The Life of Mrs. Humphry Ward Part 14

"The artist, as I hold, may gather from any field, so long as he sacredly respects what other artists have already made their own by the trans.m.u.ting processes of the mind. To draw on the conceptions or the phrases that have once pa.s.sed through the warm minting of another's brain, is for us moderns at any rate, the literary crime of crimes. But to the teller of stories, all that is recorded of the real life of men, as well as all that his own eyes can see, is offered for the enrichment of his tale. This is a clear and simple principle; yet it has been often denied. To insist upon it is, in my belief, to uphold the true flag of Imagination, and to defend the wide borders of Romance."

The cottage on the "shelf of fell" in Langdale, whence poor Phbe Fenwick set forth on her mad journey to London, had also a solid existence of its own, though no "acknowledgment" is made to it in Foreword or text. "Robin Ghyll" stands high above the road on the fell-side, between a giant sycamore and an ancient yew, close by the ghyll of "druid oaks" whence it takes its name--resisting with all the force of the mountain stone of which it is built the hurricanes that sweep down upon it from the central knot of those grim northern hills.

The view from its little lawn of Pikes, Crinkle Crags and Bow Fell has perhaps no equal in the Lake District. Suns.h.i.+ne and storm have pa.s.sed over it for 200 years or more, since the valley folk first built it as a small statesman's farm or shepherd's cottage. At the time of which I write the little place was occupied by a poetically minded resident who had added two pleasant rooms.

Mrs. Ward and her daughter Dorothy noticed Robin Ghyll as they drove up Langdale with "Aunt Fan" one summer day in 1902, and fell in love with it. Two years later it actually fell vacant, so that Mrs. Ward could take it in the name of her daughter and share with her the joy of furnis.h.i.+ng and then inhabiting its seven rooms. But though Mrs. Ward loved Robin Ghyll and fled to it occasionally for complete retirement, it belonged in a more particular sense to her daughter, and derived from her its charm. Thither she would go at Whitsuntide or in September, refres.h.i.+ng body and mind by contact with its solitudes. Not often indeed could she be spared from the absorbing life of Stocks, or Italy, or Grosvenor Place, where so much depended upon her. But though life limped at Stocks during Dorothy's brief absences, she always returned from Robin Ghyll with strength redoubled for the arduous service of love which she rendered to her mother all her life long, and from which both giver and receiver derived a sacred happiness.

CHAPTER XI

THE VISIT TO THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA

1908

Mrs. Ward had often been a.s.sured by her friends and admirers in the United States that if she would but visit them she would find such a welcome as would stagger all her previous ideas of hospitality. She could not doubt it; it was, in fact, this thought, combined with the frailness of her health, that had deterred her during the twenty years that followed the publication of _Robert Elsmere_ from going to claim the honours that awaited her. Her husband and daughter had already paid two visits to the States, and had experienced in the kindness and warmth of their reception an earnest of what would fall to Mrs. Ward's lot should she venture across the Atlantic; nor had they merely whirled with the pa.s.sing show, but had made many lifelong friends. Mrs. Ward had, however, resisted the pressure of these friends for many years, until at length, in the spring of 1908, so strong a combination of circ.u.mstances arose to tempt her that her resolution gave way. Her own health, which had suffered a grievous and prolonged breakdown in 1906, had gradually re-established itself, so that by the time of which we are speaking she was perhaps in better case for such an adventure than she had been for some years. Mr. and Mrs. Whitridge would hear of nothing but that she should make their house her home during her stay in New York; Mr. Bryce made the same demand for Was.h.i.+ngton; Earl Grey for Ottawa (where he was at that time Governor-General), while Mr. Ward's acquaintance with Sir William van Horne, Chairman of the Canadian Pacific Railway--based on a common enthusiasm for Old Masters--led to the irresistible offer of a private car on the Line for Mrs. Ward and her party, at the Company's expense, from Montreal to Vancouver and back. Such lures were hardly to be withstood, but I doubt whether Mrs. Ward would have succ.u.mbed even to them had it not been for her growing desire to see, with her own eyes, the work which was being done in New York for the play-time of the children. She knew that New York was far in advance of London in the provision of Vacation Schools for the long summer holiday, and of evening Recreation Centres for the children who had left school; but Play Centres for the school-children themselves were as yet unknown there, so that she felt much might be gained by an exchange of experiences between herself and the "Playground a.s.sociation of America."

