THE VISIT TO THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
1908
Mrs. Ward had often been assured by her friends and admirers in the
United States that if she would but visit them she would find such a
welcome as would stagger all her previous ideas of hospitality. She
could not doubt it; it was, in fact, this thought, combined with the
frailness of her health, that had deterred her during the twenty years
that followed the publication of _Robert Elsmere_ from going to claim
the honours that awaited her. Her husband and daughter had already paid
two visits to the States, and had experienced in the kindness and warmth
of their reception an earnest of what would fall to Mrs. Ward's lot
should she venture across the Atlantic; nor had they merely whirled with
the passing show, but had made many lifelong friends. Mrs. Ward had,
however, resisted the pressure of these friends for many years, until at
length, in the spring of 1908, so strong a combination of circumstances
arose to tempt her that her resolution gave way. Her own health, which
had suffered a grievous and prolonged breakdown in 1906, had gradually
re-established itself, so that by the time of which we are speaking she
was perhaps in better case for such an adventure than she had been for
some years. Mr. and Mrs. Whitridge would hear of nothing but that she
should make their house her home during her stay in New York; Mr. Bryce
made the same demand for Washington; Earl Grey for Ottawa (where he was
at that time Governor-General), while Mr. Ward's acquaintance with Sir
William van Horne, Chairman of the Canadian Pacific Railway--based on a
common enthusiasm for Old Masters--led to the irresistible offer of a
private car on the Line for Mrs. Ward and her party, at the Company's
expense, from Montreal to Vancouver and back. Such lures were hardly to
be withstood, but I doubt whether Mrs. Ward would have succumbed even to
them had it not been for her growing desire to see, with her own eyes,
the work which was being done in New York for the play-time of the
children. She knew that New York was far in advance of London in the
provision of Vacation Schools for the long summer holiday, and of
evening Recreation Centres for the children who had left school; but
Play Centres for the school-children themselves were as yet unknown
there, so that she felt much might be gained by an exchange of
experiences between herself and the "Playground Association of America."
And so, on March 11, 1908, they sailed in the _Adriatic_--she and Mr.
Ward, and her daughter Dorothy, with the faithful Lizzie in attendance.
The great ship set her thinking of the only other long voyage that she
had ever made, over far other seas. "When I look at this ship," she
wrote, "and think of the cockleshell we came home in round the Horn in
'56, and the discomforts my mother must have suffered with three
children, one a young baby! Happiness, as we all know, and as the
copy-books tell us, does not depend on luxuries--but how she would have
responded to a little comfort, a little petting, if she had ever had it!
My heart often aches when I think of it." The comforts of the _Adriatic_
were indeed colossal, and since the ocean was kindness itself, Mrs. Ward
took no ill from the voyage, but arrived in good spirits, and ready to
face the New World with that zest which was her cradle-gift.
Mr. Whitridge's pleasant house in East Eleventh Street received Mr. and
Mrs. Ward, while Dorothy stayed with equally hospitable friends--Mrs.
Cadwalader Jones and her daughter--over the way. Avalanches of reporters
had to be faced and dealt with, all craving for five minutes' talk with
Mrs. Ward, but they were usually intercepted in the hall by Mr.
Whitridge, whose method of dealing with his country's newspapers was
somewhat drastic. If they passed this outer line of defence they were
received by Mr. or Miss Ward, who found them persistent indeed, but
always marvellously civil; and on the very few occasions when Mrs. Ward
did consent to be interviewed, she insisted on seeing the proof and
entirely re-writing what had been put into her mouth. The newspapers,
indeed, had reckoned without a mentality which intensely disliked this
kind of thing; it was unfortunate, perhaps, but inevitable!
In all other respects, however, it was impossible for Mrs. Ward not to
be deeply moved by the kindness that was heaped upon her. "Life has been
a tremendous rush," wrote D. M. W. from New York, "but really a very
delightful one, and we are accumulating many happy and amusing memories.
