The Life of Mrs. Humphry Ward Part 7

She had written to him at last, knowing of him--as all that generation knew--mainly as the generous founder of Free Libraries, but without much hope that he would seriously take up the Marchmont Hall building scheme.

At that time the Committee were in favour of a site in Somers Town, north of the Euston Road, the advantages of which Mrs. Ward had set forth in her letter to Mr. Edwards. His answer ran as follows:

_May 30, 1894._

MY DEAR MADAM,--

Since I received your letter in Italy I have considered your suggestion in reference to the extension in ampler premises of University Hall Settlement, and thereby planting as you say a Toynbee Hall in the Somers Town district. I have also visited the district in and around Clarendon Sq., and am convinced that such an Inst.i.tution is as much wanted in North London as it was wanted in East London. I therefore cheerfully respond to your appeal, and undertake to provide the necessary building within the limits of the sum you indicate, if somebody will provide a suitable site. The vacant place in Clarendon Sq. would, I consider, be a convenient spot for the Settlement. As a matter of course, provision must be made that the building shall be permanently devoted to the purpose now intended. In my opinion we have the two things most necessary in the Somers Town district for a Toynbee Hall: we have a numerous working population requiring educational a.s.sistance and advantages; and we have in the neighbourhood many able and willing workers ready to a.s.sist in works of intellectual, moral and social culture.

I remain, Yours faithfully, J. Pa.s.sMORE EDWARDS.

This was her first great victory on the road to the building of the Pa.s.smore Edwards Settlement. That road was still to be a long and difficult one, but she was not to be discouraged, and where many lesser souls would have fallen out by the wayside, wearied by ill-health and by the multiplication of obstacles, she persisted, and won in the end a vantage-ground in the fine buildings of the Settlement, whence, in the course of time, she could pa.s.s on to new and various achievements.

Heavy and exacting as the work of University Hall was during the first three years of its existence, and glum as the face of our coachman was wont to look at the reiterated orders to drive there (for he disapproved of his horse being kept waiting in the street while people were just talking), Mrs. Ward never allowed it to absorb her mind completely.

Indeed, these years saw the writing of her second three-volume novel, _The History of David Grieve_, as well as many important developments in our domestic affairs. The house on Grayswood Hill, near Haslemere, was rising fast during the early months of 1890, while the principles of the new Settlement were being thrashed out in the study at Russell Square, and at length Mrs. Ward tore herself away from London, stipulating for a six weeks' break from the affairs of University Hall, buried herself in a neighbouring house named "Grayswood Beeches," wrote _David_ hard, and kept a watchful eye on the plasterers and painters at work on "Lower Grayswood" below. She took the keenest interest in every detail of the new house, planning it out in daily letters to her husband, and yet as it drew near completion she could not help rebelling at its very newness, at the half-made garden and the plantations of birch and larch and pine which covered much of the nine acres of ground, while of real trees there was hardly one. Waves of longing would a.s.sail her for Hampden House, with its silence and its s.p.a.ciousness, its old lawns and trees, and its complete absence of neighbours. "How I have been hankering after Hampden lately!" she writes to her father in June, 1890, and to her husband she confesses that she has been to the agent's to inquire whether Hampden could be let for a term of years. "They don't think so. I told them to inquire without mentioning our names at all."

Hampden, however, was not to be had, and when once she was established in Lower Grayswood, Mrs. Ward took more kindly to the house, which had from its windows one of the most astonis.h.i.+ng views in all the South of England. Yet still she wrote to her father: "I doubt whether I shall be content ultimately without an old house and old trees! If one may covet anything, I think one may covet this kind of inheritance from the past to shelter one's own later life in. Life seems so short to make anything quite fresh. Meanwhile, Lower Grayswood is very nice, and more than we deserve!"

The verdict of children and friends was indeed unanimous in praise of the poor new house, whence endless fis.h.i.+ng expeditions were made to muddy little brooks in the plain below, almost compensating for the loss of Forked Pond and the other barbarian delights of Borough Farm. But even the children realized that there were "too many people about" for the health of their mother's work. The pile of cards on the hall table grew ominously thick. Americans walked in, taking no denial, and once in mid-August, when the youngest child tactlessly won a junior race at the Lythe Hill Sports, with all Haslemere looking on, there were paragraphs in the evening papers. It would not do, and I think the house at Haslemere was doomed from that day onwards. Still, for two years it played its part delightfully in the web of Mrs. Ward's life, giving her quiet, especially in the autumn and winter, for the writing of _David Grieve_, giving her deep draughts of beauty which were not forgotten in after years. The lodge was made a home for tired Londoners, whether boys or mothers or factory-girls, and the house itself was never long empty of guests.

There, too, in the book-lined room which she had made her study, she would on Sunday evenings carry out in practice those ideas on the teaching of the Bible which she had striven to inculcate at University Hall. The audience sat on low stools or lay on the floor, while she read to them usually a part of the Gospels, making the scene live again, as only she could make it, not only by her intimate knowledge of the times, but by her gift of presentation. Systematically, making us use our minds to follow her, she would work through a section of St. Mark or St.

Matthew, comparing each with the other, showing the touches of the "later hand," taking us deep into the fascinating intricacies of the Synoptic Problem. But all the time the central figure would grow clearer and clearer, in simple majesty of parable or act of healing, while at the greatest moments commentary fell away and only the old words broke the stillness. She was immensely interested in the problem of the Master's own view of himself and his mission, following him step by step to the declaration at Caesarea Philippi, then tracing the gathering conviction that in himself was to be fulfilled Isaiah's prophecy of the Suffering Servant. She was inclined to reject the prophecies of the Second Coming as showing too obviously the feeling of the second generation, as being unworthy of him who said, "The Kingdom of G.o.d is within you." But in later years she came to regard them as probably based on utterances of his own, for was he not, after all, the child of his time and country? With an episode like the Transfiguration she would show us the elements of popular legend from which it was put together, fitting piece into piece till the whole stood out with a new freshness, throwing its light backwards over the age-long Jewish expectations of the return of Moses and Elijah. So with the Resurrection stories; she bade us always remember the teeming soil from which they sprang, in that long-past childhood of the world; how none of them were written down till forty years, most of them not till sixty and seventy years, had pa.s.sed since the Crucifixion; how the return from Hades on the third day is at least as old as Alcestis. These things, she said, forbade us to accept them as literal fact; but it was impossible to listen to her reading of the Walk to Emmaus, or the finding of the empty tomb, without coming under the spell of an emotion as deep as it was austere. For the fact that we in these latter days had outgrown our childhood and must distinguish truth from phantasy was no reason in her mind, why we should renounce the poetic value of scenes and pictures woven into the very fabric of our being. And so, Sunday after Sunday, our little minds drank in a teaching which she would fain believe could have been spread broadcast among our generation, could the ideals of University Hall but reach the ma.s.ses. She did not realize how unique her teaching was, nor how few among her generation combined such knowledge as hers with such a power of instilling it into other minds and hearts.

The writing of _David Grieve_ was a long-sustained effort, extending over the best part of three years, and too often performed under the handicap of writer's cramp and sleeplessness. But Mrs. Ward was at the prime of her powers, and felt herself more thoroughly master of her material in this book than she had done in the case of _Robert Elsmere_, so that the revision, when it came, was a matter of weeks and not of months. Her visits to Manchester and Derbys.h.i.+re for the local colour of the book had inspired her with a vivid faith in the working population of the north, which finds expression in a letter written to her father in September, 1890, in reply to criticisms which he, with his Catholic prepossessions, had made on the unloveliness of their lives:

"You and I would not agree about New Mills, I am afraid! At least, if New Mills is like Bacup and the towns along the Irwell, as I suppose it is. After seeing those mill-colonies among the moors, I came home cheered and comforted in my mind for the future of England--so differently may the same things affect different people. Beatrice Potter told me that she had stayed for some time incog. as one of themselves with a family of mill-hands at Bacup, and that to her mind they were 'the salt of the earth,' so good and kind to each other, so diligent, so G.o.d-fearing, so truly unworldly. She attributed it to their religion, to those hideous chapels, which develop in them the keenest individual sense of responsibility to G.o.d and man, to their habit of combination for a common end as in their Co-op. Societies and Unions, and to their real sensitiveness to education and the things of the mind, up to a certain point, of course. And certainly all that I saw last autumn bore her out. I imagine that if you were to compare Lancas.h.i.+re with any other manufacturing district in Europe, with Belgium, with Lyons, with Catalonia, it would show favourably as regards the type of human character developed. All the better men and women are interested in the things that interested St. Paul--grace and salvation, and the struggle of the spirit against the flesh, and for the rest they work for their wives and children, and learn gradually to respect those laws of health which are, after all, as much 'set in the world,' to use Uncle Matt's phrase, as beauty and charm, and in their own way as much a will and purpose of G.o.d. Read the books about Lancas.h.i.+re life a hundred years ago, and see if they have not improved--if they are not less brutal, less earthy, nearer altogether to the intelligent type of life. That they have far to go yet one cannot deny. But altogether, when London fills me with despair, I often think of Lancas.h.i.+re and am comforted for the future. I think of the people I had tea with at Bacup, all mill-hands, but so refined, gentle and good; and I think of the wonderful development of the civic sense in a town like Oldham, with all its public inst.i.tutions, its combinations of workpeople for every possible object, and its generally happy and healthy tone. I wish the streets were less ugly, but after all, our climate is hard and drives people indoors three-parts of the year, and the race has very little artistic gift."

Meanwhile, the Copyright Committee was again hard at work in the United States, arousing much anxious speculation in Mrs. Ward's mind as to whether their Bill would be through Congress in time for her new book; but in the end the victory came more easily and swiftly than was expected. Congress pa.s.sed it in November, 1890, and it became law in the following March. The effect on Mrs. Ward's fortunes was not long in making itself felt. Mr. George Smith had been negotiating for her with an American firm that offered good but not magnificent terms for _David Grieve_; he was dissatisfied, and in his wise heart bethought him of her old friends the Macmillans, who had an "American house." The sequel must be told in his own words:

15, WATERLOO PLACE, S.W.

_June 13, 1891._

DEAR MRS. HUMPHRY WARD,--

I met Frederick Macmillan in the Park this morning. It flashed on my mind that I would sell him the American copyright of your book, and after a long talk (which made me late for breakfast) I promised him that if he made me a firm offer of seven thousand pounds for the American copyright, including Canada, before one o'clock to-day, I would accept it on your behalf. He has just called here and written the enclosed note. I am rather pleased with myself, and I hope that you will not reproach me. I write in haste, for I shall feel rather anxious until I have a line from you on the subject.

Believe me, Yours sincerely, G. M. SMITH.

Needless to say, the "line" was forthcoming, and Mrs. Ward was left to contemplate, with some emotion, the fact that she was mistress of a little fortune. Whether the Macmillans remained as contented with their bargain as she was is, however, a point of some obscurity. Certainly they desired her next book (_Marcella_), which amply made up to them for any shortcomings on _David Grieve_, but during the negotiations for it some uncomfortable tales leaked out. "Mr. Brett told me," wrote Mrs.

Ward to George Smith, eighteen months after the appearance of _David_, "that owing to the description of profit-sharing in _David Grieve_ and the interest roused by it in America, their American branch adopted it last year for all their employes. Then in consequence of _David_ there were no profits to divide! I don't know whether to laugh or cry over the situation, and I am quite determined that if there are losses this time I will share them."

But as yet the prospect was unclouded, and the summer of 1891 was spent in a hard wrestle with the remaining chapters of the book--with the tragedy of Lucy and the sombre fate of Louie Grieve--but at length, on September 24, the last words of _David Grieve_ were written, and on October 16 she and Mr. Ward fled for nine weeks to Italy.

It was not their first visit, for in the spring of 1889 they had spent eight days in Rome, making their first Italian friends.h.i.+ps and learning something of the spell of that city of old magic. "In eight days one can but scratch the surface of Rome," she had written to her father on that occasion. "Still, I think Lord Acton was quite right when he said to us at Cannes, 'If you have only three days, go!' To have walked into St.

