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Mrs. Humphry Ward's Last Novel

Harvest — By Mrs. Humphry Ward

If we attempt to analyse the feeling of respect with which we regard the large body of conscientious work produced by Mrs. Humphry Ward, we find that it springs from the fact that the angel who handed her the pen was never other than the ‘stern daughter of the voice of God.’ She recognized the problems with which her generation was faced; she felt it was her duty so to state, so to explain those problems that men and women who were thrown into confusion at the thought of strange ideas and theories escaping from their cages and running loose in society should be comforted and calmed by the spectacle of many a noble man, many a gracious lady bringing them to heel, teaching them to bear harness and to carry them up heights too steep for the pedestrian, too narrow for the easy carriage.

In her early novels and in those of her prime we are never for a page unconscious of the deliberate task which she has set herself; the plot, the story, is the least important thing. What is important is the messages that her characters have to deliver; she sees herself, we fancy, as the person at the great house, receiving these messages and translating them to the eager, inquiring crowd about the gates, and then—returning to the library. For who can imagine Mrs. Humphry Ward away from that decorous apartment, that discreet and dignified room with its heavy door shutting out the unmeasured tones of existence, its high windows letting in the pale light of the English country? Here she interviewed Life, polished and agreeable Life with an intellectual brow, an easy carriage, thoughtful eyes; ardent, rebellious Life, Diana in a plumed hat ready to die for the Cause; timid, under-fed Life, coughing behind a thread glove; and honest, page 183 stupid Life, twisting a cap, grinning and pulling a forelock. The light gleams upon the books and upon the table with its paper and pens. One by one, or so many of them together in a prearranged order, the figures enter, yield the information they are expected to yield and depart, or are, more properly, removed, conducted, seen off the premises, with a quiet firm sentence or two….

But the inaudible and noiseless foot of Time passed and repassed, and the problems which had seemed to her so worth the solving seemed to dissolve, and with them her intense intellectual efforts. With the disappearance of the rich difficulties came the unbaring of the plot. She seemed to see how weak it was, how scarcely it held, and her later books rely upon the story. They are failures for this reason. She had no idea of what happened to those people when they had left the library; her imagination was poor—her sympathy did not extend beyond a kind of professional sympathetic interest.

The modern world came streaming through the library, making all sorts of strange demands, ceaseless, careless, changing even as she watched it. And the spectacle of the no longer youthful, of the woman tired and unflagging, trying to keep pace with the mood of the moment, is not without pathos.

She cannot be judged by ‘Harvest.’ It is a plain mystery novel; it bears the impress of her desire to emerge from the library and to walk in the cornfields—in the new land which is war-time England. But she is unhappy in such surroundings, and her serenity is gone.