“Why? For, after all, women’s range of material, even in the novel, is necessarily limited. There are a hundred subjects and experiences from which their mere sex debars them. Which is all very true, but not to the point. For the one subject which they have eternally at command, which is interesting to all the world, and whereof large tracts are naturally and wholly their own, is the subject of love—love of many kinds indeed, but pre-eminently the love between man and woman. And being already free of the art and tradition of words, their position in the novel is a strong one, and their future probably very great.”
She sent her Prefaces to a few intimate friends, turning in this case chiefly to those French friends who represented for her the ultimate tribunal in literary matters. The older generation—Scherer, Taine, Renan—were passing away by this time, but a younger had followed them, of whom Paul Bourget, Brunetière of the Revue des Deux Mondes, the Gaston Paris, the Ribots, the Boutmys were among those whom Mrs. Ward would always seek out during her almost annual visits to Paris in these years. But among all her French acquaintance she came about this time to regard M. André Chevrillon, nephew of Taine, traveller and generous critic of English politics and literature, as the most sympathetic, for he seemed to combine with an almost miraculous knowledge of English the very essence of that esprit français which she continued to adore to the end of her life. He had first visited Mrs. Ward at Haslemere in 1891, as a “young French student lost in London,” and he happened to be with us at Stocks at the time of the publication of the Haworth Edition (1900). A few days later Mrs. Ward received the following appreciation from him:
MADAME,—
Je désire tout de suite vous remercier de votre gracieux accueil et de la bonne journée que j’ai passée à Tring, mais je voudrais surtout essayer de vous dire un peu l’impression, l’émotion durable et qui me poursuit ici—que m’a donnée la lecture de vos admirables articles sur les Brontë. Je n’ai pas su le faire tandis que j’étais auprès de vous; ce n’est que ce matin que j’ai lu l’article sur Charlotte et Jane Eyre et j’en suis encore tout hanté. Jamais âmes de poètes et d’artistes n’ont été sondées d’un coup d’œil plus pénétrant, plus rapide, plus exercé et plus sûr. Vous avez su, en quelques pages, montrer l’irréductible personnalité de ces âpres et douloureuses jeunes femmes en même temps que vous expliquiez les traits qui chez elles sont ethniques et généraux, la tendre, la nostalgique âme celtique, farouchement repliée sur soi avec ses pressentiments, ses divinisations magiques, sa faculté d’apercevoir dans les couleurs du ciel, dans les formes et les lignes que présente çà et là la nature des signes chargés de sens mystérieux et profond.... Enfin le dernier paragraphe où vous mettez Charlotte à sa place dans la littérature européenne nous rappelle la sûre scholarship, la puissance de généralisation auxquelles vous nous avez habitués, la faculté philosophique qui aperçoit les idées comme des forces vivantes, dramatiques qui se croisent, se combattent, moulent et façonnent les hommes, et sont les plus vraies des réalités.
M. Chevrillon shared, I think, with M. Jusserand and with M. Elie Halévy the distinction of being the most profound and sympathetic among French students of England at that time; all three were firm friends of Mrs. Ward’s, all charmed her into envious despair by their perfect command of our language. M. Jusserand—who as a young man on the staff of the French Embassy had been a constant visitor at Russell Square—would dash off such notes as this: “Dear Mrs. Ward—Are you in town, or rather what town is it you are in?” and now in this matter of the Brontë Prefaces he wrote her his terrible confession:
‘I spent yesternight a most charming evening reading your essay. Shall I confess that I feel with Kingsley, having had a similar experience? I could never go beyond the terrible beginning of Shirley—and yet I tried and did my best, and the book remains unread, and I the more sorry as my copy does not belong to me, but to Lady Jersey, who charged me to return it when I had finished reading. I really tried earnestly: I took the volume with me on several occasions; it has seen, I am sure, as many lands as wise Ulysses, having crossed the Mediterranean more than once and visited Assuan. But there it is, and I see from my writing-table its threatening green cloth and awful back, with plenty of repulsive persons within. And yet I can read. I have read with delight and unflagging interest Vol. I in-folio of the Rolls of Parliament, without missing a line. Shirley, I cannot. I must try again, were it only for the sake of the editor of the series!”
But in spite of these warm and in many cases lifelong friendships, Mrs. Ward did not find the French atmosphere an easy one in such a year as 1900. The South African War had followed on the Dreyfus Case, the Dreyfus Case on Fashoda, and the ties of friendship suffered an unkindly strain. Mrs. Ward spent a few spring weeks in Rome, where all was golden and delightful—forming new friendships every day, and passing into that second stage of intimacy where first impressions are tested and were not, for her, found wanting; then on the way home she lingered a little in Paris, plunging into the gay confusions of the Great Exhibition. Her literary friends offered her attentions and hospitalities as of old, but she felt at once the difference of atmosphere, describing it vividly in a letter to her brother Willie:
“PARIS,
”May 16, 1900.
‘We have had a delicious time in Rome, Dorothy and I, and now Paris and the Exhibition are interesting and stimulating, but are not Rome! I have come back more Italy-bewitched than ever. Rome was bathed in the most glorious sunshine. Every breath was life-giving—everything one saw was beauty. And the people are so kind, so clever, so friendly—so different from this France malveillante, between whom and us as it seems to me, Fashoda, Dreyfus and the Transvaal have opened a gulf that it will take a generation to fill. In Rome we saw many people and I had much conversation that will be of use for the revision of Eleanor. The country is progressing enormously, the Anno Santo is a comparative failure, and the Jesuit hatred of England flourishes and abounds. The Harcourts were there and I had much talk with Sir William about politics and much else. He is very broken in health, but as amusing as ever. With him and Father Ehrle we went one morning through the show treasures of the Vatican, turned over and handled the Codex Vaticanus, the Michael Angelo letters, the wonderful illuminated Dante and much else. One day with two friends D. and I went to Viterbo, slept, and next day saw the two Cinquecento villas, the Villa Lante and Caprarola. Caprarola was a wonderful experience. Ten miles’ drive into the mountains along a ridge 3,000 feet high, commanding on one side the Lake of Vico, on the other the whole valley of the Tiber from Assisi to Palestrina, with Soracte in the middle distance, and the great rampart of the Sabines half in snow and girdled with cloud. Between us and the plain, slopes of chestnut and vine, and on either side of the road delicious inlets of grass, starred thick with narcissus, running up into continents of broom that by now must be all gold. Then the great pentagonal palace of Caprarola, gloomy, magnificent, in an incomparable position, frescoed inside from top to toe by the Zuccheri, and containing in its great sala a series of portrait groups of Charles V, Francis I, Henry II, Philip II, of the greatest possible animation and brilliancy, and in almost perfect preservation.”
After such delights the atmosphere of Paris must indeed have seemed cold, but Mrs. Ward could always see the other side of such a controversy, and took pleasure in reporting to her father a conversation she had had, while in Paris, with “a charming old man, formerly secretary of the Duc D’Aumale, and now curator of the Chantilly Museum.”