by Ellen Wood
“Autumn weather. Mrs. Jacob Chandler away, and house shut up. Jane goes out one evening at dusk to Mrs. Sym’s on an errand for her mother — meets Valentine. He has come home for her. Tells him of the distress about Juliet. He does not believe it; Juliet would think twice before plunging into the prettiest pond ever seen. Juliet found — is lady housekeeper to an old gentlemen in Guernsey — most likely shall marry him — has lots of money. Jane and Val marry and sail for Canada.”
This ability to draw out her plots elaborately and minutely gave her, we say, unusual power. She saw clearly the end of her story from the beginning. It prevented all contradiction, omission, or mistake. Every incident received its appointed place. There was no hurrying at the end, no confusion of interests. Scarcely a single line or word will be found in any one of her books unnecessary to the story. By her characters she touches the deeper chords of human nature, whilst she herself is carefully kept in the background. She possessed the power of making the common uncommon; and, again, of making improbabilities probable, so gradually and easily are her least probable incidents led up to. This gives her work a value not immediately apparent.
Yet nothing can be less mechanical than the manner in which the novels are written. The stories flow onward as life dramas, so real that the author might be merely recording, not creating them; one incident leads up to another as naturally as if destiny and not design had been at work. She never moralised or criticised, therefore never descended from the highest level of her faculty. If a philosopher, she was so unconsciously, for she never obtruded her personality upon the reader. She is a simple, lucid, and picturesque narrator, often creating great effects out of the most ordinary and everyday material. No wonder that her work never ceased to fascinate her. Everything outside the realms of her imagination must have seemed commonplace and prosaic. In all this lay one great secret of her success.
From a child she had written stories, which were destroyed as soon as ended, and no one ever saw a line of them. Like all such efforts, no doubt the fire was their best place; and in after years she never encouraged precociousness in children. Even to her father, closely allied as they were, her early productions were never shown. But they were a great resource. Reclining upon her couch day after day and year after year, Time must now and then have shown more of his leaden feet than of his wings, and they brightened many an hour that would otherwise have proved long and wearisome. Many romances and fairy-tales were woven into her quiet and suffering life. Pen and paper alone endowed them with reality, but all the time the talent was growing. Even her governess, whom she ever loved and valued, and who took great pride and interest in the few works which appeared before her death, was never admitted into the secret of this inexhaustible well.
She one day remarked that she had never but once hesitated in composing a plot; seeing two ways before her, not quite certain which was the better. This was when writing East Lynne. And yet it must have been long in her mind; for years she had wished to begin the novel, and was only prevented by Mr. Ainsworth’s refusal to take anything but short stories from her. The point in question was a leading situation in the story, and caused her much thought and deliberation. “In the end,” she added, “I decided rightly, and soon saw that I had adopted the only possible course.” It is certainly difficult to see how the plot of East Lynne could be improved or made more interesting. Here, if anywhere, the doctrine of inevitableness seems evident. It is full of action, yet every incident fits into its place as the different sections of a puzzle; and any change would appear to disturb the narrative.
Not very long ago a gentleman observed that a friend in America was complaining of blunted feelings. “Nothing touches me,” he said, “as it once did. I neither cry nor laugh when others do, or feel moved one way or the other.”
“Come with me,” said his friend. “They are playing East Lynne to-night. We will go and see it acted.” And, with the rest of the audience, he was much affected as the play went on. “I don’t quite see the insensibility you complain of,” said the friend as they left the theatre together. “You have relieved me,” was the reply. “I thought my feelings were dead or paralysed, but to-night have found them as much alive as ever.”
Until the time of East Lynne, Mrs. Wood was in the habit of copying everything; but East Lynne, partly on account of severe illness, was sent to press as it was written; and from that time she never copied again. And here, in answer to a question frequently asked, we may state that Mrs. Wood never dictated. Every word of every one of her works was written with her own hand. She used to say that she could never have dictated, for, like Dr. Johnson, the brain and the pen must go together.
Her handwriting was extremely legible, as the specimen given will show; clear and sensitive, like herself! In earlier life this was very apparent; but as years went on it grew more upright and decided, answering to the decision of character which comes with the advance of life, and we find ourselves in positions where judgment and common-sense are a daily exercise, and we have often to choose between “two alternatives.” We wish there were a page of East Lynne to place before the reader, but the manuscript was not preserved. It was destroyed, month by month, by the printers, as the story appeared in serial form. Even had it accompanied the proofs, Mrs. Wood thought so little of these things that she would probably herself have destroyed it — as she destroyed nearly all her other manuscripts. The few now existing were accidentally retained. The specimens given belong to her earliest and latest periods.
The longer is taken from The Red Court Farm, one of the earliest and most popular of her works. The MS. consists of some nine hundred pages, and from beginning to end there is scarcely a correction or an erasure, marking the wonderful ease and fluency with which Mrs. Wood wrote. The accompanying page is not specially selected, and is no better than any other part of the MS. Those whose duty it was to set up the type were always glad when Mrs. Wood’s “copy” fell to them. Where workmen are paid by the amount of work done and not by time a clear handwriting makes a sensible difference to the day’s earnings.
Mrs. Wood’s memory could recall every line and expression she had written; and if by chance the printers altered a single word, she never failed to discover it, and restore the original. When George Canterburys Will was passing through the press, after the manuscript had gone in she wished to make a slight change in it. Time failed, and it was necessary for some one to call at the printers’. Mrs. Wood indicated the nature of the passage, and, as nearly as she could tell, the number of the page on which it would be found, and its position. Everything proved as described, and the new matter, some twenty lines, was substituted for the old. But only a very clear head and memory could have done this.
Memory and clearness of vision and judgment remained to the end. Yet in the last two or three years of her life she found that as regarded time and ease, she worked very unequally. Her pen was no longer quite that of a ready-writer. There were days when she wrote as quickly as ever, and others again when she wrote very slowly indeed. It took her much longer to write her stories, and cost her much more labour; she would often alter or re-write parts of many pages, a thing unknown in earlier days. But her facility for inventing plots, if anything, increased. “I could sit down now and compose a hundred plots with the greatest ease, if I only had the strength to work them out,” she remarked a short time before her death. It was all, from beginning to end, from first to last, a labour of love.
“I feel quite vexed with myself,” she again remarked one morning in the last autumn of her life; “I write so slowly compared with the old days. It takes me four months to get through the amount of work I could once do in as many weeks.”
But this was after the labour of many years, in which few had worked more earnestly and indefatigably.
CHAPTER XX
“’Tis held that sorrow makes us wise;
Yet how much wisdom sleeps with thee
Which not alone had guided me,
But served the seasons
that may rise.”
IT has been said of many literary people that they are not domesticated. It was not so with Mrs. Henry Wood. No one ever looked more earnestly to “the ways of her household.” The happiness of those about her was ever her first thought and consideration. Her house was carefully ruled, and order and system reigned. Nothing ever jarred; the domestic atmosphere was never disturbed. Her servants were expected to do their duty without undue surveillance, and it was done thoroughly and conscientiously. They delighted to serve, appreciating the kindness with which they were treated, ever made to feel that their welfare was a matter of personal thought and consideration. It was the rarest thing for any servant to leave her, unless to be married, or for some equally good reason. At the time of her death several of her domestics had been with her for nearly a quarter of a century.
No home duty was ever neglected or put aside for literary labours. Every morning before commencing work there was the interview with the housekeeper, when the household affairs for the day were discussed and settled. Punctuality was strictly observed. In all there was no effort; no ruling excepting by kindness and quiet influence. With her it was ever —
“Think truly and thy thoughts
Shall the world’s famine feed;
Speak truly and each word of thine
Shall be a fruitful seed;
Live truly and thy life shall be
A great and noble deed.”
Mrs. Wood was now living in St. John’s Wood Park, South Hampstead; a locality chosen because it was more bracing than the central parts of London. Mr and Mrs. Wood had for a time lived in Kensington, but in its relaxing air the health of one of their children failed. They were advised to go northward, and as a test, took for some months the furnished house in Lancaster Terrace already alluded to, and which was said to possess the prettiest drawing-room in London. Here health improved, and the house in St. John’s Wood Park was finally chosen and occupied for many years. The situation was somewhat inconveniently remote, but health had to be considered before all things.
Here, early-rising was a law of the house. At seven o’clock, summer and winter, Mrs. Wood’s maid entered her room, undrew the curtains, and she rose immediately after. At eight she went into her study, where, Sundays excepted, she always breakfasted alone, never coming down, save on special occasions, until two o’clock, when work was put aside. The remainder of the day was devoted to reading and conversation, receiving friends, social duties and pleasures, the exercise of that hospitality her heart delighted in.
Her dress — to bring her more vividly before the reader — was always the same for quite the latter half of her life; so that one ever had a distinct and unvarying impression of her. She wore at all times plain but rich black silk, specially made for her in Lyons, the town so associated with her early recollections; the only difference between the morning and evening dress being that the latter would be more trimmed with old laces that so well became her. Only in the extreme heat of summer would the heavier material be laid aside for some thin and flowing substance, but the colour never varied. The reader has seen her in the Alpine terraces clothed in white, listening to the rapturous nightingales; but those were the days of youth and romance, which come but once to us all.
To simple taste in dress she added another virtue. At any moment, “from early morn to dewy eve,” she would have been found ready to receive the most exalted personage in the land.
Never was there a break in this rule; and as it is a merit not always seen in literary people, it is well to record a notable instance. Self-respecting and respecting others, it could not have been otherwise. And her dresses were so arranged with scarves and laces that the curvature was less evident than it might otherwise have been.
