Chapter 4

We believe that many changes in the conditions of life and labour areneeded, and are coming to pass; but we believe also that men, without any change except in themselves and in their feelings towards one another, might make this world a better and a happier place.Therefore, with the same sympathies but different experiences of life, we meet to exchange ideas and to discuss social questions, in the hope that, as we learn to know one another better, a feeling of fellowship may arise among us.To these ends we have a Library, Clubs, Lectures, Classes, Entertainments, etc., and we endeavour to make the Settlement a centre where we may unite our several resources in a social and intellectual home.

Therefore, with the same sympathies but different experiences of life, we meet to exchange ideas and to discuss social questions, in the hope that, as we learn to know one another better, a feeling of fellowship may arise among us.

To these ends we have a Library, Clubs, Lectures, Classes, Entertainments, etc., and we endeavour to make the Settlement a centre where we may unite our several resources in a social and intellectual home.

In all this work Mrs. Humphry Ward is the inspiration, and a moving, active spirit. Her name stands next to that of the wealthy Duke of Bedford as the most liberal contributor. She is the Honorable Secretary of the Council, a member of the Finance Committee, president of the Women’s Club, etc. But these are only her official positions. Her directing hand is manifest in every branch of the work, and, from the warden down to the humblest member of the Girls’ Club, her name is accorded a respect amounting almost to reverence.

But, as with the play centers, Mrs. Ward is not content with the work of this one institution, splendid as it is. To her it is only the means of ascertaining the way. She feels that she is dealing with a great problem, and her method is to ascertain, first of all, the best solution, and then to use her large influence to induce others to take up the work. Thus the “New Brotherhood” of Robert Elsmere has not only continued to exist for a quarter of a century, but has in it the elements of growth which will make it a vital power in human society long after the real Robert Elsmere, in the person of Mrs. Ward, has ceased to be the directing force.

IITHE REAL ROBERT ELSMERE

Inseeking to point out the real persons and places of Mrs. Ward’s novels, it is only fair to the author to begin with her own statement as to the story-teller’s method of procedure:—

An idea, a situation, is suggested to him by real life, he takes traits and peculiarities from this or that person whom he has known or seen, but that is all. When he comes to write ... the mere necessities of an imaginative effort oblige him to cut himself adrift from reality. His characters become to him the creatures of a dream, as vivid often as his waking life, but still a dream. And the only portraits he is drawing are portraits of phantoms, of which the germs were present in reality, but to which he himself has given voice, garb, and action.

It is my purpose to point out some of these “germs of reality” in Mrs. Ward’s work, relying for the essential facts, at least, upon information given me personally by the novelist herself. For Mrs. Ward does not hesitate to admit that certain characters were drawn from real life; but she insists upon a proper understanding of the exact sense in which this is true. Because “Miss Bretherton” was suggested by the career of Mary Anderson it does not follow that all that is said of the former is true of the latter. Thereis a vast difference between a “suggestion” and a “portrait.” The thoughts and feelings or the personal characteristics of a certain individual may suggest a character who in his physical aspects, his environment, and the events of his career may be conceived as an individual totally different. Mrs. Ward’s novels contain no portraits and no history. But they abound in characters suggested by people whom she has known, in incidents and reminiscences of real life, and in vivid word-pictures of scenes which she has learned to love or of places with which she is personally familiar.

A study of the scenery of these novels properly begins in the County of Surrey. About four miles southwest of Godalming is Borough Farm, an old-fashioned brick house, which we reached by a drive over country that seemed in places almost like a desert—so wild and forsaken that one could scarcely believe it to be within a few miles of some of the busiest suburbs of London. But it has a splendid beauty of its own. The thick gorse with its golden blossoms everywhere waves a welcome. There are now and then great oaks to greet you, and graceful patches of white birch. And everywhere is a delightfully exhilarating sense of freedom and fresh air such as only this kind of open country can suggest. Here Mrs. Ward lived for seven summers, finding in the country round about some of the most interestingof the scenes of her first novel, “Miss Bretherton,” and of “Robert Elsmere.”

“Miss Bretherton” was published in 1884. Mary Anderson was at that time the reigning success on the London stage, while Sarah Bernhardt, in Paris, was startling the world with an art of a totally different character. The beauty of the young American actress was the one subject of conversation. Was it her beauty that attracted the crowds to the theater, and that alone? Was she totally lacking in that consummate art which the great Frenchwoman admittedly possessed? These questions suggested to Mrs. Ward the theme of her first attempt at fiction. The beautiful Miss Bretherton is taken in hand by a party of friends representing the highest types of culture. In their effort to give her mind and body much-needed rest from the exactions of London society she is carried away on two notable excursions. The first is to Surrey, the real scene of this outing being a place near Borough Farm called “Forked Pond,” well known to Mrs. Ward and her family while residents at the farm. The other is to Oxford, where, after admiring the colleges, which brought many happy recollections to the gentlemen of the party, Miss Bretherton is taken to Nuneham Park, a beautiful place on the river where a small rustic bridge enhances the romantic character of the surroundings. This, of course, was familiar ground to the author, whospent sixteen happy years in that vicinity as a resident of Oxford. Through the kindness of these friends, and particularly by the influence of Kendal, who becomes her lover, Miss Bretherton is made to take a new view of her art, and is transformed into an actress of real dramatic power.

Although a charming story, “Miss Bretherton” did not prove successful and had little part in making the reputation of the novelist, who is likely to be known as “the author of ‘Robert Elsmere,’” so long as her fame shall endure. For this great book created a sensation throughout the English-speaking world when it appeared, and aroused controversies which did not subside for many years.

The scenery of “Robert Elsmere” combines the Westmoreland which Mrs. Ward learned to love in her childhood with the Oxford of her girlhood and early married life, and the Surrey where so many pleasant summers were spent. Not wishing, for fear of recognition, to describe the country near Ambleside, with which she was most familiar, Mrs. Ward placed the scenes of the opening chapters in the neighboring valley of Long Sleddale, giving it the name of Long Whindale. Whinborough is the city of Kendal, and the village of Shanmoor is Kentmere. Burwood Farm, where the Leyburns lived, is a house far up the valley, which still “peeps through the trees” at the passer-by just as it did in the dayswhen Robert Elsmere first met the saintly Catherine there. A few hundred yards down the stream is a little stone church across the road from a small stone schoolhouse, and next to the school a gray stone vicarage, standing high above the little river, all three bearing the date 1863. At sight of this group ofbuildingsone almost expects to catch a glimpse of the well-meaning but not over-wise Mrs. Thornburgh, sitting in the shade of the vicarage, awaiting the coming of old John Backhouse, the carrier, with the anxiously expected consignment of “airy and appetizing trifles” from the confectioner’s.

At the extreme end of the valley the road abruptly comes to an end. A stone bridge leads off to the left to a group of three small farms. In front no sign of human habitation meets the eye. The hills seem to come together, forming a kind of bowl, and there is no sound to break the stillness save the ripple of the river. It was to this lonely spot that Catherine was in the habit of walking, quite alone, to visit the dying Mary Backhouse. The house of John and Jim Backhouse where Mary died may still be seen. It is the oldest of the three farms above mentioned. A very small cottage, it is wedged between a stable on one side and a sort of barn or storehouse on the other, so that from the road before crossing the bridge it seems to be quite pretentious. The house dates back to 1670.Mary Backhouse never existed except in imagination, but Mrs. Ward, upon seeing the photograph of the house, exclaimed with much satisfaction, “Yes, that is the very house where Mary Backhouse died.” So real to her are the events described in her novels that Mrs. Ward frequently refers to the scenes in this way. Behind the house is a very steep hill, covered with trees and rough stones. It was over this hill that Robert and Catherine walked on the night of Mary Backhouse’s death. Readers of “Robert Elsmere” will remember that poor Mary was the victim of a strange hallucination. On the night of Midsummer Day, one year before, she had seen the ghost or “bogle” of “Bleacliff Tarn.” To see the ghost was terror enough, but to be spoken to by it was the sign of death within a year. And Mary had both seen and been spoken to by the ghost. Her mind, so far as she had one, for she was really half-insane, was concentrated on the one horrible thought—that on Midsummer Night she must die. The night had at last arrived, and Catherine, true to her charitable impulses, was there to comfort the dying girl.

The weather was growing darker and stormier; the wind shook the house in gusts, and the farther shoulder of High Fell was almost hidden by the trailing rain-clouds. But Catherine feared nothing when a human soul was in need, and,hoping to pacify the poor woman, volunteered to go out to the top of the Fell and over the very track of the ghost at the precise hour when she was supposed to walk, to prove that there was nothing near “but the dear old hills and the power of God.” As she opened the door of the kitchen, Catherine was surprised to find Robert Elsmere there, and together they set out, over the rough, stony path, facing the wind and rain as they climbed the distant fell-side. There Robert pleaded his love against Catherine’s stern sense of duty, and won.

When Robert and Catherine were married, they went to live at the Rectory of Murewell, in Surrey. This old house is at Peper Harow, three miles west of Godalming and a mile or so from Borough Farm. It was leased for one summer by Mrs. Ward. A plain, square house of stone, much discolored by the weather, it could hardly be called attractive in itself. But stepping back to the road, with its picturesque stone wall surmounted by foliage, and viewing the house as it appears from there, flanked on the left by a fine spreading elm and on the right by a tall, pointed fir and a cluster of oaks, with a little flower garden under the windows and the gracefully curving walk leading past the door in a semicircle stretching from gate to gate, the ugly house is transformed into a home of beauty, where Robert and Catherine, one can well imagine,might have been quite happy and contented with their surroundings.

In the rear of the house is the garden, famous for its phloxes, the scene of many walks and family confidences. At the farther end is the gate where Langham poured out the story of his life in passionate speech, impelled by the equally passionate sympathy of Rose, only to recall himself a moment later, “the critic in him making the most bitter, remorseless mock of all these heroics and despairs the other self had been indulging in.”

Only a short walk from the Rectory is the little church of Peper Harow, the scene of Robert’s early clerical labors, and further on is the large and beautiful Peper Harow Park, the present home of Lord Middleton. This attractive park is the original of Squire Wendover’s, but the house itself is not described. The fine library owned by the Squire, which so delighted Robert Elsmere with its many rare books, was in reality the famous Bodleian Library of Oxford, with which the author became familiar very early in life.

Three characters from real life, each a man of marked individuality, stand out prominently in the pages of “Robert Elsmere.” These are Professor Mark Pattison, whose strong personality and scholarly attainments suggested Squire Wendover; Professor Thomas H. Green, the original ofMr. Grey; and the melancholy Swiss philosopher, poet, and dreamer Amiel, who was the prototype of Langham.

