by Ellen Wood
Many of the old song-writers Mrs. Wood delighted in. There was scarcely an old and famous ballad that she could not repeat; and if her friends in singing any of them forgot the words, she was always able to come to the rescue. She was so especially fond of a short poem of Christina Rossetti’s, Amor Mundi, and it is so associated with her in our own mind, that we venture to quote it. The verses were partly explained by an illustration. A youth and maiden meet in the valley of life. The one greets the other, and finally they turn together into the downhill path: —
“‘Oh, where are you going, with your love-locks flowing,
On the west wind blowing, along this valley track?’
‘ — This downhill path is easy, come with me an’ it please ye,
We shall escape the uphill by never turning back.’
“So they two went together, in glowing August weather,
The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right;
And dear she was to dote on, her twin-feet seemed to float on
The air, like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight.
“‘Oh, what is that in heaven, where gray cloud-flakes are seven,
Where blackest clouds hang riven just at the rainy skirt?’
‘ — Oh, that’s a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous,
An undeciphered, solemn signal of help or hurt.’
“‘Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly,
Their scent comes rich and sickly?’
‘A scaled and hooded worm.’
‘Oh, what’s that in the hollow, so pale, I quake to follow?’
‘Oh, that’s a thin dead body which waits the eternal term.’
“‘Turn again, oh, my sweetest, turn again, false and fleetest,
This way whereof thou weetest I fear is hell’s own track.’
‘ — Nay, too steep for hill-mounting, nay, too late for cost-counting:
This downhill path is easy, but there’s no turning back.’”
Another poem which had always attracted her was The Twin Genii, by Mrs. Plarr, and it led to a slight but pleasant incident. The verses first appeared anonymously many years ago in Household Words, long before its editor had laid down for ever his magic pen. Years afterwards Mrs. Wood quoted them in a Johnny Ludlow paper, not knowing who had written them or whether the author were still living. Mrs. Plarr immediately wrote to Johnny Ludlow, saying how much pleasure it had given her to find that he so much appreciated the lines. Johnny Ludlow was still unknown; no one dreamed that he was Mrs. Henry Wood, and Mrs. Plarr, like the rest of the world, never supposed that the author was of her own sex.
About the same time an amusing letter was received from Tom Hood directed to Johnny Ludlow, under cover to Messrs. Richard Bentley and Son. It stated with what pleasure he had read the papers, and how much he should like to make Johnny’s acquaintance, and ended by asking if he would not spend an evening with him, and over a cigar discuss notes and reminiscences of old college days. We can imagine the amusement the note caused the author of Johnny Ludlow. But it was only one of many similar letters received from strangers anxious to know who Johnny Ludlow was, or to make his acquaintance.
We have quoted Amor Mundi, and venture to quote The Twin Genii, for we feel that in any record of Mrs. Henry Wood it would give her pleasure to include it. Both poems strike as it were the same keynote; and it is the keynote struck by Mrs. Wood herself in so many of her books — the inevitable law of Compensation.
“There are twin genii who, strong and mighty,
Under their guidance mankind retain;
And the name of the lovely one is Pleasure,
And the name of the loathly one is Pain.
Never divided where one can enter,
Ever the other comes close behind,
And he who in Pleasure his thoughts would centre,
Surely Pain in the search shall find!
“Alike they are, though in much they differ —
Strong resemblance is ‘twixt the twain;
So that sometimes you may question whether
It can be Pleasure that you feel, or Pain.
Thus ’tis that whatever of deep emotion
Stirreth the heart — be it grave or gay —
Tears are the symbol; from feeling’s ocean
These are the fountains that rise to-day.
“Should not this teach us calmly to welcome
Pleasure when smiling our hearths beside?
If she be the substance, how dark the shadow;
Close doth it follow the near allied.
Or if Pain long o’er our threshold hover,
Let us not question but Pleasure nigh
Bideth her time her face to discover,
Rainbow of Hope in a clouded sky!”
