The Life of Mrs. Humphry Ward Part 6

"It is a great moral strain, this extraordinary success. I feel often as though it were a struggle to preserve one's full individuality, and one's sense of truth and proportion in the teeth of it. There is no help but to look away from oneself and everything that pertains to self, to the Eternal and Divine things, to live penetrated with the feebleness and poverty of self and the greatness of G.o.d."

Yet naturally she enjoyed the many letters from Americans of all ranks and cla.s.ses which reached her during the autumn and winter of 1888. The veteran Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote to her in his most charming vein, speaking of the book as a "medicated novel, which will do much to improve the secretions and clear the obstructed channels of the decrepit theological system." W. R. Thayer, afterwards the biographer of Cavour, wrote:

"The extraordinary popularity of _Robert Elsmere_ is a most significant symptom of the spiritual conditions of this country. No book since _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ has had so sudden and wide a diffusion among all cla.s.ses of readers; and I believe that no other book of equal seriousness ever had so quick a hearing. I have seen it in the hands of nursery-maids, and of shop-girls behind the counter; of frivolous young women, who read every novel that is talked about; of business men, professors, students, and even schoolboys. The newspapers and periodicals are still discussing it, and, perhaps the best sign of all, it has been preached against by the foremost clergymen of all denominations."

And a st.u.r.dy rationalist, Mr. W. D. Childs, thus recorded his protest:

"I regret the popularity of _Robert Elsmere_ in this country. Our western people are like sheep in such matters. They will not see that the book was written for a people with a State Church on its hands, that a gross exaggeration of the importance of religion was necessary. It will revive interest in theology and r.e.t.a.r.d the progress of rationalism.

"Am I not right in this? You surely cannot think it good for individuals or for societies to take religion seriously, when there is so much economic disorder in the world, when the ma.s.s of physical and mental suffering is so obviously reducible only by material means."

It was very delightful, of course, to be making a little money from the book, after so many years of strenuous work, and though the sum she had earned was still a modest one (about 3,200 by January, 1889), it enabled her and her husband to make plans for the future and to embark on the purchase of some land for building in the still unspoilt country to the east of Haslemere. Here, on Grayswood Hill, overlooking the vast tangle of the Weald as far as Chanctonbury Ring and the South Downs, a red-brick house of moderate size, cunningly designed by Mr. Robson, gradually arose during 1889 and the first part of 1890; but while it was still building a fortunate accident placed in our way the chance of living for three months in a far different habitation--John Hampden's wonderful old house near Great Missenden, which was then in a state of interregnum, and might be rented for a small sum.

"It will be quite an adventure," wrote Mrs. Ward to her publisher in July, 1889, "for in spite of the beauty and romance of the place there is hardly enough furniture of a ramshackle kind in it to enable us to camp for three months in tolerable comfort! But by dint of sending down a truck load of baths, carpets and saucepans from home we shall get on, and our expenses will be less than if we took a villa at Westgate."

And to Mrs. Johnson, of Oxford, who was coming with her whole family to stay there, Mrs. Ward wrote three days after her arrival:

"The furniture of the house is decrepit, scanty and decayed, but it has breeding and refinement, and is a thousand times preferable to any luxurious modern stuff. I am _perfectly_ happy here, and bless the lucky chance which drew our attention to the advertis.e.m.e.nt. I will not spoil the old house and gardens and park for you by describing them--but they are a dream, and the out-at-elbowness of everything is an additional charm."

So for three months we stayed at Hampden, revelling in its beauty and its s.p.a.ciousness, learning to know the Chiltern country with its chalk-downs and beech-woods, entertaining many visitors, including the much-loved Professor Huxley, and watching anxiously for the ghost that walked in the pa.s.sage outside the tapestry-room on moonlight nights. It never walked for us, though Mrs. Ward sat up many times to woo it, but there were plenty of ghosts of another sort in a house that had sheltered Queen Elizabeth on one of her "progresses," that still possessed the chair in which John Hampden had sat when they came to arrest him for ship-money, and that had guarded his body at the last, when his Greencoats bore it thither from Thame to lie in the great hall for one more night before its burial in the little church across the garden. At first there were no lamps, and we groped about with stumps of candles after dark, but gradually all the more glaring deficiencies were remedied and Mrs. Ward settled down to a happy three months of work on her new novel, _David Grieve_. But as she wrote of her two wild children on the Derbyshire moors, or of young David and his books in Manchester, the very different scene around her formed itself in her mind into a new setting, from which arose in course of time _Marcella_.

