Fenwicks Career

Fenwick's Career, by Mrs.
Humphry Ward

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Title: Fenwick's Career
Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward
Release Date: May 21, 2004 [eBook #12403]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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CAREER***
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FENWICK'S CAREER

by
MRS HUMPHRY WARD
1910

TO
MY DEAR SISTER
J.F.H.
MAY, 1906

[Illustration: Robin Ghyll Cottage]

A PREFATORY WORD
The story told in the present book owes something to the past, in its
picturing of the present, as its predecessors have done; though in much
less degree. The artist, as I hold, may gather from any field, so long as
he sacredly respects what other artists have already made their own by
the transmuting processes of the mind. To draw on the conceptions or
the phrases that have once passed through the warm minting of
another's brain, is, for us moderns, at any rate, the literary crime of
crimes. But to the teller of stories, all that is recorded of the real life of
men, as well as all that his own eyes can see, is offered for the
enrichment of his tale. This is a clear and simple principle; yet it has
been often denied. To insist upon it is, in my belief, to uphold the true
flag of Imagination, and to defend the wide borders of Romance.
In addition to this word of notice, which my readers will perhaps accept
from me once for all, this small preface must also contain a word of
thanks to my friend Mr. Sterner, whose beautiful art has contributed to

this story, as to several of its forerunners. I have to thank him, indeed,
not only as an artist, but as a critic. In the interpreting of Fenwick, he
has given me valuable aid; has corrected mistakes, and illumined his
own painter's craft for me, as none but a painter can. But his poetic
intelligence as an artist is what makes him so rare a colleague. In the
first lovely drawing of the husband and wife sitting by the
Westmoreland stream, Phoebe's face and look will be felt, I think, by
any sympathetic reader, as a light on the course of the story;
reappearing, now in storm, as in the picture of her despair, before the
portrait of her supposed rival; and now in tremulous afterglow, as in the
scene with which the drawings close. To be so understood and so
bodied forth is great good-fortune; and I beg to be allowed this word of
gratitude.
The lines quoted on page 166 are taken, as any lover of modern poetry
will recognise, from the 'Elegy on the Death of a Lady,' by Mr. Robert
Bridges, first printed in 1873.
MARY A. WARD.

CONTENTS

PART I. WESTMORELAND

PART II. LONDON

PART III. AFTER TWELVE YEARS

NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS
FENWICK'S COTTAGE
This cottage, known as Robin Ghyll, is situated near the Langdale
Pikes in Westmoreland. It is owned by Miss Dorothy Ward, the
author's daughter. The older part of the building served as the model for
Fenwick's cottage.
HUSBAND AND WIFE
From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.
EUGÉNIE
From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.
PHOEBE'S RIVAL
From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.
'BE MY MESSENGER'
From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.
ROBIN GHYLL COTTAGE
A nearer view of Miss Ward's cottage. (See frontispiece.)
FENWICK STOOD LOOKING AT THE CANVAS
From an original drawing by Albert Sterner.
All of the illustrations in this volume are photogravures, and except
where otherwise stated, are from photographs taken especially for this
edition.

INTRODUCTION

Fenwick's career was in the first instance suggested by some incidents
in the life of the painter George Romney. Romney, as is well known,
married a Kendal girl in his early youth, and left her behind him in the
North, while he went to seek training and fortune in London. There he
fell under other influences, and finally under the fascinations of Lady
Hamilton, and it was not till years later that he returned to
Westmoreland and his deserted wife to die.
The story attracted me because it was a Westmoreland story, and
implied, in part at least, that setting of fell and stream, wherein,
whether in the flesh or in the spirit, I am always a willing wanderer.
But in the end it really gave me nothing but a bare situation into which
I had breathed a wholly