Loyola College - Review Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

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LOYOLA COLLEGE REVIEW 19 Mrs. Humphry Ward N the 25th of last March, feast of the Annunciation of our Blessed Lady, Father Drummond addressed a very well attended meeting of the Loyola School of Sociology as follows: You have doubtless noticed in to-day's papers that Mrs. Hum- phry Ward, the most famous woman- novelist since George Eliot, died yesterday. As I was privileged to lunch with her nearly twelve years ago, I am in a position to impart Although Sir William could not be present to welcome a writer who had so nobly striven to improve the lot of farm laborers in England, every one appreciated this delicate compliment to the author of “The Mating of Lydia. During the short outward journey a private car was placed at our disposal, and luncheon was served. Mrs. Ward was travelling with her daughter Miss Ward and CIRCULATION AND ADVERTISING STAFF Left to Right—E. McCaffrey J. Hébert Wm. Brennan F. Terroux, Advt. Mgr. 1. Beaudin H.Smeaton H. Phelan L. Kelly one or two items of exclusive information that may interest you. It was in the early autumn of 1908. When the papers an- nounced that Mrs. Humphry Ward would visit Winnipeg Mr. Sanford Evans, who was then mayor of that bustling city, invited me and a couple of his friends to meet the dis- tinguished visitor and accompany her on a trip to Sir William Van Horne’s model farm, fifteen miles from the capital of Manitoba. a Miss W., daughter of a New York eleventh- street millionaire of the old school. Mr. and Mrs. Sanford Evans were the hosts. They set me on Mrs. Ward’s right hand. I began by saying that, at her father’s request, I had contributed, in a very slight degree, to an article he was then preparing in that great. work of his, “The Catholic Dictionary. She replied in a natural and easy tone, without the slightest sign of annoyance, that | | |

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l 18 LOYOLA COLLEGE REVIEW The Obstinacy of a Fountain Pen E was a very meek little man, with huge goggle spectacles, and an enor- mous umbrella, and his manner, to say the least, was retiring. He entered the shop very quietly, and said in a small voice—“ I should like to look at your fountain pens. Certainly, replied the snappy-suited clerk, and forthwith he slid a tray onto the counter of fountain pens of every conceivable size and shape. The little man gazed at the gorgeous sight in awed admiration, and finally he pointed with a stubby forefinger at a gold-tipped one, which was illuminating the shop with its briliance, and in a muffled voice, he said “ТІ take that опе.” When he emerged from the domicile of the snappy-suited clerk and the fountain pens, he was a changed man. He no longer looked meek and little. His step was firm and his eyes were shining behind his goggle spec- tacles, while under his arm—done up in a brown parcel with a red string—he carried the cause of all this. His expression as he turns in at his own gate—of course, he is а commuter—is, if anything, more beatific in its unrestrained joy than it was at the purchase of the gloom- dispeller, and his wild rush into the house and up the stairs to the seclusion of his study is a poor exterior expression of the interior happiness which consumed him. With a cry he flung off his coat, hat, rubbers and umbrella and squatted on the floor to undo his precious prize. But the “‘snappy-suited clerk” had put a hard knot in the red string, and our joyous and erstwhile meek friend had to get up and sort his overcoat out of the cupboard to get a penknife. Не returned to his untying but there was a tiny frown on his usually placid forehead and he lost a lot of energy cutting the stubborn knot. Thus, when he was at last seated at his desk, with a clean sheet of paper in front of him, and his gold-tipped gem in his hand, his joy was a trifle more restrained than was natural. However, with many a flourish, he settled himself to the pleasure of writing. The word “settled” is the right word in this case, as that is all he did, after five minutes of holding the pen at every possible angle, and doing everything to it except—the right thing. He finally decided it must be in need of ink. He knew that you put the ink in some hole in the pen, and what place is more natural for a hole to be than where the ink comes out? So, with deliberate care, he pulled the gold nib off and proceeded to pour the ink into the place where the nib had been. Thirty minutes later, he returned with a fresh suit on, a clean shirt, unmistakable signs of a severe cleaning of the hands and a terrific frown. After another careful blot- ting of his desk chair, he seated himself once more at the ink-stained desk and reflected sadly that it would cost him “many a rupee” to have that huge ink spot in the carpet removed. And with his frown more pronounced than ever, he resumed his task with all his joy flown to the four winds. With many unkind words, he restored the nib to its resting place, the pseudo ' hole, and proceeded to look for the filling lever he had remembered about too late. Plunging the pen into the ink bottle, he lifted the lever, and let it spring back into place, but he was sure he hadn’t filled it in so short a time, and raising the pen close to his near sighted eyes, nib foremost, he lifted the lever suddenly. АС Gentle Reader —We will draw a kindly veil over this scene of rage and chagrin. Suffice it to say that one hour later our erstwhile very meek friend was still scrub- bing his face with a nail-brush, meanwhile, talking in a very loud and uncomplimentary manner about gold-tipped pens, snappy- suited youths, and ink. I think he said the most about ink. However that may be, the fact remains that next morning when Gus the garbage-man was delving into Mr. Erstwhile Very Meek-Man’s refuse, he found a lovely gold-tipped pen, which illuminated the sordid surroundings, broken into four separate and distinct parts, and right beside it the shattered fragments of an ink-bottle. MURRAY SEMPLE, ’25,

