Produced by Chuck Greif, University of Michigan Libraries
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net
THE LIFE OF
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
[Illustration: MARY WARD AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-FIVE]
FROM A WATER-COLOUR PAINTING BY MRS A. H. JOHNSON]
THE LIFE OF
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
BY HER DAUGHTER
JANET PENROSE TREVELYAN
Author of
"A Short History of the Italian People"
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1923
_Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner Ltd., _Frome and London_
TO
DOROTHY MARY WARD
AUTHOR'S NOTE
My warmest thanks are due to the many friends who have helped me,
directly or indirectly, in the writing of this book, but especially to
all those who have sent me the letters they possessed from Mrs. Ward, or
who have given me leave to publish their own. Mr. Henry Gladstone kindly
looked out for me the letters written by Mrs. Ward to Mr. Gladstone
during the _Robert Elsmere_ period; Mrs. Creighton did the same for the
long period covered by Mrs. Ward's correspondence with the Bishop and
with herself; Miss Arnold of Fox How sent me many valuable letters
belonging to the later years. So with Mrs. A. H. Johnson, Mrs.
Conybeare, Mrs. R. Vere O'Brien, Sir Robert Blair, Mr. Leonard Huxley,
Mrs. Reginald Smith, Lord Buxton, M. Chevrillon, Miss McKee, Mrs.
Turner, Miss Gertrude Wood, and many others, and although the letters
may not in all cases have been suitable for publication, they have given
me many valuable side-lights on Mrs. Ward's life and work.
To Mrs. A. H. Johnson my special thanks are due for permission to
reproduce her water-colour portrait of Mrs. Ward, and to Mrs. T. H.
Green for much help in connexion with the Oxford portion of the book.
No book at all, however, could have been produced, even from the
material so generously placed at my disposal, had it not been for the
constant collaboration of my father and sister, whose help in sifting
great masses of papers and in advising me in all difficulties has been
my greatest support throughout this task.
J. P. T.
BERKHAMSTEAD,
_July, 1923_.
CONTENTS
PAGES
CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD
Mary Arnold's Parentage--The Sorells--Thomas Arnold the
Younger--Marriage in Tasmania with Julia Sorell--Conversion
to Roman Catholicism--Return to England--The
Arnold Family--Mary Arnold's Childhood--Schools--Her
Father's Re-conversion--Removal to Oxford 1-16
CHAPTER II
LIFE AT OXFORD, 1867-1881
Oxford in the 'Sixties--Mark Pattison and Canon Liddon--Mary
Arnold and the Bodleian--First Attempts at Writing--Marriage
with Mr. T. Humphry Ward--Thomas Arnold's
Second Conversion--Oxford Friends--The Education of
Women--Foundation of Somerville Hall--_The Dictionary
of Christian Biography_--Pamphlet on "Unbelief and Sin" 17-34
CHAPTER III
EARLY YEARS IN LONDON--THE WRITING OF _ROBERT
ELSMERE_, 1881-1888
Mr. Ward takes work on _The Times_--Removal to London--The
House in Russell Square--London Life and Friends--Work
for John Morley--Letters--Writer's Cramp--_Miss
Bretherton_--Borough Farm--Amiel's _Journal Intime_--Beginnings
of _Robert Elsmere_--Long Struggle with the
Writing--Its Appearance, February 24, 1888--Death of
Mrs. Arnold 35-54
CHAPTER IV
_ROBERT ELSMERE_ AND AFTER, 1888-1889
Reviews--Mr. Gladstone's Interest--His Interview with Mrs.
Ward at Oxford--Their Correspondence--Article in the
_Nineteenth Century_--Circulation of _Robert Elsmere_--Letters--Visit
to Hawarden--_Quarterly_ Article--The Book
in America--"Pirate" Publishers--Letters--Mrs. Ward
at Hampden House--Schemes for a _New Brotherhood_ 55-80
CHAPTER V
UNIVERSITY HALL, _DAVID GRIEVE_ AND "STOCKS," 1889-1892
Foundation of University Hall--Mr. Wicksteed as Warden--The
Opening--Lectures--Social Work at Marchmont Hall--Growing
Importance of the Latter--Mr. Passmore
Edwards Promises Help--Our House on Grayswood Hill--Sunday
Readings--The Writing of _David Grieve_--Visit
to Italy--Reception of the Book--Letters--Removal to
"Stocks" 81-103
CHAPTER VI
THE STRUGGLE WITH ILL-HEALTH--_MARCELLA_ AND _SIR
GEORGE TRESSADY_--THE BUILDING OF THE PASSMORE
EDWARDS SETTLEMENT, 1892-1897
Mrs. Ward much Crippled by Illness--The Writing of _Marcella_--Stocks
Cottage--Reception of the Book--Quarrel with
the Libraries--_The Story of Bessie Costrell_--Friends at
Stocks--Letter from John Morley--_Sir George Tressady_--Letters
from Mrs. Sidney Webb and Mr. Rudyard Kipling--Renewed
attacks of Illness--The Building and Opening
of the Passmore Edwards Settlement 104-122
CHAPTER VII
CHILDREN AND ADULTS AT THE PASSMORE EDWARDS SETTLEMENT--THE
FOUNDATION OF THE INVALID CHILDREN'S
SCHOOL, 1897-1899
Beginnings of the Work for Children--The Recreation School--The
Work for Adults--Finance--Mrs. Ward's interest
in Crippled Children--Plans for Organizing a School--She
obtains the help of the London School Board--Opening
of the Settlement School--The Children's Dinners--Extension
of the Work--Mrs. Ward's Inquiry and Report--Further
Schools opened by the School Board--After-care--Mrs.
Ward and the Children 123-142
CHAPTER VIII
_HELBECK OF BANNISDALE_--CATHOLICS AND UNITARIANS--_ELEANOR_
AND THE VILLA BARBERINI, 1896-1900
Origins of _Helbeck_--Mrs. Ward at Levens Hall--Her Views on
Roman Catholicism--Creighton and Henry James--Reception
of _Helbeck_--Letter to Creighton--Mrs. Ward
and the Unitarians--Origins of _Eleanor_--Mrs. Ward takes
the Villa Barberini--Life at the Villa--Nemi--Her Feeling
for Italy 143-164
CHAPTER IX
MRS. WARD AS CRITIC AND PLAYWRIGHT--FRENCH AND
ITALIAN FRIENDS--THE SETTLEMENT VACATION SCHOOL,
1899-1904
Mrs. Ward and the Brontës--George Smith and Charlotte--The
Prefaces to the Brontë Novels--André Chevrillon--M.
Jusserand--Mrs. Ward in Italy and Paris--The Translation
of Jülicher--Death of Thomas Arnold--The South
African War--Death of Bishop Creighton and George
Smith--Dramatization of _Eleanor_--William Arnold--Mrs.
Ward and George Meredith--The Marriage of her
Daughter--The Vacation School at the Passmore Edwards
Settlement 165-186
CHAPTER X
LONDON LIFE--THE BEGINNINGS AND GROWTH OF THE
CHILDREN'S PLAY CENTRES, 1904-1917
Mrs. Ward's Social Life--Her Physical Delicacy--Power of
Work--American Friends--F. W. Whitridge--Plans for
Extending Recreation Schools for Children to other Districts--Opening
of the first "Evening Play Centres"--The
"Mary Ward Clause"--Negotiations with the London
County Council--Efforts to raise Funds--No help from the
Government till 1917--Two more Vacation Schools--Organized
Playgrounds--_Fenwick's Career_--"Robin
Ghyll" 187-206
CHAPTER XI
THE VISIT TO THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA, 1908
Invitations to visit America--Mr. and Mrs. Ward and Dorothy
sail in March, 1908--New York--Philadelphia--Washington--Mr.
Roosevelt--Boston--Canada--Lord Grey and
Sir William van Horne--Mrs. Ward at Ottawa--Toronto--Her
Journey West--Vancouver--The Rockies--Lord
Grey and Wolfe--_Canadian Born_ and _Daphne_ 207-223
CHAPTER XII
MRS. WARD AND THE SUFFRAGE QUESTION
Early Feeling against Women's Suffrage--The "Protest" in
the _Nineteenth Century_--Advent of the Suffragettes--Foundation
of the Anti-Suffrage League--Women in Local
Government--Speeches against the Suffrage--Debate with
Mrs. Fawcett--Deputations to Mr. Asquith--The "Conciliation
Bill"--The Government Franchise Bill--Withdrawal
of the Latter--_Delia Blanchflower_--The
"Joint Advisory Committee"--Women's Suffrage passed
by the House of Commons, 1917--Struggle in the House of
Lords--Lord Curzon's Speech 224-245
CHAPTER XIII
LIFE AT STOCKS, 1908-1914--_THE CASE OF RICHARD MEYNELL_--THE
OUTBREAK OF WAR
Rebuilding of Stocks--Mrs. Ward's Love for the Place--Her
Way of Life and Work--Greek Literature--Politics--The
General Elections of 1910--Visitors--Nephews and Nieces--Grandchildren--Death
of Theodore Trevelyan--The
"Westmorland Edition"--Sense of Humour--_The Case
of Richard Meynell_--Letters--Last Visit to Italy--_The
Coryston Family_--The Outbreak of War 246-263
CHAPTER XIV
THE WAR, 1914-1917--MRS. WARD'S FIRST TWO
JOURNEYS TO FRANCE
Mrs. Ward's feeling about Germany--Letter to André
Chevrillon--Re-organization of the Passmore Edwards
Settlement--President Roosevelt's Letter--Talk with Sir
Edward Grey--Visits to Munition Centres--To the Fleet--To
France--Mrs. Ward near Neuve Chapelle and on the
Scherpenberg Hill--Return Home--_England's Effort_--Death
of F. W. Whitridge and of Reginald Smith--Second
Journey to France, 1917--The Bois de Bouvigny--The
Battle-field of the Ourcq--Lorraine--_Towards the Goal_ 264-287
CHAPTER XV
LAST YEARS: 1917-1920
Mrs. Ward at Stocks--Her _Recollections_--The Government
Grant for Play Centres--The Cripples Clause in Mr. Fisher's
Education Act--The War in 1918--Italy--The Armistice--Mrs.
Ward's third journey to France--Visit to British
Headquarters--Strasburg, Verdun and Rheims--Paris--Ill-health--The
Writing of _Fields of Victory_--The last
Summer at Stocks--Mrs. Ward and the "Enabling Bill"--Breakdown
in Health--Removal to London--Mr.
Ward's Operation--Her Death 288-309
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
TO FACE
PAGE
Mary Ward at Twenty-five. From a water-colour painting by
Mrs. A. H. Johnson _Frontispiece_
Borough Farm. From a water-colour painting by Mrs.
Humphry Ward 45
Mrs. Ward in 1889. From a photograph by Bassano 82
Mrs. Ward in 1898. From a photograph by Miss Ethel M.
Arnold 149
Mrs. Ward and Henry James at Stocks. From a photograph
by Miss Dorothy Ward 252
Mrs. Ward beside the Lake of Lucerne. From a photograph
by Miss Dorothy Ward 262
CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD
1851-1867
Is the study of heredity a science or a pure romance? For the unlearned
at least I like to think it is the latter, since no law that the
Professors ever formulated can explain the caprices of each little human
soul, bobbing up like a coracle over life's horizon and bringing with it
things gathered at random from an infinitely remote and varying
ancestry. It is, I believe, generally known that the subject of this
biography was a granddaughter of Arnold of Rugby, and therewith her
intellectual ability and the force of her character are thought to be
sufficiently explained. But what of her mother, the beautiful Julia
Sorell, of whom her sad husband said at her death that she had "the
nature of a queen," ever thwarted and rebuffed by circumstance? What of
the strain of Spanish Protestant blood that ran in the veins of the
Sorells: for although they were refugees from France after the Edict of
Nantes, it is most probable that they came of Spanish origin? What of
the strain brought in by the wild and forcible Kemps of Mount Vernon in
Tasmania? A daughter of Anthony Fenn Kemp (himself a "character" of a
remarkable kind) married William Sorell and so became the mother of
Julia and the grandmother of Mary Arnold; but the principal fact that is
known of her is that she deserted her three daughters after bringing
them to England for their education, went off with an army officer and
was hardly heard of more. An ungovernable temper seems to have marked
most of this family, and the recollections of her childhood were so
terrible to Julia Sorell that she wrote in after years to her husband,
"Few families have been blessed with such a home training as yours, and
certainly very few in our rank of life have been cursed with such as
mine." Yet although Julia inherited much of this violence and passion,
to her own constant misery, she had also "the nature of a queen," and
transmitted it in no small degree to her daughter Mary.
The Sorells were descended from Colonel William Sorell, one of the early
Governors of Tasmania, who had been appointed to the post in 1816. Nine
years before, on his appointment as Adjutant-General at the Cape of Good
Hope, this Colonel Sorell had left behind him in England a woman to whom
he was legally married and by whom he had had several children, but whom
he never saw again after leaving these shores. He occupied himself,
indeed, with another lady, while the unfortunate wife at home struggled
to maintain his children on the very inadequate allowance which he had
granted her. Twice the allowance lapsed, with calamitous results for the
wife and children, and it was only on the active intervention of Lord
Bathurst, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, that the payment
of her quarterly instalments was resumed in 1818. Meanwhile, her eldest
son William, a steady, hard-working lad, had been trying to support the
family from his own earnings of 12s. a week, and when he grew to man's
estate he applied to Lord Bathurst for permission to join his father in
Van Diemen's Land, hoping that so he might help to reconcile his
parents. Lord Bathurst gave him his passage out, but had in fact already
decided to recall Governor Sorell, so that when young Sorell arrived at
Hobart Town early in 1824 he found his father only awaiting the arrival
of his successor (the well-known Colonel Arthur), before quitting the
Colony for good. William, however, decided to remain there, accepted the
position of Registrar of Deeds from Colonel Arthur, and made his
permanent home in the island. He married the head-strong Miss Kemp, and
in his sad after-life suffered a reversal of the parts played by his own
father and mother. Long after his wife had deserted him he lived on in
Hobart Town, much respected and beloved, and remembered by his
granddaughter as a "gentle, affectionate, upright being, a gentleman of
an old, punctilious school, content with a small sphere and much loved
within it."
His daughter Julia grew up as the favourite and pet of Hobart Town
society, much admired by the subalterns of the solitary battalion of
British troops that maintained our prestige among the convicts and the
"blacks" of that remote settlement. But for her Fate held other things
in store. Early in 1850 there appeared at Hobart Town a young man of
twenty-six, tall and romantic-looking, who bore a name well known even
in the southern seas--the name of Thomas Arnold. He was the second son
of Dr. Arnold of Rugby. He had left the Old World for the Newest three
years before on a genuine quest for the ideal life; had tried farming in
New Zealand, but in vain, and had then, after some adventures in
schoolmastering, come to Tasmania at the invitation of the Governor, Sir
William Denison, to organize the public education of the Colony. Fortune
seemed to smile upon the young Inspector of Schools, who as a
first-classman and an Arnold found a kind and ready welcome from those
who reigned in Tasmania, and when he met Julia Sorell a few weeks after
he landed and fell in love with her at first sight, no obstacles were
placed in his way. They were married on June 12, 1850--a love-match if
ever there was one, but a match that was too soon to be subjected to
that most fiery test of all, a religious struggle of the deepest and
most formidable kind.
Thomas Arnold came of a family to whom religion was always a "concern,"
as the Quakers call it; whether it was the great Doctor, with his making
of "Christian gentlemen" at Rugby and his fierce polemics against the
"Oxford malignants," or Matt, with his "Power, not ourselves, that makes
for righteousness," or William (a younger brother), with his religious
novel, _Oakfield_, about the temptations of Indian Army life; and Thomas
was by no means exempt from the tradition. A sentimental idealist by
nature, he was a friend of Clough and had already been immortalized as
"Philip" in the _Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich_.[1] He came now to the
Antipodes in rationalistic mood and in search of the nobler, freer life;
but soon the old beliefs reasserted themselves, yet brought no peace.
His mind was "hot for certainties in this our life," and he had not been
five years in Tasmania before he was seeing much of a certain Catholic
priest and feeling himself strongly drawn towards the ancient fold. His
poor wife, in whom her Huguenot ancestry had bred an instinctive and
invincible loathing for Catholicism, felt herself overtaken by a kind of
black doom; she made wild threats of leaving him, she shuddered at the
thought of what might happen to the children. Yet nothing that she or
any of his friends could say might avert the fatal step. Tom Arnold was
received into the Roman Catholic Church at Hobart Town on January 12,
1856.
His prospects immediately darkened, for feeling ran high in the Colony
against Popery, and it soon became clear that he must give up his
appointment and return to England. Already three children had been born
to him and Julia, but the young wife was now plunged in preparations for
the uprooting of her household and the transport of the whole family
across the globe, to an unknown future and a world of unknown faces. The
voyage was accomplished in a sailing-ship of 400 tons, the _William
Brown_, so overrun by rats that the mother and nurse had to take turns
to watch over the children at night, lest their faces should be bitten;
but after more than three months of this existence the ship did finally
reach English waters and cast anchor in the Thames on October 17, 1856.
It was wet autumn weather and the little family huddled forlornly in a
small inn in Thames Street, but the next day a deliverer appeared in the
person of William Forster (the future Education Minister), who had
married Tom's eldest sister Jane a few years before and who now carried
off the whole family to better quarters in London, helped them in the
kindest way and finally saw off the mother and children to the friendly
shelter of Fox How--that beloved home among the Westmorland hills which
"the Doctor" had built to house his growing family and which was now to
play so great a part in the development of his latest descendant, the
little Mary Arnold.
Mary Augusta had been born at Hobart Town on June 11, 1851. She was, of
course, the apple of her parents' eyes, and the descriptions which her
father wrote of her, in the long letters that went home to his mother at
Fox How by every available boat, give a curiously vivid picture of a
little creature richly endowed with fairy gifts, but above all with the
crowning gift of _life_. At first she is a "pretty little creature, with
a compact little face, good features and an uncommonly large forehead";
then at eight months, "If you could but see our darling Mary! The vigour
of life, the animation, the activity of eye and hand that she displays
are astonishing. Her brown hair in its abundance is the admiration of
everybody." At a year old she is "passionate but not peevish, sensitive
to the least harshness in word or gesture, but usually full of merriment
and gladsomeness. She is like a sparkling fountain or a gay flower in
the house, filling it with light and freshness." She has many childish
ailments, but conquers them all in a manner strangely prophetic of her
later power of resisting illness. "I fear you will think she must be a
very sickly child," writes her father, "and she certainly is delicate
and easily put out of order; but I have much faith in the strength of
her constitution, for in all her ailments she has seemed to have a power
of battling against them, a vitality that pulls her through." As a
little thing of under two her feelings are terribly easily worked upon:
"The other evening it was raining very hard and I began to talk to her
about the poor people out in the rain who were getting wet and had no
warm fire to sit by and no nice dry clothes to put on. You cannot
imagine how this touched her. She kept on repeating over and over again,
'Poor people! Poor people! Out in the rain! Get warm! get warm!'" But as
she grows bigger she develops a will of her own that sorely troubles her
father, beset with all the ideas of his generation about "prompt
obedience"; at three and a half he writes: "Little Polly is as imitative
as a monkey and as mischievous; self-willed and resolute to take the
lead and have her own way, whenever her companions are anything
approaching to her own age. Not a very easy character to manage as you
will see, yet often to be led through her feelings, when it would be
difficult to drive her in defiance of her will." Soon he is having "a
regular pitched battle with her about once a day," and writes ruefully
home--as though he were having the worst of it--that Polly is "kind
enough where she can patronize, but her domineering spirit makes even
her kindness partake of oppression." Two little brothers, Willie and
Theodore, had already been added to the family by the time they made the
voyage home--playthings whom Mary alternately slapped and cuddled and in
whom she took an immense pride of possession. They were the first of a
long series of brothers and sisters to whom her kindness, in after
years, was certainly not of the kind that "partakes of oppression."
Thus, at the age of five, this little spirit, passionate, self-willed
and tender-hearted, came within the direct orbit of the Arnold family.
During most of the four years that followed their arrival she was either
staying with her grandmother, the Doctor's widow, at Fox How, or else
living as a boarder at Miss Clough's little school at Eller How, near
Ambleside, and spending her Saturdays at Fox How. Her father meanwhile
took work under Newman in Dublin and earned a precarious subsistence for
his wife and family by teaching at the Catholic University there. They
were times of hardship and privation for Julia, who never ceased to be
in love with Tom and never ceased to curse the day of his conversion;
and as the babies increased and the income did not she was fain to allow
her eldest daughter to live more and more with the kind grandmother, who
asked no better than to have the child about the house. And, indeed, to
have this particular child about the house was not always a light
undertaking! She was wonderfully quick, clever and affectionate, but her
tempers sometimes shook her to pieces in storms of passion, and the
devoted "Aunt Fan," the Doctor's youngest daughter, who lived with her
mother at Fox How, was often sorely puzzled how to deal with her. Still,
by a judicious mixture of severity and tenderness she won the child's
affection, so that Mary was wont to say, looking slyly at her aunt, "I
like Aunt Fan--she's the master of me!"
The Arnold atmosphere made indeed a very remarkable influence for any
impressionable child of Mary's age to live in; it supplied a deep-rooted
sense of calm and balance, an unalterable family affection and a sad
disapproval of tempers and excesses of all kinds which, as time went on,
had a marked effect on the Tasmanian child. From a Sorell by birth and
temperament, as I believe she was, she gradually became an Arnold by
environment. If she inherited from her mother those wilder springs of
energy and courage which impelled her, like some dæmon within, to be up
and doing in life's race, it was from the Arnolds that she learnt the
art of living, the art of harnessing the dæmon. They certainly made a
memorable group, the nine sons and daughters of Arnold of Rugby: all of
whom, except Fan, the youngest daughter, were scattered from the nest by
the time that "little Polly" came to Fox How, but all of whom maintained
for each other and for their mother the tenderest affection, so that
life at the Westmorland home was continually crossed and re-crossed by
their visits and their letters. In looking through these faded letters
the reader of to-day is struck by their seriousness and simplicity of
tone, by the intense family affection they display and by the very real
relation in which the writers stood towards the "indwelling presence of
God." Hardly a member of the family can be mentioned without the prefix
"dear" or "dearest," nor can anyone who is acquainted with the Arnold
temperament doubt that this was genuine. Birthdays are made the occasion
for rather solemn words of love or exhortation, and if any sorrow
strikes the family one may expect without fail to find a complete
reliance on the accustomed sources of consolation. Yet they are not
prigs, these brothers and sisters; their roots strike deep down to the
bed-rock of life, and though they are all (except poor Tom) in fairly
prosperous circumstances, they can be generous and open-handed to those
who are less so. Tom was, I think, the special darling of the family,
and his lapse to Catholicism a terrible trial to them, but none the less
did they labour for Tom's children in all simplicity of heart.
The daughter who, next to "Aunt Fan," had most to do with little Mary
was Jane, the wife of William Forster; Mary was her godchild, and soon
conceived a kind of passion for this sweet-faced woman of thirty-five,
who, childless herself, returned the little girl's affection in no
ordinary degree. Mary would sometimes go to stay with her at
Burley-in-Wharfedale, where she looked with awe at the "great wheels" in
Uncle Forster's woollen mill and saw the children working
there--children untouched as yet by their master's schemes for their
welfare, or by the still remoter visions of their small observer. Then
there was Matt--Matt the sad poet and gay man of the world, who brought
with him on his rarer visits to Fox How the breath of London and of
great affairs, for was he not, in his sisters' eyes at least, the spoilt
darling of society, the diner-out, the frequenter of great houses? He
looked, we know, with unusual interest upon Tom's Polly, and in later
years was wont to say, with his whimsical smile, that she "got her
ability from her mother." Another aunt to whom the Tasmanian child
became much devoted was her namesake Mary, at that time Mrs. Hiley, a
woman whose rich, responsive nature and keen sense of humour endeared
her greatly to the few friends who knew her well, and whose early
rebellions and idealisms had given her a most human personality. It was
she among all the group who understood and sympathized most keenly with
Tom's wife, so that between Julia and Mary Hiley a bond was forged that
ended only with the former's death. Poor Julia! The Arnold atmosphere
was indeed sometimes a formidable one, and had little sympathy to give
to her own undisciplined and tempestuous nature, with its strange deeps
of feeling. Julia's temptations--to extravagance in money matters and to
passionate outbursts of temper--were not Arnold temptations, and she
often felt herself disapproved of in spite of much outward affection and
kindness. And then she would have morbid reactions in which the old
Calvinistic hell-fire of her forefathers seemed very near. Once when she
was staying at Fox How, ill and depressed, she wrote to her husband:
"The feeling grows upon me that I am one of those unhappy people whom
_God has abandoned_, and it is the effect of this feeling I am sure
which causes me to behave as I often do. Oh! it is an awful thing to
_despair_ about one's future state...." Probably she felt that in spite
of their undoubted humility, her in-laws never quite despaired about
theirs.
* * * * *
By the time that Mary was seven years old, that is in the autumn of
1858, it was decided that she should go as a boarder to Miss Anne
Clough's school at Ambleside, or rather at Eller How on the slopes of
Wansfell behind the town. Here she spent two years and more--happy on
the whole, often naughty and wilful, but usually held in awe by Miss
Clough's stately presence and power of commanding her small flock.
There was only one other boarder besides Mary, a girl named Sophie
Bellasis, whose recollections of those days were preserved and given to
the world long afterwards by her husband, the late Mr. T. C. Down, in an
article published by the _Cornhill Magazine_.[2] Miss Bellasis'
impressions of the queer little girl, Mary Arnold, who was her
fellow-boarder, make so vivid a picture that I may perhaps be forgiven
for reproducing them here:
"Mary had a very decided character of her own, as well as a pretty
vivid imagination, for the odd things she used to say, merely on
the spur of the moment, would quite stagger me sometimes. Once when
we were going along the passage upstairs leading to the schoolroom,
she stopped at one of the gratings where the hot air came up from
the furnace, with holes in the pattern about the size of a
shilling, and told me that she knew a little boy whose head was so
small that he could put it through one of those holes: and after we
had gone to bed she would tell me the oddest stories in a whisper,
because it was against the rules to talk. I think now that her
fancy used to run riot with her, and, of course, she had to give
vent to it in any way that suggested itself. But I implicitly
believed whatever she chose to tell me, so that you see we both
enjoyed ourselves. Her energy and high spirits were something
wonderful; out of doors she was never still, but always running or
jumping or playing, and she invariably tired me out at this sort of
thing. Still, nothing came amiss to her in the way of amusement;
anything that entered her head would answer the purpose, and she
was never at a loss. I recollect she had a lovely doll, which her
aunt, Mrs. Forster, had given her, all made of wax. Once she was
annoyed with this doll for some reason or other and broke it up
into little bits. We put the bits into little saucepans, and melted
them over one of the gratings I told you of. Sometimes Willy Dolly
(that was the name we had for the general factotum) would let the
fire go down, and then the gratings were cold, and at other times
he would have a roaring fire, and then they would be so hot that
you couldn't touch them. So we melted the wax and moulded it into
dolls' puddings, and that was the last of her wax doll!
"One day we were over at Fox How, which was a pretty house, with a
wide lawn and garden. One side of it was covered with a handsome
Virginia creeper, which was thought a great deal of, and, of
course, was not intended to be meddled with. Suddenly it occurred
to Mary that it would be first-rate fun to pick 'all those red
leaves,' and I obediently went and helped her. We cleared a great
bare space all along the wall as high as we could reach, but from
what Miss Arnold said when she came out and discovered what was
done, I gathered that she was not so pleased with our work as we
were ourselves."
It was during these years, from six to nine, that the foundation was
laid of that passionate adoration for the fells, with their streams,
bogs and stone walls, which became one of Mary's most intimate
possessions and never deserted her in after years. In her
_Recollections_ she describes a walk up the valley to Sweden Bridge with
her father and Arthur Clough, the two men safely engaged in grown-up
talk while she, happy and alone, danced on in front or lingered behind,
all eyes and ears for the stream, the birds and the wind. It was a walk
of which she soon knew every inch, just as she knew every inch of the
Fox How garden, and I believe that the sights and sounds of that rough
northern valley came to be woven in with the very texture of her soul.
They appealed to something primitive and deep-down in her little heart,
some power that remained with her through life and that, as she once
said to me, "stands more rubs than anything else in our equipment."
Then, when she was only nine and a half, she was transferred to a school
at Shiffnal in Shropshire, kept by a certain Miss Davies, whose sister
happened to be an old friend of Tom Arnold's and offered now to
undertake little Mary's maintenance if she were sent to this "Rock
Terrace School for Young Ladies." But the change seemed to call out all
the demon in Mary's composition; she fought blindly against the
restrictions and rules of this new community, felt herself at enmity
with all the world and broke out ever and anon in storms of passion. In
the first chapter of _Marcella_ it is all described--the "sulks,
quarrels and revolts" of Marcie Boyce (_alias_ Mary Arnold), the
getting up at half-past six on dark winter mornings, the cold ablutions
and dreary meals, and the occasional days in bed with senna-tea and
gruel when Miss Davies (at her wits' end, poor lady!) would try the
method of seclusion as a cure for Mary's tantrums. The poor little thing
suffered cruelly from headaches and bad colds, and laboured too under a
sore sense of poverty and disadvantage as compared with the other girls;
she was, in fact, paid for at a lower rate than most of the other
boarders, and was not allowed to forget it. Often she writes home to beg
for stamps, and once she says to her father: "Do send me some more
money. It was so tantalizing this morning, a woman came to the door with
twopenny baskets, so nice, and many of the other girls got them and I
couldn't." Another time she begs him to send her the threepence that she
has "earned," by writing out some lists of names for him. But on
Saturdays she had one joy, fiercely looked forward to all the week; a
"cake-woman" came to the school, and by hoarding up her tiny weekly
allowance she was able--usually--to buy a three-cornered jam puff. To a
rather starved and very lonely little girl of nine or ten this was--she
often said to us afterwards--the purest consolation of the week.
But there were some compensations even in these unlovely surroundings.
The nice old German governess, Fräulein Gerecke, was always kind to her,
and tried in little unobtrusive ways to ease the lot which Mary found so
hard to bear. Once she made for her, surreptitiously, a white muslin
frock with blue ribbons and laid it on her bed in time for some little
function of the school for which Mary had received no "party frock" from
home. A gush of hot tears was the response, tears partly of gratitude,
partly of soreness at the need for it; but the muslin frock was worn
nevertheless, and entered from that moment into the substance of the
day-dreams and stories that she was for ever telling herself. Any child
who has a faculty for it will understand how great a consolation were
these self-told stories, in which she rioted especially on days of
senna-tea and gruel. Tales of the Princess of Wales and how she, Mary,
herself succeeded in stopping her runaway horses, with the divinity's
pale agitation and gratitude, filled the long hours, and the muslin
frock usually came into the story when Mary made her trembling
appearance "by command" at the palace afterwards. Gradually, too, these
tales came to weave themselves round more accessible mortals, for Mary's
heart and affections were waking up and she did not escape, any more
than the modern schoolgirl, her share of "adorations." At twelve years
old she fell headlong in love with the Vicar of Shiffnal and his wife,
Mr. and Mrs. Cunliffe; going to church--especially in the evenings, when
the Vicar preached--became a romance; seeing Mrs. Cunliffe pass by in
her pony-carriage lent a radiance to the day. The Vicar's wife, a gentle
Evangelical, felt genuinely drawn towards the untamed little being and
did her best to guide the wayward footsteps, while Mary on her side
wrote poems to her idol, keeping them fortunately locked within her
desk, and let her fancy run from ecstasy to ecstasy in the dreams that
she wove around her. What "dauntless child" among us does not know these
splendours, and the transforming effect that they have upon the prickly
hide of youth? Little Mary Arnold was destined to leave her mark upon
the world, partly by power of brain, but more by sheer power of love,
and the first human beings to unlock the unguessed stores of it within
her were these two kindly Evangelicals.
Still, the demon was not quite exorcised, and "Aunt Fan" still found
Mary something of a handful when she stayed at Fox How, though now in a
different way.
"She seems to me very much wanting in _humility_," she writes in
January, 1864, "which, with the knowledge she must have of her own
abilities, is not perhaps wonderful, but it is ungraceful to hear
her expressing strong opinions and holding her own, against elder
people, without certainly much sense of reverence. One thing,
however I will mention to show her desire to conquer herself. She
had no gloves to go to Ellergreen, and I objected to buying her
kid, but got her such as I wear myself, very nice cloth. She vowed
and protested she couldn't and shouldn't wear them, so I said I
should not make her, but if she wanted kid, she must buy them with
her own money. I talked quietly to her about it and said how
pleased I should be if she conquered this whim, and when she came
to say good-bye to me before starting for Ellergreen her last words
were--'I am going to put on the gloves, Auntie!'--and she has worn
them ever since, though I must say with some grumblings!"
She stayed for four years at Miss Davies's, during which time her
parents moved (in 1862) from Dublin to Birmingham, where Tom Arnold was
offered work under Newman at the Oratory School. The change brought a
small increase in salary, but not enough to cover the needs of the still
growing family, and if it had not been for the help freely given during
these years by W. E. Forster, the struggling pair must almost have gone
down under their difficulties. One result of the change was that the
elder boys, Willie and Theodore, were themselves sent to the Oratory
School, and the thought of Arnold of Rugby's grandsons being pupils of
Newman gave rise to bitter reflections at Fox How. "I was very glad to
hear of Willy's having done so well in the examination of his class,"
wrote Julia to her husband from the family home, "although I must
confess the thought of _our son_ being examined by Dr. Newman had
carried a pang to my heart. Your mother I found felt it in the same way;
she said (when I read out to her that part of your letter) with her eyes
full of tears, 'Oh! to think of _his_ grandson, _dearest Tom's son_,
being examined by Dr. Newman!'" Still, Julia was emphatically of opinion
that if priests were to have a hand in their education at all, she would
rather it were English than Irish priests.[3]
Meanwhile, the shortcomings of the school at Shiffnal were becoming
evident to Mary's mother, and in the winter of 1864-5 she succeeded in
arranging that the child should be sent instead to another near Clifton,
kept by a certain Miss May, which was smaller and also more expensive
than Miss Davies's. Heaven knows how the payments were managed, but the
change answered extremely well, for after the first term Mary settled
down in complete happiness and soon developed such a devotion to Miss
May as made short work of her remaining tendencies to temper and
"contrariness." Miss May must have been exactly the type of
schoolmistress that Mary needed at this stage--kind and large-hearted,
with the understanding necessary to win the confidence of such an
uncommon little creature--so that it was not long before the child's
mind began to expand in every direction. Long afterwards she was wont to
say that the actual knowledge she acquired at school was worth next to
nothing--that she learnt no subject thoroughly and left school without
any "edged tools." But certainly by the time she was twelve she could
write a French letter such as not many of us could produce with all our
advantages, while the drawing and music that she learnt at school
encouraged certain natural talents in her that were to give her some of
the purest joys of her after-life. Still, no doubt her mind received no
systematic training, and at Miss Davies's I believe that _Mangnall's
Questions_ were still the common textbook! Though she learnt a little
German and Latin she always said that she had them to do all over again
when she needed them later for her work, while Greek, which became the
joy and consolation of her later years, was entirely a "grown-up"
acquisition. But whatever the imperfections of her nine years of school,
better times were at hand both for Mary and her mother.
Whether it was that after two or three years of the Birmingham Oratory,
Tom Arnold's political radicalism (always a sturdy growth) began to make
him uneasy at the proceedings of Pio Nono--for 1864 was the year of the
Encyclical--or whether it was more particularly the Mortara case, as he
says in his autobiography,[4] at any rate his feeling towards the
Catholic Church had grown distinctly cool by the end of that year, and
he was meditating leaving the Oratory. Gradually the rumour spread among
his friends that Tom Arnold was turning against Rome, and in June, 1865,
a paragraph to this effect appeared in the papers. Little Mary, now a
girl of fourteen, heard the news while she was at Miss May's, and wrote
in ecstasy to her mother:
"My precious Mother, I have indeed seen the paragraphs about Papa.
The L's showed them me on Saturday. You can imagine the excitement
I was in on Saturday night, not knowing whether it was true or not.
Your letter confirmed it this morning and Miss May, seeing I
suppose that I looked rather faint, sent me on a pretended errand
for her notebook to escape the breakfast-table. My darling Mother,
how thankful you must be! One feels as if one could do nothing but
thank Him."
Her father's change opened indeed a new and happier chapter in their
lives, for it opened the road to Oxford. He had been seriously facing
the possibility of a second emigration, this time to Queensland, and had
been making inquiries about official work there, but his own
inclinations--and, of course, Julia's too--were in favour of trying to
make a living at Oxford by the taking of pupils. His old friends there
encouraged him, and by the autumn of 1865 they were established in a
house in St. Giles's and the venture had begun. Mary wrote in delight
that winter to her dear Mrs. Cunliffe:
"Do you know that we are now living at Oxford? My father takes
pupils and has a history lectureship. We are happier there than we
have ever been before, I think. My father revels in the libraries,
and so do I when I am at home."
A fragment of diary written in the Christmas holidays of 1865-6 reveals
how much she enjoyed being taken for a grown-up young lady by Oxford
friends. "Went to St. Mary Magdalen's in the morning and heard a droll
sermon on Convictional Sin. Met Sir Benjamin [Brodie] coming home. Miss
Arnold at home supposed to be seventeen, and Mary Arnold at school known
to be fourteen are two very different things." She is absorbed in
_Essays in Criticism_, but can still criticize the critic. "Read Uncle
Matt's Essay on Pagan and Mediaeval Religious Sentiment. Compares the
religious feeling of Pompeii and Theocritus with the religious feeling
of St. Francis and the German Reformation. Contrasts the religion of
sorrow as he is pleased to call Christianity with the religion of sense,
giving to the former for the sake of propriety a slight pre-eminence
over the latter." She does not like the famous _Preface_ at all. "The
_Preface_ is rich and has the fault which the author professes to avoid,
that of being amusing. As for the seductiveness of Oxford, its moonlight
charms and Romeo and Juliet character, I think Uncle Matt is slightly
inclined to ride the high horse whenever he approaches the subject."
As the eldest of eight children she led a very strenuous life at home,
helping to teach the little ones and ever striving to avoid a clash
between her mother's temper and her own. The entries in the diary are
often sadly self-accusing: "These last three days I have not served
Christ at all. It has been nothing but self from beginning to end.
Prayer seems a task and it seems as if God would not receive me."
But after another year and a half at Miss May's school these
difficulties vanished, and by the time that she came to live at home
altogether, in the summer of 1867, the rough edges had smoothed
themselves away in marvellous fashion. She was sixteen, and the world
was before her--the world of Oxford, which in spite of her criticisms of
the _Preface_ was indeed _her_ world. Her father seemed content with his
teaching work, and was planning the building of a larger house. She set
to work to be happy, and so indeed did her mother--happy in a great
reprieve, and in the reviving hopes of prosperity. But now and then
Julia would stop suddenly in her household tasks, hearing ominous sounds
from Tom's study. Was it the chanting of a Latin prayer? She put the
fear behind her and passed on.