The story of Mrs. Ward’s activities for the welfare of London’s children has taken us far beyond the period of her life at which we had otherwise arrived. To return briefly to her literary work, it may be said, I think, that those two novels of London life, Lady Rose’s Daughter and William Ashe, had marked its highest point in sheer brilliance and success; after these the long autumn of her novel-writing began, which, like all mellow autumns, had its moments of more true and delicate beauty than the full summer had possessed. The first of these autumn novels, if I may use the term, was Fenwick’s Career, which appeared in May, 1906; it was not a great popular success, like the previous two, but to those who read it in these after-times its sober excellence of workmanship, as shown especially in the scenes at Versailles and at the Westmorland cottage where husband and wife meet again after their long separation, are perhaps more attractive than all the brilliance of poor Kitty Bristol or of the shifting groups in Lady Henry’s house in Bruton Street. Mrs. Ward had been criticized in the case of these three novels for having made use of the persons and incidents of the past without any definite acknowledgment, but she defended herself vigorously, in a short Preface to Fenwick’s Career, in words that I cannot do better than reproduce:

“The artist, as I hold, may gather from any field, so long as he sacredly respects what other artists have already made their own by the transmuting processes of the mind. To draw on the conceptions or the phrases that have once passed through the warm minting of another’s brain, is for us moderns at any rate, the literary crime of crimes. But to the teller of stories, all that is recorded of the real life of men, as well as all that his own eyes can see, is offered for the enrichment of his tale. This is a clear and simple principle; yet it has been often denied. To insist upon it is, in my belief, to uphold the true flag of Imagination, and to defend the wide borders of Romance.”

The cottage on the “shelf of fell” in Langdale, whence poor Phœbe Fenwick set forth on her mad journey to London, had also a solid existence of its own, though no “acknowledgment” is made to it in Foreword or text. “Robin Ghyll” stands high above the road on the fell-side, between a giant sycamore and an ancient yew, close by the ghyll of “druid oaks” whence it takes its name—resisting with all the force of the mountain stone of which it is built the hurricanes that sweep down upon it from the central knot of those grim northern hills. The view from its little lawn of Pikes, Crinkle Crags and Bow Fell has perhaps no equal in the Lake District. Sunshine and storm have passed over it for 200 years or more, since the valley folk first built it as a small statesman’s farm or shepherd’s cottage. At the time of which I write the little place was occupied by a poetically minded resident who had added two pleasant rooms.

Mrs. Ward and her daughter Dorothy noticed Robin Ghyll as they drove up Langdale with “Aunt Fan” one summer day in 1902, and fell in love with it. Two years later it actually fell vacant, so that Mrs. Ward could take it in the name of her daughter and share with her the joy of furnishing and then inhabiting its seven rooms. But though Mrs. Ward loved Robin Ghyll and fled to it occasionally for complete retirement, it belonged in a more particular sense to her daughter, and derived from her its charm. Thither she would go at Whitsuntide or in September, refreshing body and mind by contact with its solitudes. Not often indeed could she be spared from the absorbing life of Stocks, or Italy, or Grosvenor Place, where so much depended upon her. But though life limped at Stocks during Dorothy’s brief absences, she always returned from Robin Ghyll with strength redoubled for the arduous service of love which she rendered to her mother all her life long, and from which both giver and receiver derived a sacred happiness.

CHAPTER XI
THE VISIT TO THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
1908

MRS. WARD had often been assured by her friends and admirers in the United States that if she would but visit them she would find such a welcome as would stagger all her previous ideas of hospitality. She could not doubt it; it was, in fact, this thought, combined with the frailness of her health, that had deterred her during the twenty years that followed the publication of Robert Elsmere from going to claim the honours that awaited her. Her husband and daughter had already paid two visits to the States, and had experienced in the kindness and warmth of their reception an earnest of what would fall to Mrs. Ward’s lot should she venture across the Atlantic; nor had they merely whirled with the passing show, but had made many lifelong friends. Mrs. Ward had, however, resisted the pressure of these friends for many years, until at length, in the spring of 1908, so strong a combination of circumstances arose to tempt her that her resolution gave way. Her own health, which had suffered a grievous and prolonged breakdown in 1906, had gradually re-established itself, so that by the time of which we are speaking she was perhaps in better case for such an adventure than she had been for some years. Mr. and Mrs. Whitridge would hear of nothing but that she should make their house her home during her stay in New York; Mr. Bryce made the same demand for Washington; Earl Grey for Ottawa (where he was at that time Governor-General), while Mr. Ward’s acquaintance with Sir William van Horne, Chairman of the Canadian Pacific Railway—based on a common enthusiasm for Old Masters—led to the irresistible offer of a private car on the Line for Mrs. Ward and her party, at the Company’s expense, from Montreal to Vancouver and back. Such lures were hardly to be withstood, but I doubt whether Mrs. Ward would have succumbed even to them had it not been for her growing desire to see, with her own eyes, the work which was being done in New York for the play-time of the children. She knew that New York was far in advance of London in the provision of Vacation Schools for the long summer holiday, and of evening Recreation Centres for the children who had left school; but Play Centres for the school-children themselves were as yet unknown there, so that she felt much might be gained by an exchange of experiences between herself and the “Playground Association of America.”

And so, on March 11, 1908, they sailed in the Adriatic—she and Mr. Ward, and her daughter Dorothy, with the faithful Lizzie in attendance. The great ship set her thinking of the only other long voyage that she had ever made, over far other seas. “When I look at this ship,” she wrote, “and think of the cockleshell we came home in round the Horn in ’56, and the discomforts my mother must have suffered with three children, one a young baby! Happiness, as we all know, and as the copy-books tell us, does not depend on luxuries—but how she would have responded to a little comfort, a little petting, if she had ever had it! My heart often aches when I think of it.” The comforts of the Adriatic were indeed colossal, and since the ocean was kindness itself, Mrs. Ward took no ill from the voyage, but arrived in good spirits, and ready to face the New World with that zest which was her cradle-gift.

Mr. Whitridge’s pleasant house in East Eleventh Street received Mr. and Mrs. Ward, while Dorothy stayed with equally hospitable friends—Mrs. Cadwalader Jones and her daughter—over the way. Avalanches of reporters had to be faced and dealt with, all craving for five minutes’ talk with Mrs. Ward, but they were usually intercepted in the hall by Mr. Whitridge, whose method of dealing with his country’s newspapers was somewhat drastic. If they passed this outer line of defence they were received by Mr. or Miss Ward, who found them persistent indeed, but always marvellously civil; and on the very few occasions when Mrs. Ward did consent to be interviewed, she insisted on seeing the proof and entirely re-writing what had been put into her mouth. The newspapers, indeed, had reckoned without a mentality which intensely disliked this kind of thing; it was unfortunate, perhaps, but inevitable!

In all other respects, however, it was impossible for Mrs. Ward not to be deeply moved by the kindness that was heaped upon her. “Life has been a tremendous rush,” wrote D. M. W. from New York, “but really a very delightful one, and we are accumulating many happy and amusing memories. The chief thing that stands out, of course, is the love and admiration for M. and her books. When all’s said and done, it really is pretty stirring, the way they feel about her. And the things the quiet, unknown people say to one about her books go to one’s heart.” (“We dined at a house last night,” wrote Mrs. Ward herself, “where everybody had a card containing a quotation from my wretched works. Humphry bears up as well as can be expected!”) But on one occasion, at least, she came in for a puff of unearned incense. At an afternoon tea, given in her honour by Mrs. Whitridge, an elderly lady was overheard saying in awe-struck tones to her neighbour, “To think that I should have lived to shake hands with the authoress of Little Lord Fauntleroy!”

Dinners, lunches, receptions, operas and theatres succeeded one another in a dazzling rush, but New York knew quite well what was the main purpose of Mrs. Ward’s visit, and it was fitting that the principal function arranged in her honour should have been a dinner given her at the Waldorf-Astoria by the Playground Association of America. There were 900 persons present, and when Mrs. Ward stood up to address them every man and woman in the room spontaneously rose to their feet to greet her. It was a moment that would have touched a far harder heart than hers.