Robert Elsmere brought its author into touch with many who desired, as she did, to work among the London poor, as missionaries of undogmatic religion. In 1890 she and her associates founded a settlement at University Hall, Gordon Square, for popular Bible-teaching and ‘simplified’ Christianity on the one hand, and for social purposes on the other. This developed a few years later into the Passmore Edwards Settlement, opened in Tavistock Square in 1897 [see Edwards, John Passmore.]
Though her health was always uncertain, Mrs. Ward continued for the rest of her life to accomplish an enormous amount of work. Her novels followed each other in rapid succession. The History of David Grieve appeared in 1892, Marcella in 1894, The Story of Bessie Costrell in 1895, Sir George Tressady in 1896, Helbeck of Bannisdale in 1898, Eleanor in 1900, Lady Rose's Daughter in 1903, The Marriage of William Ashe in 1905, Fenwick's Career in 1906, and The Testing of Diana Mallory in 1908. She continued to publish novels down to 1920, but except for The Case of Richard Meynell (1911), a return to the theme of Robert Elsmere, her later books did not achieve that remarkable combination of serious intellectual interest with descriptive power and skilful presentation of social types which had won her her great reputation.
Mrs. Ward's practical achievements were no less notable than her literary success. At the Passmore Edwards Settlement she instituted the ‘children's play hours’, which developed into the movement, so closely associated with her name, for recreational centres for London children. In 1898 she set on foot a scheme for the education, at the Settlement, of crippled children; and by many years of experiment and propaganda she succeeded in so fully awakening the public mind to the necessity for special educational facilities for physically defective children, that the provision of such facilities was made compulsory on local authorities in 1918.
Mrs. Ward's other principal activity, in the period before the European War, was the organization of opposition to the extension of the franchise to women. She was the foundress of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League (1908), and also, since she combined anti-suffrage feeling with a personal taste for political activity, of the ‘Joint Advisory Council of Members of Parliament and Women Social Workers’, an organization for bringing the views of women to bear on the legislature without the aid of the vote. In 1910 she wrote a series of political pamphlets, Letters to My Neighbours, for the benefit of the Hertfordshire constituency in which her son was conservative candidate.
During the War Mrs. Ward undertook, at the request of Mr. Roosevelt and with the encouragement of the British government, a series of articles designed to bring home to the imagination of the American people the efforts and achievements of the Allies. She was allowed facilities for seeing the army in the field, the navy, and the munitions works, and she published the result of her tours of inspection in the press as Letters to an American Friend, later republished as England's Effort (1916), Towards the Goal (1917), and Fields of Victory (1919). In 1918 she published an autobiographical volume, A Writer's Recollections.
Shortly before her death Mrs. Ward was invited to act as one of the first seven women magistrates, and the university of Edinburgh offered her the degree of LL.D. She died in London 24 March 1920, and was buried at Aldbury, Hertfordshire. Her husband died in 1926. She had one son and two daughters: Arnold, who was member of parliament for West Hertfordshire from 1910 to 1918; Dorothy; and Janet, the wife of Professor George Macaulay Trevelyan.
[The Times, 25 March 1920; Janet Penrose Trevelyan, The Life of Mrs. Humphry Ward, 1923; Mrs. Humphry Ward, A Writer's Recollections, 1918.]
WARD, WILFRID PHILIP (1856–1916), biographer and Catholic apologist, was born 2 January 1856 at Old Hall House, Ware, Hertfordshire, the second son of William George Ward [q.v.], ‘Ideal’ Ward, of the Oxford Movement. His family was of old standing in the Isle of Wight and noteworthy in the cricketing world. Ward was brought up in an ultramontane atmosphere before proceeding to Ushaw College, Durham, and the Gregorian University at Rome. He lectured on philosophy at Ushaw College in 1890, was an examiner in mental and moral science for the Royal University of Ireland 1891–1892, and a member of the royal commission on Irish university education (1901). In 1906 he became editor of the Dublin Review, which he raised to a commanding standard of thought and influence. His vocation to the Catholic priesthood was not realized, but his younger brother, Bernard Nicholas (1857–1920), was ordained priest in 1882, and afterwards became president of St. Edmund's College, Ware, and bishop of Brentwood.
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