Meanwhile it was not Hampden's ghost but Elsmere's that still haunted her, in the sense that the "New Brotherhood" with which the novel ended would not die with it, but struggled dumbly in the author's mind for expression in some living form. Some time before she had been deeply impressed by a visit she had paid to Toynbee Hall with "Max Creighton,"

as she wrote to her father, when she found that "in the library there _R.E._ had been read to pieces, and in a workmen's club which had just been started several ideas had been taken from the "New Brotherhood."

The experience had remained with her; she had brooded and dreamt over it, and now when she returned to London in the autumn of 1889 she began for the first time to try to work out the idea in consultation with certain chosen friends. "Lord Carlisle came and had a long talk with M.

about a proposed Unitarian Toynbee somewhere in South London"--so wrote the little sister-in-law (herself an orthodox Christian) in her journal on November 11, 1889. And a little later: "Mr. Stopford Brooke came and had a long talk with her about a 'New Brotherhood' they hope to start with Lord Carlisle and a few others to help."

Was it to be a new religion, or a re-vivifying of the old? The impulse to build up, to re-create, was hot within her; could she not appeal to her generation to help her in following out this impulse towards some practical goal? Was there not room for another Toynbee, inspired still more definitely than the first with the ideals of a simpler Christianity? The daemon drove; surely the very success of her book showed that this was the need of the new age in which she lived. She plunged into the task, and only time and Fate were to reveal that the "new religion" was doomed to take no outward form, but to work itself out in ways undreamt of as yet by the author of _Robert Elsmere_.

CHAPTER V

UNIVERSITY HALL--_DAVID GRIEVE_ AND "STOCKS"

1889-1892

The conversations with Stopford Brooke and Lord Carlisle mentioned in the last chapter contained the germ of all that public work which was to claim henceforth so large a share of Mrs. Ward's life. Up to this point she had hardly taken any part in London committees; indeed, those s.p.a.cious days were still comparatively free from them, and it is remembered that when the first meeting of the group with whom she was discussing her new scheme took place at Russell Square,[15] one irreverent child in the schoolroom next door said to its fellow, "What's a committee?" "Oh," said the elder, in the manner of one who imparts information, "it's when the grown-ups get together, and first they think, and then they talk, and then they think again." At the moment no sound was audible through the wall. "They must be thinking now," said the instructor carelessly, leaving his junior to the solemn belief, held for many years, that a committee was a sort of prayer-meeting.

That first group, who discussed and finally approved Mrs. Ward's draft circular announcing the foundation of a "Hall for Residents" in London, consisted of the following men and women besides herself: Dr. Martineau, Dr. James Drummond, of Manchester College, Oxford, Mr. Stopford Brooke, Lord Carlisle, Rev. W. Copeland Bowie, Dr. Estlin Carpenter, Mr.

Frederick Nettlefold, the Dowager Countess Russell, Miss Frances Power Cobbe, and lastly, Dr. Blake Odgers, Q.C., who acted as Hon. Treasurer.

Mr. Copeland Bowie, who helped Mrs. Ward for several months as a "kind of a.s.sistant secretary," has recorded his impressions of those crowded days in an article which he wrote for the _Inquirer_ on April 3, 1920:

"We met in the dining-room at Russell Square. Mrs. Ward was the moving and executive force; the rest of us were simply admiring and sympathetic spectators of her enterprise and zeal. It is delightful to recall her abounding activity and enthusiasm. Difficulties were overcome, criticisms were answered, work was carried on with extraordinary devotion and skill. Several meetings were devoted to the consideration of how to proceed, for the pathway was beset by many difficulties. At last, early in March, 1890, a scheme for the establishment of a Settlement at University Hall, Gordon Square, in a part of the old building belonging to Dr. Williams's Trustees, was agreed upon. The religious note is very prominent. University Hall would encourage 'an improved popular teaching of the Bible and the history of religion, in order to show the adaptability of the faith of the past to the needs of the present.'"