One more we quote, which was an especial favourite with Mrs. Wood, and which she introduces into Mrs. Halliburton’s Troubles: —
“How rarely, friend, a good, great man inherits
Honour and wealth with all his worth and pains!
It seems a fable from the land of spirits
When any man gets that which he merits,
Or any merits that which he obtains.”
“For shame, my friend! renounce this idle strain:
What wouldst thou have the good great man obtain? —
Wealth? Title? Dignity? A golden chain?
Or heaps of corpses which his sword hath slain?
Goodness and greatness are not means but ends.
Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The good, great man? Three treasures — Life, and Light,
And calm thoughts equable as infant’s breath;
And three fast friends, more sure than day or night,
Himself, his Maker, and the angel, Death.”
Such simple poetry Mrs. Wood loved. In earlier life she wrote several historical plays in rhyme and blank verse: the theme of one being Catherine de Medicis and the Eve of St. Bartholomew; of another, the times and surroundings of Lady Jane Grey; but these she destroyed, though she afterwards regretted doing so. With the generality of readers she thought poetry unpopular, and that the element introduced into novels rendered them unpopular also. For this reason her love for poetry, and the great storehouse of poetry treasured up in her memory are not set forth in her writings.
CHAPTER XIX
“But what of that? My darken’d ways
Shall ring with music all the same;
To breathe my loss is more than fame,
To utter love more sweet than praise.”
WHEN East Lynne appeared, Mrs. Wood’s health had rallied from the strain of her long illness. All her energy returned, and day after day would see her at work in her reclining chair. Indeed, in later years, with artificial support, she was able to do what had once been impossible — to write at her table. Every author has his own way of working and his own times. Some authors can only write when they feel themselves in the vein. Days and weeks pass and the spirit does not move them. It was so with Charlotte Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell has told us. For months all power seemed to leave her; inspiration failed; ideas would not flow. Then some morning, without knowing why or wherefore, she would awake in all the fervour of the “creative mood.” But Charlotte Bronte’s mind was soon exhausted; it was not a well yielding supplies for ever; and before her death — early though it was — her real work seemed to be ended.
Mrs. S. C. Hall once told us that she could not herself write continuously; after a certain amount of work the brain grew empty and would do no more; and she often had to take weeks and months of rest before the pen could be taken up again.
This allusion to Mrs. Hall recalls a slight incident once witnessed in her drawing-room which proved that even wise women are sometimes weak in small matters.
It was an afternoon reception at her house in the Boltons, and the rooms were fairly crowded. In one part a group had gathered, of which Mrs. Hall was the centre. We happened to be next
to her, and near her was a young clergyman. Books — her own writings — were at the moment the topic of conversation. Mrs. Hall had made some remark which brought up the subject, and for once the feeling was put aside that it is better not to discuss the works of an author in his presence.
“Mrs. Hall,” said the clergyman, “I remember reading your books when I was a child, and being especially delighted with your Irish stories.”
“Then, sir,” quickly rebuked Mrs. Hall, “if you read my books when you were a child, you ought to know better than to say so!” And she left the divine crushed and uncomfortable.
It was done on the impulse of the moment, for a kindlier heart than Mrs. Hall’s never beat, or a nature more careful not to wound the sensitiveness of others. The offence was also incomprehensible, for the Irish stories must have been written twenty years before the young clergyman was born, and Mrs. Hall must then have been at least seventy years old — and looked even more, for the plaits she wore fastened by a cameo in the centre of the forehead added to her age. This occurred many years ago; but if the hero is still living he must remember the episode which gave him so uncomfortable a moment that he soon after made his bow and withdrew.
Another instance of this sensitiveness to age we found in the late Mrs. Kavanagh, the mother of Julia Kavanagh, of whom we have already spoken. She was a woman of great powers of mind, of vivid imagination, of unusual force of character; but here was her heel of Achilles. At this time, too, she was almost blind, and long past eighty years of age.
She had been one day with her French maid to the cemetery at Nice to visit the magnificent tomb she had erected to her daughter: a monument built by degrees. First a quiet grave, with a small white cross and stone, pure as the life of the gifted being whose remains reposed there. But Mrs. Kavanagh’s ambition was never satisfied; she thought nothing sufficiently beautiful to mark her daughter’s resting-place; and in the end a magnificent white marble tomb was the result.
Within a few yards are the slopes of the Riviera, stretching downwards to the shore, wedding all their richness of tone to the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Before this monument Mrs. Kavanagh was standing with her maid. Julia Kavanagh’s age — fifty-four — was recorded; and she had been dead some years. The maid, contemplating the inscription, at length remarked:
“Madame must be very old.”
“Old!” exclaimed Mrs. Kavanagh. “Why should I be old? What do you know about my age?”
“Mademoiselle was fifty-four when she died,” pointing to the record, “and she has been dead some time; therefore Madame must be very old.”
This troubled Mrs. Kavanagh, and the next day she sent a mason and had the age removed. Yet one would have supposed — clever, unusually strong-minded, almost blind, and more than eighty — that she must have outlived such feelings by many years; especially as her daughter’s death had ever since been a ceaseless pain and trouble to her. But the heart is capricious; and perhaps it is natural that we should all try to retain some fragments and illusions of youth to the last. Both mother and daughter, so beautiful in their lives, have long slept in the same tomb, and both have reached that shore where time no longer exists and people never grow old. As a proof of Mrs. Kavanagh’s spirit and strength of mind, we may mention that when long past eighty she travelled alone from Nice to Paris, and underwent a successful operation for cataract, seating herself heroically in the chair, and refusing chloroform or any other deadening medium.
But we were speaking of the way in which people do their work; the ebb and flow of inspiration.
With Mrs. Wood it was never fluctuating. She never knew what it was not to be in the humour for writing. It was not only that she could always write, but she ever felt a desire to do so — a power urging her, whether she would or no. It was always her delight; and she would sometimes remark that if we carried our occupations with us into the next world nothing would give her greater pleasure than to go on writing books for ever. It would have been impossible to live without writing. As Julia Kavanagh once remarked, on one of the many pleasant evenings we spent with her in Paris: “The work once taken up can never be laid aside again. It is as necessary as food and sleep. The sacred fire must be kept burning.” Julia Kavanagh did not live long enough to feel her powers failing; and Mrs. Wood’s faculties remained fresh and spontaneous to the end. She never suffered from the feeling of a loss of power, which it has been said was the dread of Charles Dickens, and a trouble of his later days.
Mrs. Wood at all times wrote easily and rapidly, scarcely ever pausing for word or idea. The great amount of thought and deliberation bestowed upon her books was always at the commencement.
She would first compose her plot — a matter of extreme care and deliberation, where nothing was passed over or hurried. This would take her about three weeks of very close application, and until the whole was accomplished not one word of the novel was written. Characters, motives, incident and action — everything was duly and deeply weighed, until all threads were well in hand.
Having decided upon the main subject of the work, she next divided her matter into the requisite number of chapters, giving to each chapter its leading idea. After this every separate chapter was again elaborated; every incident was carefully thought out and recorded — the most trifling and the most important — from the first chapter to the last, from the opening to the closing scenes.
Thus, before a line of the story was begun, plot and drama stood out in a complete form, the various characters endowed with life and reality; everything existed not only as a clear picture in the author’s brain, but in black and white, a solid foundation to work upon. Once thought out, plot and incidents were never changed; the story, in being written, did not develop fresh views and possibilities. It was not permitted to do so; the author had her matter well in hand — a fixed purpose. The various characters, their work, actions, ultimate destinies, had passed into the inevitable. To herself her dramas and characters had a very real existence. Morning by morning, as she turned to her work, she had only to take up her elaborated notes and the day’s task stood out clearly before her.