The theme of the novel is the development of Robert Elsmere’s character and the gradual change of his religious views, brought about through many a bitter struggle. In this the principal influence was that of Roger Wendover, a typical English squire of large possessions, but, in addition, a scholar of the first rank, the possessor of a large library filled with rare and important volumes of history, philosophy, science, and religion, with the contents of which he was thoroughly familiar, and an author of two great books, one of which had stirred up a tremendous excitement in the circles of English religious thought.

The Pentateuch, the Prophets, the Gospels, St. Paul, Tradition, the Fathers, Protestantism and Justification by Faith, the Eighteenth Century, the Broad Church Movement, Anglican Theology—the Squire had his say about them all. And while the coolness and frankness of the method sent a shock of indignation and horror through the religious public, the subtle and caustic style, and the epigrams with which the book was strewn, forced both the religious and the irreligious public to read, whether they would or no. A storm of controversy rose round the volumes, and some of the keenest observers of English life had said at the time, and maintained since, that the publication of the book had made or marked an epoch.

Against the influence of such a book, and more particularly against a growing intimacy with its author, Robert Elsmere felt himself as helpless as a child. The squire’s talk “was simply the outpouring of one of the richest, most skeptical, and most highly trained of minds on the subject of Christian origins.” His two books were, he said, merely an interlude in his life-work, which had been devoted to an “exhaustive examination of human records” in the preparation of a great History of Testimony which had required learning the Oriental languages and sifting and comparing the entire mass of existing records of classical antiquity—India, Persia, Egypt, and Judea—down to the Renaissance.

Reference has already been made to the influence of Professor Mark Pattison upon the early life of Mrs. Ward. To create the Squire she had only to imagine the house in the great park of Peper Harow, equipped with a library like the Bodleian, and inhabited by a person who might be otherwise like any English squire, but in mental equipment a duplicate to some extent of the Rector of Lincoln. Professor Pattison’s father was a strict evangelical. He gave his son a good education, and the boy early manifested a delight in literature and learning. He soon developed an independence of character, and, refusing to confine his reading to the prescribed books of orthodoxy,delved into the classics extensively as well as the English literature of Pope, Addison, and Swift. He was graduated at Oxford in 1836, and took his M.A. degree in 1840. By this time he had abandoned the evangelical teachings of his youth, and with other young men came under the influence of Newman, in whose house he went to live. When Newman went into the Roman Catholic Church in 1845, Pattison was not so much shocked as others. Indeed, he confessed that he “might have dropped off to Rome himself in some moment of mental and physical depression or under pressure of some arguing convert.” But Pattison, who was now a Fellow at Lincoln College, was thoroughly devoted to his work and was fast gaining a great reputation, not only for his magnetic influence upon young men, but as one of the ablest of college tutors and lecturers. In 1861 he became Rector of Lincoln. He was an indefatigable writer, contributing to many magazines and to the “Encyclopædia Britannica.” An article on “Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750” aroused widespread comment. His literary work was marked by evidences of most painstaking research coupled with a profound scholarship and excellent judgment in the arrangement of his material. He devoted a lifetime to the preparation of a history of learning—a stupendous undertaking of which only a portion was evercompleted. He possessed a library said to be the largest private collection of his time in Oxford. It numbered fourteen thousand volumes, and was extraordinarily complete in books on the history of learning and philosophy in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Of Professor Pattison’s personality his biographer says:—

Under a singularly stiff and freezing manner to strangers and to those whom he disliked he concealed a most kindly nature, full of geniality and sympathy and a great love of congenial and especially of female society. But it was in his intercourse with his pupils and generally with those younger than himself that he was seen to most advantage. His conversation was marked by a delicate irony. His words were few and deliberate but pregnant with meaning and above all stimulating, and their effect was heightened by perhaps too frequent and, especially to undergraduates, somewhat embarrassing flashes of silence.

All these qualities are continually appearing in the Squire. But Professor Pattison’s own definition of a man of learning is the best description of Roger Wendover:—

Learning is a peculiar compound of memory, imagination, scientific habit, accurate observation, all concentrated through a prolonged period on the analysis of the remains of literature. The result of this sustained mental endeavor is not a book, but a man. It cannot be embodied in print; it consists of the living word.

The second in importance of the potent influences upon Robert Elsmere’s character was that of Henry Grey, a tutor of St. Anselm’s (Balliol College), Oxford. Very early in his Oxford career Elsmere was taken to hear a sermon by Mr. Grey, which made a deep impression on his mind. The substance of this sermon, which is briefly summarized in the novel, was taken from a volume of lay sermons by Professor Thomas Hill Green, entitled “The Witness of God.”

The whole basis of Grey’s thought was ardently idealist and Hegelian. He had broken with the popular Christianity, but for him God, consciousness, duty, were the only realities. None of the various forms of materialist thought escaped his challenge; no genuine utterance of the spiritual life of man but was sure of his sympathy. It was known that, after having prepared himself for the Christian ministry, he had remained a layman because it had become impossible to him to accept miracle; and it was evident that the commoner type of Churchmen regarded him as an antagonist all the more dangerous because he was so sympathetic.

