A WRITER'S RECOLLECTIONS
(IN TWO VOLUMES), VOLUME II

The few recollections of William Forster that I have put together in thepreceding volume lead naturally, perhaps, to some account of myfriendship and working relations at this time with Forster's mostformidable critic in the political press--Mr. John Morley, now LordMorley. It was in the late 'seventies, I think, that I first saw Mr.Morley. I sat next him at the Master's dinner-table, and the impressionhe made upon me was immediate and lasting. I trust that a great man, towhom I owed much, will forgive me for dwelling on some of the incidentsof literary comradeship which followed!

My husband and I, on the way home, compared notes. We felt that we hadjust been in contact with a singular personal power combined with amoral atmosphere which had in it both the bracing and the charm that,physically, are the gift of the heights. The "austere" Radical, indeed,was there. With regard to certain vices and corruptions of our life andpolitics, my uncle might as well have used Mr. Morley's name as that ofMr. Frederick Harrison, when he presented us, in "Friendship's Garland,"with Mr. Harrison setting up a guillotine in his back garden. There wassomething--there always has been something--of the somber intensity ofthe prophet in Mr. Morley. Burke drew, as we all remember, anineffaceable picture of Marie Antoinette's young beauty as he saw it in1774, contrasting it with the "abominable scenes" amid which sheperished. Mr. Morley's comment is:

    But did not the protracted agonies of a nation deserve the tribute
    of a tear? As Paine asked, were men to weep over the plumage and
    forget the dying bird? ... It was no idle abstraction, no
    metaphysical right of man for which the French cried, but only the
    practical right of being permitted, by their own toil, to save
    themselves and the little ones about their knees from hunger and
    cruel death.

The cry of the poor, indeed, aga

...

A WRITER'S RECOLLECTIONS
(IN TWO VOLUMES), VOLUME II

BY
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

Published November, 1918.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS