by Ellen Wood
Into much of Mr. Price’s inner life his wife could not enter; not from want of mental power, for she was as well educated and intelligent as most women, but from want of sympathy. She had nothing of the contemplative about her. Though a woman of vivid imagination, there was little in her of the dreamer. Passionately devoted to her husband, she yet never sought to identify herself with his intellectual pursuits. Her pleasure lay in ruling her household, in receiving friends, in knowing everything that was going on in the world, and, as far as she could, influencing the little realm around her; loving to feel herself a necessity, and that without her the earth would cease to move. She delighted to talk, and she talked well. Her conversation was witty and vivacious; and, whatever the society she was in, she must be its leading movement and shining light. As Montaigne has said of another, she would have taken upon herself the negotiations of the world, and found her happiness in doing so.
A great deal may be said for and against such a temperament. Mrs. Price was actuated by excellent principles; her desire was to set the world to rights; a state of paradise or a millennium would have charmed her, always supposing her to be a chief ministering spirit. But these natures in their anxiety to do good often do a great deal of harm. The world refuses to be set to rights after their pattern, and those who give themselves this impossible task disturb much outward and inward harmony.
It followed that upon her first-born daughter Ellen it was impossible that she could have any great influence. The active temperament which must be the Prime Minister of her little kingdom was out of touch with the thoughtful girl whose happiness lay in rest and repose, in reading and study, in spending all the time permitted in her fathers library: a delightful haven of refuge from the outside world; even from the more bustling parts of the house, where other children, as they appeared and began to grow up and assert themselves, brought with them all the reposeless atmosphere in which children of all ages have their being.
Yet there was always the charm of beauty about Mrs.
Price, and though her voice was seldom silent, it was sweet. She had been brought up in a home where the word of one was the law of the household. Her father, one of the finest men of his time — he was six feet seven inches high — was violent and overbearing in temper. He would brook no contradiction; and the gentle spirit of his wife had soon learned that passive obedience and non-resistance must be her refuge. A tyrant in his own house, he was not beloved within it, and was feared outside it.
His two daughters naturally stood in awe of him, and contradiction was never attempted. For his son he made home so uncomfortable that he went out to India, and died there. A journey to India a century ago was a very different matter from what it is to-day, and meant greater exile; to those left behind it seemed a parting for ever — as it proved to be in this instance. The mothers heart was broken; her son had been the one hope and consolation in her repressed life, as only sons often are, no matter how numerous the daughters; and she seldom smiled after her dear James left her. He was a young man of much ability and promise, and with his departure went out the light and sunshine of the home.
MRS PRICE
( THE MOTHER OF MRS HENRY WOOD )
Yet, strange as it may seem, this tyrant, who made every one so uncomfortable and unhappy, was greatly attached in his own way to his wife and children. Indulged and spoilt in his youth, accustomed to being made first from childhood upwards and to having his own will in all things, he was eminently selfish. The child was father to the man; he grew up violent in temper, passionate in spirit. But in his own peculiar way he was sternly just, meting out to every man his exact due; only withholding in his own home the affection and consideration equally its right.
His two daughters were very pretty girls, and were known far and wide as “the beautiful Miss Evanses.” Both were extremely amiable; the one inheriting her father’s love of ruling, though with none of his unsociable and violent qualities; the other, like her mother, letting the world have its way, “laughed and bid it pass.” Many suitors came, only to be summarily dismissed by the father, who declared that his daughters should never marry. At length in this matter they took the law into their own hands. When their hearts fell captive, love gave courage to the occasion: and Miss Elizabeth Evans became Mrs. Thomas Price. Her sister soon followed her example, and the old home was left with only the parent birds.
We do not know whether the change softened the iron-willed father, and made him more tender and considerate towards the lonely and subdued wife. Even so, he had not very long wherein to make atonement. Soon after the marriage of his second daughter — who was even more attractive than Mrs. Price, and owned the dark violet eyes that are so rare, but that once seen can never be forgotten — he was drowned; thus coming to a violent end, even as he had lived a stormy life.
We have said that life with Mrs. Price was no visionary thing, but on the contrary a very active reality. Yet she was a woman of strong imagination. She also sometimes had remarkable dreams, and on one occasion at least saw what is vulgarly called a ghost. Or perhaps it might rather be termed an apparition, for it was the manifestation of a person at the moment of death.
Taking a quiet country walk one spring morning, she passed through the very field in which a few years before her little daughter Ellen had been placed in such jeopardy by the deceitful bull and Mrs. Tipton’s indiscretion. One of her servants was to be married that morning. She had lived for some years with her mistress, was devoted to her, and had long debated in her own mind whether to give up her comfortable home for the uncertainties of matrimony and the perfidious possibilities of mankind. As usual, matrimony won the day. She had been an excellent servant; her mistress had taken much interest in her, and was sorry to part with her; though faithful servants who identified themselves with the household were in those days not few and far between. The maid’s name was Betty; and Betty went back to her mother’s cottage to prepare for the great occasion and spend some last days in the old home.
It was the wedding morning; but as Mrs. Price went through the fields she was not at that moment thinking of her late handmaiden. Suddenly raising her eyes, to her astonishment she saw Betty sitting upon the stile in her wedding clothes — the attire and bonnet given her for the occasion — pressing her hand to her side. At that moment she ought to have been in church standing at the altar, and Mrs. Price felt a little bewildered. “Betty, why are you there? What are you doing?” she called.
There was no response. For a moment Mrs. Price withdrew her eyes, and when she looked again the figure had vanished. Supposing her to be on the other side the hedge, her mistress, still more bewildered, hastened onwards. There was no Betty anywhere, either this side the hedge or the other. Unable to fathom the mystery, she determined to go to Betty’s cottage, which was about two miles away. There she found trouble; the mother overwhelmed, the bridegroom inconsolable. When dressed for church and about to start, Betty had suddenly pressed her hand to her side, and calling out, “O mother! mother!” had dropped lifeless from disease of the heart. It was at this moment that she had appeared to her mistress sitting on the distant stile. Poor Betty was now lying on her bed in the stillness of death, dressed as her mistress had seen her, excepting that the wedding bonnet had been removed.
We give this as an authentic record of an apparition, a fact not to be disputed. Those who are sceptical upon these points must explain the circumstance to their own satisfaction, if they can do so.
But Mrs. Price had many supernatural and spiritualistic experiences. With dreams that came true she was also occasionally visited. The following is a single instance, and one of the most simple.
She dreamed one night that she was standing on a vast and solitary plain, nothing before her but a level surface bounded by the horizon. Some distance behind her was an immense mass of precipitous rock which seemed to tower to the clouds. In the centre was a cavernous opening, a species of immense portal; and within it a mysterious darkness no human eye could penetrate. In
the sky of her dream a strange light threw its reflection upon the wide plain, and she seemed to recognise it as “the light that never was on land or sea.” Suddenly across the plain she saw three figures advancing, one behind the other, walking slowly but steadily, as though nothing could turn aside their footsteps or arrest their progress; there was a destiny to be fulfilled. As they approached she recognised two of them as near relatives, the third a friend about to become connected with her by marriage. All three looked solemn and serious.
Then, in her dream, she beckoned to the first and pointed to the portal. He hesitated a moment, went on, and passed into the impenetrable darkness. She knew she should see him no more. In like manner she beckoned to the second and pointed to the portal, and he too passed out of mortal sight; and so with the third. She remained standing alone upon the plain, gazing sadly at the dark opening. “I too,” she murmured, “must pass through, but not yet.” The words seemed not her own, but suggested. When she awoke she distinctly remembered her dream, and related it to her husband. He had no sympathy with dreams and ghosts, and all the supernatural elements that follow in their train. And when his wife ended by saying, “Thomas, you will see that those three will soon die,” he simply replied, “My dear, I think you should pay no regard to these things.” Yet it is certain that within a few months the three men seen in her dream died one after the other, and in the order in which they had passed into the darkness.
The whole colouring and surrounding of the dream was so singularly borne out by subsequent facts, that one hesitates to say there was nothing of the supernatural about it. Mrs. Price had many such dreams; and it would seem there are persons to whom the veil dividing the material from the spiritual world is partially withdrawn, so that they obtain glimpses others can never see, and are susceptible to influences others can never feel. It appears evident that some are in closer contact with the “things unseen” than others.
With all her love of ruling and undue attention to small things, Mrs. Price had a high tone of mind; was almost “unjustly just”; literally, as well as figuratively, censuring others by the dignity of excelling, insisting upon perfection, and of course never meeting with it; often discouraging by fault-finding, rather than helping others by praise and forbearance to “rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things.” She was very quick; all fire and intelligence; not always weighing her words, which often went deeper than she intended. Yet there was a great deal of the spiritual about her. She also possessed a keen sense of humour and of the pathetic.
Mrs. Price lived to a great age, and with her the evening of life was calm. Sorrow and trial had been largely her portion. Yet she retained her activity to the end. When past eighty years of age she would walk about the Malvern Hills as brightly and briskly as ever; small and thin and somewhat frail, she knew nothing of the “weight of years.” She was very proud of her daughter’s reputation. In those days life for her was comparatively over; all its activity had departed; her love of ruling and power, her desire to set the world to rights, had ceased. “My greatest pleasure now,” she would say, “is to be alone, to shut myself into my sitting-room with one of my daughters books. At once I feel myself in another world, surrounded by a crowd of familiar friends; and they are as real to me as if they actually existed.”
She would take some of the credit to herself. “It is my opinion,” she would say laughingly, “that talent is a good deal inherited from the mother, and that I by no means count for nothing in this matter. I quite think that if I had tried to write when I was young, I should have succeeded. I often find my brain weaving stories and plots, and could almost imagine them realities.”
One of her great friends was Mrs. Benson, wife of Dr. Benson, one time Master of the Temple and Canon of Worcester. We have before us a copy of an old edition of Milton once given by Mrs. Benson to Mrs. Price, and long, long afterwards passed on to us by the latter, who parted with it as with a treasure. We mention the fact because Canon Benson greatly influenced Mrs. Henry Wood’s earlier years, and she ever spoke of him in terms of affection. The months when he was in residence were to her some of the happiest of the year. He would not have been very many hours within the precincts of the Cathedral before they met; and once more she would be charmed with the quiet, earnest tones, the sweet voice and gentle bearing, always singularly subdued, but full of purpose. He was exactly the sort of man who formed one of her ideals — grave, courtly, quiet, earnest and devoted; a scholar, and a preacher of rare eloquence. Whenever he was in residence people flocked from far and near to hear him. The College gates were besieged long before the hour of service. Aisles were thronged, and even the pulpit stairs were occupied, so that people had to come down and make way for the preacher to ascend. All sects and denominations would be there: dissenters; others who never went anywhere at other times; even Quakers, who would never enter the Cathedral on ordinary occasions, scarcely dare to do so, under penalty of a rebuke at “Meeting.” His preaching was the quietest, calmest, most earnest that could be conceived; precisely the oratory that most impressed Mrs. Henry Wood. Such a voice as his was seldom heard; it was harmony and music, so clear and distinct that its softest whisper could be heard by the whole congregation. He had one affliction. In later life he became so deaf that he could not even hear the organ in church; and when reading the Commandments, a sign had to be made when the response ceased and it was time to go on. It was a common saying that it was difficult to decide which was the sweeter and more musical — his clear voice, or the soft flute notes of the instrument.
Another Cathedral dignitary in those days very much influenced her life and mind — Dr. Murray, then Dean of Worcester and at the same time Bishop of Rochester: for they were days of pluralities. He was a handsome and dignified man, and carried an atmosphere of dignity into all his domestic relations.
Amongst such people and surroundings Ellen Priced early life was passed; it is this life which she loves to introduce into so many of her works. In none is it more conspicuous than in the work that was appearing at the time of her death — Lady Grace; though a comparatively short story. One feels that it is drawn from life; that the people had an existence; nothing is invented excepting plot, situations, and incident; even in these we know not where reality ends and fiction begins. Cathedral atmosphere, cathedral people, cathedral prejudices — these were a part of herself, influencing mind and thought. With these she was identified. She delighted in the smallest details of this life as much as in its broad outlines and deeper realities.
CHAPTER IV
“In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.”
ELLEN PRICE early began to learn the lessons of endurance which life teaches to most of us. “In your patience possess ye your souls.” Through suffering she was to obtain this patience, and to be made yet more perfect.
At the age of thirteen a delicacy began to show itself. Something was wrong with the spine: no organic disease, but a weakness which eventually produced a serious curvature.
In these days probably all might have been rectified, the wrong put right; but seventy years ago the science of medicine and surgery was in a very elementary condition; doctors were still groping in the dark, asking of each other the origin of life, the mystery of disease and death. All that was known was applied to the delicate child; all that could be done was done; nothing availed; it seemed that a life of more or less pain and weakness was to be her lot. Her days were now passed on a reclining board or couch, from which she seldom moved. More than ever she became the companion of her father in his study, and probably more than ever dear to his heart. Her hold on life seemed to be relaxing, and we prize most that we are about to lose. Reading and study, always her great pleasure, became her chief resource. Probably in these days she applied herself too closely to work; but surrounded by her books she was always happy, a
nd her gentle father, erring himself on the same side, was the last to restrain her.
Her mind grew and expanded, but its development was no doubt at the expense of physical power. As delicacy increased, so did the singular beauty of the face: a beauty difficult to describe, and quite apart from mere perfection of feature. Perhaps the word ethereal will give the best idea of its character, for it was like a perfume. We inhale the scent of the rose, we know it is there and delights us, but we cannot grasp or describe it. Equally subtle was the charm of Ellen Price. This remained to the end. Even in hours of illness and suffering it never forsook her. Her face was without line or wrinkle or sign of age to the last. A description by an unknown writer at the time of her death is as true as anything that could be said. Whoever the writer was, he must have known her well. “You can almost see the spirit itself of Mrs. Henry Wood shining through the frail, I had almost said diaphanous body, and exquisite face. One never grows familiar with the sight, and it rivets and charms one more and more; for she possesses a sparkling intellect and a heart of gold.”
The face was a pure oval, singularly refined: that perfect outline so rarely found. A straight, delicate nose; teeth white and even; a charming mouth betraying at once the sensitive sympathy and steadfastness of her disposition; firm as well as sweet Her head was well set upon the shoulders; small, excepting where the intellectual faculties were largely but not prominently developed. Her eyes were brown, large and brilliant, and seemed to read your inmost thoughts. One felt that everything had to be told; if only half a thought were spoken, she would divine the remainder.