The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-04-23
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

picked up copy of the Times. dated March 2s and while casually glancing down the court calendar, came to forth coming marriages and funerals. { never put down an Age Herald until have glanced through the list of deaths, for among the list may be some friend, loved one. or relative. The notices are short but long enough to carry sorrow to many homes.
 
 I do not know why I should have gone down the column in the great Eng fish paper to see who was dead. but did, and my attention was soon arrested by the name of Mrs. Humphrey Ward, and then I was all attention, for she had made a name for herself which was world wide.
 Among the details I saw that the body had been borne on a hand-drawn bier to Aldbury Church, near Tring, and that g detachment of the Hertfordshire com stabulary walked before the process sion. Mrs. Ward having held office io- cally as a magistrate. although shs was one of the founders of the Wom- ems National Anti-Sruffrage League in 1908.
 The short newspaper account stated congregation. including, besides resi- dents of Aldbury and the district, a number who had travelled from London viscounts and viscountesses lords and ladies, members of Parliament, gen erals, authors and playwrights and in all most distinguished company of noted men and women who were pres ent The editor of the Times wrote, ex- pressing his regret at his unavoidable absence
 The family mourners were: MT. Arr mold Ward (son), Miss Dorothy Ward (daughter), Mir. and Mrs. George Treve- ivan (son-in-law and daughter), and pr, F. s. Arnold. Mir Humphrey Ward, however, was unable to be present ow- ing to illness. The dean of St. Pauls, with Canon Wood. rector of Aldbury, and the Rev. George Selwyn Ga nephew 1 of Mrs. ward), conducted the service, which was fully choral The hymns were: Let saints on earth in concert sing and 70 Light, whose beams illu- mine all" and the Dead March in Saul was played as the wreath laden coffin was borne from the church. In the churchyard the graveside was flanked ! by a mass of flowers.
 | I have given these details feeling sure that her many admirers and she r ad thousands of them in America, will he glad to know something about the interment of the distinguished English novelist who was born on the 11th of June, 1851, at Hobart, Tasmania. an island colony of Britain, lying fully 100 miles south of Australia, from which | it is separated by Bass strait, where her | father, Thomas Arnold, was then an l inspector of schools.
 This is not to be an attempt at the l appreciation of her rank in literature
  even a catalogue of her books. My de- sire is to simply give some of the sa- lient facts in her biography in order that those who have read her books will be better able to understand how it was 1 in choosing such vital topics she was able to handle them so effectively. l She had behind her a noted ancestry | for Thomas Arnold was son of Arnold .lxf- II, Mot thew Arnold, whose impressions oi America have been published, for ht came over some years back on lecture tour. The Arnolds for generations have cone their own thinking and have never shirked, but always stood for the thing which they believed, even though i meant to change and be misunderstood
 Thomas Arnold was a scholar of the University College, Oxford at the crisis of the Oxford movement, in which some of the Church of England men wen lover to Rome. He began life as a liber- | al of the school Of Jowett Clough and Stanley. but in 1856 he became Ro' man Catholic, relinquished his inspec ! torship of schools in Tasmania. and was appointed professor of English litera' ture at Dublin. thence following New | man to Birmingham, where he published (his manual of English literature: I have brought this out not merely tt show the changing religious atmos phere in which Mary Augusta, his tai l ented daughter. was reared. but that 1 was a change of churcf which brough l her from the other side of the world tt 1 be brought up mainly at Oxford. He | early Associations with a life of schol iarship and relfgious conflict are deepl, | marked in some of her epoch I'm akins novels. Thomas Arnold himself re verted to the English church ard re
 mained in it for nearly score of years l and then again in 1877 reverted onc' more to the Catholic Church, dying il
 Dublin in 1900.
 l I have said this much to be able t jump ov& her first literary outpu until the appearance of Robert Else mere" in 1sSSs but the conflicts tracinl the mental evolu tion of an English cler lbyman of high character and conscience and of intellectual lea nings was no drawn from her father, but owed mucl to "reminiscences both of T. H. Green tho philosopher, and of J. R. Green tn historian But in "Helbeck of Bannis dale" t1SoS) she treats of the clash be tween the ascetic ideal of Roman Ca
 thoiicism and modern lise.
 I'll leave the novels in which sh broke ground for politics and socialism and stick to Robert Elsmere." in whicl there is fight over religious beliefs ! Largsly in consequence of review b, ! William E, Gladstone Robert Elsemer
 and the Battle of Belief" which an