All of this, like all the other references to Grey throughout the book, applies perfectly to Professor Green. He was the leading exponent at Oxford of the principles of Kant and Hegel, and attracted many followers. His simplicity, power, and earnestness commanded respect. He associated with his pupils on terms of friendlyintimacy, frequently taking some of them with him on his vacations. He was a man of singularly lofty character, and those who knew him were reminded of Wordsworth, whom he resembled in some ways.

When Elsmere is advised by his friend Newcome to solve all the problems of his doubt by trampling upon himself, flinging away his freedom, and stifling his intellect, these words of Henry Grey flash upon his mind:—

God is not wisely trusted when declared unintelligible. Such honor rooted in dishonor stands; such faith unfaithful makes us falsely true.God is forever reason; and his communication, his revelation, is reason.

God is not wisely trusted when declared unintelligible. Such honor rooted in dishonor stands; such faith unfaithful makes us falsely true.

God is forever reason; and his communication, his revelation, is reason.

The words are taken from the same volume of Professor Green’s sermons.

The death of this dear friend of Robert Elsmere occurred in 1882, and is most touchingly described. An old Quaker aunt was sitting by his bedside:—

She was a beautiful old figure in her white cap and kerchief, and it seemed to please him to lie and look at her. “It’ll not be for long, Henry,” she said to him once. “I’m seventy-seven this spring. I shall come to thee soon.” He made no reply, and his silence seemed to disturb her.... “Thou’rt not doubting the Lord’s goodness, Henry?” she said to him, with the tears in her eyes. “No,” he said, “no, never. Only it seems to be his will; we should be certain of nothing—butHimself! I ask no more.” I shall never forget the accent of these words; they were the breath of his inmost life.

To understand the third of the three characters from real life in “Robert Elsmere,” it is necessary to glance at the story of Henri Frédéric Amiel, a Swiss essayist, philosopher, and dreamer, who was born in 1821 and died in 1881, leaving as a legacy to his friends a “Journal Intime” covering the psychological observations, meditations, and inmost thoughts of thirty years. They represented a prodigious amount of labor, covering some seventeen thousand folio pages of manuscript. This extensive journal was translated into English by Mrs. Ward and published in 1883, five years before the date of “Robert Elsmere.” Her long and exhaustive study of the life of this extraordinary man as revealed by himself made a deep impression upon the mind of the novelist—so much so that she could not refrain from introducing him in the person of the morbid Langham. A brief glance at some of the peculiarities of Amiel will prove the best interpretation of Langham, without which the latter must always remain a mystery.

Amiel’s estimate of the value of his life-work was not a high one. “This Journal of mine,” he said, “represents the material of a good many volumes; what prodigious waste of thought, of strength. It will be useful to nobody, and evenfor myself it has rather helped me to shirk life than to practice it.” And again, “Is everything I have produced taken together, my correspondence, these thousands of journal pages, my lectures, my articles, my poems, my notes of different kinds—anything better than withered leaves? To whom and to what have I been useful? Will my name survive me a single day? And will it ever mean anything to anybody? A life of no account! When it is all added up, nothing!”

“Amiel,” says Mrs. Ward, “might have been saved from despair by love and marriage, by paternity, by strenuous and successful literary production.”

Family life attracted him perpetually. “I cannot escape from the ideal of it,” he said. “A companion of my life, of my work, of my thoughts, of my hopes; within, a common worship—towards the world outside, kindness and beneficence; education to undertake; the thousand and one moral relations which develop around the first—all these ideas intoxicate me sometimes.”

But in vain. “Reality, the present, the irreparable, the necessary, repel and even terrify me. I have too much imagination, conscience, and penetration, and not enough character. The life of thought alone seems to me to have enough elasticity and immensity to be free enough from the irreparable; practical life makes me afraid.I am distrustful of myself and of happiness because I know myself. The ideal poisons for me all imperfect possession, and I abhor all useless regrets and repentances.”

Mrs. Ward dramatized this strange individuality in the character of Langham. The love-scene in which Langham wins the hand of the beautiful Rose, followed by the all-night mental struggle in which he finally feels compelled to renounce all that he has gained, is almost tragic in its intensity.

Poor Langham, with the prize fairly within his grasp, found that he lacked the courage to retain it. And so the morning after the proposal, instead of the pleasantly anticipated call from her accepted lover, the unfortunate Rose was shocked to receive a pessimistic letter announcing that the engagement had not survived the night. To the casual reader it would seem that such a man as Langham would be impossible. But that Amiel was just such a person his elaborate journal fully reveals. And Professor Mark Pattison has given his testimony that Amiel was not alone in his experiences, for six months after the journal was published he wrote, “I can vouch that there is in existence at least one other soul which has lived through the same struggles mental and moral as Amiel.”

Among the very large number of persons who come upon the stage in the action of this remarkablebook, several besides the Squire, Grey, and Langham may have been suggested by persons whom the author knew. But the prototypes of these three are the only ones who really enter, in a vital way, into the actual construction of the novel. “But who was the real Elsmere?” one naturally asks. Many attempts have been made to identify this good preacher or that worthy reformer with the famous character, much to the annoyance of the author, who really created Elsmere out of the influences already described. The real Elsmere would be obviously one whose religious views were moulded by Mark Pattison and Thomas H. Green, and one who was profoundly interested in, if not influenced by, the strange self-distrust of Amiel. The real Elsmere would be also one whose religious convictions led inevitably to the desire to perform some practical service to mankind. Such an Elsmere exists in the person of Mrs. Ward herself, who is to-day regarded by the workers and associates of the Passmore Edwards Settlement, in Tavistock Place, London, with very much the same love and gratitude as Elsmere won from the people of Elgood Street. For this beneficent institution was a direct result of the novel, and owes its existence very largely to Mrs. Ward’s energetic and influential efforts.

IIIOTHER PEOPLE AND SCENERY

“TheHistory of David Grieve,” Mrs. Ward’s third novel, is by many considered, next to “Robert Elsmere,” her greatest achievement. David and his sister Louie are the orphan children of a sturdy and high-minded Englishman whose wife was a French woman of somewhat doubtful character. Their development from early childhood to full maturity is traced with a power of psychological analysis seldom equaled. Both are intensely human and fall easy prey to the temptations of their environment, but in the end David overcomes the evil influences, while poor Louie, inheriting more of her mother’s temperament, goes to her death in poverty and disgrace.

The most attractive part of the book is the opening, where the two children are seen roaming the hills of the wild moorland country of their birth. This is the Kinderscout region, in Derbyshire, something over twenty miles southeast of Manchester.

The visitor must take the train to Hayfield, called Clough End in the novel, and then, if he is fortunate enough to have permission from the owner, may drive a distance of four or five miles to what is now called Upper House, thecountry home of a wealthy merchant of Manchester. This was originally known as Marriott’s Farm, and for several hundred years was owned by a family of that name. Here Mrs. Ward spent two days, when the entire house consisted of what is now the right wing. She walked over the moors and along the top of the Kinderscout with Mr. Marriott as her guide, and thus obtained the knowledge for the most perfect description of pastoral life to be found in any of her novels.

Needham’s Farm, the home of David and Louie, is the only other farm in the neighborhood. It is now known as the Lower House, and is owned by the same Manchester gentleman, but is leased to a family named Needham, who have occupied it for many years. It looks now just as it did when Mrs. Ward described it.

The “Owd Smithy,” where the prayer-meeting was held and Louie wickedly played the ghost of Jenny Crum, is now only remotely suggested by a heap of rocks bearing little resemblance to a building of any kind. Huge mill-stones, partly embedded in the earth, are scattered about here and there. The Downfall, which, when the water is coming over, is visible for miles around, is ordinarily a bare, bleak pile of rocks, for it is usually nearly if not quite dry. But after a heavy rain the water comes over in large volume, and, if the wind is strong, is blown back, presenting a most curious spectacle of acascade seeming to disappear in the air when halfway to the bottom. Not far away is the Mermaid’s Pool, haunted by the ghost of Jenny Crum. There is a real ghost story connected with this pool, which doubtless formed the basis of Mrs. Ward’s legend. An old farmer named Tom Heys was much troubled by a ghost, of which he could not rid himself. He once shot at it, but without effect except that the bullet-mark is in the old house even now. An old woman once saw the ghost while shearing sheep. She threw the tongs at it. Instantly the room was filled with flying fleece, while the woman’s clothes were cut to pieces and fell off her body. These were some of the troublesome pranks played by the ghost. At length the farmer discovered, somewhere on his place, an old skull, which doubtless belonged to His Ghostship, and carried it to the Mermaid’s Pool, where he deposited it

“To stay as long as holly’s green,And rocks on Kinderscout are seen.”

“To stay as long as holly’s green,

And rocks on Kinderscout are seen.”

This effectually disposed of the ghost so far as he was concerned, but the spirit still hovers over the Mermaid’s Pool.

Market Place, Manchester, where we find David after his flight from the old farm, looks to-day very much the same. Half Street, however, on the east of the cathedral, has disappeared.Purcell’s shop in this street was described from a quaint little book-shop which actually existed at the time.

The Parisian scenes of “David Grieve,” the Louvre, the Boulevards, the Latin Quarter, Fontainebleau, Saint-Germain, and Barbizon, are all too well known to need mention here. The final scenes of the novel, where David’s wife is brought after the beginning of her fatal illness, are in one of the most beautiful localities in the English Lake District. Lucy’s house is supposed to be on the right bank of the river. The house is imaginary (the one on the left bank having no connection with the story), but the location is exactly described. This is just above Pelter Bridge, a mile north of Ambleside, where the river Rothay combines with the adjacent hills to make one of those fascinating scenes for which Westmoreland is famous. Nab Scar looms up before us, and off to the left is Loughrigg. A stroll along the river brings one to the little bridge at the outlet of Rydal Water, where David walked for quiet meditation during his wife’s illness; and still farther northward the larch plantations on the side of Silver How add their touch of beauty to the landscape. This entire region has always been dear to Mrs. Ward’s heart from the associations of her girlhood, and, if Lucy must die, she could think of no more lovely spot for the last sad scenes.

One character in “David Grieve” is drawn from real life—Élise Delaunay, the French girl with whom David falls in love on his first visit to Paris. This is, in some respects, a portrait of Marie Bashkirtseff, a young native of Russia, whose brief career as an artist attracted much notice. Marie was born of wealthy parents in 1860. When she was only ten years old her mother quarreled with her husband and left him, taking the children with her. Marie returned to her father, with whom she traveled extensively. A born artist, the journey through Italy created in her a new and thrilling interest. She resolved to devote her life to art, and in 1877 entered the school of Julian in Paris. She soon showed astonishing capacity, and Julian assured her that her draughtsmanship was remarkable. One of her paintings, “Le Meeting,” was exhibited in the Salon of 1884, and attracted much notice. Reproductions were made in all the leading papers, and it was finally bought by the cousin of the Czar, the Grand Duke Constantino Constantinowitch, a distinguished connoisseur and himself a painter. This picture represents half a dozen street gamins of the ordinary Parisian type holding a conference in the street. Their faces exhibit all the seriousness of a group of financiers consulting upon some project of vast importance.