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20 LOYOLA COLLEGE REVIEW she had never heard of that great book. Then I tried another subject. Was she aware that the character of Helbeck of Bannisdale was recognized in this country as echoed in that of a man called Beck, judge of the Alberta Supreme Court and one of the most able and uncompromising champions of the Church in Canada. She certainly had heard of this curious coincidence and was greatly amused at the partial coincidence of names. Now, ladies and gentlemen, please note these two contrasts. Mrs. Humphry Ward had been and was still keenly interested in the fact that the name of the most prominent figure of that celebrated novel of hers, Hel- beck of Bannisdale—that one of her many novels in which she showed such deep sympathy with the truth that she seemed just to have missed a great chance of seeing the light —had suggested a real man of like caliber. On the other hand, she professed complete ignorance of her father's share in “The Catholic Dictionary. To understand how it is possible charitably to account for the genuineness of such as- tounding ignorance one must remember her extraordinary family history. Mary Augusta Arnold, her maiden-name, was the grand- daughter of Thomas Arnold, Sr., the famous Head-master of Rugby, immortalized by Thomas Hughes in his ‘Tom Brown's School Days. Doctor Arnold, as he was generally called, was one of the founders of the Broad Church, that section of Anglicans which tolerates the most widely divergent views on fundamental doctrines. Her uncle, Matthew Arnold, was the celebrated Apostle of Culture, whose essay on Sweetness and Light might deceive an archangel who did not know how godly language may clothe the most complete scepticism. Her father, Thomas Arnold, Jr., began as a liberal Anglican, and, at the age of thirty-two became a Catholic. But his first conversion seems not to have been sufficiently motived, for he reverted the next year to the Anglican Church and went to Oxford, where he lived twenty years, editing very learned works on ancient English literature. It was during this period, from 1857 to 1877, that his daughter Mary Augusta, born in 1851, knew him best. These early associa- tions with a life of scholarship and religious conflict have left a deep impress on her own later literary career. As she married Thomas Humphry Ward in 1872, she was not a close witness of her father’s return to Catholicism in 1877, and of his editing, with W. E. Addis, the. Catholic Dictionary in 1883. As her recently published autobio- graphy, A Writer’s Recollections, shows, she never seems to have forgiven the father, whom she really loved, for having made his family uncomfortable by his second and REV. J. MULDOON, C.SS.R. final break with the City of Confusion. Knowing, as we do, what an impassable barrier a definite acceptance of the Catholic faith used to set up, forty years ago, between the convert and his family, we can under- stand how all her father’s literary activities during the years from 1877 till his death as a fervent Catholic, a fellow of the new Royal University of Ireland, in 1900, may have remained deliberately unknown to her. The Catholic Dictionary was the first complete book of reference in the English language on points of Catholic doctrine, ritual, and discipline, and was hailed with