The chief thing that stands out, of course, is the love and admiration
for M. and her books. When all's said and done, it really is pretty
stirring, the way they feel about her. And the things the quiet, unknown
people say to one about her books go to one's heart." ("We dined at a
house last night," wrote Mrs. Ward herself, "where everybody had a card
containing a quotation from my wretched works. Humphry bears up as well
as can be expected!") But on one occasion, at least, she came in for a
puff of unearned incense. At an afternoon tea, given in her honour by
Mrs. Whitridge, an elderly lady was overheard saying in awe-struck tones
to her neighbour, "To think that I should have lived to shake hands with
the authoress of _Little Lord Fauntleroy_!"
Dinners, lunches, receptions, operas and theatres succeeded one another
in a dazzling rush, but New York knew quite well what was the main
purpose of Mrs. Ward's visit, and it was fitting that the principal
function arranged in her honour should have been a dinner given her at
the Waldorf-Astoria by the Playground Association of America. There were
900 persons present, and when Mrs. Ward stood up to address them every
man and woman in the room spontaneously rose to their feet to greet her.
It was a moment that would have touched a far harder heart than hers.
"It was very moving--it really was," she wrote to J. P.
T.--"because of the evident kindness and sincerity of it. I got
through fairly well, though I don't feel that I have yet arrived at
the right speech for a public dinner.... I was most interested by
the speech of the City Superintendent of Education, Dr. Maxwell, an
_admirable_ man, who declared hotly in my favour as to Play
Centres, and has, since the dinner, given directions for the first
_afternoon_ Play Centre for school children in New York. Isn't that
jolly!
"Well, and since, we have been lunching, dining and seeing sights
with the same vigour. I have been to schools and manual training
centres with Dr. Maxwell, and we went through the Natural History
Museum with its Director,[28] who gave us a _thrilling_ time....
One afternoon I went down to a College Settlement and spoke to a
large gathering of workers about English ways. The day before
yesterday I spoke to about 900 boys and girls and their teachers,
in one of their _magnificent_ public schools. Dr. Maxwell took me,
and asked me to speak of Grandpapa. A great many of the elder boys
had read _Tom Brown_ and knew all about the 'Doctor'! I enjoyed it
greatly, and as to their saluting of the flag--these masses of
alien children--one may say what one will, but it is one of the
most thrilling things in the world, and we, as a nation, are the
poorer for not having it."
Mrs. Ward had accepted four or five engagements to lecture while she was
in America, in aid of her London Play Centres, and accumulated, to her
intense satisfaction, the handsome sum of £250 from this source during
her tour. She gave her audiences of her best--the paper already
mentioned, on "The Peasant in Literature," which revealed her literary
craft in its most finished form, and although she was so much the rage
at the time that her admirers were not disposed to be critical, she was
yet genuinely gratified by the pleasure which this paper gave,
especially in so cultivated a centre as Philadelphia. Here Mrs. Ward and
her daughter were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Earle Coates, and then of
the Bertram Lippincotts, in their charming house outside the town.
Independence Hall gave them the proper thrill of sympathy with a "nation
struggling to be free," while Mrs. Ward was delighted by the general
old-world look of many of the streets, no less than by the stately
river, on which, as she found to her astonishment, "the boat-crews
practise for Henley." During their short stay with Mrs. Coates, Mrs.
Ward made friends with Dr. Weir Mitchell, novelist and physician, and
with Miss Agnes Repplier, for whom she felt an instant attraction,
while Dorothy sat next to a Mr. Walter Smith, and talked to him
innocently about certain Modernist lectures that had been given at the
Settlement in London, discovering afterwards, to her dismay, that he was
a strong Catholic, and freely called in Philadelphia "Helbeck of
Bannisdale." "I noticed it fell a little flat!"