Peter's, to have driven up on to the Janiculan and seen the view of Rome, the Alban Hills, the Campagna and Soracte which you get from there, to have wandered about the Forum and Colosseum and to have climbed the Palatine and the Capitol, is something after all, even if one never saw this marvellous place again."

Now this second time she was so tired that they pa.s.sed Rome by on the outward journey and went instead to Naples, Amalfi and Ravello, where the good Signora Palumbo, landlady of the famous little inn, tended her as she lay quite fallow, browsing in books or gazing at sea and sky and sunny coast. But a visit to Pompeii could still arouse all her historical instincts:

"To sit in the Forum there," she writes to her sister, Mrs. Leonard Huxley, "or in one of the bright gaily painted houses, or restaurants with the wine-jars still perfect in the marble counters, and to think that people were chatting and laughing in those very courts and under those very pictures while Jesus was before Pilate, or Paul was landing at Puteoli, on the same coast some twenty miles north, made an electric moment in life. It is so seldom one actually _feels_ and _touches_ the past. After seeing those temples with their sacrificial altars and _cellae_, their priests' sleeping-rooms and dining-rooms, I read this morning St.

Paul's directions to the Corinthians about meat offered to idols--in fact, the whole first letter--with quite different eyes."

To the same beloved sister she was indebted for the inimitable tales of her small boy, Julian, which enliven the later pages of _David Grieve_; for Sandy Grieve was taken direct from this little grandson of the Professor--an "impet" indeed, in his mother's expressive phrase. "Your stories of Julian have been killing," wrote Mrs. Ward from Naples; "I was sorry one of them arrived too late for _David_. By the way, I have not yet written to Willie to say that Sandy is merely an imperfect copy of Julian. He writes 'We both _love_ Sandy.' And I am sure when the book comes out that Sandy will be the making of some of the last part."

A month after Mrs. Ward's return to England, that is on January 22, 1892, _David Grieve_ appeared, and was at once greeted with a chorus of praise, criticism and general talk. "Were there ever such contradictory judgments!" wrote Mrs. Ward to her publisher when the book had been out a week. "The Master of Balliol writes to me that it is 'the best novel since George Eliot'--'extraordinarily pathetic and interesting'--and that Louie is a sketch that Victor Hugo might have drawn. A sledgehammer article in the _British Weekly_ to-night says 'it is an almost absolute failure.' Mr. Henry Grenfell and Mr. Haldane have been glued to it till they finished it. According to other people it is 'ordinary and tedious.' Well, one must possess one's soul a little, I suppose, till the real verdict emerges." The reviews were by no means all laudatory, much criticism being bestowed on the "Paris episode" of David's entanglement with Elise Delaunay, but the general verdict certainly was that it showed a marked advance on _Robert Elsmere_ in artistic treatment, as well as a power of character-drawing that had not been seen since _Middlemarch_. This feeling was summed up in Walter Pater's sentence: "It seems to me to have all the forces of its predecessor at work in it, with perhaps a mellower kind of art--a more matured power of blending disparate literary gifts in one." Letters poured in upon her again, both from old friends and strangers. "Max Creighton," now Bishop of Peterborough, who was never tired of poking fun at Mrs. Ward about the "higher criticism," found time to dash off ten closely written sheets of pseudo-solemn investigation into the authenticity of David's life-story, beginning: "Though I am prepared to believe that David Grieve was a real personage, it is clear that many mythical elements have been incorporated into his history, and it is the function of criticism to disentangle the real man from the legendary accretions which have gathered round him." Mrs. Ward replied in suitable vein, and confided to her friend that a few of the reviews had made her very sore.

"I am very sorry to hear," he replied, "that some criticism has been ungenerous.... But I think that we all have to learn the responsibility attached to undertaking the function of a teacher, and the inevitable antagonism which the claim arouses. It has been so always. No amount of rect.i.tude or good intentions avail."

