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 institutions 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. Passmore Edwards is going to build us a Settlement!”
She had written to him at last, knowing of him—as all that generation knew—mainly as the generous founder of Free Libraries, but without much hope that he would seriously take up the Marchmont Hall building scheme. At that time the Committee were in favour of a site in Somers Town, north of the Euston Road, the advantages of which Mrs. Ward had set forth in her letter to Mr. Edwards. His answer ran as follows:
May 30, 1894.
My dear Madam,—
Since I received your letter in Italy I have considered your suggestion in reference to the extension in ampler premises of University Hall Settlement, and thereby planting as you say a Toynbee Hall in the Somers Town district. I have also visited the district in and around Clarendon Sq., and am convinced that such an Institution is as much wanted in North London as it was wanted in East London. I therefore cheerfully respond to your appeal, and undertake to provide the necessary building within the limits of the sum you indicate, if somebody will provide a suitable site. The vacant place in Clarendon Sq. would, I consider, be a convenient spot for the Settlement. As a matter of course, provision must be made that the building shall be permanently devoted to the purpose now intended. In my opinion we have the two things most necessary in the Somers Town district for a Toynbee Hall: we have a numerous working population requiring educational assistance and advantages; and we have in the neighbourhood many able and willing workers ready to assist in works of intellectual, moral and social culture.
I remain,
Yours faithfully,
J. Passmore Edwards.
This was her first great victory on the road to the building of the Passmore Edwards Settlement. That road was still to be a long and difficult one, but she was not to be discouraged, and where many lesser souls would have fallen out by the wayside, wearied by ill-health and by the multiplication of obstacles, she persisted, and won in the end a vantage-ground in the fine buildings of the Settlement, whence, in the course of time, she could pass on to new and various achievements.
Heavy and exacting as the work of University Hall was during the first three years of its existence, and glum as the face of our coachman was wont to look at the reiterated orders to drive there (for he disapproved of his horse being kept waiting in the street while people were just talking), Mrs. Ward never allowed it to absorb her mind completely. Indeed, these years saw the writing of her second three-volume novel, The History of David Grieve, as well as many important developments in our domestic affairs. The house on Grayswood Hill, near Haslemere, was rising fast during the early months of 1890, while the principles of the new Settlement were being thrashed out in the study at Russell Square, and at length Mrs. Ward tore herself away from London, stipulating for a six weeks’ break from the affairs of University Hall, buried herself in a neighbouring house named “Grayswood Beeches,” wrote David hard, and kept a watchful eye on the plasterers and painters at work on “Lower Grayswood” below. She took the keenest interest in every detail of the new house, planning it out in daily letters to her husband, and yet as it drew near completion she could not help rebelling at its very newness, at the half-made garden and the plantations of birch and larch and pine which covered much of the nine acres of ground, while of real trees there was hardly one. Waves of longing would assail her for Hampden House, with its silence and its spaciousness, its old lawns and trees, and its complete absence of neighbours. “How I have been hankering after Hampden lately!” she writes to her father in June, 1890, and to her husband she confesses that she has been to the agent’s to inquire whether Hampden could be let for a term of years. “They don’t think so. I told them to inquire without mentioning our names at all.” Hampden, however, was not to be had, and when once she was established in Lower Grayswood, Mrs. Ward took more kindly to the house, which had from its windows one of the most astonishing views in all the South of England. Yet still she wrote to her father: “I doubt whether I shall be content ultimately without an old house and old trees! If one may covet anything, I think one may covet this kind of inheritance from the past to shelter one’s own later life in. Life seems so short to make anything quite fresh. Meanwhile, Lower Grayswood is very nice, and more than we deserve!”
The verdict of children and friends was indeed unanimous in praise of the poor new house, whence endless fishing expeditions were made to muddy little brooks in the plain below, almost compensating for the loss of Forked Pond and the other barbarian delights of Borough Farm. But even the children realized that there were “too many people about” for the health of their mother’s work. The pile of cards on the hall table grew ominously thick. Americans walked in, taking no denial, and once in mid-August, when the youngest child tactlessly won a junior race at the Lythe Hill Sports, with all Haslemere looking on, there were paragraphs in the evening papers. It would not do, and I think the house at Haslemere was doomed from that day onwards. Still, for two years it played its part delightfully in the web of Mrs. Ward’s life, giving her quiet, especially in the autumn and winter, for the writing of David Grieve, giving her deep draughts of beauty which were not forgotten in after years. The lodge was made a home for tired Londoners, whether boys or mothers or factory-girls, and the house itself was never long empty of guests.