The Life of Mrs. Humphry Ward Part 15

"VERMILION STATION, C.P.R., "_May 25, 1908_.

"Here we are, stranded at a tiny wayside station of the C.P.R., and have been waiting _sixteen hours_, while eight miles ahead they are repairing a bridge which has collapsed in a marsh owing to heavy rain. Three trains are before us and about five behind. A complete block on the great line. We arrived here at six this morning, and here it is 9.50 p.m.

"It has been a strange day--mostly very wet, with nothing to look at but some scrubby woods and a bit of cutting. We captured a Manitoba Senator and made him come and talk to us, but it did not help us very far. Snell, our wonderful cook and factotum, being in want of milk, went out and milked a cow!--asking the irate owner, when the deed was done, how much he wanted. And various little incidents happened, but nothing very enlivening.

[_Later._]. "Here we are at the spot, a danger signal behind us, and the one in front just lowered. Another stop! our engine is detached and we see it vanis.h.i.+ng to the rear. The track won't bear it. How are we going to get over!--Here comes the engine back, and the brakesman behind our car imagines we are to be pushed over, the engine itself not venturing.

"10.5. Safely over! The engine pushed us to the brink, and then, as it was taken off, a voice asked for Mrs. Ward. It was the a.s.sistant Manager of the line, Mr. Jameson, who jumped on board in order to cross with us and explain to me everything that had happened. He had been working for hours and looked tired out. But we went out to the observation-platform, he and I and Dorothy, and the _trajet_ began--our train being attached to some light empty cars, and an engine in front that was pulling us over. I thought Mr. Jameson evidently nervous as we went slowly forward--we were the first train over!--but he showed us as well as the darkness allowed, the marshy place, the new bed made for the line (in the morning the rails were hanging in air and an engine and two cars went in!) and the black mud of the sink-hole pushed up into high banks--trees on the top of them--on either side by the pressure of the new filling put in--50,000 cubic yards of sand and gravel. On either side of the line were crowds of dark figures, Galician and Italian workmen, intently watching our progress. Altogether a dramatic and interesting scene! We were all glad, including, clearly, the a.s.sistant manager, when he said, 'Now we are over it'--but there was no real danger, even if the train had partially sunk, for it was only a causeway over a marsh and not a real bridge.

"Well, it is absurd to have only a day for Winnipeg, but this accident makes it inevitable. The journey has been all of it wonderful, and I am more thrilled by Canada than words can describe!"

After a breathless day in Winnipeg, very pleasantly spent, under the care of Mr. and Mrs. Sanford Evans, in endeavouring to overtake the engagements lost in the "sink-hole," Mrs. Ward and her daughter resumed their journey across the vast prairie, over the Rockies and the Selkirks, and down into Vancouver. On her return she thus summed up her impressions of it in a letter to "Aunt Fan":

"Everybody was kindness itself, everywhere, and the wonderful journey across Canada and back was something never to forget. To see how a great railway can make and has made a country, to watch all the stages of the prairie towns, from the first wooden huts upwards to towns like Calgary and Regina, and the booming prosperity of Winnipeg--to be able to linger a little in the glorious Rockies, to rush down the Fraser Canon, which Papa used to talk to us about and show us pictures of when we were children--I thought of him with tears and longing in the middle of it--and then to find ourselves at the end beside the 'wide glimmering sea' of the blue Pacific--all this was wonderful, a real enrichment of mind and imagination. At least it ought to be!"

In Vancouver they were under the chaperonage of Mr. F. C. Wade, now Agent-General for British Columbia, and of Mr. Mackenzie King, the future Prime Minister, whom they had already met at Ottawa, but with whom Mrs. Ward had a far more intimate link than that, since about five years before he had come to live as a Resident at the Pa.s.smore Edwards Settlement, and had made great friends with us all. He now acted as guide, not only to the marvellous beauties of Vancouver, but also to the recesses of the Chinese quarter, where he had many friends, owing to the fact that he happened to be engaged in dealing out Government compensation for the anti-Chinese riots of the year before. Mrs. Ward was immensely interested in all the problems of Vancouver--racial, financial and political--being especially impressed by the danger of its "Americanization" through the buying up of its real estate by American capital. She stayed long enough to lecture to the Canadian Club of Vancouver in aid of Lord Grey's fund for the purchase of the Quebec battlefields as a national memorial to Wolfe, and then set her face definitely homewards. But she could not allow herself to hurry too swiftly through the Rockies, where the snow was beginning to melt and expeditions were becoming possible. From Field she drove to feast her eyes on the Emerald Lake; from Laggan she pushed on to Lake Louise.

To T. H. W.

"BANFF, "_June 4, 1908_.

"Since we left Vancouver we have had a delicious time, but yesterday was the cream! We started at 8.30 from the very nice Field Hotel, on a special train, just our car and an engine, and--the car being in front--were pushed up the famous Kicking Horse Pa.s.s, on a glorious morning. The Superintendent in charge of the Laggan division of the line came up with us and explained the construction of the new section of the line, which is to take the place of the present dangerous and costly track down the pa.s.s. At present there are no tunnels, nothing but a long hill, up and down which extraordinary precautions have to be taken. Now they are to have spiral tunnels, or rather one long one, on the St. Gotthard plan. One won't see so much, but it will be safer, and far less expensive to work.

"The beauty of the snow peaks, the lateral valleys, the leaping streams, the forests!--and the friendliness of everybody adds to the charm. At Laggan we left the car and drove up--three miles--to Lake Louise--a perfectly beautiful place, which I tried to sketch--alack! It is, I think, more wonderful than any place of the kind in Switzerland, because of the colour of the rocks, which hold the gorgeous glacier and snow-peak. We spent the day there, looked after by a charming Scotchwoman--Miss Mollison--one of three sisters who run the C.P.R. hotels about here. About 6.30 we drove down again to find Snell and George delighted to welcome us back to the car. Then we came on to Banff, sitting on the platform of the car, and looking back at a beautiful sunset among the mountains. We shall part from the Rockies with a pang! Emerald Lake and Lake Louise would certainly conjure one back again, if they were any less than 6,000 miles from home! As it is, I suppose one's physical eyes will never see them again, but it is something to have beheld them once."

At Field Mrs. Ward had met the eminent explorer, Mrs. Schaffer, who was busy collecting guides and ponies for another expedition into the unknown tracts of the Rockies. She and Mrs. Ward made great friends, and some months later the latter was delighted to receive from her photographs of a wonderful lake which she had discovered, and to which she gave the name of Lake Maligne. Mrs. Ward could not resist weaving the virgin lake into the last chapter of her story, _Canadian Born_.

When at length the long journey was over and the faithful car landed her safely at Montreal, Mrs. Ward still had one pleasant duty to perform--the handing over of her earnings at Vancouver to Lord Grey, as a thank-offering for all the good things that had fallen to her lot since she had parted from him three weeks before. His reply delighted her, especially since she had just ended her Canadian experiences by an expedition up the Heights of Abraham, escorted by Col. Wood, the Canadian military historian.

_June 12, 1908._

MY DEAR MRS. WARD,--

You are _most_ kind! I have received no contribution to the Quebec Battlefields that has given me greater pleasure. I value it partly because it is yours and partly Vancouver's. Every cent that filters through from B.C. and the Prairie Provinces is a joy to me. The Canadian National Problem, the Imperial Problem, is how to link B.C. and the Western Provinces more closely with the Maritime Eastern Provinces--how to improve the transportation service, East and West, and cause the great highroad of human traffic from Europe to Asia to go via Montreal and Vancouver--that is the problem, and that is why I rejoice over every Western Piccanin who subscribes his few cents to Quebec. A feeling for Quebec will remain engraven on his heart for all time.

...I do not think the character of the debt owing in s. d. by the British race to the Wolfe family has ever been put before the public. Wolfe's father never could obtain the repayment from the British Government of 16,000 advanced by him during the Marlborough campaigns. The different Departments did the pa.s.s trick with him--the first rule of departmental administration--played battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k with him until he desisted from pressing his claim for fear of being considered a Dun!

Then James Wolfe, our Quebec hero, never received the C. in C.

allowance of 10 per day. His mother claimed 3,000 from the British Treasury as the amount owing to her son on September 13, 1759--but the poor hard-up departments played battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k with her, and she, like her Wolfe relations, was too great a gentleman to press for payment. When, however, she found that James had left 10,000 to be distributed according to the instructions of his will, and that his a.s.sets only realized 8,000, the dear good lady did try and squeeze 2,000 out of the 19,000 owing by the Government to the family, in order that she might carry out her boy's wishes--but it was a hopeless, useless effort, and the splendid dame heaped all the coals of fire she could on the heads of the stony-hearted, perhaps because stony-broke, British People, by leaving the whole of her fortune to the widows and orphans of the officers who fell under Wolfe's command at Quebec.

Now I maintain that the whole Empire has a moral responsibility in this matter, for have not the most energetic of the descendants of the British People of 1759 emigrated into Greater Britain? The story of how we recompensed Wolfe for giving us an immortal example and half a continent has not, so far as I know, been told.

Delighted to think you are going back to England a red-hot Canadian missionary. Send out all the young people whom you know and believe in, and who are receptive and sympathetic and appreciative, and have sufficient imagination not to be stupidly critical. Send them all over here. We shall be delighted to see them, although I fear they cannot all get Private Cars!

If Mrs. Ward did not, on her return to England, set up altogether as an amateur emigration agent, she yet paid her debt to Canada by the delightful enthusiasm for the young country with all its boundless possibilities, combined with a shrewd appreciation of its difficulties, which she threw into her novel, _Canadian Born_. Neither Canada nor Lord Grey had any reason to complain of the devotion, both of heart and of head, which she gave to the cause. To her American friends, on the other hand, her impa.s.sioned attack in _Daphne_, or _Marriage a la Mode_, on the divorce laws of the United States, came as something of a surprise, for they had not realized, while she was with them, how deep an impression these things had made on her, or how much her artistic imagination had been captured by their tragic or sordid possibilities.

_Daphne_ is, indeed, little but a powerful tract, written under great stress of feeling, but the Americans missed in it the happy touch that had created Lucy Foster, and regretted that Mrs. Ward should have felt bound to portray for their benefit so wholly disagreeable a young person as Daphne Floyd. Time has, however, brought its revenges in the strong movement that has now arisen in the United States for the unification of the widely-differing divorce laws of the various States under one Federal Law.

Yet there were deeper forces at work in the writing of _Daphne_ than any which Mrs. Ward's brief visit to America alone could have accounted for.

The growing disturbance which the Suffrage question was making in the currents of English life had thrown Mrs. Ward's thoughts into these channels for longer than her critics knew. _Daphne_ was one result of this fermentation; another was what we should now call "direct action."

Within a month after her return from America Mrs. Ward wrote to Miss Arnold of Fox How (herself an undaunted Suffragist at the age of seventy-five): "You will see from the papers what it is that has been taking all my time--the foundation of an Anti-Suffrage League."