But the warm admiration expressed by those for whose opinion she cared amply made up for the hostility of these reviews. As she said of it in her _Recollections_: "It has brought me correspondence from all parts and all cla.s.ses, more intimate and striking perhaps than in the case of any other of my books." Many pages might be filled with these letters, but at a distance of thirty years two only shall be saved from oblivion, for the sake of that mere quality of delight which pervades them both and which endeared their writers beyond other men to the company in which they moved. The first is from Professor Huxley; the second from Sir Edward Burne-Jones.

HODESLEA, STAVELEY ROAD, EASTBOURNE.

_February 1, 1892._

MY DEAR MARY,--

You will think I have taken my time about thanking you for _David Grieve_; but a virtuous resolution to stick to a piece of work I have had on hand for a long time interfered with my finis.h.i.+ng it before last night. The temptation was severe, and as I do not often stick to virtuous resolutions under these circ.u.mstances, I parade the fact.

I think the account of the Parisian episode of David's life the strongest thing you have done yet. It is alive--every word of it--and without note or comment produces its ethical effect after the manner of that "gifted auth.o.r.ess," Dame Nature, who never moralizes.

Being "n.o.bbut a heathen," I should have liked the rest to be in the same vein--the picture of a man hoping nothing, rejecting all speculative corks and bladders--strong only in the will "im Ganzen, Guten, Wahren resolut zu leben," and accepting himself for more or less a failure--yet battling to the end. But you are on the side of the angels.

We are very proud of Julian's apotheosis. He is a most delightful imp, and the way in which he used to defy me, on occasion, when he was here, was quite refres.h.i.+ng. The strength of his conviction that people who interfere with his freedom are certainly foolish, probably wicked, is quite Gladstonian.

My wife joins in love.

Ever yours affectionately, T. H. HUXLEY.

THE GRANGE, 49, NORTH END ROAD, WEST KENSINGTON, W.

_Sat.u.r.day morning._

MY DEAR MRS. WARD,--

The book has just come--and to my pride and delight with such a pretty autograph: so that to-day I am mightily set up. I cannot tell you how comforting the words read to me--and how sunny they have made this grey day. By the messenger who takes this I send a little drawing, done in gold, which for a whole year past I have meant for you--it was to reach you by your last birthday, but I was ill then with this vile plague that is devastating us, and after that there seemed no reason for sending it one day more than another, and as I looked at it again it didn't seem good enough, and I thought one day you would come and choose a little souvenir of friends.h.i.+p--one perhaps more to your liking--but this day has never come, and all the year through illnesses big or little have pursued me and nipped all plans. But will you take it with my love--real grateful love; it's a kind of Urania sort of person, and will be proud to live in your bower in the country.

We are a poor lot--my wife kept to her room for about a month; Phil imprisoned in a room with carbolic curtains round him as if he were a leper, and I--too ignominious at present to be spoken about--longing to go out and see an omnibus--I _should_ like to see an omnibus again!

My love to you all, Yours, E. B. J.

P.S.--The first day I can get out I shall call and take my chance of seeing you. Don't dream of writing about the poor little drawing; I should be ashamed, and you are full of work.

The "kind of Urania sort of person" shed a radiance all her own over our house from that day onwards, and was removed before long to a "country bower" after Mrs. Ward's own heart.

For early in 1892 her attention was drawn by her old friend, Mr. (now Sir James) Thursfield, who lived near Berkhamsted, to the fact that some five miles farther from London, in the heart of a district as rural and unspoilt as any that could be found in England, stood a comfortable eighteenth-century house of medium size which happened recently to have come into the market. Sir Edward Grey had just inherited it through his mother under the will of old James Adam Gordon, its possessor in the 'forties and 'fifties; but since the place was far from any trout-stream he did not propose to live in it, but wished instead to find a tenant to take it for a term of years. Its name was simply "Stocks," and though the house itself was only 120 years old, a far older manor-house had been pulled down to make way for it; while the little estate--"the stokkes of the parish of Aldbury"--is mentioned in a fifteenth-century charter as forming an outlying part of the huge diocese of Lincoln. Mr.

Thursfield persuaded Mr. and Mrs. Ward to come and see it, winter though it was. They fell in love with it there and then, and within a few weeks it was decided that Grayswood should be sold and Stocks taken for seven years. Mrs. Ward felt that she had found at last the home she had been seeking.