The aims of the new movement were, in fact, set forth in the original circular in these words:

"It has been determined to establish a Hall for residents in London, somewhat on the lines of Toynbee Hall, with the following objects in view:

"1. To provide a fresh rallying point and enlarged means of common religious action for all those to whom Christianity, whether by inheritance or process of thought, has become a system of practical conduct, based on faith in G.o.d, and on the inspiring memory of a great teacher, rather than a system of dogma based on a unique revelation. Such persons especially, who, while holding this point of view, have not yet been gathered into any existing religious organization, are often greatly in want of those helps towards the religious life, whether in thought or action, which are so readily afforded by the orthodox bodies to their own members. The first aim of the new Hall will be a religious aim.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MRS. WARD IN 1889 (Ba.s.sano, photo.)]

"2. The Hall will endeavour to promote an improved popular teaching of the Bible and of the history of religion. To this end continuous teaching will be attempted under its roof on such subjects as Old and New Testament criticism, the history of Christianity, and that of non-Christian religions. A special effort will be made to establish Sunday teaching both at the Hall and, by the help of the Hall residents, in other parts of London, for children of all cla.s.ses. The children of well-to-do parents are often worse off in this matter of careful religious teaching than those of their poorer neighbours. There can be little doubt that many persons are deeply dissatisfied with the whole state of popular religious teaching in England. Either it is purely dogmatic, taking no account of the developments of modern thought and criticism, or it is colourless and perfunctory, the result of a compromise which satisfies and inspires n.o.body. Yet that a simpler Christianity can be frankly and effectively taught, so as both to touch the heart and direct the will, is the conviction and familiar experience of many persons in England, America, France and Holland.

But the new teaching wants organizing, deepening and extending. It should be the aim of the proposed Hall to work towards such an end."

It was natural that such ideals as these should appeal in a peculiar way to the Unitarian community, and we find in fact that the first subscription list, which guaranteed an income of about 700 to University Hall for three years, contains a preponderance of Unitarian names. Lord Carlisle and Mr. Stopford Brooke were in favour of calling it frankly a Unitarian Settlement. "There is a life and spirit about the things which are done by Dissenters," wrote Lord Carlisle, "which I believe can never be got out of people who have a lingering feeling for the Church of England." But the majority on the Committee, including Mrs. Ward and Dr. Martineau, thought that this would be setting unnecessary limits to the movement, which they rather intended to be a leaven permeating the lump both of orthodoxy and of indifferentism. It was therefore agreed not to use the word in the preliminary circular, though all the world could see from the names on the Committee that the tone of the new Settlement would be largely that of the younger and freer Unitarianism which had founded Manchester College, Oxford. It was one of Mrs. Ward's most characteristic achievements that while she herself never sympathized with Unitarianism as an organization, she was yet able to work closely with Unitarians in this her first great enterprise, sharing with them their enthusiasm for the Christian message and their austere devotion to truth, while herself cherishing that "lingering feeling for the Church of England" which forbade her to identify herself with any outside body while there was still hope of influencing and widening the national Church. Yet for all practical purposes the breach between the "new religion," as its critics contemptuously dubbed it, and the Establishment was complete enough, and the foundation of University Hall only confirmed the orthodox in their disapproval of Mrs. Ward and all her works.

Besides its definitely religious aim, the new Settlement was to have a well-marked social side as well. This is set forth in another paragraph of the circular:

"It is intended that the Hall shall do its utmost to secure for its residents opportunities for religious and social work, and for the study of social problems, such as are possessed by the residents at Toynbee Hall or those at Oxford House. There will be a certain number of rooms in the Hall which can be used for social purposes, for lectures, for recreative and continuation cla.s.ses and so on.

Though the Hall itself is in one of the West Central Squares, it is surrounded on three sides by districts crowded with poor. A room could be taken for workers from the Hall in any of these districts or in the Drury Lane neighbourhood. In addition, the Hall is close to Gower Street Station, so that it would be comparatively easy for the residents to take part in any of the organizations already existing in the East or South of London, for the help of the poor and the study of social problems."

And in spite of the religious ardour of its founders, it was in this aspect of the work of University Hall that the germ of future developments really lay. But the future lay hidden as yet from Mrs. Ward and her gifted band of a.s.sociates and fellow-workers.

