ward herself seized on the proofs and went all through them, pen in hand; little indeed was left of the daughter's unlucky sentences by the time the process was complete. In vain we would point out to her that this was the "Lower Criticism" and therefore unworthy of her serious attention; she would merely make a face at us and plunge with ardour--perhaps after a heavy day of writing--into the delightful task of defacing poor Mr. Reginald Smith's clean page-proofs. For these were the days when Mr. Reginald had practically taken over the business of Smith & Elder's from his father-in-law, George Smith, and one of the diversions that he allowed himself was to print Mrs. Ward's daughter's translation free of all profit to the firm. The profits, indeed, if any, were to go in full to the translator, but naturally the expenses of proof-correction stood on the debit side of the account. Hence the anxiety of the person who had once been seventeen whenever Mrs. Ward had had a particularly energetic day with the proofs of Julicher!

_Eleanor_ had had a triumphal progress in the monthly numbers of _Harper's Magazine_ throughout this year (1900), and appeared at length in book-form on November 1. Mrs. Ward's pleasure in its reception was much enhanced by the warm appreciation given to Mr. Albert Sterner's ill.u.s.trations--clever and charming drawings, which had wonderfully caught the spirit of her characters and of the Italian scene, for Mr.

Sterner had spent two or three weeks with us at the Villa Barberini. He and Mrs. Ward were fast friends, and it was always a matter of real delight to her whenever he could be secured to ill.u.s.trate one of her subsequent novels. This was to be the case with _William Ashe_, _Fenwick's Career_ and _The Case of Richard Meynell_. The publication of _Eleanor_ coincided, however, with news of Mr. Arnold's serious illness in Dublin, so that the chorus of delight in her "Italian novel" reached Mrs. Ward's ears m.u.f.fled by the presence of death.

Thomas Arnold died on November 12, 1900, tended to the last by his surviving children, and by the devoted second wife (Miss Josephine Benison), whom he had married in 1889. Mrs. Ward's affection for him had never wavered throughout these many years, as the letters which she wrote him about all her doings, once or even twice in every week, attest to this day; his mystical, child-like spirit attracted her invincibly.

Three days after his death she wrote to Bishop Creighton, over whom the same summons was already hovering:

_November 15, 1900._

MY DEAR BISHOP,--

Many, many thanks. It was very dear of you to write to me, especially at this time of illness, and I prize much all that you say. My father's was a rare and _hidden_ nature. Among his papers that have now come to me I have come across the most touching and remarkable things--things that are a revelation even to his children. The service yesterday in Newman's beautiful little University Church, the early ma.s.s, the bright morning light on the procession of friends and clergy through the cypress-lined paths of Glasnevin, the last 'requiescat in pace,' answered by the Amen of the little crowd--all made a fitting close to his gentle and laborious life. He did not suffer much, I am thankful to say, and he knew that we were all round him and smiled upon us to the last.

And he on his side regarded her with an adoring affection that sometimes found touching expression in his letters, as when, a few months after the publication of _David Grieve_, he broke out in these words:

"My own dearest Polly (let me call you for once what I often called you when a child), G.o.d made you what you are, and those who love you will be content to leave you to Him. He gave you that wide-flas.h.i.+ng, swiftly-combining wit, 'glancing from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven'; He gave you also the power of turning your thoughts, with deft and felicitous hand, into forms of beauty.

No one can divine what new problems will occupy you in time to come, nor how you will solve them; but one may feel sure that with you, as Emerson says, 'the future will be worthy of the past.'"

Yet there was hardly a public question, especially in his later years, on which Mrs. Ward and her father did not differ profoundly; for Tom Arnold hated "Imperialism" and the modern world, especially such manifestations of it as the Omdurman campaign and the South African War.

Mrs. Ward, on the other hand, watched the former with all the pride and dread that comes from a personal stake in the adventure; for was not Colonel Neville Lyttelton in command of a brigade, and had he not left his wife and children under our care at Stocks Cottage? She had found a task for Mrs. Lyttelton's quick mind, to while away the too-long hours of that summer, in a translation into English of the "Pensees" of Joubert; their consultations over the fine shades of his meaning, while the bees hummed in the lime-tree on the lawn, became the light and relaxation of her days, while, later on, the Introduction she contributed to the book helped its appearance with the public. And when Colonel Lyttelton came home, a happy soldier, and pegged out the Omdurman campaign for us on the drawing-room floor with matches, how was it possible not to rejoice with him in the overthrow of so dark a tyranny as the Khalifa's?