From Philadelphia they moved on to Washington, to stay with their old
friends the Bryces, at the hospitable British Embassy. An invitation
from the President (Mr. Roosevelt) to dine with him at the White House,
had already reached them. Mrs. Ward described her impressions in a long
letter to her son:
"WASHINGTON,
"_April 13, 1908_.
"Everybody here has been kindness itself, and we feel that we ought
to spend the rest of our days in trying to be nice to Americans in
London! First, as you know, we went to the Bryces. They asked a
great many people to meet us, but what I remember best is a quiet
hour with Mr. and Mrs. Root, who were smuggled into an inner
drawing-room away from the crowd, where one could listen to him in
peace, and above all, look at him! He is, I think, the most
attractive of all the Americans we have seen. He has been Secretary
of State now for some years, and is evidently, like Edward Grey,
absorbed in his own special work and not much concerned with
current politics. His subordinates speak of him with enthusiasm,
and he has a detached, humane, meditative face, with a slight
flicker of humour perpetually playing over it--as different as
possible from the hawk-like concentration of the New Yorkers. We
have seen most of the Cabinet and high officials, and I have
particularly liked Mr. Garfield, Secretary of the Interior, Mr.
Metcalf, Secretary for the Navy, and Mr. Bacon, Assistant Secretary
of State. Saturday's dinner at the White House was delightful, only
surpassed by the little round-table dinner of eight last night at
Mr. Henry Adams's, where the President took me in and talk was fast
and free--altogether a memorable evening. At the White House I did
not sit near the President, everything being regulated by a
comparatively strict etiquette and precedence--but after dinner he
sent word that I was to sit by him in the ballroom, at the little
concert which followed, and when the music was over, he and I
plunged into all sorts of things, ending up with religion and
theology! Last night he talked politics, socialism, divorce, large
and small families, the Kaiser, Randolph Churchill, the future of
wealth in this country (he wants to _lop_ all the biggest fortunes
by some form of taxation--pollard them like trees)--the future of
marriage and a few other trifles of the same kind. He is, of
course, an egotist, but an extraordinarily well-meaning and able
one, with all the virtues and failings of his natural character and
original bringing-up, exaggerated now and produced on what one
might almost call a colossal scale, which strikes the American
imagination. He honestly doesn't want a third term, and has set his
mind on Taft for his successor, but it must be hard for such a man
to step down from such a post into the ordinary opportunities of
life. However, as he says, and apparently sincerely, 'we mustn't
break the Washington tradition.'
"To-day we are going out to Mount Vernon, and to-night there is
another dinner-party. Washington is a most beautiful place--the
Capitol a really glorious building that any nation might be proud
of, and the shining White House, with its graceful pillared front,
among its flowering trees and shrubs, makes me think with shame of
that black abortion, Buckingham Palace!"
It was a special pleasure to them also to see something of M. Jusserand,
the French Ambassador, and his charming wife, and to renew a friendship
which had endured since their early days in London. But above all it was
the leaders of American politics that impressed Mrs. Ward.
"Root, Garfield, Taft," she wrote to Miss Arnold, of Fox How,
"these and several others of the leading men attracted and
impressed me greatly--beyond what I had expected. Indeed, I think
one of the main impressions of this visit has been the inaccuracy
of our common idea in England that American women of the upper
class are as a rule superior to the men. It may be true among a
certain section of the rich business class, but amongst the
professional, educated and political people it is not true at all."
Boston, of course, claimed Mrs. Ward on her way to Canada, and adopted
her in whole-hearted fashion. She was by this time a little tired of
"receptions" of five and six hundred persons, all passing before her as
in a dream and shaking a hand which was never free from writer's cramp.
"But the touching thing is the distance people come--one lame lady came
300 miles!--it made me feel badly--and all the Unitarian ministers for
thirty miles round have been asked and are said to be coming on Tuesday
next!" When they came, Mrs. Ward enjoyed the occasion particularly, and
wrote home that she had "had to make a speech, but got through better
than usual by dint of talking of T. H. Green." An elderly bookseller
among them, who had written to her regularly about each of her books for
the last twenty years, now met her and spoke with her at last; he went
away contented. But the real delights of her stay at Boston were her
visits to Harvard and Radcliffe, and her intercourse with the Nortons at
Shady Hill, and with Mrs. Fields and Miss Jewett at the former's house.