Many difficulties were encountered in the appointment of a suitable Warden, for a combination of qualities was required which was not easy to find, especially in the limited circle of those whose views in matters of faith agreed broadly with those of the Committee. Month after month went by while Mrs. Ward and Dr. Martineau interviewed many candidates, often a.s.sisted by Canon Barnett, of Toynbee, whose interest in the new venture was as sincere as it was generous. Applications from possible residents came in fast, showing that the work would not lack support in that direction, but even in August the Warden was still to seek. At length, however, in September, the ideal choice was made in Mr.

Philip Wicksteed, who was then holding the office of minister at the Unitarian chapel in Little Portland Street. He was already beginning to be widely known outside his regular work as a lecturer on Biblical subjects and on Dante, and Mrs. Ward had already sounded him once or twice in this matter of the Wardenship. But he had hitherto evaded it on the ground that his election would identify the Hall with Unitarianism.

At last, however, Mrs. Ward won his acceptance at an interview she had with him at Russell Square, in which she greeted him with the words "I want to _wrestle_ with you!" He dealt frankly with her on the subject of the religious aims of the Hall, and in a letter written to her a few days after his acceptance said:

"You remember when first you spoke to me on this matter how I told you that I had never been clear as to the exact thing contemplated in the Hall, and had never felt that it had any programme. Under those circ.u.mstances I felt that it would be false to myself and in reality false to you to allow myself to be overcome by your splendid faith and enthusiasm and take it up without any true inspiration in pity that so n.o.ble a 'quest' should find no knight-errant to try it.

"My work with you has considerably cleared my vision, and has inspired me with growing _hopes_ for the inst.i.tution, but I cannot honestly say that it has given me any deep _faith_ in its success.

You know how anxious I have been throughout about our audience for lectures, and how doubtful about the existence of any large public seriously interested in Biblical studies. My fears are not allayed; though I hope the result may put them to shame."

With Mr. Wicksteed's acceptance of the Wardenship, the arrangements for lectures and the preparations for the reception of Residents were pushed on apace, while the Committee decided that a formal opening ceremony must be held in order to plant the flag of the new Settlement's faith and ideals. The Portman Rooms were taken for the purpose; the venerable Dr. Martineau consented to be in the chair, and Mrs. Ward was to make the princ.i.p.al speech. She had never spoken in public before, and was genuinely terrified at the prospect (three years later she put into _Marcella's_ experience in the East End her own horror of extempore speaking); but she prepared her address with great care, and was afterwards told that her voice carried to the farthest limits of the room, packed as it was with a keenly expectant audience. Her plea was that the time had come for a reconstruction of the basis of Christian belief; that the results both of Darwinian inquiry and of historical criticism must be faced, especially in the teaching of children, but that when the "search for an exacter truth, which is the fate and mission of humanity" had been met, a possibility of faith remained which would be the future hope of the world. To the elucidation of this faith the efforts of the Hall, on its teaching and lecturing side, would be devoted. And in speaking of the "social and practical effort which is an _essential_ part of our scheme," she pleaded that it was "yet not its most distinctive nor its most vital part. The need of urging it on public attention is recognized in all camps. Yet, meanwhile, there are hundreds of men and women who spend themselves in these works of charity and mercy who are all the time inwardly starved, crying for something else, something more, if they could but get it. What matters to them, first and foremost--what would give fresh life to all their efforts--would be the provision of a new motive power, a new hope for the individual life in G.o.d, a new respect for man's destiny. Let me recall you for a moment from the gospel of works to the great Pauline gospel of faith, and the inner life! It is in the bringing back of _faith_--not the faith which confuses legend with history, or puts authority in the place of knowledge, but the faith which springs from moral and spiritual fact, and may be day after day, and hour after hour, again verified by fact--that the great task of our generation lies."

Thus was the new venture launched, amid a mingled chorus of admiration and criticism from that section of the world which was affected by the movement of ideas. The lecturing at University Hall was soon in full swing, and was maintained at a very high level during the years 1891 and 1892, so that when Mrs. Ward went on a speaking tour to some of the northern towns in the autumn of the latter year in order to appeal for funds for a further period of three years (an appeal in which she was completely successful), she was able to give a very remarkable account of it. Many courses on both Old and New Testament criticism had been given, by Mr. Wicksteed, by Dr. Estlin Carpenter, by M. Chavannes, of Leyden; on the Fourth Gospel by that fine scholar, Mr. Charles Hargrove; on Theism by Prof. Knight, and on the Gospel of St. Luke by Dr.

Martineau himself. These latter took place on Sunday afternoons during the spring of 1891. "Sunday after Sunday," said Mrs. Ward, "the Hall of Dr. Williams's Library was crowded to the doors, and, I believe by many to whom the line of thought followed in the lectures was of quite fresh help and service; and it will be long indeed before many of us forget the last Sunday--the venerable form, the beautiful voice, the note of unconquerable hope as to the future of faith, and yet of unconquerable courage as to the rights of the mind! I at least shall always look back to that hour as to a moment of consecration for our young Inst.i.tution, disclosing to us at once its opportunities and its responsibilities." In the non-Biblical sphere Mrs. J. R. Green had given a series of lectures on the development of the English towns[16]; Miss Beatrice Potter (soon to become Mrs. Sidney Webb) a course on the Co-operative Movement, which became the foundation of her great book on that subject; Mr. Graham Wallas on "The English Citizen"; Mr. Stopford Brooke on "The English Poets of the Nineteenth Century"; while the Warden lectured to large audiences on Dante, and "ground away" (in his own words) at political economy, thinking aloud before his band of students and "forging forward on new lines." It was all very stimulating, very much alive; but whether, as the months pa.s.sed on, it was exactly carrying out the aims and intentions of that opening day, some sympathetic observers began to doubt.

"I was uneasy all the time," wrote Mr. Wicksteed afterwards to J.

P. T., "because though I thought I was working honestly and in a way usefully, yet I could never quite feel that the Settlement was doing the work it set out to do, or that it was quite justifying its subscription list. But I don't believe your mother, in spite of a great measure of personal disappointment, ever had the smallest doubt or misgiving in this matter. She thoroughly believed in the significance and value of what _was_ being done, and cared for it with a vivid faith and affection, and supported it with an inventive enthusiasm, that have always seemed to me the expression of a generosity and magnanimity of a type and quality that were quite distinctive."

An energetic attempt was made to interest the young men employed in the big shops of Tottenham Court Road in the Hall's activities; but the times were premature; not until the Great War had loosed the foundations of our society did the young men of Tottenham Court Road find their way into the Y.M.C.A. "The young men of Tottenham Court Road," wrote Mr.

Copeland Bowie, "gave no sign that they wished to partake of the food provided for them at University Hall." Then, somewhat apart from the lecturing scheme of the Hall, there grew up the body of Residents, young men of divers attainments and tastes who were hard to mould into the original scheme, some of whom were even greatly concerned to show that they depended in no way for their ideas on the author of _Robert Elsmere_. Occasionally there were difficult moments at the Council meetings, when the Residents' views clashed with those of the older members, but it was at those moments, and generally in her gift for bowing to the inevitable when it came, that Mrs. Ward endeared herself most to her fellow-workers by her rare great-heartedness. During their first winter's work at the Hall the Residents had discovered, in the squalid neighbourhood to the east of Tavistock Square, a dingy building that went by the name of Marchmont Hall, which they decided to take as the scene of their regular social activities. They raised a special fund for its expenses, and under the leadership of a young solicitor, who combined much shrewdness and ability with a glowing enthusiasm for the service of his fellow-men, the late Mr. Alfred Robinson, the suspicions of the neighbourhood were overcome and a fruitful programme of boys'

clubs, men's clubs, concerts and lectures launched by the autumn of 1891. Mrs. Ward was deeply interested in the experiment, and hoped against hope that it might lead to those opportunities for Christian teaching which still lay very near her heart. A year later she was able to give the following account of their first attempts in that direction:

