Mary Augusta Ward 1851 - 1920 - Pascal Theatre Company

Mary Augusta Ward 1851 – 1920

(known as Mrs Humphrey Ward)

Novelist, educationalist.

11 June 1851 – 24 March 1920

Mary Ward 1895: Bassano Studio, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A tribute by Alison Stone

Mary Ward, née Arnold, was a well-known later nineteenth-century intellectual woman with several links to Bloomsbury. She wrote many successful novels, the most famous being the novel of ideas Robert Elsmere. She was also a powerful campaigner for women’s education, a pioneer of adult education for working people, and – regrettably – the leader of the opposition to women’s suffrage.

Ward was born into a rather formidable family. Her grandfather, Thomas Arnold, had been the headmaster of Rugby School, and her uncle was the critic Matthew Arnold. Mary was born in Hobart, Tasmania, but her family soon returned to the UK. Mary attended boarding school until 16, then rejoined her family in Oxford. She engaged in serious study of early Spanish history and literature in the Bodleian Library. Ward was taken seriously as a budding scholar and invited to write a book on Spain, though she declined. She married the Oxford academic Thomas Humphry Ward, and the couple became a fixture of the Oxford scene. Ward got to know many academics, and the philosophical movement known as British idealism became a key influence for her. She involved herself heavily in the movement to set up lectures and colleges for women at Oxford. She was a founder of the Association for the Education of Women and was on the committee that started Somerville Hall for women.

In 1881, the Wards moved to 61 Russell Square. But the house gave them constant trouble with plumbing problems. They eventually left for Grosvenor Place in 1891, and their Russell Square house was bought for the future Imperial Hotel. During this Bloomsbury period, Ward established herself with many contributions to leading journals, particularly Macmillan’s Magazine (she signed her essays ‘M. A. W.’). She mainly wrote on Spanish, French and English literature, including Austen, the Brontës, and Keats. She translated the Journal Intime by the Swiss philosopher Henri Frédéric Amiel, and discussed theories of religion. By now Ward was part of several London intellectual circles. One was an Aestheticist circle that included Vernon Lee and Lee’s partner of the time Mary Robinson, who hosted a salon in nearby Gower Street. But though Ward was close to Aestheticism, her own ideas, which she was working out during the 1880s, were different.

She expressed these ideas in Robert Elsmere, published in 1888. It was probably the best-selling novel of the 1880s and one of the best-selling of all nineteenth-century novels. The main character, Elsmere, is a clergyman undergoing a crisis of faith. The crisis is brought to a head by his reading in religious criticism and historicism and growing doubts about miracles and testimony. In the end Elsmere turns to the wisdom of his mentor Grey, who is a British idealist. For Grey, God’s plan is realised historically, and we can best serve it by improving other people’s lives and helping society to evolve, not by clinging to established doctrines, dogmas, and institutions. Elsmere duly founds and throws himself into an organisation to educate the poor, the ‘New Brotherhood of Christ’. All along the real core of his faith had been altruistic morality, now realised in his virtuous self-sacrifice for the good of the community. It is a literal self-sacrifice as Elsmere works himself to death.

The novel made Ward famous. She was seen as having grasped the spirit of the age. For her the true core of religion was morality and so belief must give way to practical social duty. Some saw her as a heretic who wanted morality to replace religion. The former prime minister William Gladstone criticised Elsmere on these grounds, but this only added to its fame.

Though Ward published many subsequent novels, more interesting in my view is her own Elsmere-style practical reform work. This was on two fronts – promoting education for women and the working class; and leading the opposition to women’s suffrage. These seem an odd mix but I will suggest that they did fit together.

To start with education: in 1890 Ward established University Hall, a ‘settlement’ providing education for working-class people, modelled on Toynbee Hall. University Hall had difficulties and Ward began to gather support for an expanded version, which eventually opened in 1897. It was based in Tavistock Square in Bloomsbury and called the Passmore Edwards settlement after one of its main benefactors, later being renamed the Mary Ward Centre. It provided weekend and evening adult education classes and activities in a wide range of subjects, practical and theoretical. Crucially, the Centre provided child-care. This allowed women to take part in classes and other activities and gave working-class children somewhere to go after school while their parents were still working. Ward led the way with the concept and practice of ‘play schools’. She made provision for disabled children with specially equipped rooms and facilities. The Centre was hugely successful. Hundreds of adults and children soon attended and many other places copied Ward’s innovations.

The other aspect of Ward’s practical work is less appealing. In 1889 she published (anonymously) the ‘Appeal Against Female Suffrage’ in the journal The Nineteenth Century. Louise Creighton and Ethel Harrison helped to write it but Ward was the lead author. The ‘Appeal’ was backed with 104 signatures from well-known women. However, as Ward’s opponent Millicent Fawcett observed, many of them were well-known for their husbands (Mrs T. H. Green, Mrs Max Müller, etc.). The ‘Appeal’ sparked the ‘battle of the names’ as Fawcett wrote spirited replies and gathered 500 female pro-suffrage signatories. The ‘Appeal’ also started organised anti-suffragism, which took off in earnest in the 1900s. The Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League was founded in 1908 with Ward its founding President. From then on, Ward ‘remained the main inspiration behind organized women’s anti-suffragism until the final defeat of 1918’ (Julia Bush, Women Against the Vote, 28).

Ward was a serious intellectual woman, a famous author and an effective campaigner and reformer who did a great deal for women’s education. So, it is puzzling, if not paradoxical, that she threw herself into anti-suffragism. But she herself explains why in the ‘Appeal’. For Ward, a virtuous person understands that they can only achieve happiness by serving others in social life. And women are more virtuous than men – more given to selfless service of others. Women’s virtue would be compromised if they were directly involved in national government, because politics involves the ruthless pursuit of national self-interest. However, Ward did not think women’s place was in the home. Rather, the right place for women to exercise their virtues was in civil society, community life, and local government.

We would give [women] their full share in the State of social effort …; we look for their increasing activity in that higher State which rests on thought, conscience, and moral influence; but we protest against their admission to direct power in that State which does rest upon force – the State in its administrative, military and financial aspects. (Ward, ‘Appeal’, 782)

For Ward, women ought not to have the vote because national government was bound up with force and war and this conflicted with women’s virtues.

Clearly, Ward sincerely believed in the virtue of social service. She personified it in her character Robert Elsmere, associated it with women, and put it into practice when setting up the Mary Ward Centre. But if women were more virtuous than men, then surely society needed to benefit from women’s virtue, through women being able to vote and influence government? Millicent Fawcett argued exactly that in reply to Ward. Arguably, then, Ward’s anti-suffragism contradicted itself – and it has tarnished her reputation.

Fortunately, there is more to remember about Ward than her anti-suffragism. She was one of the best-known women thinkers and writers in later nineteenth-century Britain. Her reforms in the education of women and working people, and in child-care and the inclusion of disabled children, have had a lasting influence and improved many people’s lives. Despite her anti-feminism, much is still inspiring about Mary Ward.

Alison Stone is the author of a number of books including Frances Power Cobbe – a short book about this once-famous nineteenth-century feminist philosopher – and Women Philosophers in Nineteenth-Century Britain, which looks at twelve women philosophers working in Britain during this period including Harriet Martineau, Ada Lovelace, George Eliot, Helena Blavatsky, and Annie Besant.

MINI BIOGRAPHY

Education

Educated at various boarding schools.

Studied early Spanish history and literature at the Bodleian.

Some Key Achievements and Interests

Famous British novelist writing under her married name as Mrs Humphry Ward. Robert Elsmere sold nearly a quarter of a million copies in the UK and America within a few months of publication and was translated into many languages.

Involved in movement to enable women to access higher education.

Took leading role in the founding of Somerville Hall.

Worked to improve life and education for the poor leaving a legacy through the building and development of her settlement programme.

1890 Established educational settlement at Marchmont Hall and later in 1897 the Passmore Edwards Settlement (Mary Ward House in Tavistock Place) with the aim of giving access for all to ‘the hundred pleasures and opportunities that fall mainly to the rich’.

Initiated The Play Centre movement in England by providing activities for children after school and in the holidays.

1908 Founding President of the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League.

Visited battlefields in France during WW1 and wrote reports on the conflict.

Successfully lobbied Parliament to make provision for physically disabled children in the Education Bill of 1918.

Issues

Unsettled childhood.

Felt the need to use the name Mrs Humphrey Ward to be accepted as a respectable author.

Not well off in early married life.

Fought a lifelong battle with ill health.

Stood against women’s suffrage, negatively impacting her otherwise well-received social reformations. Somerville College came to disown her.

Connection to Bloomsbury

1881-1891 Lived at 61 Russell Square, Bloomsbury, from where she worked on her educational projects.

Created a working-class settlement in the heart of Bloomsbury. She generated nurseries and after-school recreation facilities for the children of working mothers and cared for handicapped children.

Female networks include:

Beatrice Webb, secretary Bessie Churcher.

Members of the Anti-suffrage League including Gertrude Bell.

Different circles eg Aesthetic circle meeting Mary Robinson and Vernon Lee among others.

Writing/publications (fiction and non fiction)= over 50 including:

1888 Robert Elsmere

1898 Helbeck of Bannisdale

1896 Sir George Tressaday

1894 Marcella

1892 The History of David Grieve

1905 The Marriage of William Ashe

1908 Women’s Anti-Suffrage Movement