We have said that East Lynne and many other works were written in a reclining chair, before the days when artificial support, which added so much to the comfort of her later life, permitted her to write at a table. Yet in the earlier years of weakness and reclining, Mrs. Wood often began to write at nine in the morning, and wrote until six in the evening; work never seemed to tire or exhaust her. Only for perhaps half an hour at mid-day, for the lightest possible luncheon, would the work be put down. This was her invariable custom. Throughout life she took, it may be said, only one meal a day: a light breakfast of tea and toast, an almost equally light luncheon, a late and substantial dinner. Occasionally with luncheon a small cup of coffee; wine only with the later meal. One glass of wine, she would say, took away all power for work. For most of her life she took only light red or white French wines, also specially sent over from her beloved early home. She was at all times rigidly abstemious, never exceeding the allowance she permitted herself. In later years, immediately after dinner, before leaving the table, she would take a cup of weak tea.
We have so often been asked questions about these various small details that we do not hesitate to record them. There is no doubt a certain interest in hearing, even in trifles, how those who have climbed the ladder of success, and gone through a long life of laborious work, have regulated the ordering of their ways, and found time and energy to accomplish so much. In these days, indeed, of “illustrated interviews” the interest has become somewhat morbid and unhealthy.
For a time the close work we have described was compulsory. About the period that East Lynne appeared, Mrs. Wood undertook various engagements without realising the amount of work they would entail upon her; and with her a promise was sacred. No printer or publisher was ever kept waiting a single hour for any manuscript. But the pressure of this close work presently told upon her, and she felt that it could not be continued. Those engagements fulfilled, she never again accepted anything it would be a strain to perform. In a few years she wrote only from half-past eight until half-past twelve, and the rule once made was closely kept.
Yet before that time, day after day and month after month after working from nine until six, she would be as mentally bright and animated as when the day began, able to take her place in the home circle and to be interested in all that was going forward. Books and conversation were her chief recreation, but her interest and attention were by no means confined to these objects. In games, excepting occasionally a hand at cards or a game at chess — in which, like her father, she excelled — she never joined; but it was one of her great pleasures to see others at their pastimes, and nothing gladdened her more than to be able to contribute to this end.
She was, indeed, never happier than when planning for the good of others — whether for their pleasure or profit. None ever came to her in vain for sympathy. In matters of advice her clear judgment saw the best course to be taken; the wisest thing to be done in matters difficult or complicated. It is often said that people ask your advice for the pleasure of taking their own. With Mrs. Wood it was seldom asked and not taken, for she inspired confidence, first by her kindliness, secondly by her wisdom. With her children this, perhaps naturally, was invariably the case. In their eyes she could not err. It was impossible to live day after day, year after year, with one so true and steadfast, so sensible and far-seeing, yet so simple withal, without realising that in judgment and penetration she was a pillar of strength.
We see her now sitting in her drawing-room in her own special seat, observing all around her, her attitude full of repose, one hand holding a fan, which, if the weather were warm, she was seldom without, the other resting upon the arm of her chair, listening to some difficult problem that had crossed the path of a friend. Not a word spoken until the tale was told, and then quickly came the reply — the right course to pursue; where there had been darkness and complication all became clear as daylight. On one special occasion two young friends had, from no fault of their own but through the action of a third person, brought themselves into temporary disfavour at the Foreign Office. As both were rising in the Diplomatic Service, the case in point involved serious issues.
In their vexation and anxiety they bethought them of their wise friend, and went to her on the eve of a
great interview for sympathy and advice. The whole case was laid before her; the story eagerly poured out. That they were blameless was true; that it might appear otherwise was equally true. What would be the result? Without hesitation their friend told them what would be said by the head of the Department; the questions asked, the view taken. “You have nothing to fear,” she concluded. “Make your minds easy. You will be told in future to exercise more discretion and more care, and I think I must tell you so too; and there it will end.” As they were departing, consoled and comforted, she gave them her hand, and said, “Fear nothing; all will be well.”
And all so happened the next day; almost the very expressions Mrs. Wood had used the night before they heard again. Fortunately, in the head of the Department at that time — now many years ago — they found all that innate gentlemanlike courtesy and consideration and willingness to listen which do not always characterise the heads of Departments; and the true version of the case prevailed. The young men went their way rejoicing — to rise in due time to honours of which they were worthy. But they never forgot hastening to their friend and counsellor the moment the important interview was happily over, with faces from which the cares of a century had been removed. “You are a prophet!” they cried, “and must have mesmerised Sir John. The very arguments, the very words you used, he used.” And then Mrs. Wood’s quiet and musical laugh. “I am not by any means a prophet, but I see things pretty clearly, and happen to possess a little common-sense. I admit that your position was somewhat awkward, but your fears prevented you from judging calmly, whilst youth and inexperience exaggerated the matter. Sir John and I are older than you; I knew exactly the view he would take of what was after all a simple affair: though I did not know,” she laughed, “that he would honour me by using ‘my very words and arguments!’”