From this it will be seen that her novels, reading so easily and naturally that they almost seem to have written themselves, in reality cost her immense thought and labour. Every character had been long and thoroughly considered. As in the plays of the Comedie Francaise the least prominent actor must play his part as perfectly as the greatest, so was it with Mrs. Wood’s dramatis personoe. Upon the most trivial personage a full share of consideration had been bestowed. This gave her unusual power, for she took her stories in hand with, as it were, the gift of a seer, ruling the destinies of her creations.
The plot of each novel occupied many pages of close writing. We have said that each plot would take about three weeks of intense application; and on these occasions she would often relax her rule, and work far into the afternoon. At these times she could not bear the slightest interruption, for the thread of her argument once broken, she was seldom able to take it up again the same day.
It may be interesting to place before the reader the outline of a plot for one of the Johnny Ludlow stories — the only outline that we possess, and which was accidentally preserved. This was the sketch for only a very short tale occupying a few pages, and was a very different matter from the elaborated plot of a three-volume novel with its numerous incidents and characters. The one was a work of weeks, the other of hours. But it is sufficient to give an idea of Mrs. Henry Wood’s manner of working. The story “In Later Years,” was published in the Argosy for December 1887, after the author had passed away.
“IN LATER YEARS.”
“Valentine Chandler has broken down; has also had an illness. Is going to Canada. Jane calls at North Villa — sees him — he is on a sofa at home alone. They talk. No crying, but both subdued. Will try to pull up over there. Johnny walks home with Jane. Preparations for Val’s departure.
Mrs. Jacob Chandler has taken small place at Crabb; has let Nort
h Villa to the Miss Dennetts. Another interview — Jane and Val — one of the girls is sitting over the fire with Johnny. Val, pretty well now, sits down to piano and sings, ‘Remember me, tho’ rolling ocean.’ Window is open to the sighing, moaning wind of the coming winter. She stands just outside to listen. Walks away in distress — with her ‘aching heart,’ as the song says. Valentine follows her — she is in the arbour already spoken of — where Mrs. Cramp held her interview with Jacob on the Sunday afternoon many years before. They sit down; neither can speak for pain. It is their last interview — the last evening. Last conversation — aching hearts. Jane cries; he cries. Ah, how bitter these parting tears are! Some few of us, but I think not many, could testify to that. Johnny is ready to go home with Jane. ‘I’ll go this evening,’ says Val, and they go off together, nearly in silence. He takes her past the Inlets; says his last farewell at the gate; takes his last kiss.
“Juliet arrives on visit to Mrs. Cramp — brings friend with her — Cherry Dawson; a pretty, rattling sort of girl. Strikes up a flirtation with Fred Scott. Fred and Juliet (had discarded Juliet-ta)had had a love affair, or at least flirtation together. Cherry cuts Juliet out. Juliet receives letter to say sister seriously ill and wants her. Goes, leaving field open to Cherry. Back in a week. Cherry declares that she and Fred are engaged. Great disturbance. Juliet says she’ll haunt her for ever. Disappears. Straw hat and white frock found on bank of eel-pond at bottom of grounds. Written on paper pinned to frock: ‘I’ll haunt her for ever.’ Cherry, not bad-hearted, in great distress. Fred Scott, questioned by Mrs. Cramp, says he never wanted to have either of them. ‘Why, how could I?’ he asks reasonably. ‘I’ve no money to keep a wife and a house upon. The girls laughed and joked with me, and I laughed and joked back again.’ Nothing to be heard of Juliet — pond dragged — nothing comes up but eels — Georgie arrives in distress — Clementina most heartless about it — writes word it served Juliet right for her flirting folly, and she only hoped she’d haunt Cherry till her hair turned gray with fright. Of course Tod and Johnny are in it.