And so, on March 11, 1908, they sailed in the _Adriatic_--she and Mr.

Ward, and her daughter Dorothy, with the faithful Lizzie in attendance.

The great s.h.i.+p set her thinking of the only other long voyage that she had ever made, over far other seas. "When I look at this s.h.i.+p," she wrote, "and think of the c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l we came home in round the Horn in '56, and the discomforts my mother must have suffered with three children, one a young baby! Happiness, as we all know, and as the copy-books tell us, does not depend on luxuries--but how she would have responded to a little comfort, a little petting, if she had ever had it!

My heart often aches when I think of it." The comforts of the _Adriatic_ were indeed colossal, and since the ocean was kindness itself, Mrs. Ward took no ill from the voyage, but arrived in good spirits, and ready to face the New World with that zest which was her cradle-gift.

Mr. Whitridge's pleasant house in East Eleventh Street received Mr. and Mrs. Ward, while Dorothy stayed with equally hospitable friends--Mrs.

Cadwalader Jones and her daughter--over the way. Avalanches of reporters had to be faced and dealt with, all craving for five minutes' talk with Mrs. Ward, but they were usually intercepted in the hall by Mr.

Whitridge, whose method of dealing with his country's newspapers was somewhat drastic. If they pa.s.sed this outer line of defence they were received by Mr. or Miss Ward, who found them persistent indeed, but always marvellously civil; and on the very few occasions when Mrs. Ward did consent to be interviewed, she insisted on seeing the proof and entirely re-writing what had been put into her mouth. The newspapers, indeed, had reckoned without a mentality which intensely disliked this kind of thing; it was unfortunate, perhaps, but inevitable!

In all other respects, however, it was impossible for Mrs. Ward not to be deeply moved by the kindness that was heaped upon her. "Life has been a tremendous rush," wrote D. M. W. from New York, "but really a very delightful one, and we are acc.u.mulating many happy and amusing memories.

The chief thing that stands out, of course, is the love and admiration for M. and her books. When all's said and done, it really is pretty stirring, the way they feel about her. And the things the quiet, unknown people say to one about her books go to one's heart." ("We dined at a house last night," wrote Mrs. Ward herself, "where everybody had a card containing a quotation from my wretched works. Humphry bears up as well as can be expected!") But on one occasion, at least, she came in for a puff of unearned incense. At an afternoon tea, given in her honour by Mrs. Whitridge, an elderly lady was overheard saying in awe-struck tones to her neighbour, "To think that I should have lived to shake hands with the auth.o.r.ess of _Little Lord Fauntleroy_!"

Dinners, lunches, receptions, operas and theatres succeeded one another in a dazzling rush, but New York knew quite well what was the main purpose of Mrs. Ward's visit, and it was fitting that the princ.i.p.al function arranged in her honour should have been a dinner given her at the Waldorf-Astoria by the Playground a.s.sociation of America. There were 900 persons present, and when Mrs. Ward stood up to address them every man and woman in the room spontaneously rose to their feet to greet her.

It was a moment that would have touched a far harder heart than hers.

"It was very moving--it really was," she wrote to J. P.

T.--"because of the evident kindness and sincerity of it. I got through fairly well, though I don't feel that I have yet arrived at the right speech for a public dinner.... I was most interested by the speech of the City Superintendent of Education, Dr. Maxwell, an _admirable_ man, who declared hotly in my favour as to Play Centres, and has, since the dinner, given directions for the first _afternoon_ Play Centre for school children in New York. Isn't that jolly!

"Well, and since, we have been lunching, dining and seeing sights with the same vigour. I have been to schools and manual training centres with Dr. Maxwell, and we went through the Natural History Museum with its Director,[28] who gave us a _thrilling_ time....

One afternoon I went down to a College Settlement and spoke to a large gathering of workers about English ways. The day before yesterday I spoke to about 900 boys and girls and their teachers, in one of their _magnificent_ public schools. Dr. Maxwell took me, and asked me to speak of Grandpapa. A great many of the elder boys had read _Tom Brown_ and knew all about the 'Doctor'! I enjoyed it greatly, and as to their saluting of the flag--these ma.s.ses of alien children--one may say what one will, but it is one of the most thrilling things in the world, and we, as a nation, are the poorer for not having it."

Mrs. Ward had accepted four or five engagements to lecture while she was in America, in aid of her London Play Centres, and acc.u.mulated, to her intense satisfaction, the handsome sum of 250 from this source during her tour. She gave her audiences of her best--the paper already mentioned, on "The Peasant in Literature," which revealed her literary craft in its most finished form, and although she was so much the rage at the time that her admirers were not disposed to be critical, she was yet genuinely gratified by the pleasure which this paper gave, especially in so cultivated a centre as Philadelphia. Here Mrs. Ward and her daughter were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Earle Coates, and then of the Bertram Lippincotts, in their charming house outside the town.

Independence Hall gave them the proper thrill of sympathy with a "nation struggling to be free," while Mrs. Ward was delighted by the general old-world look of many of the streets, no less than by the stately river, on which, as she found to her astonishment, "the boat-crews practise for Henley." During their short stay with Mrs. Coates, Mrs.

Ward made friends with Dr. Weir Mitch.e.l.l, novelist and physician, and with Miss Agnes Repplier, for whom she felt an instant attraction, while Dorothy sat next to a Mr. Walter Smith, and talked to him innocently about certain Modernist lectures that had been given at the Settlement in London, discovering afterwards, to her dismay, that he was a strong Catholic, and freely called in Philadelphia "Helbeck of Bannisdale." "I noticed it fell a little flat!"

From Philadelphia they moved on to Was.h.i.+ngton, to stay with their old friends the Bryces, at the hospitable British Emba.s.sy. An invitation from the President (Mr. Roosevelt) to dine with him at the White House, had already reached them. Mrs. Ward described her impressions in a long letter to her son:

"WAs.h.i.+NGTON, "_April 13, 1908_.

"Everybody here has been kindness itself, and we feel that we ought to spend the rest of our days in trying to be nice to Americans in London! First, as you know, we went to the Bryces. They asked a great many people to meet us, but what I remember best is a quiet hour with Mr. and Mrs. Root, who were smuggled into an inner drawing-room away from the crowd, where one could listen to him in peace, and above all, look at him! He is, I think, the most attractive of all the Americans we have seen. He has been Secretary of State now for some years, and is evidently, like Edward Grey, absorbed in his own special work and not much concerned with current politics. His subordinates speak of him with enthusiasm, and he has a detached, humane, meditative face, with a slight flicker of humour perpetually playing over it--as different as possible from the hawk-like concentration of the New Yorkers. We have seen most of the Cabinet and high officials, and I have particularly liked Mr. Garfield, Secretary of the Interior, Mr.

Metcalf, Secretary for the Navy, and Mr. Bacon, a.s.sistant Secretary of State. Sat.u.r.day's dinner at the White House was delightful, only surpa.s.sed by the little round-table dinner of eight last night at Mr. Henry Adams's, where the President took me in and talk was fast and free--altogether a memorable evening. At the White House I did not sit near the President, everything being regulated by a comparatively strict etiquette and precedence--but after dinner he sent word that I was to sit by him in the ballroom, at the little concert which followed, and when the music was over, he and I plunged into all sorts of things, ending up with religion and theology! Last night he talked politics, socialism, divorce, large and small families, the Kaiser, Randolph Churchill, the future of wealth in this country (he wants to _lop_ all the biggest fortunes by some form of taxation--pollard them like trees)--the future of marriage and a few other trifles of the same kind. He is, of course, an egotist, but an extraordinarily well-meaning and able one, with all the virtues and failings of his natural character and original bringing-up, exaggerated now and produced on what one might almost call a colossal scale, which strikes the American imagination. He honestly doesn't want a third term, and has set his mind on Taft for his successor, but it must be hard for such a man to step down from such a post into the ordinary opportunities of life. However, as he says, and apparently sincerely, 'we mustn't break the Was.h.i.+ngton tradition.'

"To-day we are going out to Mount Vernon, and to-night there is another dinner-party. Was.h.i.+ngton is a most beautiful place--the Capitol a really glorious building that any nation might be proud of, and the s.h.i.+ning White House, with its graceful pillared front, among its flowering trees and shrubs, makes me think with shame of that black abortion, Buckingham Palace!"

It was a special pleasure to them also to see something of M. Jusserand, the French Amba.s.sador, and his charming wife, and to renew a friends.h.i.+p which had endured since their early days in London. But above all it was the leaders of American politics that impressed Mrs. Ward.