But the South African War was a matter of far more mingled feelings, though on the whole Mrs. Ward was persuaded that we were right as against President Kruger and his methods, and upheld this view in many a letter to her father:

"I am not without sympathy for the Boers," she wrote to him in November, 1899, "and I often try to realize their case and how the invasive unwelcome English power looks to them. But it seems to me that history--which for me is G.o.d--makes very stern decisions between nations. The Boers have had their chance of an ascendancy which must have been theirs if they had known how to work for it and deserve it; they have missed it, and the chance now pa.s.ses to England. If she is not worthy of it, it won't remain with her--that one may be sure. But I must say that the loyalty of the other colonies--especially of French-speaking Canada; the pacification and good government of India, the n.o.ble development of Egypt, are to me so many signs that at present we _are_ fit to rule, and are meant to rule. But we shall rule only so long as we execute righteous judgment and so long as it is for the good of the world that we should rule."

She would have liked to see peace made after Lord Roberts' early victories, and was for a time in favour of such terms as would not have involved annexation. But when this hope failed she settled down to endure the thing, and in 1901 devoted much time and labour to the improvement of the Boer women's and children's lot in the concentration camps. She joined the committee of the Victoria League formed for this purpose. And, as inevitably happens in all such controversies, the pa.s.sion felt by the other side contributed to the hardening of her own opinion, so that the end of the war found her more staunch an Imperialist, more definite a Conservative, than she would have admitted herself to be before it.

It was during the war-shadowed winter of 1900-1901 that Mrs. Ward suffered a series of heavy personal losses in the death of many of her oldest friends, beginning with Mr. James Cropper, of Ellergreen, her quasi-uncle,[21] with whom she had been on the most affectionate terms ever since her childhood. This occurred a bare month before her father's death; then, two months later (January 14, 1901), came the blow that the whole country felt as a catastrophe, the death of Bishop Creighton, and, early in April, a loss that came home very sadly to Mrs. Ward, that of her well-beloved publisher and friend, George Smith. "I never had a truer friend or a wiser counsellor," she wrote of him, and indeed he combined these qualities with so shrewd a humour and so unvarying a kindness that Mrs. Ward might well count herself fortunate to have enjoyed fourteen years of familiar intercourse with him.

"His position as a publisher was very remarkable," she wrote to her son. "He was the friend of his authors, their counsellor, banker and domestic providence often--as Murray was to Byron. But n.o.body would ever have dared to take the liberties with him that Byron did with Murray."

When he was gone, Mrs. Ward was fortunate enough to find in his successor, Reginald Smith, an equally just and generous adviser, on whose friends.h.i.+p she leant more and more until death took him too, in the tragic winter of 1916.

The remarkable success of _Eleanor_ in the United States (where the character of Lucy Foster won all hearts) led to inquiries being made from certain theatrical quarters there as to whether Mrs. Ward would not undertake to dramatize it. The suggestion attracted her at once, for though she had never written anything for the stage she had, all her life, been a keenly interested critic of plays and actors and a devoted adherent of French methods as against the heavy English stage conventions. But when she seriously confronted the problem she felt herself too ignorant of stagecraft to undertake the task unaided, and therefore called in to her counsels that delightful writer of light comedy, Julian Sturgis, whom she persuaded to collaborate with her.

Could she have foreseen the play's delays, the insolence of box offices and the manifold despairs that awaited her in this new path, probably even her high courage would have turned aside, but the co-operation it brought her with so rare a spirit as Julian Sturgis was at any rate a very living compensation. In the spring of 1901 Mr. Sturgis came out to stay with us in a villa we had taken (on the spur of the moment) on the outskirts of Rapallo (not then celebrated as the scene of international "pacts"), and together he and his hostess plunged with ardour into the business of making their puppets move. The work was extraordinarily hard, while the skies above our crimson villa behaved as though it were Westmorland and the Mediterranean thundered on the sea-wall of our garden; but Mrs. Ward enjoyed the stimulus and novelty of it immensely and always declared that she owed much even for her novelist's art to that week of "grind" with Mr. Sturgis. Nor was it quite all grind, for one day, when the sun at last shone, we took our guest and his tall Eton boy up the long pilgrimage-way to the Madonna di Montallegro, overtaking a party of laden peasant-women as we went to whom Mr. Sturgis offered some pa.s.sing kindness. His advances were met by a torrent of words in some uncouth dialect which none of us could understand, but he chose to appropriate them to himself as a prayer offered to "Santo Giulio," and "Santo Giulio" he remained to Mrs. Ward and all of us for the too-short remnant of his life.[22] The play stood up and lived by the time his visit was ended; but this was only the beginning of endless heartaches and disappointments. At first there were hopes of the Duse, then of Mrs.

Pat; then Mr. Benson was to produce it with a clever and charming amateur actress of our acquaintance in the role of Eleanor; then at length a real promise was secured from a well-known actor-manager, and all was fixed for May, 1902. But the promise was not an agreement, and was therefore mortal; when it died Mr. Sturgis's only comment was: "My dear Mrs. Ward, I am not a bit surprised. My deep distrust of the theatrical world, wherein pretending gets into the blood, makes me sceptical of any promises which are not stamped, signed and witnessed by a legion of angels."

Already, however, Miss Marion Terry, Miss Robins and Miss Lilian Braithwaite had promised in no spirit of "pretending" to play the three princ.i.p.al parts, so that with things so well advanced on that side Mrs.

Ward determined to go forward. Since the managers were timid she would take a theatre and bear the risk herself. Finally all was settled with the Court Theatre, and the delightful agony of the rehearsals began (October, 1902). Miss Terry sprained a tendon in her leg, but gallantly limped through her part, while the constant changes called for in the words, the cuts and compressions, made a bewildering variety of versions that left the lay onlooker gasping. Mrs. Ward, however, was equal to all occasions--even to a last-minute change in the actor who played Manisty[23]--until not one of the cast but was moved to astonishment and admiration, not only by her versatility, but by her long-suffering. Add to this her endless consideration for themselves--for their comfort, their feelings or their clothes--and it is easy to understand the feelings of real affection which grew up between author and actors as the play went on. Yet all was of no avail, or, at least, it failed to conquer the great heart of the British public. The cast was admirable, the reviews were kind--though Mr. Walkley in _The Times_ perhaps gave the key to the situation when he ended his article with the words, "But then, who _could_ play Manisty?" Yet, somehow, the audience (after the first day) failed to fill the seats. _Eleanor_ ran for only fifteen matinees, October 30-November 15, and though much was said of a revival, she only once again saw the footlights--in a couple of special matinees given in aid of the Pa.s.smore Edwards Settlement. And yet--what fun it had been! Though the financial loss made her rueful, Mrs. Ward always looked back to those six weeks at the Court Theatre as a breathless but happy episode, during which she had looked deep into the technique of a new art and brought from it, not success indeed, but much valuable experience which she might bring to bear upon her future work.

Certainly the two novels of these years, _Lady Rose's Daughter_ and the _Marriage of William Ashe_, gained much in sureness of touch, terseness and finish from Mrs. Ward's dramatic studies; _Lady Rose_ was in fact acclaimed by the critics as the book in which, at last, the writer showed "the predominance of the artistic over the ethical instinct, the subordination of the didactic to the artistic impulse."

She never dramatized it, but a dramatized version of _William Ashe_, at which Mrs. Ward toiled extremely hard, in collaboration with Miss Margaret Mayo, during 1905, was accepted by an American "stock company"

and acquired a considerable reputation in the States. In London, however, where it was performed by a semi-American cast in 1908, it fell very flat, Mrs. Ward being fortunately spared the sight of it owing to the fact that she herself was across the Atlantic at the time. The actress who played Kitty, wis.h.i.+ng to leave the author in no doubt as to the cause of its failure, cabled to her after the first night, "Press unfriendly to play--_my_ performance highly praised!" Even so, however, the Manager decided to withdraw it after a three weeks' run, and no play of Mrs. Ward's was ever afterwards performed in England.

Among the most absorbed spectators of the first performance of _Eleanor_, watching it from an arm-chair brought for his ease into the author's box, was the pathetic figure of Mrs. Ward's eldest brother, William Arnold. His health had broken down some years before, while he was still a.s.sistant editor of the _Manchester Guardian_, and he had come to live, with his wife, in a small house in Chelsea, where it was Mrs.

