The Life of Mrs. Humphry Ward

by Janet Penrose Trevelyan

Thus was poor Robert, with his doubts and dreams, his labours and his faith, given away with a cake of soap!

But this was not all, nor even the worst. When the boom was still at its height, in the spring of 1889, Mrs. Ward was horrified to hear that a full-blown dramatized version of the book, by William Gillette, had actually been produced in Boston, with a “comedy element,” as the newspaper report described it, “involving an English exquisite and a horsey husband,” thrown in, the Squire and Grey eliminated, and Langham “endowed with such nobility of character as ultimately to marry Rose.” She at once cabled her protest with some energy and succeeded in getting the further performance of the play stopped; but hardly was this episode ended than another followed on its heels.

“A writer in the New York Tribune,” wrote the Glasgow Herald in April, 1889, “exposes a most barefaced trick of trading upon Mrs. Humphry Ward’s name. A continuation, he says, of Robert Elsmere has already been begun by an American publisher, and advance sheets, containing thrilling instalments of the romantic adventures of Robert Elsmere’s Daughter, are being scattered broadcast over the length and breadth of the United States. The industrious agents of the publisher of this sheet have been busily engaged in inserting sample chapters of this new novel under the doors of houses all over New York. This, however, is not the worst feature of the trick. From the title of the story the impression sought to be conveyed is that Mrs. Humphry Ward, the authoress of Robert Elsmere, is responsible, too, for Robert Elsmere’s Daughter, the headings of the story being arranged in this specious shape: ‘Robert Elsmere’s Daughter—a companion story to Robert Elsmere—by Mrs. Humphry Ward.’”

It was no wonder that the scandal of these events was used by the promoters of the International Copyright Bill then before Congress as one of their most powerful arguments; for there were many honourable publishing firms in America which abhorred these proceedings and were only anxious to regularize their relations with British authors. Mr. George Haven Putnam, head of the firm of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, and the International Copyright Committee which he formed, had already been working in this direction for some years; but the opposition was strenuous, and it was only in March, 1891, that the Copyright Bill which was to have so great an effect on Mrs. Ward’s fortunes actually became law in the United States. Even before that, however, very flattering offers were made to her by American publishers—especially by Mr. S. S. McClure, founder of the then youthful McClure’s Magazine—for the right of publishing the “authorized version” of her next book. Mr. McClure tried to beguile her into writing him a “novelette,” or a “romance of Bible times,” but Mrs. Ward was not to be moved. She had already begun work upon her next book (David Grieve), and all she said in writing to her sister (Mrs. Huxley) was: “This American, Mr. McClure, is a wonderful man. He has offered me £1,000 for the serial rights of a story as long as Milly and Olly! Naturally I am not going to do it, but it is amusing.” To her father she wrote in more serious mood about the American boom:

“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 God.”

Yet naturally she enjoyed the many letters from Americans of all ranks and classes 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 classes 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 sturdy 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 retard 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 mass of physical and mental suffering is so obviously reducible only by material means.”