CHAPTER XII

MRS. WARD AND THE SUFFRAGE QUESTION

Mrs. Ward, as is well known, did not believe in Women's Suffrage. She had heard the subject discussed from her earliest days at Oxford, ever since the time when the first Women's Pet.i.tion for the vote was brought to the House of Commons by Miss Garrett and Miss Emily Davies in 1866, and John Stuart Mill moved his amendment to the Reform Bill of 1867. But it did not greatly interest her. Her mind was set in other directions, responding to the intellectual stimulus of Oxford rather in the field of historical and religious inquiry and leading her on, as we have seen, to her memorable "revolt from awe" in the matter of the Interpretation of the Scriptures. Her group of friends at Oxford were hardly touched by the Suffrage agitation; the movement for the Higher Education of Women, in which Mrs. Ward bore so distinguished a part, was wholly unconnected with it. Indeed it was the very success of this movement that helped to convince Mrs. Ward that the right lines for women's advance lay, not in the political agitation for the Suffrage, but in the broadening of education, so as to fit her s.e.x for the many tasks which were opening out before it. But she had also an inborn dislike and distaste for the type of agitation which, even in those early days, the Suffragists carried on; for the "anti-Man" feeling that ran through it, and for the type of woman--the "New Woman" as she was called in the eighties--who gravitated towards its ranks. Her scholarly mind rejected many of the Suffragist arguments as shallow and unproven, especially those which concerned the economic condition of women, while the practical co-operation between men and women that she saw all round her, both in Oxford and afterwards in London, gave her the conviction that the remaining disabilities of women might and would be removed in due course by this road, rather than by a political turmoil which would only serve to embitter the relations between them. In her eyes women were neither better nor worse than men, but different; so different that neither they nor the State would really be served by this attempt to press them into a political machine which owed its development solely to the male s.e.x.

In later years she had many close friends in the Suffrage camp, nor did she ever lose those of her earlier days who were converted, but to the end there remained a profound antipathy between her and the "feminist"

type of mind, with its crudities and extravagances--the type that was to manifest itself so disastrously in later years among the "Suffragettes."

It was not that she wished her s.e.x to remain aloof from the toil and dust of the world, as her Positivist friends would have liked; rather she felt it to be the duty of all educated women to work themselves to the bone for the uplifting of women and children less fortunate than themselves, and so to repay their debt to the community; but clamour for their own "rights" was a different thing: ugly in itself, and likely to lead, in her opinion, to a s.e.x-war of very dubious outcome.

The first time that Mrs. Ward was drawn into the battle of the Suffrage was on the occasion, early in 1889, of Lord Salisbury's much-trumpeted conversion to it, when a Private Member's Bill[30] of the usual limited type was before Parliament, and the Prime Minister's att.i.tude appeared to make it probable that the Bill might pa.s.s. Mrs. Creighton--then also opposed to the Suffrage, though on somewhat different grounds from Mrs.

Ward's--Mr. Frederic Harrison, Mr. Knowles, and Mrs. Ward united in organizing a movement of protest. It was decided at a meeting held at Mr. Harrison's house in May that the signatures of women eminent in the world of education, literature and public service should be invited to a "Protest against the extension of the Parliamentary Franchise to Women,"

which Mrs. Ward had drawn up (with some a.s.sistance from Mrs. Creighton), and which Mr. Knowles undertook to publish in the next month's _Nineteenth Century_.

The arguments advanced in this _Protest_ are interesting as showing the position from which Mrs. Ward hardly moved in the next thirty years, though many of her original allies who signed it fell away and joined the Suffrage camp. There is first the emphasis on the essentially different functions of men and women:

"While desiring the fullest possible development of the powers, energies and education of women, we believe that their work for the State, and their responsibilities towards it, must always differ essentially from those of men, and that therefore their share in the working of the State machinery should be different from that a.s.signed to men." Women can never share in such labours as "the working of the Army and Navy, all the heavy, laborious, fundamental industries of the State, such as those of mines, metals and railways, the management of commerce and finance, the service of that merchant fleet on which our food supply depends.... Therefore it is not just to give to women direct power of deciding questions of Parliamentary policy, of war, of foreign or colonial affairs, of commerce and finance equal to that possessed by men. We hold that they already possess an influence on political matters fully proportioned to the possible share of women in the political activities of England."

At the same time the recent extensions of women's responsibilities, such as their admission to the munic.i.p.al vote and to members.h.i.+p of School Boards, Boards of Guardians, etc., is warmly welcomed, "since here it is possible for them not only to decide but to help in carrying out, and judgment is therefore weighted by a true responsibility." Then comes a denial of any widespread demand among women themselves for the franchise, "as is always the case if a grievance is real and reform necessary," and finally an argument on which Mrs. Ward continued to lay much stress in after years, that of the steady removal of the reasonable grievances of women by the existing machinery of a male Parliament.

"It is often urged that certain injustices of the law towards women would be easily and quickly remedied were the political power of the vote conceded to them; and that there are many wants, especially among working women, which are now neglected, but which the suffrage would enable them to press on public attention. We reply that during the past half-century all the princ.i.p.al injustices of the law towards women have been amended by means of the existing const.i.tutional machinery; and with regard to those that remain, we see no signs of any unwillingness on the part of Parliament to deal with them. On the contrary, we remark a growing sensitiveness to the claims of women, and the rise of a new spirit of justice and sympathy among men, answering to those advances made by women in education, and the best kind of social influence, which we have already noticed and welcomed. With regard to the business or trade interests of women--here, again, we think it safer and wiser to trust to organization and self-help on their own part, and to the growth of a better public opinion among the men workers, than to the exercise of a political right which may easily bring women into direct and hasty conflict with men."

This feeling was evidently uppermost in her thoughts at that time, for she wrote as early as January, 1889, to her sister-in-law, Miss Agnes Ward:

"What _are_ these tremendous grievances women are still labouring under, and for which the present Parliament is not likely to give them redress? I believe in them as little as I believe now in the grievances of the Irish tenant. There _were_ grievances, but by the action of the parties concerned and their friends under the existing system they have been practically removed. No doubt much might be done to improve the condition of certain cla.s.ses of women, just as much might be done for that of certain cla.s.ses of men, but the world is indefinitely improveable, and I believe there is little more chance of quickening the pace--wisely--with women's suffrage than without it.... There is a great deal of championing of women's suffrage going on which is not really serious. Mr.

Haldane, a Gladstonian member, said to me the other day, 'Oh, I shall vote for it of course!--with this amendment, that it be extended to married women, and in the intention of leading through it to manhood suffrage.' But if many people treat it from this point of view and avow it, the struggle is likely to be a good deal hotter and tougher before we have done with it than it has ever been yet.

"I should like to know John Morley's mind on the matter. He began as an enthusiast and has now decided strongly against. So have several other people whose opinion means a good deal to me. And as to women, whether their lives have been hard or soft, I imagine that when the danger _really_ comes, we shall be able to raise a protest which will be a surprise to the other side."

In spite of the fact that the organizers of the _Protest_ were handicapped by the natural reluctance of many of their warmest supporters to take part in what seemed to them a "political agitation,"

and so to let their names appear in print,[31] they worked to such purpose during the ten days that elapsed between the meeting at Mr.

Frederic Harrison's house and the going to press of the _Nineteenth Century_ that 104 signatures were secured. They were regarded by their contemporaries as the signatures either of "eminent women" or of "superior persons," according to the bias of those who contemplated the list. Posterity may be interested to know that they included such future supporters of the Suffrage as Miss Beatrice Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb), Mrs. Creighton and Mrs. T. H. Green, while among women distinguished either through their own work or their husbands' in many fields occur the names of Mrs. Goschen, Lady Stanley of Alderley, Lady Frederick Cavendish, Mrs. T. H. Huxley, Mrs. J. R. Green, Mrs. Max Muller, Mrs. W.

E. Forster, and Mrs. Arnold Toynbee.

Naturally the _Protest_ drew the Suffrage forces into the field. The July number of the _Nineteenth Century_ contained two "Replies," from Mrs. Fawcett and Mrs. Ashton Dilke, to which Mrs. Creighton in her turn supplied a "Rejoinder." Meanwhile a form of signature to the _Protest_ had been circulated with the Review, and was supplied in large numbers on demand, so that in the August number Mr. Knowles was enabled to print twenty-seven pages of signatures to the statement that "The enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women would be a measure distasteful to the great majority of women of the country--unnecessary--and mischievous both to themselves and to the State." Mrs. Creighton's "Rejoinder" was regarded on the Anti-Suffrage side as a dignified and worthy close to the discussion. "The question has been laid to rest," wrote Mr. Harrison to her, "for this generation, I feel sure." Nearly thirty years were indeed to pa.s.s before the question was "laid to rest," though in a different sense from Mr. Harrison's.

During the earlier part of that long period Mrs. Ward concerned herself no further, in any public capacity, with the task of opposing the Suffrage forces. Her own opinions were known and respected by her friends of whatever party, while her growing interest in and knowledge of social questions gave her an ever-increasing right to advocate them.

At Grosvenor Place the talk at luncheon or dinner-table would often play round the dread subject in the freest manner, with a frequent appeal, in those happy days, to ridicule as the deciding factor. Mrs. Ward was particularly pleased with a dictum of John Morley's, "For Heaven's sake, don't let us be the first to make ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of Europe!" which I remember hearing her quote from time to time; but on this subject, as on all others, the atmosphere of the house was one of liberty to all comers to air and express their opinions. Most of her own family were of the Suffrage persuasion, especially her two sisters, Julia and Ethel, but her children followed her lead--save one who, being a member of a youthful debating society where the wisdom of nineteen ran riot in speech and counter-speech, was told off one day to get up the arguments in favour of Women's Suffrage and to open the debate; she got them up with the energy of that terrible age, and remained a convert ever afterwards.

The question, in fact, did not enter the region of practical politics until the advent to power of the Liberal Government in December, 1905.

It was on the occasion of Campbell-Bannerman's great meeting at the Albert Hall, before the election, that the portent of the Suffragette first manifested itself in the form of a young woman who put inconvenient questions to "C.-B.," in a strident voice, from the orchestra, and was unmercifully hustled out by indignant stewards. It was the beginning of eight years of tribulation. Mrs. Ward watched through 1906 and 1907 the growing violences of these women with mingled horror and satisfaction: horror at the unloveliness of their proceedings and satisfaction at the feeling that an outraged public would never yield to such clamour what they had refused to yield to argument. She did not yet know the uses of democracy. But the const.i.tutional agitation was also making way during these years, especially since it was known that Campbell-Bannerman himself was a Suffragist, and even after his death Mr. Asquith announced to a deputation of Liberal M.P.'s, in May, 1908, that if when the Government's proposed Reform Bill was introduced, an amendment for the extension of the franchise to women on democratic lines were moved to it, his Government as a Government would not oppose such an amendment.

This announcement brought Women's Suffrage very definitely within the bounds of practical politics, so that those who believed that the change would be disastrous felt bound to exert themselves in rallying the forces of opposition. Mrs. Ward had hardly returned from America before Lord Cromer and other prominent Anti-Suffragists approached her with regard to the starting of a society pledged to oppose the movement. They knew well enough that no such counter-movement had any chance of success without her active support, and they shrewdly augured that, once captured, she would become the life and soul of it. Mrs. Ward groaned but acquiesced, and thus in July of this year (1908) was born the "Women's National Anti-Suffrage League," inaugurated at a meeting held at the Westminster Palace Hotel on July 21.

In the long struggle that now opened it is easy to see that Mrs. Ward was not really at her ease in conducting a movement of mere opposition and denial. She did not enjoy it as she enjoyed her battles with the L.C.C. for the pus.h.i.+ng forward of her schemes for the children, yet she felt that it was "laid upon her" and that there was no escape. "As Gertrude says, it is all fiendish, but we feel we must do it," she wrote after the inaugural meeting; but this feeling explains her imperative desire to give a positive side to the movement by dwelling on the great need for women's work on local bodies--a line of argument which was mistrusted by many of her male supporters, one of whom, Lord James of Hereford, had spoken pa.s.sionately in the House of Lords against the Act of 1907 for enabling women to sit on County or Borough Councils. But Mrs. Ward had her way, so that when the programme of the Anti-Suffrage League came out it was found to contain twin "Objects":