Part 7 (2/2)

”To sit in the Forum there,” she writes to her sister, Mrs. Leonard Huxley, ”or in one of the bright gaily painted houses, or restaurants with the wine-jars still perfect in the marble counters, and to think that people were chatting and laughing in those very courts and under those very pictures while Jesus was before Pilate, or Paul was landing at Puteoli, on the same coast some twenty miles north, made an electric moment in life. It is so seldom one actually _feels_ and _touches_ the past. After seeing those temples with their sacrificial altars and _cellae_, their priests' sleeping-rooms and dining-rooms, I read this morning St.

Paul's directions to the Corinthians about meat offered to idols--in fact, the whole first letter--with quite different eyes.”

To the same beloved sister she was indebted for the inimitable tales of her small boy, Julian, which enliven the later pages of _David Grieve_; for Sandy Grieve was taken direct from this little grandson of the Professor--an ”impet” indeed, in his mother's expressive phrase. ”Your stories of Julian have been killing,” wrote Mrs. Ward from Naples; ”I was sorry one of them arrived too late for _David_. By the way, I have not yet written to Willie to say that Sandy is merely an imperfect copy of Julian. He writes 'We both _love_ Sandy.' And I am sure when the book comes out that Sandy will be the making of some of the last part.”

A month after Mrs. Ward's return to England, that is on January 22, 1892, _David Grieve_ appeared, and was at once greeted with a chorus of praise, criticism and general talk. ”Were there ever such contradictory judgments!” wrote Mrs. Ward to her publisher when the book had been out a week. ”The Master of Balliol writes to me that it is 'the best novel since George Eliot'--'extraordinarily pathetic and interesting'--and that Louie is a sketch that Victor Hugo might have drawn. A sledgehammer article in the _British Weekly_ to-night says 'it is an almost absolute failure.' Mr. Henry Grenfell and Mr. Haldane have been glued to it till they finished it. According to other people it is 'ordinary and tedious.' Well, one must possess one's soul a little, I suppose, till the real verdict emerges.” The reviews were by no means all laudatory, much criticism being bestowed on the ”Paris episode” of David's entanglement with Elise Delaunay, but the general verdict certainly was that it showed a marked advance on _Robert Elsmere_ in artistic treatment, as well as a power of character-drawing that had not been seen since _Middlemarch_. This feeling was summed up in Walter Pater's sentence: ”It seems to me to have all the forces of its predecessor at work in it, with perhaps a mellower kind of art--a more matured power of blending disparate literary gifts in one.” Letters poured in upon her again, both from old friends and strangers. ”Max Creighton,” now Bishop of Peterborough, who was never tired of poking fun at Mrs. Ward about the ”higher criticism,” found time to dash off ten closely written sheets of pseudo-solemn investigation into the authenticity of David's life-story, beginning: ”Though I am prepared to believe that David Grieve was a real personage, it is clear that many mythical elements have been incorporated into his history, and it is the function of criticism to disentangle the real man from the legendary accretions which have gathered round him.” Mrs. Ward replied in suitable vein, and confided to her friend that a few of the reviews had made her very sore.

”I am very sorry to hear,” he replied, ”that some criticism has been ungenerous.... But I think that we all have to learn the responsibility attached to undertaking the function of a teacher, and the inevitable antagonism which the claim arouses. It has been so always. No amount of rect.i.tude or good intentions avail.”

But the warm admiration expressed by those for whose opinion she cared amply made up for the hostility of these reviews. As she said of it in her _Recollections_: ”It has brought me correspondence from all parts and all cla.s.ses, more intimate and striking perhaps than in the case of any other of my books.” Many pages might be filled with these letters, but at a distance of thirty years two only shall be saved from oblivion, for the sake of that mere quality of delight which pervades them both and which endeared their writers beyond other men to the company in which they moved. The first is from Professor Huxley; the second from Sir Edward Burne-Jones.

HODESLEA, STAVELEY ROAD, EASTBOURNE.

_February 1, 1892._

MY DEAR MARY,--

You will think I have taken my time about thanking you for _David Grieve_; but a virtuous resolution to stick to a piece of work I have had on hand for a long time interfered with my finis.h.i.+ng it before last night. The temptation was severe, and as I do not often stick to virtuous resolutions under these circ.u.mstances, I parade the fact.

I think the account of the Parisian episode of David's life the strongest thing you have done yet. It is alive--every word of it--and without note or comment produces its ethical effect after the manner of that ”gifted auth.o.r.ess,” Dame Nature, who never moralizes.

Being ”n.o.bbut a heathen,” I should have liked the rest to be in the same vein--the picture of a man hoping nothing, rejecting all speculative corks and bladders--strong only in the will ”im Ganzen, Guten, Wahren resolut zu leben,” and accepting himself for more or less a failure--yet battling to the end. But you are on the side of the angels.

We are very proud of Julian's apotheosis. He is a most delightful imp, and the way in which he used to defy me, on occasion, when he was here, was quite refres.h.i.+ng. The strength of his conviction that people who interfere with his freedom are certainly foolish, probably wicked, is quite Gladstonian.

My wife joins in love.

Ever yours affectionately, T. H. HUXLEY.

THE GRANGE, 49, NORTH END ROAD, WEST KENSINGTON, W.

_Sat.u.r.day morning._

MY DEAR MRS. WARD,--

The book has just come--and to my pride and delight with such a pretty autograph: so that to-day I am mightily set up. I cannot tell you how comforting the words read to me--and how sunny they have made this grey day. By the messenger who takes this I send a little drawing, done in gold, which for a whole year past I have meant for you--it was to reach you by your last birthday, but I was ill then with this vile plague that is devastating us, and after that there seemed no reason for sending it one day more than another, and as I looked at it again it didn't seem good enough, and I thought one day you would come and choose a little souvenir of friends.h.i.+p--one perhaps more to your liking--but this day has never come, and all the year through illnesses big or little have pursued me and nipped all plans. But will you take it with my love--real grateful love; it's a kind of Urania sort of person, and will be proud to live in your bower in the country.

We are a poor lot--my wife kept to her room for about a month; Phil imprisoned in a room with carbolic curtains round him as if he were a leper, and I--too ignominious at present to be spoken about--longing to go out and see an omnibus--I _should_ like to see an omnibus again!

My love to you all, Yours, E. B. J.

P.S.--The first day I can get out I shall call and take my chance of seeing you. Don't dream of writing about the poor little drawing; I should be ashamed, and you are full of work.

The ”kind of Urania sort of person” shed a radiance all her own over our house from that day onwards, and was removed before long to a ”country bower” after Mrs. Ward's own heart.

For early in 1892 her attention was drawn by her old friend, Mr. (now Sir James) Thursfield, who lived near Berkhamsted, to the fact that some five miles farther from London, in the heart of a district as rural and unspoilt as any that could be found in England, stood a comfortable eighteenth-century house of medium size which happened recently to have come into the market. Sir Edward Grey had just inherited it through his mother under the will of old James Adam Gordon, its possessor in the 'forties and 'fifties; but since the place was far from any trout-stream he did not propose to live in it, but wished instead to find a tenant to take it for a term of years. Its name was simply ”Stocks,” and though the house itself was only 120 years old, a far older manor-house had been pulled down to make way for it; while the little estate--”the stokkes of the parish of Aldbury”--is mentioned in a fifteenth-century charter as forming an outlying part of the huge diocese of Lincoln. Mr.

Thursfield persuaded Mr. and Mrs. Ward to come and see it, winter though it was. They fell in love with it there and then, and within a few weeks it was decided that Grayswood should be sold and Stocks taken for seven years. Mrs. Ward felt that she had found at last the home she had been seeking.

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