Here she met the fine old veteran, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, author of the
"Battle-Hymn of the Republic," who had lately brought out her memoirs.
Mrs. Ward had been somewhat wickedly amused by certain passages in the
latter: "Imagine Mrs. Ward Howe declaring in public that a poem of hers,
which a critic had declared to be 'in pitiable hexameters' (English, of
course), was not 'in hexameters at all--it was in pentameters of my own
make--I never followed any special school or rule!' I have been gurgling
over that in bed this morning." But when they met, Mrs. Ward
capitulated. "By the way, I retract about Mrs. Howe. Her book is rather
foolish, but she herself is an old dear--full of fun at ninety, and
adored here. She lunched with Mrs. Fields to-day _en petit comité_, and
was most amusing."
The New England country, which she saw on a motor-trip to Concord and
Lexington, and again on a visit which she paid to Mr. and Mrs. Henry
Holt at their beautiful house overlooking Lake Champlain, fascinated
her, "with its miles and miles of young woods sprung up on the soil of
the slain forests of the past--its pools and lakes, its hills and dales,
its glorious Connecticut river, and its myriads of white, small wooden
houses, all on a nice Georgian pattern, with shady verandahs, scattered
fenceless over the open fields. There were no flowers to be seen--only
the scarlet blossom of the maples in the woods."
Nor could she get away, in such an atmosphere, from the old, old problem
of the separation.
"I have been reading Bancroft this morning, and shall read G. O. T.
to-night. We _were_ fools!--but really, I rather agree with H. G. Wells
that they make too much fuss about it! and with Mr. Bryce that it was a
great pity, for _them_ and us, that the link was broken. So they needn't
be so tremendously dithyrambic!"
It was, however, with a heart full of gratitude for the unnumbered
kindnesses of her hosts that Mrs. Ward quitted American soil at the end
of April and crossed over into Canada. Here her peregrinations were to
be mainly under the auspices of Lord Grey, then Governor-General, and of
Sir William van Horne, lord of the Canadian Pacific Railway, at whose
house in Montreal she planned the details of her great journey to the
West. These two revealed themselves to Mrs. Ward in characteristic
fashion while she was still the guest of Sir William, at Montreal, for
the Governor-General, coming over from Ottawa for the great Horse Show,
stopped during his progress round the arena at the Van Horne's box,
spoke to Mrs. Ward with the greatest cordiality, and there and then
insisted that she must go to see the great new Agricultural College at
St. Anne's, near Montreal, on their way to Ottawa the next day.
"He declared that M. could not possibly leave Canada without having seen
it," wrote D. M. W., "and then said, with a laugh and a wave of his hand
to Sir William, 'Ask him--_he'll_ arrange it all for you!'--and passed
on, leaving M. and me somewhat scared, for we had not wanted to bother
Sir William about _this_ journey at any rate! I could see that even he,
who is never perturbed, was a little taken aback, but he said, in his
quiet way, 'It can certainly be arranged,' and it _has_ been!" Then, _en
revanche_, the Governor-General, "being on the loose, so to speak, in
Montreal, with only one and the least vigilant of his A.D.C.'s," came
unexpectedly to the big evening party that the Van Hornes were giving
that night--"because, as he said, 'I like Van Horne, and I wanted to see
Mrs. Ward!'" But, once back in Ottawa, "his family and all his other
A.D.C.'s, are scolding him and wringing their hands, because he never
ought to have done it! It creates a precedent and offends 500 people,
while it pleases one. Such are the joys of his position."
When the "command" journey to the Agricultural College had been safely
preformed, the students duly presented Mrs. Ward with a bouquet and sang
"For _she's_ a jolly good fellow." "The G.G. was delighted," wrote
Dorothy, "and led her out to smile her thanks, but there was fortunately
no time for her to be called upon for five minutes of uplift, as His
Excellency was, the last time he went there! That has now become a
household word in Government House." Mrs. Ward must, I think, almost
have been in at the birth of that hard-worked phrase.
Mr. Ward had been obliged to return to England for his work on _The
Times_, so that his wife's Canadian experiences are recorded in letters
to him:
"GOVERNMENT HOUSE, OTTAWA,
"_May 14, 1908_.
..."Well, we have had a _very_ pleasant time. Lord Grey is never
tired of doing kind things, and she also is charming. He has asked
everybody to meet us who he thought would be
interesting--Government and Opposition--Civil servants,
journalists, clergy--but no priests! The fact is that there is a
certain amount of anxiety about these plotting Catholics, and
always will be. They accept the _status quo_ because they must, and
because it would not help them as Catholics to fall into the hands
of either the United States or of France. But there is plenty of
almost seditious feeling about. And the ingratitude of it! I sat
last night at the Lauriers' between Sir Wilfrid and M. Lemieux,
Minister of Labour--both Catholics. Sir Wilfrid said to me, 'I am a
Roman Catholic, but all my life I have fought the priests--_le
cléricalisme, voilà l'ennemi_. Their power in Quebec is unbounded,
but Modernism will come some day--with a rush--in a violent
reaction.' On my left M. Lemieux described his meeting last week in
Quebec with fourteen bishops, one of whom said to him--'_Le Canada,
c'est le Paradis terrestre du Catholicisme!_' But as for the
educated Catholics, M. Lemieux went on, 'We are all Modernists!'
Both of them denounced the Pope and spoke with longing of Leo
XIII."
* * * * *
"TORONTO,
"_May 18_.
"Such nice people at Ottawa, and such interesting people. Also the
guiding ideas and influences are _English,_ the first time I have
felt it. The position of the Parliament buildings is splendid, and
some day it will be a great city. The Archives represent the birth
and future of Canadian history, and a Canadian patriotism--four
years' work, and already it is influencing ideas and politics,
among a young people who did not know they _had_ a history.[29]
"Toronto is less exciting, though pleasant. We lunched yesterday
with Colonel George Denison, a great Loyalist and Preferentialist,
much in with Chamberlain. He cut Goldwin Smith twenty years
ago!--so it was piquant to go on from him to the Grange. The Grange
is an English eighteenth-century house, or early nineteenth--as one
might find in the suburbs of Manchester in a large English
garden--the remains of 1,000 acres--with beautiful trees. An old
man got up to meet me, old, but unmistakably Goldwin Smith, though
the black hair is grizzled--not white--and the face emaciated. But
he holds himself erect, and his mind is as clear, and his eye as
living, as ever--at 85. He still harps on his favourite theme--that
Canada must ultimately drop into the mouth of the United States and
should do so--and poured scorn on English Tariff Reformers and
English Home Rulers together. Naturally he is not very popular
here!"
From Toronto Mrs. Ward made a flying trip to Buffalo and Niagara, where
she was shown the glories of the Falls by General Greene--a descendant
of the gallant Nathaniel Greene, hero of the S. Carolina campaign of
1781. Then, returning to Toronto, she found Sir William van Horne and
the promised private car awaiting her--not to mention the "Royal Suite"
at the Queen's Hotel, offered her by the management "free, gratis, for
nothing! Oh dear, how soon will the mighty fall!--after the 12th of June
next" (the date of her departure for home). But, for the present, "The
car is yours," said Sir William, "the railway is yours--do exactly as
you like and give your orders."
They parted from their kind Providence on Saturday, May 23, but within
forty-eight hours the railway was providing them with quite an
unforeseen sensation. Six hours this side of Winnipeg (where all kinds
of engagements awaited her), part of the track that ran across a marsh
collapsed, with the result that Mrs. Ward's and many other trains were
held up for nearly twenty hours.
"VERMILION STATION, C.P.R.,
"_May 25, 1908_.
"Here we are, stranded at a tiny wayside station of the C.P.R., and
have been waiting _sixteen hours_, while eight miles ahead they are
repairing a bridge which has collapsed in a marsh owing to heavy
rain. Three trains are before us and about five behind. A complete
block on the great line. We arrived here at six this morning, and
here it is 9.50 p.m.
"It has been a strange day--mostly very wet, with nothing to look
at but some scrubby woods and a bit of cutting. We captured a
Manitoba Senator and made him come and talk to us, but it did not
help us very far. Snell, our wonderful cook and factotum, being in
want of milk, went out and milked a cow!--asking the irate owner,
when the deed was done, how much he wanted. And various little
incidents happened, but nothing very enlivening.
[_Later._]. "Here we are at the spot, a danger signal behind us,
and the one in front just lowered. Another stop! our engine is
detached and we see it vanishing to the rear. The track won't bear
it. How are we going to get over!--Here comes the engine back, and
the brakesman behind our car imagines we are to be pushed over, the
engine itself not venturing.
"10.5. Safely over! The engine pushed us to the brink, and then, as
it was taken off, a voice asked for Mrs. Ward. It was the
Assistant Manager of the line, Mr. Jameson, who jumped on board in
order to cross with us and explain to me everything that had
happened. He had been working for hours and looked tired out. But
we went out to the observation-platform, he and I and Dorothy, and
the _trajet_ began--our train being attached to some light empty
cars, and an engine in front that was pulling us over. I thought
Mr. Jameson evidently nervous as we went slowly forward--we were
the first train over!--but he showed us as well as the darkness
allowed, the marshy place, the new bed made for the line (in the
morning the rails were hanging in air and an engine and two cars
went in!) and the black mud of the sink-hole pushed up into high
banks--trees on the top of them--on either side by the pressure of
the new filling put in--50,000 cubic yards of sand and gravel. On
either side of the line were crowds of dark figures, Galician and
Italian workmen, intently watching our progress. Altogether a
dramatic and interesting scene! We were all glad, including,
clearly, the assistant manager, when he said, 'Now we are over
it'--but there was no real danger, even if the train had partially
sunk, for it was only a causeway over a marsh and not a real
bridge.
"Well, it is absurd to have only a day for Winnipeg, but this
accident makes it inevitable. The journey has been all of it
wonderful, and I am more thrilled by Canada than words can
describe!"
After a breathless day in Winnipeg, very pleasantly spent, under the
care of Mr. and Mrs. Sanford Evans, in endeavouring to overtake the
engagements lost in the "sink-hole," Mrs. Ward and her daughter resumed
their journey across the vast prairie, over the Rockies and the
Selkirks, and down into Vancouver. On her return she thus summed up her
impressions of it in a letter to "Aunt Fan":
"Everybody was kindness itself, everywhere, and the wonderful
journey across Canada and back was something never to forget. To
see how a great railway can make and has made a country, to watch
all the stages of the prairie towns, from the first wooden huts
upwards to towns like Calgary and Regina, and the booming
prosperity of Winnipeg--to be able to linger a little in the
glorious Rockies, to rush down the Fraser Cañon, which Papa used to
talk to us about and show us pictures of when we were children--I
thought of him with tears and longing in the middle of it--and then
to find ourselves at the end beside the 'wide glimmering sea' of
the blue Pacific--all this was wonderful, a real enrichment of mind
and imagination. At least it ought to be!"
