That autumn they went off on a round of visits, staying first at Merevale with Mrs. Dugdale, whose husband had been killed three years before in his own mine near by—a story of simple heroism which moved Mrs. Ward profoundly, so that years afterwards she used it in her own tale of George Tressady. Then to Sir Robert and Lady Cunliffe, with whom they went over to see the “old wizard” of Hawarden, and spent a wonderful hour in his company.
To her old friend, J. R. Thursfield (a staunch Home Ruler), she wrote the following account of it:
September 14, 1888.
“Where do you think we spent the afternoon of the day before yesterday? You would have been so much worthier of it than we! The Cunliffes took us over to tea at Hawarden and the G.O.M. was delightful. First of all he showed us the old Norman keep, skipping up the steps in a way to make a Tory positively ill to see, talking of every subject under the sun—Sir Edward Watkin and their new line of railway, border castles, executions in the sixteenth century, Villari’s Savonarola, Damiens and his tortures—‘all for sticking half-an-inch of penknife into that beast Louis XV!’—modern poetry, Tupper, Lewis Morris, Lord Houghton and Heaven knows what besides, and all with a charm, a courtesy, an élan, an eagle glance of eye that sent regretful shivers down one’s Unionist backbone. He showed us all his library—his literary table, and his political table, and his new toy, the strong fire-proof room he has just built to hold his 60,000 letters, the papers which will some day be handed over to his biographer. His vigour both of mind and body was astonishing—he may well talk, as he did, of ‘the foolish dogmatism which refuses to believe in centenarians.’”
À propos of this last remark, Mrs. Ward filled in the tale on her return by telling us how he turned upon her with flashing eye and demanded: “Did it ever occur to you, Mrs. Ward, that Lord Palmerston was Prime Minister at 81?” He himself was to surpass that record by returning to power at 82.
From the Cunliffes’ they also made an expedition to the Peak country, which Mrs. Ward wished to explore for purposes of her next book (David Grieve), now already taking shape in her mind—and then travelled up to Scotland to stay at a great house to whose mistress, Lady Wemyss, she was devoted. From one who was afterwards to be known as the portrayer of English country-house life the following impressions may be of interest:
To Mrs. A. H. Johnson
Fox Ghyll, Ambleside,
October 21, 1888.
...Yes, we had many visits and on the whole very pleasant ones. In Derbyshire I saw a farm and a moorland which I shall try to make the British public see some day. Then on we went to the Lyulph Stanleys’, saw them, and Castle Howard and Rivaulx, and journeyed on by the coast to Redcar and the Hugh Bells. There we found Alice Green, and had a merry time. Afterwards came a week at Gosford, whereof the pleasure was mixed. Lady Wemyss I love more than ever, but the party in the house was large and very smart, and with the best will in the world on both sides it is difficult for plain literary folk who don’t belong to it to get much entertainment out of a circle where everybody is cousin of everybody else, and on Christian name terms, and where the women at any rate, though pleasant enough, are taken up with “places,” jewels and Society with a big S. I don’t mean to be unfair. Most of them are good and kindly, and have often unsuspected “interests,” but naturally the paraphernalia of their position plays a large part in their lives, and makes a sort of hedge round them through which it is hard to get at the genuine human being.
Perhaps our most delightful visit was a Saturday to Monday with Mr. Balfour, at Whittinghame. There life is lived, intellectually, on the widest and freest of all possible planes, and the master of it all is one to whom nature has given a peculiar charm and magnetism, in addition to all that he has made for himself by toil and trouble.