Preview: Introducing Mrs. Wilfrid (Josephine) Ward on the Son Rise Morning Show

Anna Mitchell asked me if I'd like to comment on the life and career of Mrs. Wilfrid Ward (nee Josephine Mary Hope-Scott) during my usual Son Rise Morning Show spot on Monday, July 1. She had read a chapter about her in a book from Word on Fire, Women of the Catholic Imagination: Twelve Inspired Novelists You Should Know, edited by Haley Stewart, which I have not read. 

But I have read about Josephine Ward from other sources and have read two of her novels, so I said yes, I'd be happy to. So, Anna will bring what she knows about Josephine and I'll bring what I know about Josephine to our discussion.

The SRMS team will take the week of July 8 through 12 off (although Anna Mitchell has prepared many interviews to air during that week).

We will talk about the two novels by Josephine Ward I have read (One Poor Scruple and Tudor Sunset) during my resumed Monday segment on July 15!

BTW: for those of you few (!) who haven't followed this blog from the beginning, I started appearing on the Son Rise Morning Show in 2010, soon after Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation was published. I even visited Sacred Heart Radio's former location during a business trip with my late husband Mark in 2012, driving from Columbus to Cincinnati, and meeting Anna and Matt Swaim.

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern. Please listen live here or listen to the podcast later.

Josephine Ward (May 18, 1864 – November 20, 1932) was the daughter of one of Saint John Henry Newman's good friends, James Hope-Scott (please note the "-Scott") and his second wife Lady Victoria Alexandrina Fitzalan-Howard, a daughter of the 14th Duke of Norfolk, Henry Granville Fitzalan-Howard, the leading Catholic peer and Earl Marshall of England. By his first wife, Charlotte Harriet Jane Lockhart, Sir Walter Scott's granddaughter, James Hope inherited Abbotsford House in 1853 and added the "-Scott' to his name.

After her parents' deaths, she and her brother James went to live with her maternal grandmother, Augusta Minna Howard, the dowager Duchess of Norfolk at Arundel Castle in West Sussex.

I drop all these names and titles because they demonstrate the rich Catholic background Josephine Mary had--both "Old" Catholic and "New" Catholic, with ties to the recently Emancipated Recusants and the Oxford Movement/Tractarian converts. 

She lived in two historically storied homes: Abbotsford, where she describes how she used play "as a child amidst [her great-grandfathers's] coats of mail in Hall . . . and [pass] between them shivering with terror on my lonely way to bed" in her note to Alfred Noyes in her last novel, Tudor Sunset. Reflecting on her ancestor's writing career, she says as child she didn't really think about attempting "to write an historical novel!", and yet in 1932, she published one about the last years of Queen Elizabeth I.

Then she lived in Arundel Castle, associated with two Catholic martyrs, Saint Philip Howard--where his then-Venerable/Beatified remains were entombed in the Fitzalan Chapel--and Blessed William Howard. So she had those deep ties to the past and the nine pages of books consulted at the end of Tudor Sunset demonstrates how she had studied her family's Catholic heritage.

In 1887, she married Wilfrid Philip Ward, the son of another important Oxford Movement convert, William George Ward. Wilfrid wrote biographies of his father (two separate titles), of Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, and of Cardinal Newman (two volumes). She wrote novels, One Poor Scruple, Out of Due Time and The Job Secretary, for example. Wilfrid and Josephine knew all the great Catholics of that era, from Newman to Manning and Noyes to Belloc, not to mention other literary figures like Chesterton and Tennyson! Can you imagine a dinner party at their home?

To appreciate how close she and Wilfrid were to Cardinal Newman, see the letters she wrote and he wrote to Newman, announcing their engagement to be married in 1887!

Furthermore, Josephine and Wilfrid's daughter Maisie Ward married Frank Sheed in 1926, and they founded Sheed & Ward publishers, which republished some of Josephine's novels in 1933, including One Poor Scruple. Josephine assisted Maisie and Frank financially to found the company. Maisie went on to write many great books too, including biographies of her parents, Chesterton, Caryll Houselander, and Cardinal Newman--and one of my favorites, Saints Who Made History: The First Five Centuries!

Wilfrid died in 1916, Josephine in 1932; she was buried on the Isle of Wight.

The editors of the Catholic Women Writers series, Julia Meszaros and Bonnie Lander Johnson have included One Poor Scruple among the first works published in the series by the Catholic University of America Press, which I reviewed here.

In an article published in the Newman Review, they wrote of Josephine:

One of the Revival’s greatest literary treasures is Josephine Ward, who lived between 1864–1932. . . . In their writing, Josephine and Wilfrid were both concerned with the question of how to realize the fullness of human character in prose: What is a person? How is character formed? Josephine wrote in the Dublin Review that “the greatest drama is the unfolding of the action of the will as it adheres to or thwarts the Divine purpose.” But as a life-long friend of Newman’s, she was also steeped in his ideas about conscience and the formation of moral character, as well as about the importance of doctrine for both. Another central concern of Josephine’s—as topical today as it was then—was how to enable her children to participate in the best of public, intellectual, and cultural life, without exposing them over-much to the influence of institutions that remained fundamentally opposed to Catholic belief and practice.

I'm excited about this discussion on Monday and am grateful to Anna Mitchell for suggesting it.

Image Source (Public Domain): Portrait by Thomas Lawrence, c. 1820s

Son Rise Morning Show: Newman and Friendship

As promised, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show bright and early this morning at 6:50 a.m. Central Time/7:50 a.m. Eastern to talk about "Newman and Friendship" in our Santo Subito! Series.

As an example of how much Blessed John Henry Newman valued friendship, read this homily preached at the funeral of his good friend, James Hope-Scott on May 5, 1873 in London. First, Newman describes his own grief in losing Hope-Scott:

I only know what he was to me. I only know what his loss is to me. I only know that he is one of those whose departure hence has made the heavens dark to me. But I have never lived with him, or travelled with him; I have seen him from time to time; I have visited him; I have corresponded with him; I have had mutual confidences with him. Our lines of duty have lain in very different directions. I have known him as a friend knows friend in the tumult and the hurry of life. I have known him well enough to know how much more there was to know in him; and to look forward, alas! in vain, to a time when, in the evening and towards the close of life, I might know him more. I have known him enough to love him very much, and to sorrow very much, that here I shall not see him again. But then I reflect, if I, who do not know him as he might be known, suffer as I do, what must be their suffering who knew him so well?

Newman then gives a history of their friendship:

I knew him first, I suppose, in 1837 or 1838, thirty-five or six years ago, a few years after he had become Fellow of Merton College. He expressed a wish to know me. How our friendship grew I cannot tell; I must soon have been intimate with him, from the recollection I have of letters which passed between us; and by 1841 I had recourse to him, as a sort of natural adviser, when I was in difficulty. From that time I ever had recourse to him, when I needed advice, down to his last illness. On my first intimacy with him he had not reached the age of thirty. I was many years older; yet he had that about him, even when a young man, which invited and inspired confidence. It was difficult to resist his very presence. True, indeed, I can fancy those who saw him but once and at a distance, surprised and perplexed by that lofty fastidiousness and keen wit which were natural to him; but such a misapprehension of him would vanish forthwith when they drew near to him, and had actual trial of him; especially, as I have said, when they had to consult him, and had experience of the simplicity, seriousness, and (I can use no other word) the sweetness of his manner, as he threw himself at once into their ideas and feelings, listened patiently to them, and spoke out the clear judgment which he formed of the matters which they had put before him.

Newman then describes how Hope-Scott always displayed leadership and sympathy among his friends:

This is the first and the broad view I am led to take of him. He was, emphatically, a friend in need. And this same considerateness and sympathy with which he met those who asked the benefit of his opinion in matters of importance was, I believe, his characteristic in many other ways in his intercourse with those towards whom he stood in various relations. He was always prompt, clear, decided, and disinterested. He entered into their pursuits, though dissimilar to his own; he took an interest in their objects; he adapted himself to their dispositions and tastes; he brought a strong and calm good sense to bear upon their present or their future; he aided and furthered them in their doings by his cooperation. Thus he drew men around him . . .

One of the reasons that Newman valued friendship is that he believed that personal influence was essential in spreading the Good News, in calling others to Jesus, and persuading, where logic and arguments could not, others to accept the Truth. As he said in one of his Oxford sermons, "Personal Influence, the Means of Propagating the Truth":

we shall find it difficult to estimate the moral power which a single individual, trained to practise what he teaches, may acquire in his own circle, in the course of years. While the Scriptures are thrown upon the world, as if the common property of any who choose to appropriate them, he is, in fact, the legitimate interpreter of them, and none other; the Inspired Word being but a dead letter (ordinarily considered), except as transmitted from one mind to another. While he is unknown to the world, yet, within the range of those who see him, he will become the object of feelings different in kind from those which mere intellectual excellence excites. The men commonly held in popular estimation are greatest at a distance; they become small as they are approached; but the attraction, exerted by unconscious holiness, is of an urgent and irresistible nature; it persuades the weak, the timid, the wavering, and the inquiring; it draws forth the affection and loyalty of all who are in a measure like-minded; and over the thoughtless or perverse multitude it exercises a sovereign compulsory sway, bidding them fear and keep silence, on the ground of its own right divine to rule them,—its hereditary claim on their obedience, though they understand not the principles or counsels of that spirit, which is "born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." . . .

Will it be said, This is a fancy, which no experience confirms? First, no irreligious man can know any thing concerning the hidden saints. Next, no one, religious or not, can detect them without attentive study of them. But, after all, say they are few, such high Christians; and what follows? They are enough to carry on God's noiseless work. The Apostles were such men; others might be named, in their several generations, as successors to their holiness. These communicate their light to a number of lesser luminaries, by whom, in its turn, it is distributed through the world; the first sources of illumination being all the while unseen, even by the majority of sincere Christians,—unseen as is that Supreme Author of Light and Truth, from whom all good primarily proceeds. A few highly-endowed men will rescue the world for centuries to come. Before now even one man [St. Athanasius of Alexandria] has impressed an image on the Church, which, through God's mercy, shall not be effaced while time lasts. Such men, like the Prophet, are placed upon their watch-tower, and light their beacons on the heights. Each receives and transmits the sacred flame, trimming it in rivalry of his predecessor, and fully purposed to send it on as bright as it has reached him; and thus the self-same fire, once kindled on Moriah, though seeming at intervals to fail, has at length reached us in safety, and will in like manner, as we trust, be carried forward even to the end.

As Newman wrote in his meditation on "Jesus, the light of the soul":

Stay with me, and then I shall begin to shine as you shine: so to shine as to be a light to others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from you. None of it will be mine. No merit to me. It will be you who shines through me upon others. O let me thus praise you, in the way which you do love best, by shining on all those around me. Give light to them as well as to me; light them with me, through me. Teach me to show forth your praise, your truth, your will. Make me preach you without preaching-not by words, but by my example and by the catching force, the sympathetic influence, of what I do - by my visible resemblance to your saints, and the evident fullness of the love which my heart bears to you.

James Hope-Scott and Henry Manning

While I'm at the Spiritual Life Center today here in Wichita to present on "St. Thomas More: Conscience and Martyrdom" and "Blessed John Henry Newman: Conscience and Conversion", it's appropriate that I mention two contemporaries of Blessed John Henry Newman who were born on July 15.

Henry Manning was born on July 15 in 1808, James Hope (he added the -Scott later) in 1812.

Henry Cardinal Manning, the second Archbishop of Westminster, is one of the famous converts who became Catholic through the influence of Newman in the Oxford Movement. He and Newman had a rather contentious relationship during their Catholic years. The story of his conversion is told in David Newsome's The Parting of Friends: The Wilberforces and Henry Manning.

James Hope-Scott, on the other hand, was a most faithful friend and defender of Newman. He was a barrister and represented Newman during the Achilli trial. More on his life from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

third son of the Honourable Sir Alexander Hope, G.C.B., who was fourth son of John, second Earl of Hopetoun, a Scottish title dating from 1703. His mother was third and youngest daughter of George Brown of Ellerton, Roxburghshire. During early childhood his home was the Military College at Sandhurst, where his father was in command. Afterwards he went abroad with his parents, staying in succession at Dresden, Lausanne, and Florence, and thus gaining a mastery of the German, French, and Italian tongues. In 1825 he entered Eton, whence, in 1828, he matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford. After a visit to Paris in 1829 he went into residence at Oxford the same year. The degree of B.A. he took in 1832, coming out in the fourth class in literis humanioribus. Next year he was elected a Fellow of Merton. In 1835 he gave up his intention of entering the ministry of the Established Church, and began to study law under conveyancers, his call to the bar at the Inner Temple taking place in 1838. Meanwhile, in the latter year he graduated B.C.L. at Oxford, proceeding D.C.L. in 1843. In 1838, after publishing anonymously in pamphlet form a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, he saw through the press Gladstone's work entitled "The State considered in its Relations with the Church". Next year he and Roundell Palmer (the future Earl of Selborne) projected "The History of Colleges". In 1840, at Newman's request, Hope wrote in "The British Critic", a review, later published separately, of Ward's translation of "The Statutes of Magdalen College, Oxon." The same year, as junior counsel for the capitular bodies petitioning against the Ecclesiastical Duties and Revenues Bill, he delivered the remarkably able speech which moved Brougham to exclaim, "That young man's fortune is made." In 1840, moreover, he was appointed Chancellor of the Diocese of Salisbury, which post he held until 1845. About the same time he took part in the foundation of Glenalmond College, in Perthshire, for the education of the Scottish Episcopal youth. In 1840-41 he spent some eight months in Italy, Rome included, in company with his close friend Edward Louth Badeley. On his return he became, with Newman, one of the foremost promoters of the Tractarian movement at Oxford. His next publication was a pamphlet against the establishment of the Anglo-Prussian Protestant See of Jerusalem, of which a second edition appeared in 1842. In 1849 and 1850 there came the Gorham trial and judgment, and in the latter year the agitation against the so-called "Papal Aggression". These events finally determined him upon the course of joining the Catholic Church, into which, together with Archdeacon Manning, he was received in London in 1851 by the Jesuit Father Brownhill.

In 1852 he managed Newman's defence in the libel action brought against him by Achilli, and in 1855 he conducted the negotiations which ended in Newman's accepting the rectorship of the Catholic University of Ireland. As to Hope's professional work, within a few years of his call he devoted himself wholly to parliamentary practice, in which his success and emoluments became prodigious. This was the palmy period of railway construction, and eventually he became standing counsel to almost every railway in the realm. In 1849 he was appointed Q.C., with a patent of precedence.

How he came to change his name:

His first wife, whom he married in 1847, was Charlotte Harriet Jane Lockhart, only daughter of John Gibson Lockhart and granddaughter of Sir Walter Scott. She soon followed her husband into the Catholic Church. A year later he became tenant of Abbotsford to his brother-in-law, and on the latter's death, in 1853, its possessor in right of his wife, thereupon assuming the name of Hope-Scott. Not long afterwards he added a new wing to Sir Walter's mansion. In 1855 he bought the Highland estate of Dorlin, whereupon he built a new house, selling the whole to Lord Howard of Glosson in 1871. In 1858 he had to mourn the loss of his wife, who died in childbed, the newborn child dying shortly after, and Walter Michael, his infant son and heir, before the close of the year. His second wife, whom he wedded in 1861, was Lady Victoria Alexandrina Fitzalan- Howard, eldest daughter of the fourteenth Duke of Norfolk, of whose children Hope-Scott had been left guardian. In 1867 he had the honour of a visit from Queen Victoria at Abbotsford, and in the same year he bought a villa at Hyères, in Provence. Like her predecessor, his second wife died in childbed in 1870, after giving birth to James Fitzalan Hope, now (1909) M.P. Hope- Scott never overcame the grief and shock entailed by this last bereavement. He now withdrew from his profession, surviving his dead wife but little more than two years, and dying in 1873. His funeral sermon was preached by his old and intimate friend Cardinal Newman in the same Jesuit church of Farm Street in which, two and twenty years back, Hope-Scott had made his submission to the Catholic Church. His charities and benefactions were wellnigh boundless. It is reckoned that from 1860 onwards he spent £40,000 in hidden charity. Among his innumerable good works, he built at a cost of £10,000 the Catholic church at Galashiels, near Abbotsford, and he was the chief benefactor of St. Margaret's Convent, at Edinburgh, wherein he lies buried.

More about him at Abbotsford here.

At his funeral, Newman praised him for his "tender conscience", his generosity, his talents and gifts as a barrister and advocate, and then concluded:

O happy soul, who hast loved neither the world nor the things of the world apart from God! Happy soul, who, amid the world's toil, hast chosen the one thing needful, that better part which can never be taken away! Happy soul, who, being the counsellor and guide, the stay, the light and joy, the benefactor of so many, yet hast ever depended simply, as a little child, on the grace of thy God and the merits and strength of thy Redeemer! Happy soul, who hast so thrown thyself into the views and interests of other men, so prosecuted their ends, and associated thyself in their labours, as never to forget still that there is one Holy Catholic Roman Church, one Fold of Christ and Ark of salvation, and never to neglect her ordinances or to trifle with her word! Happy soul, who, as we believe, by thy continual almsdeeds, offerings, and bounties, hast blotted out such remains of daily recurring sin and infirmity as the sacraments have not reached! Happy soul, who, by thy assiduous preparation for death, and the long penance of sickness, weariness, and delay, has, as we trust, discharged the debt that lay against thee, and art already passing from penal purification to the light and liberty of heaven above!

And so farewell, but not farewell for ever, dear James Robert Hope Scott! He is gone from us, but only gone before us. It is for us to look forward, not backward. We shall meet him again, if we are worthy, in "Mount Sion, and the heavenly Jerusalem," in "the company of many thousands of angels, the Church of the first-born who are written in the heavens," with "God, the Judge of all, and the spirits of the just made perfect, and Jesus, the Mediator of the New Testament, and the blood which speaketh better things than that of Abel."