In Vancouver they were under the chaperonage of Mr. F. C. Wade, now
Agent-General for British Columbia, and of Mr. Mackenzie King, the
future Prime Minister, whom they had already met at Ottawa, but with
whom Mrs. Ward had a far more intimate link than that, since about five
years before he had come to live as a Resident at the Passmore Edwards
Settlement, and had made great friends with us all. He now acted as
guide, not only to the marvellous beauties of Vancouver, but also to the
recesses of the Chinese quarter, where he had many friends, owing to the
fact that he happened to be engaged in dealing out Government
compensation for the anti-Chinese riots of the year before. Mrs. Ward
was immensely interested in all the problems of Vancouver--racial,
financial and political--being especially impressed by the danger of its
"Americanization" through the buying up of its real estate by American
capital. She stayed long enough to lecture to the Canadian Club of
Vancouver in aid of Lord Grey's fund for the purchase of the Quebec
battlefields as a national memorial to Wolfe, and then set her face
definitely homewards. But she could not allow herself to hurry too
swiftly through the Rockies, where the snow was beginning to melt and
expeditions were becoming possible. From Field she drove to feast her
eyes on the Emerald Lake; from Laggan she pushed on to Lake Louise.
To T. H. W.
"BANFF,
"_June 4, 1908_.
"Since we left Vancouver we have had a delicious time, but
yesterday was the cream! We started at 8.30 from the very nice
Field Hotel, on a special train, just our car and an engine,
and--the car being in front--were pushed up the famous Kicking
Horse Pass, on a glorious morning. The Superintendent in charge of
the Laggan division of the line came up with us and explained the
construction of the new section of the line, which is to take the
place of the present dangerous and costly track down the pass. At
present there are no tunnels, nothing but a long hill, up and down
which extraordinary precautions have to be taken. Now they are to
have spiral tunnels, or rather one long one, on the St. Gotthard
plan. One won't see so much, but it will be safer, and far less
expensive to work.
"The beauty of the snow peaks, the lateral valleys, the leaping
streams, the forests!--and the friendliness of everybody adds to
the charm. At Laggan we left the car and drove up--three miles--to
Lake Louise--a perfectly beautiful place, which I tried to
sketch--alack! It is, I think, more wonderful than any place of the
kind in Switzerland, because of the colour of the rocks, which hold
the gorgeous glacier and snow-peak. We spent the day there, looked
after by a charming Scotchwoman--Miss Mollison--one of three
sisters who run the C.P.R. hotels about here. About 6.30 we drove
down again to find Snell and George delighted to welcome us back to
the car. Then we came on to Banff, sitting on the platform of the
car, and looking back at a beautiful sunset among the mountains. We
shall part from the Rockies with a pang! Emerald Lake and Lake
Louise would certainly conjure one back again, if they were any
less than 6,000 miles from home! As it is, I suppose one's physical
eyes will never see them again, but it is something to have beheld
them once."
At Field Mrs. Ward had met the eminent explorer, Mrs. Schäffer, who was
busy collecting guides and ponies for another expedition into the
unknown tracts of the Rockies. She and Mrs. Ward made great friends, and
some months later the latter was delighted to receive from her
photographs of a wonderful lake which she had discovered, and to which
she gave the name of Lake Maligne. Mrs. Ward could not resist weaving
the virgin lake into the last chapter of her story, _Canadian Born_.
When at length the long journey was over and the faithful car landed her
safely at Montreal, Mrs. Ward still had one pleasant duty to
perform--the handing over of her earnings at Vancouver to Lord Grey, as
a thank-offering for all the good things that had fallen to her lot
since she had parted from him three weeks before. His reply delighted
her, especially since she had just ended her Canadian experiences by an
expedition up the Heights of Abraham, escorted by Col. Wood, the
Canadian military historian.