"Root, Garfield, Taft," she wrote to Miss Arnold, of Fox How, "these and several others of the leading men attracted and impressed me greatly--beyond what I had expected. Indeed, I think one of the main impressions of this visit has been the inaccuracy of our common idea in England that American women of the upper cla.s.s are as a rule superior to the men. It may be true among a certain section of the rich business cla.s.s, but amongst the professional, educated and political people it is not true at all."

Boston, of course, claimed Mrs. Ward on her way to Canada, and adopted her in whole-hearted fas.h.i.+on. She was by this time a little tired of "receptions" of five and six hundred persons, all pa.s.sing before her as in a dream and shaking a hand which was never free from writer's cramp.

"But the touching thing is the distance people come--one lame lady came 300 miles!--it made me feel badly--and all the Unitarian ministers for thirty miles round have been asked and are said to be coming on Tuesday next!" When they came, Mrs. Ward enjoyed the occasion particularly, and wrote home that she had "had to make a speech, but got through better than usual by dint of talking of T. H. Green." An elderly bookseller among them, who had written to her regularly about each of her books for the last twenty years, now met her and spoke with her at last; he went away contented. But the real delights of her stay at Boston were her visits to Harvard and Radcliffe, and her intercourse with the Nortons at Shady Hill, and with Mrs. Fields and Miss Jewett at the former's house.

Here she met the fine old veteran, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, author of the "Battle-Hymn of the Republic," who had lately brought out her memoirs.

Mrs. Ward had been somewhat wickedly amused by certain pa.s.sages in the latter: "Imagine Mrs. Ward Howe declaring in public that a poem of hers, which a critic had declared to be 'in pitiable hexameters' (English, of course), was not 'in hexameters at all--it was in pentameters of my own make--I never followed any special school or rule!' I have been gurgling over that in bed this morning." But when they met, Mrs. Ward capitulated. "By the way, I retract about Mrs. Howe. Her book is rather foolish, but she herself is an old dear--full of fun at ninety, and adored here. She lunched with Mrs. Fields to-day _en pet.i.t comite_, and was most amusing."

The New England country, which she saw on a motor-trip to Concord and Lexington, and again on a visit which she paid to Mr. and Mrs. Henry Holt at their beautiful house overlooking Lake Champlain, fascinated her, "with its miles and miles of young woods sprung up on the soil of the slain forests of the past--its pools and lakes, its hills and dales, its glorious Connecticut river, and its myriads of white, small wooden houses, all on a nice Georgian pattern, with shady verandahs, scattered fenceless over the open fields. There were no flowers to be seen--only the scarlet blossom of the maples in the woods."

Nor could she get away, in such an atmosphere, from the old, old problem of the separation.

"I have been reading Bancroft this morning, and shall read G. O. T.

to-night. We _were_ fools!--but really, I rather agree with H. G. Wells that they make too much fuss about it! and with Mr. Bryce that it was a great pity, for _them_ and us, that the link was broken. So they needn't be so tremendously dithyrambic!"

It was, however, with a heart full of grat.i.tude for the unnumbered kindnesses of her hosts that Mrs. Ward quitted American soil at the end of April and crossed over into Canada. Here her peregrinations were to be mainly under the auspices of Lord Grey, then Governor-General, and of Sir William van Horne, lord of the Canadian Pacific Railway, at whose house in Montreal she planned the details of her great journey to the West. These two revealed themselves to Mrs. Ward in characteristic fas.h.i.+on while she was still the guest of Sir William, at Montreal, for the Governor-General, coming over from Ottawa for the great Horse Show, stopped during his progress round the arena at the Van Horne's box, spoke to Mrs. Ward with the greatest cordiality, and there and then insisted that she must go to see the great new Agricultural College at St. Anne's, near Montreal, on their way to Ottawa the next day.

"He declared that M. could not possibly leave Canada without having seen it," wrote D. M. W., "and then said, with a laugh and a wave of his hand to Sir William, 'Ask him--_he'll_ arrange it all for you!'--and pa.s.sed on, leaving M. and me somewhat scared, for we had not wanted to bother Sir William about _this_ journey at any rate! I could see that even he, who is never perturbed, was a little taken aback, but he said, in his quiet way, 'It can certainly be arranged,' and it _has_ been!" Then, _en revanche_, the Governor-General, "being on the loose, so to speak, in Montreal, with only one and the least vigilant of his A.D.C.'s," came unexpectedly to the big evening party that the Van Hornes were giving that night--"because, as he said, 'I like Van Horne, and I wanted to see Mrs. Ward!'" But, once back in Ottawa, "his family and all his other A.D.C.'s, are scolding him and wringing their hands, because he never ought to have done it! It creates a precedent and offends 500 people, while it pleases one. Such are the joys of his position."