"The Sunday evening lectures are preceded by half an hour's music, and have been from the first more definitely ethical and religious in tone than those given on Thursday. But it is only quite recently we have felt that we could speak freely, without danger of misunderstanding, upon those subjects which are generally identified by the working-cla.s.ses with sectarian and ecclesiastical propaganda. Now that we are known we need have no fear; and on November 12 the Warden, who had already spoken on the prophets of Israel and other kindred topics, gave an address on the life and character of Jesus. It was received with warm feeling, and more lectures of the same kind have already been arranged for. Next term we hope a cla.s.s in the Gospels, already begun, may take larger proportions. Among the boys and young men of the Hall, often intelligent and well-educated as they are, there is an extraordinary amount of sheer ignorance and indifference as to the Christian story and literature, even when they have had their full share of the usual Sunday School training. To some of us there could be no more welcome task, to be undertaken at once with eagerness and with trembling, than that of making old things new to eyes and hearts still capable of that 'admiration, hope, and love'

by which alone we truly live."

But the movement never developed, for in truth there was no Elsmere to lead it; Mrs. Ward herself went three times to take a boy's cla.s.s on Sunday afternoons, but could not, in the midst of her other work, maintain the effort; the Warden, versatile as he was, did not regard it as his _first_ interest, while from the body of Residents came a dumb sense of antagonism, not amounting to direct opposition, but just as effective, which in the end prevailed. The "School" of Biblical studies at University Hall continued as before, appealing to a definite cla.s.s of students and educated persons of the middle-cla.s.s, but the attempt to fuse it with the social work at Marchmont Hall was doomed to succeed as little as the attempt to attract to it the half-educated shopmen of Tottenham Court Road. Gradually the human interest of the experiment, the sense of romance and adventure, went over from the lecturing side to the work at Marchmont Hall, where the popular lectures and discussions, the Sat.u.r.day evening concerts and the Sat.u.r.day morning "play-rooms" for children were making a real mark on the life of the district. But Mrs.

Ward was fully able to recognize this, and accepted in an ungrudging spirit the different direction which circ.u.mstances had given to her own cherished dreams.

"It will be seen readily enough," wrote Mr. Wicksteed in the memorial pamphlet issued by the Pa.s.smore Edwards Settlement, "that it was on the side of the School rather than on that of the Residence that Mrs. Ward's ideals seemed to have the best chance of fulfilling themselves. Yet in truth it was in the Residence that the germ of future development lay. The greatness of Mrs. Ward's character was shown in her recognition--painful and unwilling sometimes, but always brave and loyal--of this fact. She could not and did not relinquish her "Elsmerean" ideals. The romance of _Richard Meynell_, published twenty-three years after _Robert Elsmere_, shows them in unabated ardour. The failure of the Residence to amalgamate with the School was the source of deep distress to her. She sometimes suggested measures for overcoming it that did not approve themselves to her colleagues, but throughout she never suspected their loyalty, and never failed in her own. It needed rare magnanimity. Patience seems too pa.s.sive a word to apply to so ardent a spirit, but something that did the work of patience was very truly there. And as she came to recognize that with the available material the Settlement could not be the embodiment of her full ideal, she withdrew her vital energies from the attempt to force a pa.s.sage where none was possible, she steadily refused to let blood flow through a wound that could be and should be healed, and she threw all the strength of her inventive and resourceful mind--and what is more the full stream of her affection and joy in accomplished good--into the development of such branches of her purpose as by that agency could be furthered."

By the year 1893 the situation as between University Hall and Marchmont Hall had become a curious one, since the former was too large and expensive for its purpose and the latter not nearly large enough. Mrs.

Ward and her friends came to the conclusion that some scheme must be devised for combining the activities of both inst.i.tutions under one roof; but since no suitable building existed anywhere in the neighbourhood of Marchmont Hall, where deep roots had been struck in the affections of the working population, it became obvious that the only solution was to build. Through the early spring of 1894 Mrs. Ward laboured to interest the old friends of University Hall in an appeal for a Building Fund of 5,000; but it was uphill work; her health had suffered greatly from the long strain, and there were moments when hope sank very low. Then, one evening in May of that year, the postman's knock sounded below, and one of us went down as usual to fetch the letters. There was but a single dull-looking letter in an ordinary "commercial envelope." "Only a bill," announced the bearer, as it was placed in Mrs. Ward's hands. She opened it, glanced at the signature, read it rapidly through, and then, with a little cry, exclaimed: "Mr.

Pa.s.smore Edwards is going to build us a Settlement!"