The Lure of the Camera

by Charles S. Olcott

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

THE LIME WALK

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

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

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

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

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

COTTAGE OF “MARY BACKHOUSE”

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

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