Ward's delight to find him, on his better days, and to discuss all things in heaven and earth with him. No comrades.h.i.+p could ever have been closer than was theirs, though intercourse with him would always end in a strangling heartache for his state of health, for n.o.ble gifts submerged by bodily pain, despite as gallant a fight as was ever waged by suffering man. Mrs. Ward was for ever watching over him and helping him; sending him abroad in search of sun and warmth; having him to stay with her at Stocks, in London, or at some villa in Italy; encouraging him to do what work he could. But most they loved their talks together.

Their tastes would usually agree on literary matters, and differ on politics, but no matter what the subject, his flashes of mischief and malice would light up the most ordinary topic, and no one loved better to draw him out, and to set him railing or praising, than his sister.

How they would talk, sometimes, about the details of her craft, about Jane Austen, or Trollope, or George Meredith! For this latter they both had a feeling akin to adoration, based on a knowledge not only of his novels but of his poems (then not a common accomplishment); and I remember W. T. A. once saying to me that he thought the jolliest line in English poetry was

Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose.

Mrs. Ward's feeling for the old giant of Box Hill led her on all occasions to champion his right to be regarded as the greatest living master of English--as may be seen from the following spirited letter (January 19, 1902) addressed to the secretary of the Society of Authors, when that body had, in her view, made the wrong decision in recommending Herbert Spencer instead of Meredith for the n.o.bel Prize.

"However eminent Mr. Spencer may be" (she wrote), "and however important his contribution to English thought, there must be a great many of us who will feel, when it is a question of interrogating English opinion as to the most distinguished name among us in pure literature, there can be only one answer--George Meredith. It is no reply to say that the Swedish Academy will probably know something of Mr. Herbert Spencer, and may know little or nothing about Mr. Meredith. That is their affair, not ours. The meaning and purpose of this prize has been ill.u.s.trated by the selection of M. Sully Prud'homme. Its recipient should be surely, first and foremost, a man of letters, and, if possible, a representative of what the Germans call 'Dichtung,' whether in prose or verse.

"If Mr. Meredith had written nothing but the love-scenes in _Richard Feverel_; _The Egoist_; and certain pa.s.sages of description in _Vittoria_ and _Beauchamp's Career_, he would still stand at the head of English 'Dichtung.' There is no critic now who can be ranged with him in position, and no poet. As a man of letters he is easily first; to compare Mr. Spencer's power of clear statement with the play of imaginative genius in Meredith would be absurd--in the literary field. And this is or should be a literary award.

"I trust that in writing thus I shall not be misunderstood. I am not venturing to dispute Mr. Spencer's great position in the history of English thought--I have neither the wish nor the capacity for anything of the kind. But to be the philosopher of evolution is one thing; to be our first man of letters is another.

I would submit that English opinion is asked to point out our most distinguished man of letters, and that if we cannot unanimously say 'George Meredith!' we are not worthy that Genius should come among us at all."

But only two years after this outburst (which I feel sure she showed him) her comrades.h.i.+p with "Will" ended for ever, and his sufferings ceased. He died on May 29, 1904.[24]

About the same time as she lost her beloved brother, Mrs. Ward acquired a new member of the family in the person of her son-in-law, George Macaulay Trevelyan, son of Sir George Otto Trevelyan. He and her younger daughter became engaged at the Villa Bonaventura, Cadenabbia--which Mrs.

Ward had taken from Mr. Alfred Trench--in May, 1903--and ten months later they were married at Oxford. Mrs. Ward soon became much devoted to her son-in-law, whose ardent faiths and non-faiths challenged and stimulated her, bringing her into touch with movements of thought that ran parallel to, but had not yet mingled with, her own belief in a more reasonable Christianity. The walls of her room at Stocks would re-echo, during his visits, with the most fundamental discussions! Mr.

Chamberlain, too, was a disturbing element in those days, with his Tariff Reform campaign, for what was Mrs. Ward to do when her son took one side and her son-in-law the other--and when, moreover, her own well-trained mind was perfectly capable of understanding the arguments of each? But whatever the subject of these discussions, whether politics or religion, they only served to increase the affection between the two, which grew and deepened with every turn of fortune that the years might bring.