When the "command" journey to the Agricultural College had been safely preformed, the students duly presented Mrs. Ward with a bouquet and sang "For _she's_ a jolly good fellow." "The G.G. was delighted," wrote Dorothy, "and led her out to smile her thanks, but there was fortunately no time for her to be called upon for five minutes of uplift, as His Excellency was, the last time he went there! That has now become a household word in Government House." Mrs. Ward must, I think, almost have been in at the birth of that hard-worked phrase.

Mr. Ward had been obliged to return to England for his work on _The Times_, so that his wife's Canadian experiences are recorded in letters to him:

"GOVERNMENT HOUSE, OTTAWA, "_May 14, 1908_.

..."Well, we have had a _very_ pleasant time. Lord Grey is never tired of doing kind things, and she also is charming. He has asked everybody to meet us who he thought would be interesting--Government and Opposition--Civil servants, journalists, clergy--but no priests! The fact is that there is a certain amount of anxiety about these plotting Catholics, and always will be. They accept the _status quo_ because they must, and because it would not help them as Catholics to fall into the hands of either the United States or of France. But there is plenty of almost seditious feeling about. And the ingrat.i.tude of it! I sat last night at the Lauriers' between Sir Wilfrid and M. Lemieux, Minister of Labour--both Catholics. Sir Wilfrid said to me, 'I am a Roman Catholic, but all my life I have fought the priests--_le clericalisme, voila l'ennemi_. Their power in Quebec is unbounded, but Modernism will come some day--with a rush--in a violent reaction.' On my left M. Lemieux described his meeting last week in Quebec with fourteen bishops, one of whom said to him--'_Le Canada, c'est le Paradis terrestre du Catholicisme!_' But as for the educated Catholics, M. Lemieux went on, 'We are all Modernists!'

Both of them denounced the Pope and spoke with longing of Leo XIII."

"TORONTO, "_May 18_.

"Such nice people at Ottawa, and such interesting people. Also the guiding ideas and influences are _English,_ the first time I have felt it. The position of the Parliament buildings is splendid, and some day it will be a great city. The Archives represent the birth and future of Canadian history, and a Canadian patriotism--four years' work, and already it is influencing ideas and politics, among a young people who did not know they _had_ a history.[29]

"Toronto is less exciting, though pleasant. We lunched yesterday with Colonel George Denison, a great Loyalist and Preferentialist, much in with Chamberlain. He cut Goldwin Smith twenty years ago!--so it was piquant to go on from him to the Grange. The Grange is an English eighteenth-century house, or early nineteenth--as one might find in the suburbs of Manchester in a large English garden--the remains of 1,000 acres--with beautiful trees. An old man got up to meet me, old, but unmistakably Goldwin Smith, though the black hair is grizzled--not white--and the face emaciated. But he holds himself erect, and his mind is as clear, and his eye as living, as ever--at 85. He still harps on his favourite theme--that Canada must ultimately drop into the mouth of the United States and should do so--and poured scorn on English Tariff Reformers and English Home Rulers together. Naturally he is not very popular here!"

From Toronto Mrs. Ward made a flying trip to Buffalo and Niagara, where she was shown the glories of the Falls by General Greene--a descendant of the gallant Nathaniel Greene, hero of the S. Carolina campaign of 1781. Then, returning to Toronto, she found Sir William van Horne and the promised private car awaiting her--not to mention the "Royal Suite"

at the Queen's Hotel, offered her by the management "free, gratis, for nothing! Oh dear, how soon will the mighty fall!--after the 12th of June next" (the date of her departure for home). But, for the present, "The car is yours," said Sir William, "the railway is yours--do exactly as you like and give your orders."

They parted from their kind Providence on Sat.u.r.day, May 23, but within forty-eight hours the railway was providing them with quite an unforeseen sensation. Six hours this side of Winnipeg (where all kinds of engagements awaited her), part of the track that ran across a marsh collapsed, with the result that Mrs. Ward's and many other trains were held up for nearly twenty hours.