The peculiarity of Marie’s character is set forth by her biographer in words which enablethe reader of “David Grieve” instantly to recognize Élise Delaunay:—

She never wholly yields herself up to any fixed rule of conduct, or even passion, being swayed this way or that by the intense impressionability of her nature. She herself recognized this anomaly in the remark, “My life can’t endure; I have a deal too much of some things and a deal too little of others, and a character not made to last.” The very intensity of her desire to see life at all points seems to defeat itself, and she cannot help stealing side glances at ambition during the most romantic tête-à-tête with a lover, or being tortured by visions of unsatisfied love when art should have engrossed all her faculties.

In the last year of her life Marie achieved an admiration for Bastien-Lepage which, her biographer says, “has a suspicious flavour of love about it. It is the strongest, sweetest, most impassioned feeling of her existence.” She died in 1884, at the early age of twenty-four, assured by Bastien-Lepage that no other woman had ever accomplished so much at her age.

“Marcella” and “Sir George Tressady” are novels of English social and political life—a field in which Mrs. Ward is peculiarly at home, and in which she has no superior. Marcella, who in her final development became one of the most beautiful women of all Mrs. Ward’s characters, was suggested by the personality of an intimatefriend, whose name need not be mentioned. Mellor Park, the home of Marcella, is drawn from Hampden House in Buckinghamshire. It is a famous old house, some centuries old, now the country-seat of the Earl of Buckinghamshire, and, with its well-kept gardens and spacious park, is unusually attractive. Twenty years ago, however, it was in a state of neglect. The road leading to it was full of underbrush, the garden was wholly uncared-for, and the house itself much in need of repair. This is the state in which Mrs. Ward describes it—and she knew it well, for she had leased it for a season and made it her summer home. The murder of the gamekeeper, described as taking place near Mellor Park, really happened at Stocks, Mrs. Ward’s present home near Tring.

The village of Ferth, where Sir George Tressady had his home and owned the collieries, is a mining village ten miles from Crewe, known as “Talk o’ the Hill.” The ugly black house to which Tressady brought home his young wife was described from an actual house which the author visited.

“Helbeck of Bannisdale” was written while the author was living at Levens Hall, the handsome country home of Captain Bagot, M.P., which Mrs. Ward leased for a summer. It is a few miles south of Kendal, in Westmoreland, and just on the border of the “Peat Moss”country. The old hall dates back to 1170, the original deed now in possession of Captain Bagot bearing that date. The dining-room has an inlaid design over the mantel with the date 1586. The entrance-hall, dining-room, and drawing-room contain many antique relics. But the most remarkable feature of Levens is the garden, containing about two hundred yews trained and trimmed into every conceivable shape. There is an “umbrella” which has required two hundred years of constant care to reach its present size and shape; a British lion, with perfect coronet; a peacock with correctly formed neck and tail feathers; a barrister’s wig, a kaffir’s hut, and so on through a long list of curious shapes. In front of the house the river Kent, with a bridge of two arches, makes a picturesque scene. This is the “bridge over the Bannisdale River” which marked the end of Laura’s drive with Mason, where at sight of Helbeck the young man made his sudden and unceremonious departure. A spacious park skirts the river, through which runs a grassy road bounded by splendid oaks intertwining their branches high above. Following this path we reached a foot-bridge barely wide enough for one person to cross, on the park end of which is a rough platform apparently built for fishermen. Here Laura kept her clandestine appointment with Mason, and on her way home was mistaken for the ghost of the“Bannisdale Lady,” much to the terror of a poor old man who chanced to be passing, and not a little to her own subsequent embarrassment. A little beyond is the deep pool where Laura was drowned.

The exterior of Bannisdale Hall is not Levens, but Sizergh Castle, some two or three miles nearer Kendal. At the time of the story a Catholic family of Stricklands owned the place, but, like Helbeck, were gradually selling parts of their property, and dealers from London and elsewhere were constantly coming to carry off furniture or paintings. The family finally lost the property, and it was acquired by a distant relative, Sir Gerald Strickland, who was recently appointed Governor of New South Wales, and who now owns but does not occupy it.

The little chapel, high up on a hill, where Laura was buried, is at Cartmel Fell, in Northern Lancashire. A quaint little chapel five or six hundred years old, it is well worth a visit.

The scenes of “Eleanor” are in Italy, and here Mrs. Ward fairly revels in descriptions of “Italy, the beloved and beautiful.” The opening chapters have their setting in the Villa Barberini, on the ridge of the Alban Hills, south of Rome, from the balcony of which the dome of St. Peter’s can be seen in the distance, dominating the landscape by day and seeming at night to be the onething which has definite form and identity. There is a visit to Nemi and Egeria’s Spring, after which the scene changes to the valley of the Paglia, beyond the hill town of Orvieto, “a valley with wooded hills on either side, of a bluish-green color, checkered with hill towns and slim campaniles and winding roads; and, binding it all in one, the loops and reaches of a full brown river.”

Torre Amiata—the real name of which is Torre Alfina—is a magnificent castle, “a place of remote and enchanting beauty.” Through some Italian friends, Mrs. Ward met the agent of this great estate, who put his house at her disposal for a season. This happy opportunity gave her the intimate acquaintance with the surrounding country which she used with such excellent skill in “Eleanor,” and enabled her, among other things, to discover the ruined convent and chapel which formed the dismal retreat of Lucy and Eleanor in their strange flight from Mr. Manisty.

“Lady Rose’s Daughter,” which followed “Eleanor,” likewise reflects the author’s love of Italy. It was written, in part at least, in the beautiful villa at Cadenabbia, on Lake Como, from which a view of surpassing loveliness meets the eye in every direction. Mrs. Ward never tires of it, and in her leisure moments while therefound great delight in reproducing in her sketch-book the charming colors of a landscape which can scarcely be equaled in any other part of the world.

The setting of the novel in its earlier chapters is London. But when Julie Le Breton, worn out by mental anguish, the result of experiences which had nearly ruined her life, could be rescued and brought back to life only by a quiet rest amid pleasant surroundings, Lake Como was the place selected by her kind-hearted little friend the duchess. As her strength gradually returned she daily walked over the hill to the path that led to the woods overhanging the Villa Carlotta.

Such a path! To the left hand, and, as it seemed, steeply beneath her feet, all earth and heaven—the wide lake, the purple mountains, the glories of a flaming sky. On the calm spaces of water lay a shimmer of crimson and gold, repeating the noble splendor of the clouds.... To her right a green hillside—each blade of grass, each flower, each tuft of heath, enskied, transfigured by the broad light that poured across it from the hidden west. And on the very hilltop a few scattered olives, peaches, and wild cherries scrawled upon the blue, their bare, leaning stems, their pearly whites, their golden pinks and feathery gray, all in a glory of sunset that made of them things enchanted, aerial, fantastical, like a dance of Botticelli angels on the height.

The story opens with a graphic description of Lady Henry’s salon—frequented by the mostprominent people in London—where the chief attraction was not the great lady herself, but her maid companion, Julie Le Breton. Everywhere Julie was met with smiles and evidence of eager interest. She knew every one, and “her rule appeared to be at once absolute and welcome.” But one evening Lady Henry was ill and gave orders that the guests be turned away with her apologies. As the carriages drove up, one by one, the footman rehearsed Lady Henry’s excuses. But a group of men soon assembled in the inner vestibule, and Julie felt impelled to invite them into the library, where they were implored not to make any noise. The distinguished frequenters of Lady Henry’s salon were all there. Coffee was served, and, stimulated by the blazing fire and a sense of excitement due to the novelty of the situation, an animated conversation sprang up, which continued till midnight and was at last suddenly interrupted by the unexpected appearance of Lady Henry herself.

Lady Henry’s awakening led to Julie’s dismissal. But her friends did not desert her. A little cottage was found, where Julie was soon comfortably installed.

This much of the story—and little if any more—was suggested by the life of Julie de Lespinasse, a Frenchwoman who figured brilliantly in the Paris society of the middle of the eighteenth century.

In 1754 the Marquise du Deffand was one of the famous women of Paris. Her quick intelligence and a great reputation for wit had brought to her drawing-room the famous authors, philosophers, and learned men of the day. But the great lady, now nearly sixty, was entirely blind and subject to a “chronic weariness that devoured her.” She sought a remedy in the society of an extraordinarily attractive young woman, of somewhat doubtful parentage, named Julie de Lespinasse, whom she took into her home as a companion. Julie became a great social success. For ten years she remained with Madame du Deffand, when a bitter quarrel separated them. Julie’s friends combined to assure her an income and a home, and she was soon established almost opposite the house of her former patron. The Maréchale de Luxembourg presented her with a complete suite of furniture. Turgot, the famous Minister of Louis XVI, and President Hénault were among those who provided funds. D’Alembert, distinguished as a philosopher, author, and geometrician, who was the cause of the quarrel with the marquise, became Julie’s most intimate friend. When she founded her own salon, his official patronage and constant presence assured its success. Her success was, in fact, astonishingly rapid. “In the space of a few months,” says her biographer, the Marquis de Ségur, “the modest room withthe crimson blinds was nightly filled, between the hours of six and ten, by a crowd of chosen visitors, courtiers and men of letters, soldiers and churchmen, ambassadors and great ladies, ... each and all gayly jostling elbows as they struggled up the narrow wooden stairs, unregretting, and forgetting in the ardor of their talk, the richest houses in Paris, their suppers and balls, the opera, and the futile lures of the grand world.”

The remarkable career and unique personality of this famous woman furnished the suggestion for Julie Le Breton. But beyond this the resemblance is slight. The subsequent history of the Frenchwoman has no relation to the story of “Lady Rose’s Daughter,” and the personality of the two women differs in many respects.

“The Marriage of William Ashe” is like “Lady Rose’s Daughter” in two important respects: it is a story in which the author reveals an extraordinary knowledge of English politics and familiarity with the social life of the upper classes, and it is one in which a story of real life plays an important part. Indeed, there is far more of real life in this novel than in any other the author has written. William Ashe and his frivolous and erratic wife Kitty are portraits, considerably modified, it is true, but nevertheless real, of William and Caroline Lamb. WilliamLamb—known to posterity as Lord Melbourne—did not become a distinguished statesman until after he had entered the House of Lords. For twenty-five years he had been a member of the House of Commons, of little influence and almost unknown to the country at large. But soon after the death of George IV he entered the cabinet of Earl Grey as Home Secretary. This was in 1830. Less than four years later he rose suddenly to the highest position in the state. As Premier it was his unique privilege to instruct the young Queen, Victoria, in the duties of her high office—a task which he executed with commendable tact and skill. It is the inconsequential William Lamb of the House of Commons, and not the exalted Lord Melbourne, whom Mrs. Ward had in mind in portraying William Ashe; and it was more particularly his young wife, Caroline Lamb, who furnished the real motive of the novel.

“Lady Caroline,” we are told by Lord Melbourne’s biographer, Dr. Dunckley, “became the mistress of many accomplishments. She acquired French and Latin, and had the further courage, Mr. Torrens tells us, to undertake the recital of an ode of Sappho. She could draw and paint, and had the instinct of caricature. Her mind was brimming with romance, and, regardless of conventionality, she followed her own tastes in everything. In conversation she was both vivaciousand witty.” Such was Lady Caroline Ponsonby when she married William Lamb. The marriage proved an extremely unhappy one. Lady Caroline’s whole life was a series of flirtations—deliberately planned, as a matter of fact, and yet entered upon with such mad rushes of passion as to seem merely the result of some irresistible impulse. A son was born to the couple, but he brought no joy, for as he grew up he developed an infirmity of intellect amounting almost to imbecility. The life of the young people was “an incessant round of frivolous dissipation.” The after-supper revels often lasted till daybreak. But this brought no happiness, and both husband and wife came to realize that marriage had been, for them, a troublesome affair. About this time Lord Byron appeared on the scene. “Childe Harold” had brought him sudden fame. He had traveled in the East, was the hero of many escapades, had been sufficiently wicked to win the admiration of certain ladies of romantic tendencies, and altogether created quite afurorthrough the peculiar charms of his handsome face and dashing ways. He sought and obtained an introduction to Lady Caroline. He came to call the next day when she was alone, and for the next nine months almost lived at Melbourne House. They called each other by endearing names, and exchanged passionate verses. They were constantly together, and the intimacy caused much scandalous comment. Itlasted until Byron became tired of it all, and announced his intention of marrying. The marriage to a cousin of Lady Caroline aroused the fierce jealousy of the latter, who proceeded to perform a little melodrama of her own, first trying to jump out of a window and then stabbing herself—not so deep that it would hurt—with a knife.

Such escapades could have but one result. There came a separation, of course; but some traces of the early love remained in both, and when Lady Caroline was dying, William Lamb was summoned from Ireland. The final parting was not without tender affection on both sides, and William felt his loss deeply.

In this brief sketch the reader of Mrs. Ward’s novel will recognize Kitty Ashe in every line. The portraiture is very close. Cliffe takes the place of Lord Byron without being made to resemble him. But he serves to reveal the weakness of Kitty’s character. Even Kitty’s mischievous work in writing a book, which came near ruining her husband’s career, was an episode in the life of Caroline Lamb. She wrote a novel in which Byron and herself were the principal characters, and their escapades were paraded before the world in a thin disguise which deceived nobody.

Of Mrs. Ward’s later books there is little to say, so far as scenes and “originals” are concerned.In “Fenwick’s Career” the little cottage where the artist and his wife lived was in reality the summer home of Mrs. Ward’s daughter Dorothy. It stands on the slope of a hill near the Langdale Pikes in Westmoreland, commanding a view of surpassing loveliness.

In the “Testing of Diana Mallory” the scenery is all taken from the country near Stocks, the summer home of the novelist.

In “Daphne,” or “Marriage à la Mode,” Mount Vernon, Washington, Niagara Falls, and an imaginary English estate supply the necessary scenery, and these are not described with real interest, for the author, contrary to her usual custom, is here writing with a fixed didactic purpose. But a chapter incidentally thrown in reflects the novelist’s impressions of a visit to the White House as the guest of President Roosevelt—an experience which interested her greatly. In “the tall, black-haired man with the meditative eye, the equal, social or intellectual, of any Foreign Minister that Europe might pit against him, or any diplomat that might be sent to handle him,” it is easy to recognize Mr. Root. Secretary Garfield is “this younger man, sparely built, with the sane handsome face—son of a famous father, modest, amiable, efficient.” Secretary Taft, with whom, apparently, the distinguished author did not really become acquainted, is lightly referred to as “this otherof huge bulk and height, the hope of a party, smiling already a Presidential smile as he passed.”

It has been said of this book that it does an injustice to America. But such was assuredly far from the author’s intent. Mrs. Ward, who is one of the keenest observers of English and European public men, pays a high compliment in the remark that “America need make no excuses whatever for her best men.... She has evolved the leaders she wants, and Europe has nothing to teach them.” She is attacking the laxity of the divorce laws in certain American States, and in doing so is actuated by motives which every high-minded American must applaud. The English general who berates American institutions is held up to ridicule, and the most agreeable woman in the book—perhaps the only agreeable one—is an American. Daphne, through whom the author condemns the evil, is not a typical American girl, but, with evident intent to avoid offense, is made the daughter of a foreigner.

As a matter of fact, Mrs. Ward’s feelings toward America are of the kindliest nature, and, whatever may be said of the merits of “Marriage à la Mode” as a work of fiction, in condemning an abuse which nobody can defend she has performed a real service.

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