In the Preface to the “Westmorland Edition” of Robert Elsmere, issued twenty-three years later, Mrs. Ward herself confessed to her models for some of the principal characters—to the friend of her youth, Mark Pattison, for the figure of the Squire (though not in his landowning capacity!); to Thomas Hill Green, “the noblest and most persuasive master of philosophic thought in modern Oxford,” for that of Henry Grey; and to Amiel himself, the hapless intellectual tortured by the paralysis of will, for that of Langham. Both the Rector of Lincoln and Professor Green had recently died, the latter in the prime of his life and work, and Mrs. Ward sought both in the dedication and in her sketch of the strong and lovable tutor of St. Anselm’s, to express her lasting admiration for this lost friend. But she claimed in each case the artist’s freedom to treat her creatures as her own, once they had entered the little world of the novel: a thesis which she was to maintain and develop in later years, when she occasionally went to the past for her characters. Catherine was a more composite picture, drawn from the “strong souls” she had known among her own kinswomen from childhood up, and therefore, perhaps, more tenderly treated by the author than the rules of artistic detachment would allow. She was a type far more possible in the ’eighties than now, but it is perhaps comforting to know that no single human being inspired her. As to the scene in which these figures moved, it was on a sunny day at the end of May, 1885, that Mrs. Ward’s old friend, Mr. James Cropper, of Ellergreen, took her for a drive up the valley of Long Sleddale, in a lonely part of Westmorland. There she saw the farm at the head of the dale, the vicarage, the Leyburns’ house. Already her thoughts were busy with her story, and from that day onwards she peopled the quiet valley with her folk.

At first she was full of hope that the book would be finished before the summer of 1886, although she admits to her mother that “it is very difficult to write and the further I get the harder it is.” In March of that year she writes to her sister-in-law: “I have made up my mind to come here [Borough Farm] for the whole of April, so as to get Robert Elsmere done! It must and shall be done by the end of April, if I expire in the attempt.” In April she did indeed work herself nearly to death, writing sixteen, eighteen and even twenty pages of manuscript in the day, and a sort of confidence began to grow up in her mind that the book would not speak its message in vain. “I think this book must interest a certain number of people,” she writes to her mother; “I certainly feel as if I were writing parts of it with my heart’s blood.” But the difficulties only increased, and actually it was the end of October before even the first two volumes were finished. And then “the more satisfied I become with the second volume the more discontented I am with the first. It must be re-cast, alas!” Her arm was often troublesome, especially in the autumn of this year, when she was staying at the Forsters’ house near Fox How, working very hard. “I am dreadfully low about myself,” she writes; “my arm has not been so bad since April, when it took me practically a month’s rest to get it right again. I have been literally physically incapable of finishing my last chapter. And to think of all the things I promised myself to do this week! And here I have time, ideas, inclination, and I can do nothing. I will dictate if I can to Gertrude, but I am so discouraged just at present I seem to have no heart for it.” Then a few days later it has taken a turn for the better, and she is overjoyed: “The second volume was finished last night! The arm is decidedly better, though still shaky. I sleep badly, and rheumatism keeps flying about me, now here, now there, but I am not at all doleful—indeed in excellent spirits now that the arm is better!”

So, in spite of the distractions of London, she struggled on with the third volume all through that winter (1886-7), flying for a week in December to Borough Farm in order to get complete isolation for her task. “Oh, the quiet, the blissful quiet of it! It helps me most in thinking out the book. I can write in London; I seem to be unable to think.” Sometimes, however, her head was utterly exhausted. Returning to London, she wrote to her mother: “I did a splendid day’s work yesterday, but it was fighting against headache all day, and this morning I felt quite incapable of writing and have been lying down, reading, though my wretched head is hardly fit for reading. It is not exactly pain, but a horrid feeling of tension and exhaustion, as if one hadn’t slept for ever so long, which I don’t at all approve of.”

Often, when these fits of exhaustion came on, a small person would be sent for from the schoolroom, in whose finger-tips a quaint form of magic was believed to reside, and there she would sit for an hour, stroking her mother’s head, or her hands, or her feet, while the “Jabberwock” on the Chinese cabinet curled his long tail at the pair in silence. “Chatter to me,” she used to say; but this was not always easy, and a golden and friendly silence, peopled by many thoughts, usually lay between the two.

At length, on March 9, 1887, the last words of the third volume were written, there in the little powder-closet behind the back drawing-room. But this did not mean the end. She was already painfully aware that the book was too long, and Mr. George Smith, best and truest of advisers, firmly indicated to her that the limits even of a three-volume novel had been overstepped. She herself had already admitted to her brother Willie that it was “not a novel at all,” and she now plunged bravely into the task of cutting and revision, fondly hoping that it would take her no more than a fortnight’s hard work. Instead it took her the best part of a year. Publication first in the summer season, then in the autumn, had to be given up, while her own fatigue increased so that sometimes for days together she could not touch the book. The few friends to whom she showed it were indeed encouraging, and her brother Willie was the first to prophesy that it would “make a great mark.” After reading the first volume he wrote to Mrs. Arnold, “You may look forward to finding yourself the mother of a famous woman!” But the mood of this year was one of depression, while Mrs. Arnold’s illness became an ever-increasing sorrow. In the Long Vacation Mrs. Ward took the empty Lady Margaret Hall, at Oxford, for a few weeks, in order to be near her mother—a step which brought her unexpectedly another pleasure. On the very day after they arrived she wrote: “I have had a great pleasure to-day, for at three o’clock arrived a note from Jowett saying that he was in Oxford for a day and would I come to tea? So I went down at five, stayed an hour, then he insisted on walking up here, and sat in the garden watching the children play tennis till about seven. Dear old man! I have the most lively and filial affection for him. We talked about all sorts of things—Cornwall, politics, St. Paul—and when I wanted to go he would not let me. I think he liked it, and certainly I did.”

Through the autumn and into the month of January, 1888, she struggled with mountains of proofs, while Mr. Smith, though without much faith in the popular prospects of the book, was always “kind and indulgent,” as she gratefully testifies in the Recollections. At length, towards the end of January, she sent in the last batch, and on February 24 the book appeared.

Six weeks later, in the little house in Bradmore Road, which had witnessed so many years of suffering indomitably borne, Julia Arnold lay dying. Through pain and exhaustion unspeakable she had yet kept her intense interest in the human scene, and now the last pleasure which she enjoyed on earth was the news that reached her of the growing success of her daughter’s book. With a hand so weak that the pen kept falling from her fingers, she wrote her an account of the Oxford gossip on it; she asked her, with a flash of the old malice, to let her know at once should she hear what any of her aunts were saying. Alas, Julia knew better than anyone else on earth what the religious temperament of the Arnolds might mean; but before the answer came her poor tormented spirit was at rest for ever.

CHAPTER IV
ROBERT ELSMERE AND AFTER
1888-1889

THREE volumes, printed as closely as were those of Robert Elsmere, penetrated somewhat slowly among the fraternity of reviewers. The Scotsman and the Morning Post were the first to notice it on March 5, nine days after its appearance; the British Weekly wept over it on March 9; the Academy compared it to Adam Bede on the 17th; the Manchester Guardian gave it two columns on the 21st; the Saturday “slated” it on the 24th; while Walter Pater’s article in the Church Guardian on the 28th, calling it a “chef d’œuvre of that kind of quiet evolution of character through circumstance, introduced into English literature by Miss Austen and carried to perfection in France by George Sand,” gave perhaps greater happiness to its author than any other review. The Times waited till April 7, being in no hurry to show favour to one connected with its staff, but when it came the review duly spoke of Robert as “a clever attack upon revealed religion,” and all was well. By the end of March, however, the public interest in the book had begun in earnest; the first edition of 500 copies was exhausted and a second had appeared; this was sold out by the middle of April; a third appeared on April 19 and was gone within a week; a fourth followed in the same way. Matthew Arnold wrote from Wilton, the Pembrokes’ house, a week before his death (which occurred on April 15), that he found all the guests there reading or intending to read it, and added, “George Russell, who was staying at Aston Clinton with Gladstone, says it is all true about his interest in the book. He talked of it incessantly and said he thought he should review it for Knowles.”

As a matter of fact, Mr. Gladstone had already written the first draft of his article and was corresponding with Lord Acton on the various points which he wished to raise or to drive home. His biographer hints that Acton’s replies were not too encouraging. But the old giant was not to be deterred. The book had moved him profoundly and he felt impelled to combat the all too dangerous conclusions to which it pointed. “Mamma and I,” he wrote to his daughter in March, “are each of us still separately engaged in a death-grapple with Robert Elsmere. I complained of some of the novels you gave me to read as too stiff, but they are nothing to this. It is wholly out of the common order. At present I regard with doubt and dread the idea of doing anything on it, but cannot yet be sure whether your observations will be verified or not. In any case it is a tremendous book.” And to Lord Acton he wrote: “It is not far from twice the length of an ordinary novel; and the labour and effort of reading it all, I should say, sixfold; while one could no more stop in it than in reading Thucydides.” Early in April he came to Oxford to stay with the Edward Talbots at Keble College, and hearing that Mrs. Ward was also there, watching over her dying mother, he expressed a desire to see her, and, if possible, to talk the book over with her. She came on the day after her mother’s death—April 8—towards evening, and waited for him alone in the Talbots’ drawing-room. That night she wrote down the following account of their conversation: