ABSTRACT
At the end of the nineteenth century two Mrs Wards, not related to each other,
were writing novels in England. The older and more celebrated was Mrs
Humphry Ward, born Mary Augusta Arnold, a niece of Matthew Arnold; Max
Beerbohm drew her as a precocious small girl directing at her smiling uncle the
pained enquiry, 'Why, Uncle Matthew, oh why, will not you be always wholly serious?' Mrs Humphry Ward was famous as the author of Robert Elsmere,
published in 1888, a novel sympathetically describing the loss of faith of a
Victorian clergyman, which included fictional portraits of Walter Pater and
T.H. Green. Mrs Wilfrid Ward was never so celebrated, though One Poor
Scruple, a novel of faith, not of doubt, was very well received in 1899. Indeed a
reviewer in Punch insisted that it was 'far and away better work than anything which the authoress of Robert Elsmere has given to the world'. In general,
though, Mrs Humphry's reputation has survived rather better than Mrs
Wilfrid's; the reverent agnosticism of the one has seemed more approachable than the intense Catholicism of the other. One Poor Scruple has been almost
forgotten, and the new edition should give readers a chance to discover for
themselves a distinguished early example of what later became known as the
'Catholic novel'. It is also an absorbing work of fiction in its own right, which needs no apology before it can be appreciated for its literary qualities.
