11 January: Boreham on Mrs.Henry Wood

A Hurricane of Thrills
Literature, like everything else, has its second fiddles—some of them very fine fiddles indeed—and of these excellent instruments Mrs. Henry Wood, the anniversary of whose birthday occurs on the 17 January, was a conspicuous example. In her struggle for recognition Ellen Price—to give her her maiden name—enjoyed one enormous advantage and was subjected to one cruel handicap. The daughter of a wealthy glove manufacturer, she was cradled in the lap of luxury and denied none of the amenities of gentility, culture, and refinement. Against this, however, she was ordained to be a life-long sufferer. She endured from infancy the discomforts and disfigurements incidental to a spinal curvature which compelled her to spend some of the brightest years of her young maidenhood on a reclining couch and which necessitated that, to the end of her days, she should adopt in repose the habits and attitudes of a semi-invalid. Most of her writing was done while propped up by pillows with her manuscript supported on her upraised knees.

Her physical disability was probably caused by a hair-raising escapade of her childhood. Near her home was a large field in which a bull was often turned out to graze. Mr. and Mrs. Price had given the strictest instructions that, on no account whatever, was Ellen to be taken into this pasture. Her nurse, however, convinced either of the absence or docility of the ponderous beast, one afternoon defied the parental authority and took Ellen for a walk across the forbidden domain. To her horror the nurse discovered, when it was too late to retreat, that the bull was in residence and that, attracted perhaps by the little girl's red-riding-hood array, he was charging menacingly in their direction. Snatching up the child, the woman rushed wildly to the border of the field and, desperately gathering up all her strength, hurled her charge bodily over the edge. So abject was her terror that to her dying day she could never recall the method of her own escape. But the violent handling to which the little girl was subjected that day was often blamed for the life-long ailments that followed.

A Late Start And a Tardy Triumph
Save, however, that her injury made her appear a trifle shorter than would otherwise have been the case, and that it induced cautious movement and premature weariness, her enfeebled frame did not exclude her from the pleasures and activities of a normal feminine life. She married at 22 a man who had already distinguished himself in the consular service and who adorned a position of importance and authority in the mercantile and financial world. Soon after their union Mr. Wood resolved to give his frail young wife the delights and sensations of European travel, and, as those who can read between the lines of her novel can easily imagine, it was in France that some of the happiest years of her life were spent. Mrs. Henry Wood was nearly 50 when she wrote her first novel—"East Lynne".

"East Lynne" can never take the place in our libraries of "Adam Bede," "Great Expectations," and ""Hereward the Wake"—all written about the same time—yet none of these, at the time, enjoyed the vogue that fell to Mrs. Henry Wood's initial effort. It ran into more than a million copies and has been translated not only into every European language but into several Oriental languages. Its dramatic presentations have been innumerable. Not that her triumph was instantaneous. Before her work saw the light she had to endure the torments and vexations that had fallen to the lot of Charlotte Bronte a few years earlier. As soon as the manuscript was complete Mrs. Wood posted it to Chapman and Hall who, according to custom, handed the parcel to their literary valuer, who happened to be no less distinguished a person than George Meredith. Meredith read the story, scribbled across the wrapper the chilling words, "Opinion emphatically against it," and returned the package to the firm. They, on the strength of that brusque verdict, summarily declined it.

In Foremost Rank Of English Novelists
Harrison Ainsworth urged Mr. Chapman, of the publishing firm, to reconsider that decision. Mr. Chapman explained that tradition made it impossible for a firm to act in the teeth of the judgment of their valuer. "Well," exclaimed Ainsworth as he turned away, "I think you are making a great mistake!" "I think so too" replied Mr. Chapman with a wry face. And Chapman and Hall estimate that, having regard to all the other novels that ultimately flowed from the same pen, that mistake cost them £120,000. Mrs. Wood at length cajoled a publisher into shouldering the risk, and, as soon as the book was in the press Mr. Wood again took his wife abroad. He wished to shield her from the mortification of failure or the no less dangerous exultation of success. But his scheme miscarried. The English newspapers arriving at their continental retreat were very soon ringing with the praises of "East Lynne." Even "The Times" greeted it with an unusually long and exceedingly flattering review, in which it welcomed the new writer to the foremost rank of English novelists.

Although Mrs. Wood had found her metier so late in life she contrived to follow up that initial triumph by writing about 30 other novels. They are all marked, in greater or lesser degree, by the excellences and the weaknesses that had characterised "East Lynne." "No one," the "Saturday Review" once averred, "lays out the plan of a novel better than she does; and even Wilkie Collins himself, to whom ingenuity is the Alpha and Omega of his craft, is not greater than she in the cleverness with which she devises her puzzles and fits the parts together." High praise as this is, it does not overshoot the mark. Mrs. Wood lived to be 73, and then, deeply loved and universally admired, while everybody around her was preparing for the celebration of Queen Victoria’s jubilee, she quietly slipped away.

F W Boreham

Image: Mrs. Henry Wood