_June 12, 1908._
MY DEAR MRS. WARD,--
You are _most_ kind! I have received no contribution to the Quebec
Battlefields that has given me greater pleasure. I value it partly
because it is yours and partly Vancouver's. Every cent that filters
through from B.C. and the Prairie Provinces is a joy to me. The
Canadian National Problem, the Imperial Problem, is how to link
B.C. and the Western Provinces more closely with the Maritime
Eastern Provinces--how to improve the transportation service, East
and West, and cause the great highroad of human traffic from Europe
to Asia to go via Montreal and Vancouver--that is the problem, and
that is why I rejoice over every Western Piccanin who subscribes
his few cents to Quebec. A feeling for Quebec will remain engraven
on his heart for all time.
...I do not think the character of the debt owing in £ s. d. by the
British race to the Wolfe family has ever been put before the
public. Wolfe's father never could obtain the repayment from the
British Government of £16,000 advanced by him during the
Marlborough campaigns. The different Departments did the pass trick
with him--the first rule of departmental administration--played
battledore and shuttlecock with him until he desisted from pressing
his claim for fear of being considered a Dun!
Then James Wolfe, our Quebec hero, never received the C. in C.
allowance of £10 per day. His mother claimed £3,000 from the
British Treasury as the amount owing to her son on September 13,
1759--but the poor hard-up departments played battledore and
shuttlecock with her, and she, like her Wolfe relations, was too
great a gentleman to press for payment. When, however, she found
that James had left £10,000 to be distributed according to the
instructions of his will, and that his assets only realized £8,000,
the dear good lady did try and squeeze £2,000 out of the £19,000
owing by the Government to the family, in order that she might
carry out her boy's wishes--but it was a hopeless, useless effort,
and the splendid dame heaped all the coals of fire she could on the
heads of the stony-hearted, perhaps because stony-broke, British
People, by leaving the whole of her fortune to the widows and
orphans of the officers who fell under Wolfe's command at Quebec.
Now I maintain that the whole Empire has a moral responsibility in
this matter, for have not the most energetic of the descendants of
the British People of 1759 emigrated into Greater Britain? The
story of how we recompensed Wolfe for giving us an immortal example
and half a continent has not, so far as I know, been told.
Delighted to think you are going back to England a red-hot Canadian
missionary. Send out all the young people whom you know and believe
in, and who are receptive and sympathetic and appreciative, and
have sufficient imagination not to be stupidly critical. Send them
all over here. We shall be delighted to see them, although I fear
they cannot all get Private Cars!
If Mrs. Ward did not, on her return to England, set up altogether as an
amateur emigration agent, she yet paid her debt to Canada by the
delightful enthusiasm for the young country with all its boundless
possibilities, combined with a shrewd appreciation of its difficulties,
which she threw into her novel, _Canadian Born_. Neither Canada nor Lord
Grey had any reason to complain of the devotion, both of heart and of
head, which she gave to the cause. To her American friends, on the other
hand, her impassioned attack in _Daphne_, or _Marriage à la Mode_, on
the divorce laws of the United States, came as something of a surprise,
for they had not realized, while she was with them, how deep an
impression these things had made on her, or how much her artistic
imagination had been captured by their tragic or sordid possibilities.
_Daphne_ is, indeed, little but a powerful tract, written under great
stress of feeling, but the Americans missed in it the happy touch that
had created Lucy Foster, and regretted that Mrs. Ward should have felt
bound to portray for their benefit so wholly disagreeable a young person
as Daphne Floyd. Time has, however, brought its revenges in the strong
movement that has now arisen in the United States for the unification of
the widely-differing divorce laws of the various States under one
Federal Law.
Yet there were deeper forces at work in the writing of _Daphne_ than any
which Mrs. Ward's brief visit to America alone could have accounted for.
The growing disturbance which the Suffrage question was making in the
currents of English life had thrown Mrs. Ward's thoughts into these
channels for longer than her critics knew. _Daphne_ was one result of
this fermentation; another was what we should now call "direct action."
Within a month after her return from America Mrs. Ward wrote to Miss
Arnold of Fox How (herself an undaunted Suffragist at the age of
seventy-five): "You will see from the papers what it is that has been
taking all my time--the foundation of an Anti-Suffrage League."